Modern philosophy of science, especially quantum physics, is only just catching up with the past. The past being a science where the scientist and the experience are not separate, but participate in the act of science – an inquiry of events coming-into-being.  This is different from the dominant present practice of science where the senses are denied, only the end-product looked at and the scientist ‘isn’t there’!

I hope you enjoy my short extracts with the accompanying discussion. I say ‘discussion’ as your input would be gratefully appreciated.  If you don’t understand anything please let me know and I will try and find an answer.

_____________

Extracts from:

‘The Practice of Osteopathy’ – Carl Philip McConnell and Charles Clayton Teall, 1920, Journal Printing Company, Kirksville, Missouri.

[A. T. Still] sets the exact date, June 22, 1874, when the light dawned and he saw the outline of his great philosophy – Osteopathy. Then came the years of adversity and struggle. With the eye of a prophet he saw the future of that philosophy, and with the firmness of a Spartan has defended it since birth. It must be a separate, distinct system.

Osteopathy has been defined as “that science or system of healing which emphasizes,

(a) the diagnosis of disease by physical methods with the view of discovering, not the symptoms but the cause of disease in connection with misplacements of tissue, obstruction of fluids and interference with the forces of the organism;

(b) the treatment of disease by scientific manipulations in connection with which the operating physician mechanically uses and applies the inherent resources of the organism to overcome disease and establish health, either by removing or correcting mechanical disorders and thus permitting nature to recuperate the diseased parts, or by producing and establishing anti-toxic and anti-septic conditions to counteract toxic and septic conditions of the organism or its parts;

(c) the application of mechanical and operative surgery in setting fractures or dislocated bones, repairing lacerations and removing abnormal tissue growths or tissue elements when these become dangerous to life.” In a word, osteopathy is adjustment and the osteopath is an anatomical engineer who knows what is wrong and has the ability to correct it.

“Osteopathy would expound and apply the true philosophy of manipulation. While the hands are used, it is not this alone and chiefly that distinguishes its method of operation, but the idea and purpose that lie behind manipulation.” From the  Encyclopedia Amaricana.

All manipulators are not osteopaths any more than all butchers are surgeons. The need for deep study of the subject is apparent from this characteristic statement of Dr. Still’s: “Osteopathy is a science; not what we know of it, but the subject we are working is deep as eternity. We know but little of it. I have worked and worried here in Kirksville for twenty-two long years, and I intend to study for twenty-three thousand years yet.”

The fact that use is made of the hands to the extent it is by both osteopaths and masseurs or Swedish movement operators gives rise to the mistaken idea of similarity in treatment.

“The essential distinction,” says G. D. Hulett, “between Osteopathy and all other systems of healing based on manipulation, clusters around the aetiology of disease. While these other systems, as indicated at least by their practice, look at disease from a peripheral standpoint, osteopathy views it from a central standpoint.”

It must be understood at once that the osteopath admits the reality of drug action for “there is no doubt that the pharmacopeia records many drugs whose action is rapid and effective so far as securing activity or decrease of secretion is concerned, but the element of danger, i.e., their destructive power is great. Oftentimes their power does not stop at the point desired or limit its effect to the therapeutic action sought.”

Walter’s discussion:

In this introduction to McConnell and Teall’s book the word ‘philosophy’ is used on numerous occasions. As I have mentioned in my lectures, osteopathy is a practical philosophy.  We are reminded that one of the objectives of manipulation is that the “operating physician mechanically uses and applies the inherent resources of the organism to overcome disease and establish health.”  Today this has been reduced to an overwhelming manipulation of joints, muscles, fascia etc.  McConnell states in other works that the direct treatment of structures is an idol and a pitfall, as this approach focuses on structures as the end-product.

Still’s quote, “the subject we are working is as deep as eternity.  We know but little of it”  indicates the historical and evolutionary foundation of osteopathic philosophy.  Still warns us of the non-ending nature of osteopathy saying: “I intend to study for twenty-three thousand years yet.”

Hulett’s quote comparing the different types of healing based on manipulation recognises the central rather than peripheral nature of osteopathic practice. Again, this is to dispel any end-product – i.e. tissue dominant thinking or treatment.  This “central standpoint” being the osteopathic lesion, which is an organising idea rather than a tissue.

