July 4th
July 4th has always been an interesting holiday for me; first
because everyone goes all out to celebrate July 4th, 1776, when
colonists decided they were no longer going to recognize the
authority of Britain over them; and second, because my ancestors were
on the losing side.
However, if I can forgive Germany enough to produce my third and
fourth children with a German physicist, even after German military
made Uncle Tony paraplegic, and Michael and Tony’s cousin dead, and
killed over 20 close relatives of my English grandparents, I can
certainly forgive the American colonists, especially since I became
an American citizen in 2008. I am one of them, but I really wish
fireworks were not part of the deal. Do we have to have something
lighting the warm summer sky that is made of dynamite and is so loud?
Soap bubbles and lights, why can’t we do those?
My July 4th weekend started on July 3rd when I was a guest in West
Philadelphia at a party with food mainly prepared by my vegan 3rd
son. Falafel, humus, pita, cucumber, tomatoes. Allister outdid
himself, and I was sufficiently fueled to head to the Philadelphia
Art Museum for a wander through the galleries.
Videos from the July 4th
weekend:
Visiting the Art Museum: https://youtu.be/O-Orf1lAW1c
Waiting for Parade to start with the Haddonfield dinosaur:
https://youtu.be/31amerTRtws
Haddonfield Parade with the MacGregor Band:
https://youtu.be/tXjfSyV4ch8
Haddonfield Parade with Ukrainian marchers:
https://youtu.be/g-6slW449QU
---
Cryptocurrency
Easy to ignore cryptocurrency, but not wise; the Guardian reports
that the number of cryptocurrency users is over 300 million, and
increasing. You may not want to exchange your hard-earned cash for
listings on a block chain, but likely those around you are, and
organizations you care about are accepting these listings as
charitable donations.
For at least a year on the Haddonfield-Berlin Road a flag has been
waving at cyclists, walkers, and greenhouse emitters. The flag is a
cheerful orange and white, and declares that Bitcoin can be bought
there, at a gasoline and convenience shop which also declares the
gasoline sold comes from Lukoil, which means Russia. This is a busy
corner, before Lukoil, before my carless days, I remember frequently
supplying my car’s energy needs from this shop.
To simplify cryptocurrency, what you pay for is not what you may
get; you may get nothing if you buy into a crypto that does not have
a block chain. What you pay for needs to be able to be seen by
everyone else; if you crypto does not have a well-organized block
chain, you have been scammed and someone is buy a jet with your
retirement money. I understand that if you really must buy crypto,
and do not mind destroying the planet from the massive amount of
greenhouse gases involved in making blockchains work, and do not mind
losing all in an unregulated industry, Bitcoin is the best.
Videos on cryptocurrency:
From MIT. A lecturer, presumably
cool-headed. https://youtu.be/EH6vE97qIP4
Another
lecture from MIT: https://youtu.be/59Dd5T6crKw
--
Fighting climate change
So many ways we can decrease our own energy use. Here is a
list:
1. Grow your own food. Anything you eat that does not
require trucks, ships, cars to transport food from the source to your
plate is a win. Victory garden:
2. Avoid cryptocurrency. Takes a lot of energy to maintain the
blockchain and mine crypto https://youtu.be/hi830ZpGGec
3. Collect shower water and use it to flush toilets
4. Collect non-soapy kitchen water from washing vegetables,
rinsing pots, plates and use fluids on plants
5. Become active in your community. My town Haddonfield mostly
have sidewalks in front of houses. These are usually a mess, they are
only smooth and level if trees shading roads have been removed, or if
homeowners have followed town advice to cut away the roots under the
sidewalks. This has the result of trees toppling over in storms,
which is why homeowners prefer to cut down the trees rather than care
for them so they can keep the roads cool and reduce the need for
air-conditioning in homes and vehicles. My solution: get rid of
sidewalks and turn part of the roads into sidewalks. Absurd my quiet
street being a two-way road with room for parked cars.
---
Conference in London
1988 was a year unforgettable for the end of a life, my father
Michael, and the beginning of a life, my third son Allister Michael.
Michael was born in 1919 to a war widow remarried after the
1914-1918 Armistice; Hannah had also lost a fiance in 1918, in the
final German push the Germans named Operation Michael. And all those
years later, in 1988, Allister Michael’s father was a citizen of
Germany, a nation that tried twice to annihilate my British relatives
in the 20th Century. I like the symmetry, and the
understanding that everything, anything, can be forgiven, and anyone
can give and take love, no matter where they come from, no matter who
they are.
In 1988 I decided that the world needed another collection of
stories about the carbonic anhydrases. I contacted some colleagues to
add their names to the editing team, and some publishers, and all of
them said yes! Please do this! A successful collection was published
in 1984 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and the
main editor then agreed to be an editor on my book. The publishers
had seen the publication numbers. Plenum Press looked like the best
deal, so I chose them. I started contacting possible contributors,
and because I like to go overboard, contacted colleagues also about
organizing a conference somewhere gorgeous in good weather. I had
been in the physiology department at the University of Pennsylvania
since 1978, and my boss, Dr RE Forster II was supportive of
everything I did, especially after the NIH awarded me a grant to keep
studying the respiratory roles of organs other than lungs. And I
enjoyed organizing conferences and speaker series, I still do.
