Carbon Dioxide Facts

Carbon Dioxide gets a bad rap from the press, but it is natural and essential to life. CO2 is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas and it is not a pollutant. Trying to control CO2 by regulation is trying to regulate and control nature. Without CO2, plants die off and without plant life the earth's biological food chain would be terminally broken.

Plants require carbon dioxide to conduct photosynthesis. Greenhouses enrich their atmospheres with additional CO2 to sustain and increase plant growth. Plants can grow as much as 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm CO2 when compared with ambient conditions. If carbon dioxide is increasing so much around the globe, it would be logical that plants and trees would be growing faster than they previously did, but they are not.

CO2 is reduced by photosynthesis of plants. A photosynthesis-related drop (by a factor less than two) in carbon dioxide concentration in a greenhouse compartment would kill green plants, or completely stop their growth. Increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations result in fewer stomata developing on plants, which leads to reduced water usage and increased water-use efficiency.

Deforestation for agriculture is just replacing one type of vegetation with another. Both trees and plants reduce CO2.

Photosynthesis by phytoplankton consumes dissolved CO2 in the upper ocean and promotes the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere. Photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and water to produce sugars from which other organic compounds can be constructed, and oxygen is produced as a by-product. Sea urchins convert carbon dioxide into raw material for their shells.

Carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO3) and carbonate (CO32). There is about fifty times as much carbon dissolved in the sea water of the oceans as exists in the atmosphere. The oceans act as an enormous carbon sink, and take up about 30% of the total released into the atmosphere.

In medicine, up to 5% carbon dioxide (130 times atmospheric concentration) is added to oxygen for stimulation of breathing after apnea and to stabilize the O2/CO2 balance in blood.

Liquid and solid carbon dioxide are important refrigerants, especially in the food industry, where they are employed during the transportation and storage of frozen foods. Solid carbon dioxide, dry ice is used for small shipments where refrigeration equipment is not practical.

Carbon dioxide is used in enhanced oil recovery where it is injected into or adjacent to producing oil wells, when it becomes miscible (mixed) with the oil. It acts as both a pressurizing agent and, when dissolved into the underground crude oil, significantly reduces its viscosity, and changes surface chemistry enabling the oil to flow faster.

Carbon dioxide is used to keep the pH level from rising in swimming pools.

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide fluctuate slightly with the change of the seasons. Concentrations of carbon dioxide fall during the Northern Hemisphere spring and summer as plants consume it, and rise during the northern autumn and winter as plants go dormant or die.

Up to 40% of the gas emitted by some volcanoes during eruptions is carbon dioxide.

Various proxies and modeling suggests larger variations in past times. 500 million years ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now.

Take a deep breath, exhale and out comes carbon dioxide. All the carbon in our body comes either directly or indirectly from plants, which recently took it out of the air. When we breathe out, all the carbon dioxide we exhale has already been accounted for. We are simply returning to the air the same carbon that was there to begin with, so humans are carbon neutral.

Incidentally, during 2009, energy-related CO2 emissions in the US had their largest absolute and percentage decline, seven percent (which followed a three percent drop in 2008), since the start of US Energy Information Administration comprehensive record of annual energy data that began in 1949.

Tylenol vs. Advil vs. Aleve

Here is a handy chart which shows the best uses for these common pain killers. I think Aspirin is a bit under reported in the chart.

Origins of Apple Words

Steve Jobs came back from working on a commune-type All-One Farm in Oregon and announced to his partners that he had a name for their company, Apple Computer.

Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who first started the project, picked "Macintosh" because the McIntosh was his favorite apple. The spelling was changed to avoid copyright infringement. Steve Jobs said the product was "insanely great".

The slogan, Think Different, was dreamed up by an art director, Craig Tanimoto.

TBWA ad agency came up with the 'i' prefix to infer internet. It also connoted individual, imaginative, and more.

App Store was pure Jobs and meant both applications and a contraction of Apple.

Free Friday Smile

Happy Friday

Life has no meaning, only living has meaning.

Living is doing something, like celebrating a Happy Friday!

National Tap Dance Day

 In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's (Mr. Bojangles) birth.

Names and Initials

You may have wondered about some famous person's initials.

• E. E. Cummings - The famous poet's initials stood for Edward Estlin Cummings
• E.B. White - Writer and author of English Language Sytle Guide, Elwyn Brooks White
• H.P. Lovecraft - Horror author, Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• H.G. Wells - "war of the worlds", "time machine", etc., Herbert George Wells
• J.K. Rowling - The "K" in J.K. Rowling is not her name. Joanne Rowling does not have a middle name, but her publishers wanted to add another initial to her name for her book. She settled on Kathleen, the name of her favorite grandmother.
• J.R.R. Tolkien - "Hobbit", lord of rings series, etc., John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Moon and Earth Names

Translations of the Bible into English was one of the earliest recorded uses of the name Earth – "God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good."

It is called ‘terra’ in Portuguese, ‘dünya’ in Turkish and ‘aarde’ in Dutch. The common thread in all languages is that they were all derived from the same meaning in their origins, which is ‘ground’ or ‘soil’.

The modern English word and name for our planet Earth goes back at least 1,000 years. Just as the English language evolved from ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (English-German) with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century AD, the word ‘Earth’ came from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘erda’ and its Germanic equivalent ‘erde’ which means ground or soil. In Old English, the word became ‘eor(th)e’ or 'ertha '.