There is recognition in the above texts of the usefulness of medication, with the warning of the non-specificity of drug action.  Osteopaths increasingly took up the use of drugs to strengthen their position in the world of medicine, as their concept of ‘pure’ osteopathic practice weakened.  With a change of wholeness as central to thinking, came the dominance of peripheral, separateness and differential thinking in diagnosis and treatment.

How do you think we can get this wholeness thinking back?

What effect do you think it would have on your ability to treat a wider range of conditions?

23May13 }:{  Reports trending today give details about the death of 1986 Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Rohrer.  One of the latest uses of Dr. Rohrer’s invention came this year, when I.B.M. scientists made what they call history’s tiniest stop-action film, as verified by Guinness World Records. Called “A Boy and His Atom,” the film assembles atoms into the image of a small boy and shows him dancing, bouncing about and playing catch with an atom. It was made by moving atoms frame by frame — 250 frames in all — and magnifying them 100 million times.

Heinrich Rohrer, Physicist, Dies at 79; Helped Open Door to Nanotechnology nyti.ms/12LkVYz

— HRG(@hrgresearch) May 23, 2013

Dr. Rohrer, who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing a microscope that made it possible to see individual atoms and move them around, an achievement that led to vastly faster computing and greatly advanced molecular biology, died on Thursday night or early Friday morning in Wollerau, Switzerland. He was 79.

Now a member of SCAGA }:{  alt@cities on paper.li 

A review of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

If you’re the sort of person who gravitates to the sidelines at parties, shuns speaking opportunities and the spotlight in general, and wonders how gregarious people ever got to be that way, this book was written for you. And, as it turns out, not just for me, too, but also for between one-third and one-half of the American population.

Here’s Susan Cain framing her subject: “Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality — the ‘north and south of temperament,’ as one scientist puts it — is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Our place on this continuum influences our choice of friends and mates, and how we make conversation, resolve differences, and show love. It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them.” And, of course, lots more.

The popular misconception of introversion in America is that it’s “somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.” By contrast, extroversion has become what Cain calls the “Extrovert Ideal” in U.S. society, making the rest of us feel somehow guilty when we don’t measure up. Cain takes on this misguided notion with a vengeance. In Quiet, she demonstrates how each of these two personality types has its own advantages and disadvantages. She makes a clear case for including a balance of the two types in any organization, the extroverts to push the limits and the introverts to hold them back from hurtling over the edge.

The terms introvert and extrovert were popularized by Carl Jung in an influential book published nearly a century ago (1921). “Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves.” In Quiet, Cain details the many ways in which the two personality types differ in the ways they work, play, invest, love, and perform just about any other function common to Americans in the here and now.

The distinction between the two types isn’t hard and fast. For example,
“[i]ntroverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while they wish they were home in their pajamas. . .  Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating.” Introverts listen more than they talk. Extroverts talk more than they listen. Still, the contrast isn’t complete: these are tendencies exhibiting strong statistical correlations with distinct patterns of chemical interaction in the brain . They’re not universal guides to behavior.

Cain places contemporary views of introversion and extroversion in historical context. A century ago, during what she terms the “Culture of Character,” Abraham Lincoln was placed atop the pedestal of virtue. Today? Tony Robbins represents the ideal in the Culture of Personality. (Tony Robbins?! You’ve got to read the book.)

Quiet is endlessly fascinating, with lengthy passages and sometimes chapters devoted to Robbins, Harvard Business School, Dale Carnegie, Rosa Parks, open-plan offices, Steve Wozniak, and other icons, fads, and trends of today’s America. Throughout, the author presents the detailed findings of research in “personality psychology,” as the relevant field is called. She cites the jargon but explains everything in clear, straightforward prose.

If you want to gain insight into who you are and why you act the way you do, read this book. It’s a pleasure.

]]> http://weatherdem.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/nasa-noaa-april-2013-13th-warmest-globally-on-record/ Thu, 23 May 2013 16:50:11 +0000 weatherdem http://weatherdem.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/nasa-noaa-april-2013-13th-warmest-globally-on-record/ According to data released by NASA and NOAA last week, April was the 13th warmest April globally on record.  Here are the data for  NASA’s analysis; here are NOAA data and report.  The two agencies have slightly different analysis techniques, which in this case resulted in different temperature anomaly values but the same overall rankings.  Most months, the analyses result in different rankings.  The two techniques do provide a check on one another and confidence for us that their results are robust.

