Time Left Between Now and Departure from Local Airport
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Surviving Collegiate Research!
Lab Safety!
As a researcher, you may be tasked with doing some rather dangerous activities. It depends on the field, but I have been told before 'Mix this, this, and this. Here's your blast-shield.' Luckily nothing happened and the reaction was repeated without incident. However, when you're doing frontier research, you may be working on something that no one else has seen before.
This means several things:
1) no instruction manual or super-helpful review
2) no one is an expert in their entire field and an advisor may not know much about something you end up having to do to continue down a given path of research
3) no one has figured out if it explodes or not yet
I particularly work in chemistry, so I have most of my expertise there. I cannot expound on the possible dangers of computer science or physics, etc. as I haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of those fields and don't really plan to. Computer science would be interesting but the existence of wireless networks and satellites and everything actually working blows my mind.
So, as a very basic and incomplete guide, here's a short list of the many things you should be aware of. They may mention some of this in lecture or lab but you don't really pick up on lab safety until you start to read around or really engage in talks with experience people:
-Glass is really, really, really sharp. A lot of that glass is covered in chemicals which will be in direct contact with your blood. Nitrile gloves aren't going to help here.
-Hydrofluoric acid is a particularly 'weak acid' but it'll pass through your skin and leech calcium from your bones. You are a molecule. Free fluorine atoms will fluorinate you. This is bad as well. Treat burns with calcium gluconate, which you should probably have on hand. (E-Med Link) By the way, HF is a colorless gas which will eat through glass.
-DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, or methyl sulfoxide) is a common organic solvent which will dissolve most organic compounds pretty readily. It will pass through your skin along with anything in it.
-Look out for volatile or powdered brominated compounds. They are often labeled as irritants and lachrymatory agents (tear gas) as the vapors will form HBr in your nose or eyes. This could happen with chlorinated materials as well.
-Ethers, R-O-R, will form peroxides when a bottle is opened and resealed with air inside. Typically a bottle of ether contains some agents to hinder this formation but once it is expired it will form these peroxides in the threaded cap. When you go to open it, this will set off the peroxide. Ethers are generally flammable. Therefore, you've set off a small bomb in your hands and you're probably covered in flaming, fuming chemicals.
-Perchlorates, such as perchloric acid, are similar in nature to peroxides. However, they will build up over time in a fume hood and can detonate. There are special perchlorate hoods. As far as I know, they sort of wash themselves from time to time to purge the build up of perchlorates.
-Nitroxide, nitroso, azides, and other many nitrogen or nitrogen-oxygen groups pose an explosive risk. Working with click chemistry, I was performing reactions with sodium azide (NaN3). This is the stuff they put in air bags since a large enough charge passed through it will release all those N's as nitrogen gas. The formula here is: 2 NaN3 -> 2Na + 3N2
So, every 130 grams (0.286 pounds) of azide reacted in this way will yield 67.2 L (17.75 gallons) of nitrogen gas.
-Open bottles under the hood. Things like bromine will immediately release pent up vapors in a cloud of smoke, sometimes invisibly. Fine powders might be carried off in the motion of opening the container.
As a researcher, you may be tasked with doing some rather dangerous activities. It depends on the field, but I have been told before 'Mix this, this, and this. Here's your blast-shield.' Luckily nothing happened and the reaction was repeated without incident. However, when you're doing frontier research, you may be working on something that no one else has seen before.
This means several things:
1) no instruction manual or super-helpful review
2) no one is an expert in their entire field and an advisor may not know much about something you end up having to do to continue down a given path of research
3) no one has figured out if it explodes or not yet
I particularly work in chemistry, so I have most of my expertise there. I cannot expound on the possible dangers of computer science or physics, etc. as I haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of those fields and don't really plan to. Computer science would be interesting but the existence of wireless networks and satellites and everything actually working blows my mind.
So, as a very basic and incomplete guide, here's a short list of the many things you should be aware of. They may mention some of this in lecture or lab but you don't really pick up on lab safety until you start to read around or really engage in talks with experience people:
-Glass is really, really, really sharp. A lot of that glass is covered in chemicals which will be in direct contact with your blood. Nitrile gloves aren't going to help here.
-Hydrofluoric acid is a particularly 'weak acid' but it'll pass through your skin and leech calcium from your bones. You are a molecule. Free fluorine atoms will fluorinate you. This is bad as well. Treat burns with calcium gluconate, which you should probably have on hand. (E-Med Link) By the way, HF is a colorless gas which will eat through glass.
-DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, or methyl sulfoxide) is a common organic solvent which will dissolve most organic compounds pretty readily. It will pass through your skin along with anything in it.
-Look out for volatile or powdered brominated compounds. They are often labeled as irritants and lachrymatory agents (tear gas) as the vapors will form HBr in your nose or eyes. This could happen with chlorinated materials as well.
