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#Oxygen

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"When you buy a new electronic appliance, shoes, medicines or even some food items, you often find a small paper sachet with the warning: “silica gel, do not eat”.

What exactly is it, is it toxic, and can you use it for anything?"

theconversation.com/do-not-eat

The Conversation‘Do not eat’: what’s in those little desiccant sachets and how do they work?
More from The Conversation AU + NZ

#Jellyfish attack #NuclearPowerPlant. Again.

By Susan D’Agostino | October 28, 2021

"#Scotland’s only working nuclear power plant at #Torness shut down in an emergency procedure when jellyfish clogged the sea water-cooling intake pipes at the plant, according to the Scotland Herald this week. Without access to cool water, a nuclear power plant risks overheating. The intake pipes can also be damaged, which disrupts power generation. And ocean life that gets sucked into a power plant’s intake pipes risks death.

[...]

"The clash between gelatinous jellyfish and hulking nuclear power plants has a long history. These spineless, brainless, bloodless creatures shut down the Torness nuclear power plant in 2011 at a cost of approximately $1.5 million per day, according to one estimate. Swarms of these invertebrates have also been responsible for nuclear power plant shutdowns in Israel, Japan, the United States, the #Philippines, #SouthKorea, and Sweden.

"Humans have unwittingly nurtured the adversarial relationship between jellyfish and nuclear power plants. That is, human-induced #ClimateChange has raised ocean water temperatures, setting conditions for larger-than-usual jellyfish populations. Further, the relatively warm water near nuclear power plant discharge outlets may attract jellyfish swarms, according to one study. Also, #pollution has lowered #oxygen levels in sea water, which jellyfish tolerate more than other marine animals, leading to their proliferation.

"Some look at jellyfish and see elegant ballerinas of the sea, while others view them as pests. Either way, they are nothing if not resilient. Jellyfish are 95 percent water, drift in topical waters and the Arctic Ocean, and thrive in the ocean’s bottom as well as on its surface. Nuclear power plant operators might take note: Older-than-dinosaur jellyfish are likely here to stay."

Full article:
thebulletin.org/2021/10/jellyf

#OceansAreLife #NuclearPowerPlants
#NoNukes #NoNukesForAI #RethinkNotRestart

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists · Jellyfish attack nuclear power plant. Again.Scotland’s only working nuclear power plant at Torness shut down in an emergency procedure when jellyfish clogged the sea water-cooling intake pipes at the plant. To protect marine life and avert nuclear disasters, scientists are investigating the use of drones to provide estimates of jellyfish locations, amounts, and density.

#LongCovid therapies

Someone suggested trying hydrogen - oxygen therapy for LongCovid. That is, breathing a mixture of 1 part #oxygen and 2 (or 3) parts #hydrogen, from a bottle. Apparently you do that for a few hours per day, for a month or two.

Does anyone have experience with that? I’ve never heard of it before.

(I did try the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. After 6 sessions in the high-pressure pod: mixed results. I don’t know whether continuing that is worth it.)

Its high time
Both #water and #oxygen for critical patients need be rationed
This has nothing to do with #poverty
But lack of civic sense and awareness
This is the mess called Indian politics
Sitting on the graveyard it builds
Any self respecting #democracy would ve snatched the 100 acres of #golf course in lutiyans
These vultures, blood feeding vultures
In drought-hit Delhi, the haves get limitless water, the poor fight for every drop | Reuters
"politicians, civil servants and corporate lobbyists who live in substantial houses and apartments in central Delhi pay very little to get limitless supplies of piped water – whether for their bathrooms, kitchens or to wash the car, dog, or spray a manicured lawn. They can do all that for as little as $10-$15 a month.
But step into one of the slum areas in the inner city, or a giant disorganized housing estate on the outskirts and there is a daily struggle to get and pay for very limited supplies of water, which is delivered by tanker rather than pipe. And the price is soaring as supplies are fast depleting."
reuters.com/article/world/in-d.