The details:

April’s global average temperatures were 0.50°C (0.9°F) above normal (1951-1980), according to NASA, as the following graphic shows.  The past three months have a +0.53°C temperature anomaly.  And the latest 12-month period (Apr 2012 – Mar 2013) had a +0.59°C temperature anomaly.  The time series graph in the lower-right quadrant shows NASA’s 12-month running mean temperature index.  The 2010-2012 downturn was largely due to the latest La Niña event (see below for more) that ended early last summer.  Since then, ENSO conditions returned to a neutral state (neither La Niña nor El Niñ0).  Therefore, as previous anomalously cool months fall off the back of the running mean, and barring another La Niña, the 12-month temperature trace should track upward again throughout 2013.

Figure 1. Global mean surface temperature anomaly maps and 12-month running mean time series through April 2013 from NASA.

According to NOAA, April’s global average temperatures were 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the 20th century mean of 13.7°C (56.7°F).  NOAA’s global temperature anomaly map for April (duplicated below) shows where conditions were warmer and cooler than average during the month.

Figure 2. Global temperature anomaly map for January 2013 from NOAA.

The two different analyses’ importance is also shown by the preceding two figures.  Despite differences in specific global temperature anomalies, both analyses picked up on the same temperature patterns and their relative strength.

Both analyses show much cooler than normal conditions over most of North America, Europe, and northeast Asia.  As I’ve discussed elsewhere, this is in response to the abnormal jet stream.  Large, unmoving high pressure centers blocked the jet stream at different locations in the Northern Hemisphere multiple times this winter and spring.  The jet stream therefore assumed a high amplitude pattern where the trough and ridge axes were tens of degrees of latitude apart from one another.  When this happens, very cold air is pulled southward and warm air is pulled northward (look at central Eurasia).  In April 2013, the specific position of the high pressure centers caused cold air to spill southward over land as opposed to over the oceans.  These cold air outbreaks were an advantage for the US in that severe storms were unable to form.  This situation obviously broke down in the past couple of weeks and we have correspondingly seen devastating severe weather outbreaks across the south-central US.

During the second half of last year, a ENSO-neutral state (neither El Niño nor La Niña) began, which continues to this day:

Figure 3. Time series of weekly SST data from NCEP (NOAA).  The highest interest region for El Niño/La Niña is NINO 3.4 (2nd time series from top).

The last La Niña event hit its highest (most negative) magnitude more than once between November 2011 and February 2012.  Since then, tropical Pacific sea-surface temperatures peaked at +0.8 (y-axis) in September 2012.  You can see the effect on global temperatures that the last La Niña had via this NASA time series.  Both the sea surface temperature and land surface temperature time series decreased from 2010 (when the globe reached record warmth) to 2012.  So a natural, low-frequency climate oscillation affected the globe’s temperatures during the past couple of years.  Underlying that oscillation is the background warming caused by humans.  And yet temperatures were still in the top-10 warmest for a calendar year (2012) and individual months, including through March 2013, in recorded history.  We ascribe a certain status to top-10 events.  April 2013 obviously missed the top-10 threshold, but it remains close to that level of anomalous warmth.  However, the difference in temperature magnitude between the 10th and 13th warmest Aprils is measured in tenths of a degree.

Skeptics have pointed out that warming has “stopped” or “slowed considerably” in recent years, which they hope will introduce confusion to the public on this topic.  What is likely going on is quite different: since an energy imbalance exists (less outgoing energy than incoming energy due to atmospheric greenhouse gases) and the surface temperature rise has seemingly stalled, the excess energy is going somewhere.  That somewhere is likely the oceans, and specifically the deep ocean (see figure below).  Before we all cheer about this (since few people want surface temperatures to continue to rise quickly), consider the implications.  If you add heat to a material, it expands.  The ocean is no different; sea-levels are rising in part because of heat added to it in the past.  The heat that has entered in recent years won’t manifest as sea-level rise for some time, but it will happen.  Moreover, when the heated ocean comes back up to the surface, that heat will then be released to the atmosphere, which will raise surface temperatures as well as introduce additional water vapor due to the warmer atmosphere.  Thus, the immediate warming rate might have slowed down, but we have locked in future warming (higher future warming rate).