-Ethers, R-O-R, will form peroxides when a bottle is opened and resealed with air inside. Typically a bottle of ether contains some agents to hinder this formation but once it is expired it will form these peroxides in the threaded cap. When you go to open it, this will set off the peroxide. Ethers are generally flammable. Therefore, you've set off a small bomb in your hands and you're probably covered in flaming, fuming chemicals.
-Perchlorates, such as perchloric acid, are similar in nature to peroxides. However, they will build up over time in a fume hood and can detonate. There are special perchlorate hoods. As far as I know, they sort of wash themselves from time to time to purge the build up of perchlorates.
-Nitroxide, nitroso, azides, and other many nitrogen or nitrogen-oxygen groups pose an explosive risk. Working with click chemistry, I was performing reactions with sodium azide (NaN3). This is the stuff they put in air bags since a large enough charge passed through it will release all those N's as nitrogen gas. The formula here is: 2 NaN3 -> 2Na + 3N2
So, every 130 grams (0.286 pounds) of azide reacted in this way will yield 67.2 L (17.75 gallons) of nitrogen gas.
-Open bottles under the hood. Things like bromine will immediately release pent up vapors in a cloud of smoke, sometimes invisibly. Fine powders might be carried off in the motion of opening the container.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Airfare Booked!
While I was booking it, I came across the travel insurance option. I went for it, better safe than sorry I suppose. But I ran into some pretty interesting sections, like:
| Benefits | Maximum Limit per Person |
| Trip Cancellation | 100% of Trip Cost |
| Trip Interruption | 100% of Trip Cost |
| Trip Delay | $100 |
| Missed Connection | $750 |
| Baggage Delay | $100 |
| Accidental Death & Dismemberment | $100,000 per policy |
And...
"ACCIDENTAL DEATH & DISMEMBERMENT The Company will pay the percentage of the Principal Sum shown in the Table of Losses when You, as a result of an Accidental Injury occurring during the Covered Trip, sustain a Loss shown in the Table below. The Loss must occur within 181 days after the date of the Accident causing the Loss. The Principal Sum is shown on the Confirmation of Coverage.
The Maximum Benefits for any one single Accident is limited to $15,000,000 for all persons insured under the Policy. If more than one Loss is sustained, as the result of an Accident, the amount payable shall be the largest amount of a sustained Loss shown in the Table of Losses.
| Loss of | Percentage of Principal Sum |
| Life | 100% |
| Both hands or both feet | 100% |
| Sight of both eyes | 100% |
| One hand and one foot | 100% |
| Either hand or foot and sight of one eye | 100% |
| Either hand or foot | 50% |
| Sight of one eye | 50% |
| Speech and hearing in both ears. | 100% |
| Speech | 50% |
| Hearing in both ears | 50% |
| Thumb and index finger of same hand | 25% |
"Loss" with regard to:
1. Hand or foot means actual complete severance through and above the wrist or ankle joints;
2. Eye means an entire and irrecoverable Loss of sight;
3. Speech or hearing means entire and irrecoverable Loss of speech or hearing of both ears; and
4. Thumb and index finger means actual severance through or above the joint that meets the finger at the palm."
(From: http://www.onetravel.com/Portals/95/insurance/insurance.html)
I used to intern for an insurance company and I can definitely say that there are plenty of stories to go around when you're on the investigation side of things. You've got to wonder who comes up with this stuff, and what sorts of things have to happen to bring it to their attention in order to make it into an official policy. I don't expect a 5-hour layover in Tokyo to get that rough... We'll see.
One of the things about booking airfare is that a lot of the sites don't tell you that there will be $200 - $300 in taxes that are excluded from the final cost. Sometimes they don't include the fees as well. This leads you to believe a flight will be $400 cheaper than it is. A week ago when I started to consider my options, the average before it got into the extremely expensive region was about $1750 to mid $1800. Now, anything below $1900 is pretty good from where I'm departing from. I managed to find this flight out of a ton of others, but it leaves at 6 am in the morning.
I'll be leaving Thursday morning on the 3rd, arriving Friday night. For the return trip, the time zones work out so that I get on the plane and off again on Monday August 16th. I'm not sure whether the times reported on the website are in EST or local, but I would imagine it's local since the times don't add up right unless you factor in zones.
"JET LAGGG-glurghrghgh!"
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Group
So group assignments were sent out a few days ago! I'll be working with Dr. Palangpon Kongsaeree.
Now I have to find a round-trip flight to Bangkok within the NSF-set spending limits if I want to get reimbursed. I've done some looking around and from here it seems like it'll be $1600 - $1750 depending on the carrier. It looks like it'll be a departure on June 3rd and a return on August 16th.