Oh my goodness! You can enable login and logout sounds in KDE Plasma! 🎶

The Oxygen sound theme has such a nice jingle, too. It reminds me of the good old days. I'm keeping that.

You can enable it in Settings → Apps & Windows → Notifications → Login → Play a sound (See screenshot)

You can set a custom sound file, but a file from your current sound theme should already be default if there is one.

Check out our latest #preprint in which we use a combination of #clumped and #oxygen #isotope measurements to reconstruct extreme summer temperatures experienced by #fossil #rudist bivalves from the Late #Cretaceous in Oman. All feedback is welcome!
egusphere.copernicus.org/prepr

egusphere.copernicus.orgLiving on the edge: Response of rudist bivalves (Hippuritida) to hot and highly seasonal climate in the low-latitude Saiwan site, OmanAbstract. Earth’s climate history serves as a natural laboratory for testing the effect of warm climates on the biosphere. The Cretaceous period featured a prolonged greenhouse climate characterized by higher-than-modern atmospheric CO2 concentrations and mostly ice-free poles. In such a climate, shallow seas in low latitudes probably became very hot, especially during the summers. At the same time, life seems to have thrived there in reef-like ecosystems built by rudists, an extinct group of bivalve molluscs. To test the seasonal temperature variability in this greenhouse period, and whether temperature extremes exceed the maximum tolerable temperatures of modern marine molluscs, we discuss a detailed sclerochronological (incrementally sampled) dataset of seasonal scale variability in shell chemistry from fossil rudist (Torreites sanchezi and Vaccinites vesiculosus) and oyster (Oscillopha figari) shells from the late Campanian (75-million-year-old) low latitude (3° S paleolatitude) Saiwan site in present-day Oman. We combine trace element data and microscopy to screen fossil shells for diagenesis, before sampling well-preserved sections of a Torreites sanchezi rudist specimen for clumped isotope analysis. Based on this specimen alone, we identify a strong seasonal variability in temperature of 19.2 ± 3.8 °C to 44.2 ± 4.0 °C in the seawater at the Saiwan site. The oxygen isotopic composition of the seawater (δ18Osw) varied from -4.62 ± 0.86 ‰ VSMOW in winter to +0.86 ± 1.6 ‰ VSMOW in summer. We use this information in combination with age modelling to infer temperature seasonality from incrementally sampled oxygen isotope profiles sourced from the literature, sampling multiple shells and species in the assemblage. We find that, on average, the Saiwan seawater experienced strong seasonal fluctuations in monthly temperature (18.7 ± 3.8 to 42.6 ± 4.0 °C seasonal range) and water isotopic composition (-4.33 ± 0.86 to 0.59 ± 1.03 ‰ VSMOW). The latter would strongly bias the interpretation of stable oxygen isotopes in shell carbonate without independent control on either temperature or seawater composition. Combining our seasonal temperature estimates with shell chronologies based on seasonal cyclicity in stable isotope records and daily variability in trace element data, we show that T. sanchezi rudists record temperatures during the hottest periods of the year as well as during the winters, which were characterized by cooler temperatures and enhanced influx of freshwater. Both O. figari and V. vesiculosus plausibly stopped growing during these seasonal extremes. This study aims to demonstrate how high-resolution geochemical records through fossil mollusc shells can shed light on the variability in past warm ecosystems and open the discussion about the limits of life in the shallow marine realm during greenhouse climates. Future work should apply the clumped isotope paleothermometer on incrementally sampled bio-archives to explore the upper-temperature limits experienced by calcifiers in different environments throughout geological history.

Why a new #zero-carbon #UK #steel plant offers hope and a headache | Steel industry | The Guardian

The problem with making steel using a #BlastFurnace is that it requires very high temperatures and #CokingCoal to #reduce the #Oxygen content as it is made to bond to #Carbon instead. This produces #CarbonMonoxide and then #CarbonDioxide.

theguardian.com/business/2025/

The Guardian · Why a new zero-carbon UK steel plant offers hope and a headacheBy Jasper Jolly