Figure 4. New research that shows anomalous ocean heat energy locations since the late 1950s.  The purple lines in the graph show how the heat content of the whole ocean has changed over the past five decades. The blue lines represent only the top 700 m and the grey lines are just the top 300 m.  Source: Balmaseda et al., (2013)

Paying for recovery from seemingly localized severe weather and climate events is and always will be more expensive than paying to increase resilience from those events.  As drought continues to impact US agriculture, as Arctic ice continues to melt to new record lows, as storms come ashore and impacts communities that are not prepared for today’s high-risk events (due mostly to poor zoning and destruction of natural protections), economic costs will accumulate in this and in future decades.  It is up to us how many costs we subject ourselves to.  As President Obama begins his second term with climate change “a priority”, he tosses aside the most effective tool available and most recommended by economists: a carbon tax.  Every other policy tool will be less effective than a Pigouvian tax at minimizing the actions that cause future economic harm.  It is up to the citizens of this country, and others, to take the lead on this topic.  We have to demand common sense actions that will actually make a difference.  But be forewarned: even if we take action today, we will still see more warmest-ever La Niña years, more warmest-ever El Niño years, more drought, higher sea levels, increased ocean acidification, more plant stress, and more ecosystem stress.  The biggest difference between efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to scrub sulfur and CFC emissions and future efforts to reduce CO2 emissions is this: the first two yielded an almost immediate result while it will take decades to centuries before CO2 emission reductions produce tangible results humans can see.  That is part of what makes climate change such a wicked problem.

via Science News Headlines – Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/white-tiger-got-coat-162134391.html

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New Report Urges a U.S. Global Food Security Focus on Science, Trade and Business, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Pesticides Make a Comeback, The Wall Street Journal

The biodiversity challenge in Europe, Thinking Country

Q+A: Committee on World Food Security chair urges use of forest foods in diets, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Ghana hosts 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week, Joy Online

Trees on farms: challenging conventional agricultural practice, The Guardian

Disasters displaced over 32 mln people in 2012, rising trend forecast, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Feature: Curbing hunger, Ghana must go biotech, Ghana Business News

G8 under pressure to rethink biofuel mandates, EurActiv.com

Yeah.

First part of my synthesis. So far so good.

Time to get the solvents out! (There’s THF, methanol and water inside.)

After SIX hours of evaporation, things got oxidized.

Notes:
1. From literature, only 1 h of evaporation is required and my coworker actually got it under two hours. I’m suspecting that the rotavap isn’t a very functioning one.
2. I’m supposed to get a white powder, but the longer I put it under the rotavap, the darker the solution got. I’m guessing that my product got oxidized or the HI (one of the reactants) got oxidized, or both.
3. Unclean glassware. I’m baking the round bottomed flask now in the oven to make sure that it’s clean.
4. Difference in reagents used. The lack of the exact reagent (we had to use methylamine in THF instead of methanol) and that might have affected.

Oh, by the way, I’m trying to synthesize methylammonium iodide from methylamine and hydroiodic acid.

That’s it for this week’s Lab Notes, update about this synthesis more next week!

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The Pavlof Volcano, located in the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan coast, is one of the most active volcanoes in the United States. It is 7 kilometres wide, 2500 metres high, and has several active vents.

Though the volcano has been relatively inactive since 2007, on May 13, it once again started erupting, sending an ash cloud 6,000 metres into the air.  The plume extended over the North Pacific Ocean. Astronauts aboard the ISS photographed the volcano’s ash cloud on May 18.

What makes these images unique is that satellite imagery typically photographs volcanic eruptions from the top down. The ISS crew was 764 kilometres south-southeast of the volcano, allowing them to take 3D-like images of the its plume.

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Via Joel “I wish I was Canadian” Watts

He’s especially concerned because the economic crisis is global, and our nation’s economy is intertwined with the global economy more than ever before. “We’re in uncharted waters,” Jolly said. “I am very concerned that we have papered over these problems.” And by papered over, he means printed lots of money to get out of this economic crisis.

He’s a businessman through and through, and Space Tech Expo is very much about the business of space travel. Jolly sees a way out of the economic crisis: small- and medium-business development and more intelligent cities. And NASA can help accomplish both.