Now I have to find a round-trip flight to Bangkok within the NSF-set spending limits if I want to get reimbursed. I've done some looking around and from here it seems like it'll be $1600 - $1750 depending on the carrier. It looks like it'll be a departure on June 3rd and a return on August 16th.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Biofuels and Non-Water-Based Fuel Cells
I still have a lot of time before the trip, so I'll talk about things I'm looking up to prepare myself for Thailand as well as more on green chemistry/alternative energy.
When I was doing my work at UMass, I looked up the set of chemical reactions that occurs in the fuel cell. There are two reactions, half reactions, that occur at each end of the fuel cell at the positive end and negative end (like a battery).
For a typical proton-exchange fuel cell, it looks something like:
** = logically, this is the first 'step'
An alkaline-exchange type can look like this:
** = logically, this is the first 'step'
In the end, this accomplishes more or less the same thing as the proton-exchange membrane, it's just in 'reverse'.
However, that alkaline-exchange type, would probably end up running with methanol like this:
** = logically, this is the first 'step'
When I first saw this, I was a little disappointed. The fuel cell was going to produce CO2, just like a regular vehicle now, so why did the whole project even matter?
Here is the Carbon Cycle:
Through the carbon cycle, carbon moves above and below the surface of the Earth as a natural process. You get carbon deposits from organic matter and over millions of years it is processed into fossil fuels. There's supposed to be a natural rhythm to the circle. Now when you burn up fossil fuels (or large volumes of living trees), you're forcing that stored carbon out of the cycle and back above the surface. There's a fixed amount of carbon on the Earth and if it all appears in one place at one time, then that's really bad. If we use it all up, then it'll exist as by-products of those fossil fuels in the atmosphere.
The thing to biofuels and sustaining the cycle is that burning a biofuel does not encroach on the carbon cycle. Some people aren't able to understand this concept. The distribution of atoms on Earth shouldn't change by much, baring radioactivity, foreign material from space entering the atmosphere, or things escaping (helium, etc. but apparently helium is also brought into the system as well). If you are producing a biofuel, then you are using plants which take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to plant materials which are harvested and then processed. When you burn the biofuel, you return that carbon back to the atmosphere. At the least, it is not increasing the amount of atmospheric CO2 (most of the mass of a plant comes from the gases it takes in, like H2O and CO2, not from the soil). Then the future plants grown to produce more biofuels can uptake that carbon dioxide to produce more plant mass. If the introduction of new carbon to the environment stops, natural processes will eventually return it back below the surface or it will be captured in trees and other biomass living on the planet.
When I was doing my work at UMass, I looked up the set of chemical reactions that occurs in the fuel cell. There are two reactions, half reactions, that occur at each end of the fuel cell at the positive end and negative end (like a battery).
For a typical proton-exchange fuel cell, it looks something like:
| Anode:** | 2H2 -> 4H+ + 4e- |
| Cathode: | O2 + 4H+ + 4e- -> 2H2O |
| Total: | 2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O |
An alkaline-exchange type can look like this:
| Anode: | 2 H2 + 4 OH- - > 4 H2O + 4 e- |
| Cathode:** | O2 + 2 H2O + 4 e- - > 4 OH- |
| Total: | 2 H2 + O2 - > 2 H2O |
In the end, this accomplishes more or less the same thing as the proton-exchange membrane, it's just in 'reverse'.
However, that alkaline-exchange type, would probably end up running with methanol like this:
| Anode: | CH3OH + 6OH- - > CO2 + 5H2O + 6e- |
| Cathode:** | 3/2O2 + 3H2O + 6e- - > 6OH- |
| Total: | CH3OH + 3/2O2 - > 2H2O + CO2 |
When I first saw this, I was a little disappointed. The fuel cell was going to produce CO2, just like a regular vehicle now, so why did the whole project even matter?
Here is the Carbon Cycle:
Through the carbon cycle, carbon moves above and below the surface of the Earth as a natural process. You get carbon deposits from organic matter and over millions of years it is processed into fossil fuels. There's supposed to be a natural rhythm to the circle. Now when you burn up fossil fuels (or large volumes of living trees), you're forcing that stored carbon out of the cycle and back above the surface. There's a fixed amount of carbon on the Earth and if it all appears in one place at one time, then that's really bad. If we use it all up, then it'll exist as by-products of those fossil fuels in the atmosphere.
The thing to biofuels and sustaining the cycle is that burning a biofuel does not encroach on the carbon cycle. Some people aren't able to understand this concept. The distribution of atoms on Earth shouldn't change by much, baring radioactivity, foreign material from space entering the atmosphere, or things escaping (helium, etc. but apparently helium is also brought into the system as well). If you are producing a biofuel, then you are using plants which take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to plant materials which are harvested and then processed. When you burn the biofuel, you return that carbon back to the atmosphere. At the least, it is not increasing the amount of atmospheric CO2 (most of the mass of a plant comes from the gases it takes in, like H2O and CO2, not from the soil). Then the future plants grown to produce more biofuels can uptake that carbon dioxide to produce more plant mass. If the introduction of new carbon to the environment stops, natural processes will eventually return it back below the surface or it will be captured in trees and other biomass living on the planet.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Enter Thailand.