The Moon did have other names, including the name of an ancient deity, Luna, the Roman Goddess of the Moon. The word Luna is still associated with the Moon. For instance, Luna is the root of words like lunar.

When humanity first learned of other moons orbiting the planets in our solar system, one of the primary reasons they were given names was to differentiate them from the Moon, which is still the official name of our moon in English. The word “moon” can be traced back to Old English, where it is said to have derived from the Proto-Germanic word “menon”, which in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European “menses”, meaning “month, moon”.

With few exceptions, the Moon has long been associated with women, fertility, and a whole host of other female attributes. In most cases, menstrual cycles more or less coincide with the phases of the Moon. It should then come as no surprise that across many languages, the words for “moon”, “month”, and the name for a woman’s menstrual cycle often has the same root word.

Potatoes Business

The potato is the world’s fourth largest food crop, following rice, wheat, and corn/maize. The Inca Indians in Peru were the first to cultivate potatoes around 8,000 BC to 5,000 BC. They first came to the US in 1621.

Did you know there is a National Potato Council, Potato Association of America, World Potato Congress, US Potato Board, US Potato Promotion Board, among others. In addition, Michigan has Mich. Potato Industry Commission, Mich. Seed Potato Assoc., and Potato Growers of Mich. There are more than 100 varieties of potatoes in the US. There are many more types of potato chips from around the world. Next week I will list a few of them.

Michigan supplies over a third of all potato chips in the US. Its annual Winter Potato Conference is one of the biggest in the country. It is overshadowed by the  Potato Expo, the largest conference and trade show for the potato industry held in North America.

Potatoes contain many of the essential nutrients that the dietary guidelines recommend Americans increase in their diet. Potatoes eaten with the skin provide nearly half of the Daily Value for vitamin C and are one of the best sources of potassium (more than a banana), iodine, iron, other trace minerals, and fiber. One medium-sized potato has 100 calories and provides complex carbohydrates needed to fuel our brains. Potatoes contain no fat.

Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London noted that a small "bag of ready-salted crisps" contains less salt than a serving of "Special K, All-Bran, Golden Grahams, Cheerios, Shreddies, and every brand of cornflakes on sale in the UK."

20/20 Vision

The 20/20 scale is different in different parts of the world. After examining a large number of people, American ophthalmologists decided on the 20/20 scale, saying that “20/20” is the normal visual acuity of the average person. That means standing 20 feet away from something, you can see what the average person can see standing 20 feet away from the same thing. In metric countries doctors measure how well a person can see at 6 meters away (19.69 feet).

The Snellen eye chart is the chart topped with the big E and consists of 11 rows of capital letters that get progressively smaller toward the bottom of the chart. A person is placed 20 feet away from the chart. Since most doctors’ offices are too small, mirrors are often used to simulate 20 feet. The doctor asks the person to read out the smallest line of letters that can be seen at that distance. Most people can read the fourth line up from the bottom without trouble, so if a person can do this, the vision is considered 20/20.

Using the Snellen chart, if a person can only see the big E up top and none of the other lines of text, he is considered to have 20/200 vision., meaning he sees at 20 feet what an average person can see at 200 feet away. 20/200 visual acuity and worse is considered legally blind in the United States, unless it can be corrected to better with glasses or contacts.

If a person can read the tiny bottom line of text on the chart at 20 feet away, it is considered 20/5 visual acuity. Most humans do not have the ability to have much better than 20/10 vision.

The 20/20 or 6/6 visual acuity is not a measure of a prescription as it does not take into account the nature of the problem, only the result of it.

Wordology, Base Jump

BASE is an acronym for Buildings, Antennas, Spans and Earth. Base jumps and other non-harnessed jumps are illegal in all US national parks.

Eight Useful Google Tips

Are you trying to remember the name of a song you heard? Try typing, winner takes it* abba and Google will try to complete your search.

You can search by file type by typing filetype:ppt or filetype:excel or any other file type.

Putting two periods, .. between two numbers will search within that range, such as news 2013..2015

If you are looking for a definition type, define: followed by the word you want defined.

Here is a very useful thing google can do for you. Set a timer by typing, set timer for and then the amount of time, as in, set timer for 10 minutes.

In a restaurant and need to figure out tip, type in, tip calculator and Google will present an onscreen calculator for you. You set amount, tip percent and it does the work for you.

If you want listen to some music, type in, music by Cher or any other artist and add youtube at the end.

You can do the same for books, type in, books by and the author name, (of course I had to test this by typing in my own name).

Discreet vs. Discrete

This pair of homophones (words that sound alike, but are different in meaning, spelling, or both) can be confusing. Discreet implies the showing of reserve in behavior or speech. Discrete means distinct, separate, unrelated.

Both words derive from the same Latin word discretus meaning “separated.” Until the 1700s, these words were each spelled many different ways including discrete, discreet, dyscrete, discreete, etc.

Eventually discrete and discreet came to be differentiated in spelling as well as in meaning. Discreet has yielded the noun discretion, but discrete's noun form is discreteness. For most of English history, discreet was more frequently used, but today discrete is much more frequently used than discreet; it has seen a dramatic rise since the 1940s.

If the e’s are separated by the “t”,  use “discrete” (meaning “separate”).

Happy Friday

How can you lose at the game of life when you have joy, friendship, happiness, and love on your team.

My team always plays to win and have a Happy Friday!