David Leetsma spoke for NASA. He’s a three-time shuttle astronaut and works at Johnson Space Center to foster technology transfer from NASA to private industry. NASA has developed a lot of great stuff in the process of going to the Moon and spending the last three decades doing orbital spaceflight, and it’s Leetsma’s job to figure out how to get some of that good stuff into development by private companies so that products find their ways to regular people in the United States and beyond.

President Obama on the role of NASA

Sometimes, NASA studies the existing market and publicizes a technology that seems as if it might be useful and valuable. For instance, NASA, with the help of GM, developed Robonaut for the International Space Station and, in the process, made a terrific robotic glove. Now, the Veterans Administration sees that a robotic limb could be of great benefit to soldiers returning from battle without all their limbs. Ta-dah, technology transfer.

Other times, a person with an interesting problem seeks out NASA. A deer hunter knew that deer urine attracted deer, but deer urine lost its attractive qualities quickly. NASA had developed a urine preservative for the human biological testing done in spaceflight so that bodily fluids could be preserved for analysis back on Earth after a mission. The deer hunter contacted NASA and adapted the urine preservative to improve hunting odds.

Leetsma welcomes “non-traditional partnerships.” NASCAR drivers now wear the type of underwear that NASA developed for astronauts on spacewalks. The underwear’s tubes circulate cool water to keep racecar driver or extravehicular astronaut comfortable.

In 2005, the United States portion of the International Space Station (ISS) was designated a national laboratory, just like Fermilab or Los Alamos. NASA will continue to maintain and operate ISS at least through 2020, a decision that cheered the space business community. Only with that commitment from NASA can businesses make plans to use the space station. The ISS National Laboratory—through an NGO called CASIS—is working with other government agencies, universities, and private industry to encourage low-Earth orbit research and application of that research on Earth.

So who’s really in charge of the ISS National Lab in this new relationship? And what’s going on up there these days? We learned some new and surprising things, and the folks at the private companies involved are incredibly jazzed about zero-gravity capitalism.

Check back at Lofty Ambitions for more on technology transfer. In the meantime, ponder this chart of what’s costed what in our federal spending in response to economic crises over the years (and note the relatively small amount of total NASA spending).

Depending on your background, you will have a different answer. A biologist may say your body decomposes; you have no life after you are brain dead. A spiritualist may say you return to oneness with nature. A religious person may say you go to heaven (or maybe somewhere else). A zombie aficionado may say “hopefully you stay dead so I don’t have to shoot you in the head.”

But no one really knows for sure.

That’s why I found this article on “Consciousness After Death” so incredibly fascinating. A doctor and researcher specializes in bringing people back to life after their hearts stop. And sometimes, they say they’ve heard and seen things that defy the understanding of science.

The article says:

At the same time, experiences reported by resuscitated people sometimes defy what’s thought to be possible. They claim to have seen and heard things, though activity in their brains appears to have stopped.

It sounds supernatural, and if their memories are accurate and their brains really have stopped, it’s neurologically inexplicable, at least with what’s now known.

Chills, right? I mean, this whole idea sounds like it’s straight out of science fiction (and it inspires a good bit of science fiction, too). But these are real doctors, real researchers.

This is part of the reason I’m so inspired by science fiction. It’s the genre that best blends the line between real and fiction, in a way that fantasy just couldn’t. I mean, when 50,000 Leagues Under the Sea was published, no one thought we might one day actually have ships that could travel under the water and discover massive squid. There’s this fantastic interplay between fiction and reality, this great chicken-egg situation, that is so exciting.

But back to the article. What do you think: is there something beyond the electric activity in our neurons, something that sticks around after we die?

The bonding pairs which are the shared electrons between two atoms, that are bonded together, is the main factor affecting the shape of the molecule. The bonding pairs repel each other, since they are all negative, which means that they try to move a maximum distance apart, in order to have a minimal repulsion.

Some molecules also have lone pairs, which are unbonded electrons in the outer shells of the central atom. These lone pairs repel the bonding pairs more strongly than the bonding pair repels another bonding pair, which means that the lone pair changes the shape of the molecule completely.

The most simple molecule would contain just 2 bonding pairs, and no lone pairs. BeCl2 is such a molecule. Beryllium (Be) acts as the central atom,and the two chlorine (Cl) atoms are bonded to it. Beryllium has no lone pairs, so the simple molecule created is called planar. The bond angles are of 180º, which is the maximum distance they could be apart.