Thailand Profile:- Full Name - Kingdom of Thailand
- Size - Slightly smaller than Texas (~200k sq. miles)
- Population - 67 million
- Cities:
- Bangkok (Capital) - 10 million
- Nakhon Ratchasima - 1/2 million for district, 3 for province
- Chiang Mai - 1/4 million for district, 1.6 for province
- Climate - Tropical monsoon
- Religions - 93-94% Buddhist, 5-6% Muslim, remainder is Christian/Hindu/misc.
- Languages - Thai (official), English (secondary), Malay and regional dialects
- Traditional founding date - 1238
- Government
- Constitutional monarchy
- In 1932, a bloodless coup transformed the Government of Thailand from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy.
- Beginning with a brief experiment in democracy during the mid-1970s, civilian democratic political institutions slowly gained greater authority, culminating in 1988 when Chatichai Choonhaven--leader of the Thai Nation Party--assumed office as the country's first democratically elected Prime Minister in more than a decade. In 1991, yet another bloodless coup ended his term.
- In January 2001, telecommunications multimillionaire Thaksin Shinawatra and his new Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party won a decisive plurality victory on a populist platform of economic growth and development.
- In the February 2005 elections, Thaksin was re-elected by an even greater majority, sweeping 377 out of 500 parliamentary seats for Thailand’s first-ever single-party outright electoral victory. As the second term began, allegations of corruption emerged against his government. Peaceful anti-government mass demonstrations grew, and hundreds of thousands marched in the streets to demand Thaksin's resignation.
- Prime Minister Thaksin dissolved the parliament in February 2006 and declared snap elections in April. Before new elections could be held, on September 19, 2006 a group of top military officers overthrew the caretaker Thaksin administration in a non-violent coup d’etat, repealed the 1997 constitution, and abolished both houses of parliament.
- From 1992 and until the 2006 coup, the country was considered a functioning democracy with constitutional changes of government. Generally free and fair multi-party elections held in December 2007 subsequently restored democratic governance.
- The King has little direct power under Thailand's constitutions but is a symbol of national identity and unity. King Bhumibol (Rama IX)--who has been on the throne since 1946--commands enormous popular respect and moral authority, which he has used on occasion to resolve political crises that have threatened national stability.
- Thailand's legal system blends principles of traditional Thai and Western laws. Under the constitution, the Constitutional Court is the highest court of appeals, though its jurisdiction is limited to clearly defined constitutional issues.
- Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branch
- Chief of State--King Bhumibol Adulyadej
- Prime Minister--Abhisit Vejjajiva
- Multi-party system; Communist Party is prohibited
- Threatened by communist revolutions in neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during the Cold War, Thailand actively sought U.S. assistance to contain communist expansion in the region.
- Voting age - 18 (universal; compulsory - you could be fined or jailed in principle)
- US-Thai Relations
- On March 20, 1833, the United States and Thailand, then Siam, signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, the United States’ first treaty with a country in Asia.
- The United States and Thailand are among the signatories of the 1954 Manila Pact of the former Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
- Thailand's stability and independence are important to the maintenance of peace in the region.
- Thailand has received U.S. military equipment, essential supplies, training, and assistance in the construction and improvement of facilities and installations for much of the period since 1950; since then more Thai have been trained under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program than any other country.
- Minister of Foreign Affairs--Kasit Piromya
- Ambassador to the U.S.--Don Pramudwinai
- Ambassador to the UN--Norachit Sinhaseni
- Thailand maintains an embassy in the United States at 1024 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington DC 20007 (tel. 202-944-3600). Consulates are located in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
- Economy
- Natural resources - Tin, rubber, natural gas, tungsten, tantalum, timber, lead, fish, gypsum, lignite, fluorite.
- Industries - Tourism, textiles, garments, agricultural processing, cement, integrated circuits, jewelry, electronics, petrochemical, and auto assembly.
- Exports - automatic data processing machines and parts, automobiles and parts, precious stones and jewelry, refined fuels, rubber, electronic integrated circuits, polymers of ethylene and propylene, rice, iron and steel and their products, rubber products, chemical products.
- The Thai economy is export-dependent, with exports of goods and services equivalent to over 60% of GDP during the first three quarters of 2009
- Roughly 40% of Thailand's labor force is employed in agriculture (data based on Bank of Thailand.) Rice is the country's most important crop; Thailand is the largest exporter in the world rice market.
U.S. Department of State
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