CO2 is also a planar molecule, with the same 180º bond angle. However, the bond between the carbon (C) and the oxygen (O) is a double bond. This means that the bond is shorter. This will make no difference to the shape of the molecule or the angle, but the bond length will change. Single bonds are the longest, and also the weakest. Double bonds are shorter and stronger. Triple bonds are even shorter, and also even stronger. The shorter the bond, the stronger it is. These planar molecules will be non polar overall, because they are symmetrical, so the polarities cancel out.

There is also molecules such as water  (H2O). These have 2 bonding pairs, but there is also 2 lone pairs. This means that the lone pairs repel the bonding pairs, so that the bonding pairs are forced closer together. The angle between the two bonds is therefore 104.5º, and the shape is called bent. This is because a bent V-shape is made, by the repulsion of the lone pairs. These will be polar due to the fact that they are not symmetrical, so the polarities do not cancel out.

If there is one more bonding pair, but no lone pairs, like BF3, then the molecule has a completely different shape. The planar shape only has bonding pairs in a single plane. In BF3 it is the same. The shape is trigonal planar, and all of the bonding pairs are all in the same plane. The 3 bonds are separated by angles of 120º, which is slightly smaller than the planar bond angle. As more bonding pairs are added on, the angles will get smaller, as the bonding pairs will not be able to move as far apart. These will be non polar overall, due to the fact that the polarities will cancel out, because the symmetrical shape of the molecule.

Furthermore, there is also molecules such as ammonia (NH3), which have three bonding pairs, but they also have a single lone pair. This makes a shape which is quite different from the trigonal planar. The shape is not planar, as the bonding pairs move into the other planes. This means that the repulsion can be minimised as much as possible. The 3 bonding pairs have angles of 107º between them. These molecules are called pyramidal. The lone pair causes the molecule to be asymmetrical, so the molecules will be polar overall.

Moreover there is also the replacement of the lone pair with an extra bonding pair, making 4 bonding pairs. The shape of the molecule is changed ever so slightly from the pyramidal shape. The addition of the extra bonding pair makes the shape tetrahedral, which means that the angle is slightly larger. It is larger because the extra bonding pair causes less repulsion than the lone pair in the ammonia molecule. The tetrahedral bond angle is 109.5º, which is only slightly larger than the pyramidal shape.

Molecules such as SiCl4 (silicon tetrachloride) and CH4 (methane) have the tetrahedral structure. They have no lone pairs, only 4 bonding pairs. They are non polar molecules, because even though they do not look symmetrical, they are.

When another bonding pair is added resulting in 5 bonding pairs, the molecule will completely change shape. In fact 2 bond angles will be created, due to the distribution of the bonding pairs. The shape is called trigonal bipyramidal. Half of the molecule will be planar, and the other half is not planar. This is what creates the two angles. The two angles will be 90º and 120º. The shape is quite different to most others, due to the double bond angle. However, they are in fact symmetrical, despite their odd shape. They are therefore non polar overall.

Molecules like PCl5 (Phosphorous pentachloride) and PF5 (Phosphorous pentafluoride) have the trigonal bipyramidal shape.

The final shape is an octahedral shape. Molecules such as SF6 are octahedral. They have 6 bonding pairs, and no lone pairs. This means that they are symmetrical. The bonding angles are all 90º, and there is just the one bond angle. Despite the name octahedral, which makes the molecule sound like it should have 8 bonding pairs, it does only have 6. The reason for the name is because it looks like an octahedron.

Organic molecules also have some common bonding pairs. The COH bond in organic molecules has a 104.5º shape, due to the fact that it has a very similar shape to water. The HCH bond angle is 109.5º, because all carbons in organic molecules have 4 bonding pairs, so a tetrahedral shape is created. There is also the CCC bond, which will have an angle of 120º, giving it a trigonal planar shape.

Therefore all molecules have shape, even if they are in long chains, there are still shape present.

Related articles

• Holding everything together: Intermolecular forces (ellemedit1234.wordpress.com)
• Electronegativity of the elements (ellemedit1234.wordpress.com)

Now they’re just messing with us. Physicists have long known that quantum mechanics allows for a subtle connection between quantum particles called entanglement, in which measuring one particle can instantly set the otherwise uncertain condition, or “state,” of another particle—even if it’s light years away. Now, experimenters in Israel have shown that they can entangle two photons that don’t even exist at the same time.

“It’s really cool,” says Jeremy O’Brien, an experimenter at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. Such time-separated entanglement is predicted by standard quantum theory, O’Brien says, “but it’s certainly not widely appreciated, and I don’t know if it’s been clearly articulated before.”

Entanglement is a kind of order that lurks within the uncertainty of quantum theory. Suppose you have a quantum particle of light, or photon. It can be polarized so that it wriggles either vertically or horizontally. The quantum realm is also hazed over with unavoidable uncertainty, and thanks to such quantum uncertainty, a photon can also be polarized vertically and horizontally at the same time. If you then measure the photon, however, you will find it either horizontally polarized or vertically polarized, as the two-ways-at-once state randomly “collapses” one way or the other.

Entanglement can come in if you have two photons. Each can be put into the uncertain vertical-and-horizontal state. However, the photons can be entangled so that their polarizations are correlated even while they remain undetermined. For example, if you measure the first photon and find it horizontally polarized, you’ll know that the other photon has instantaneously collapsed into the vertical state and vice versa—no matter how far away it is. Because the collapse happens instantly, Albert Einstein dubbed the effect “spooky action at a distance.” It doesn’t violate relativity, though: It’s impossible to control the outcome of the measurement of the first photon, so the quantum link can’t be used to send a message faster than light.

Now Eli Megidish, Hagai Eisenberg, and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have entangled two photons that don’t exist at the same time. They start with a scheme known as entanglement swapping. To begin, researchers zap a special crystal with laser light a couple of times to create two entangled pairs of photons, pair 1 and 2 and pair 3 and 4. At the start, photons 1 and 4 are not tangled. But they can be if physicists play the right trick with 2 and 3.

The key is that a measurement “projects” a particle into a definite state — just as the measurement of a photon collapses it into either vertical or horizontal polarization. So even though photons 2 and 3 start out unentangled, physicists can set up a “projective measurement” that asks, are the two in one of two distinct entangled states or the other? That measurement entangles the photons, even as it absorbs and destroys them. If the researchers select only the events in which photons 2 and 3 end up in, say, the first entangled state, then the measurement also entangles photons 1 and 4. The effect is a bit like joining two pairs of gears to form a four-gear chain: Enmeshing to inner two gears establishes a link between the outer two.

In recent years, physicists have played with the timing in the scheme. For example, last year a team showed that entanglement swapping still works even if they make the projective measurement after they’ve already measured the polarizations of photons 1 and 4. Now, Eisenberg and colleagues have shown that photons 1 and 4 don’t even have to exist at the same time, as they report in a paper in press at Physical Review Letters.

To do that, they first create entangled pair 1 and 2 and measure the polarization of 1 right away. Only after that do they create entangled pair 3 and 4 and perform the key projective measurement. Finally, they measure the polarization of photon 4. And even though photons 1 and 4 never coexist, the measurements show that their polarizations still end up entangled. Eisenberg emphasizes that even though in relativity, time measured differently by observers traveling at different speeds, no observer would ever see the two photons as coexisting.

The experiment shows that it’s not strictly logical to think of entanglement as a tangible physical property, Eisenberg says. “There is no moment in time in which the two photons coexist,” he says, “so you cannot say that the system is entangled at this or that moment.” Yet, the phenomenon definitely exists. Anton Zeilinger, a physicist at the University of Vienna, agrees that the experiment demonstrates just how slippery the concepts of quantum mechanics are. “It’s really neat because it shows more or less that quantum events are outside our everyday notions of space and time.”

So what’s the advance good for? Physicists hope to create quantum networks in which protocols like entanglement swapping are used to create quantum links among distant users and transmit uncrackable (but slower than light) secret communications. The new result suggests that when sharing entangled pairs of photons on such a network, a user wouldn’t have to wait to see what happens to the photons sent down the line before manipulating the ones kept behind, Eisenberg says. Zeilinger says the result might have other unexpected uses: “This sort of thing opens up people’s minds and suddenly somebody has an idea to use it in quantum computing or something.”

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