London colleagues stepped up, and volunteered hosting a
conference; my job was to invite anyone and everyone with something
to contribute to show up in London in July, and , put together a
program. At the same time I was soliciting papers on the carbonic
anhydrases for the book; with the title The Carbonic Anhydrases, not
to beat around the bush.
In 1933 the very first description of the carbonic anhydrase came
from work done in Oxford, and Philadelphia. The University of
Pennsylvania in fact.
Stadie WC, O’Brien H. The catalysis of the hydration of
carbon dioxide and dehydration of carbonic acid by the enzyme
isolated from red blood cells. J Biochem. 1933 103:521-529.
However the Oxford group had better public relations, and a far
better title. The Journal of Physiology published three papers naming
and describing the same enzyme, but naming it carbonic anhydrase also
in 1933:
Meldrum NU, Roughton FJ. Carbonic anhydrase. Its
preparation and properties. J Physiol. 1933 Dec 5;80(2):113-42.
Meldrum NU, Roughton FJ. The state of carbon dioxide in
blood. J Physiol. 1933 Dec 5;80(2):143-70.
Brinkman R. The
occurrence of carbonic anhydrase in lower marine animals. J
Physiol. 1933 Dec 5;80(2):171-3.
Why these discoveries took place at
the same time in both sides of the Atlantic was that clever
physiologists realized at the beginning of the 20th
Century that blood zipped around the body, and that far too much
carbon dioxide was there to be instantly moved into blood and then
into the lungs to be breathed out. Something was loading the carbon
dioxide into the blood, and offloading it at the lungs, and in the
1933 papers, that something is carbonic anhydrase, which is a tool
(aka enzyme) which rapidly inter-converts water and carbon dioxide
into bicarbonate and hydrogen ions.
In 1988 I reasoned that any conference on carbonic anhydrases
needed to be held in honor of FJW Roughton, since his widow Dr Alice
Roughton was still living, and NU Meldrum had not even been alive
when the papers were published. I heard stories during my 23 years
working on blood gases; one was of FJW chewing on his tie and
actually swallowing a bit. Gosh. I also heard that NU Meldrum
disliked him intensely and wrote in his lab books in a language FJW
did not know, and after finishing his seminal work, killed himself.
Tragic story.
Another reason was that not only had my boss Dr RE Forster II
published with FJW, he also wrote FJW’s obituary in 1972. The
following list also includes a publication by Forster and Holland:
RAB Holland was my PhD advisor in Sydney. He had asked Dr Forster to
be an examiner on my thesis, which resulted in Dr Forster passing me,
and offering me a job in Philadelphia. And 44 years later, I am still
here, still getting excited every time I walk through old city to
Quaker meetings.
FORSTER RE, ROUGHTON FJ, KREUZER F, BRISCOE WA.
Photocolorimetric determination of rate of uptake of CO and O2 by
reduced human red cell suspensions at 37 degrees C. J Appl
Physiol. 1957 Sep;11(2):260-8.
ROUGHTON FJ, FORSTER RE, CANDER
L. Rate at which carbon monoxide replaces oxygen from combination
with human hemoglobin in solution and in the red cell. J Appl
Physiol. 1957 Sep;11(2):269-76.
FORSTER RE, ROUGHTON FJ, CANDER
L, BRISCOE WA, KREUZER F. Apparent pulmonary diffusing capacity
for CO at varying alveolar O2 tensions. J Appl Physiol. 1957
Sep;11(2):277-89.
ROUGHTON FJ, FORSTER RE. Relative
importance of diffusion and chemical reaction rates in determining
rate of exchange of gases in the human lung, with special reference
to true diffusing capacity of pulmonary membrane and volume of blood
in the lung capillaries. J Appl Physiol. 1957 Sep;11(2):290-302.
Forster RE. F.J.W. Roughton, F.R.S. 1899-1972.
Physiologist. 1972 Nov;15(4):387-93.
Holland RA, Forster RE 2nd.
Effect of temperature on rate of CO2 uptake by human red cell
suspensions. Am J Physiol. 1975 May;228(5):1589-96.
As an aside, both Dr Forster and
Professor Roughton were full professors, and Dr Forster was
additionally chair of the department, as well as having his portrait
painted by Nelson Shanks. (Mr Shanks also painted Princess Di, you
can be impressed.) However, professor is a term used in the US for
anyone teaches, and does not denote academic rank as it does just
about everywhere else in the world. Professor Holland was an
associate professor in Australia, but he liked the title. Personally
I reached the rank of full professor, but that was at a university
which was recently swallowed by Philadelphia Jesuits. Am I Professor
Dodgson or Dr Dodgson? Quakers do not include degrees or titles on
their small flat tombstones, so it matters not. I imagine my children
will be as careless with my remains as my siblings were with
Michael’s and my mother’s; with no memorial headstone or plaque.
When I go, you will be pleased to know, I will be gone entirely.
Back to the conference in London
in July 1988: it was held in a facility owned by the University of
London, from which my father had graduated in medicine in 1944. By
July my father had been dead six months, and I was looking forward to
birth, not backwards to death. I was busy talking about carbonic
anhydrase with colleagues and hanging out with the German physicist
who came from Germany to spend time with me afterwards, and make
plans for the birth two months later of his first child, my third. I
am now wondering how I had the energy, and even the thoughts, that
brought into existence the book, the conference, and Allister.
The conference took place over
three days, I remember paying for lunches for everyone from my NIH
grant, it was not much, and London paid for the dinner with the
keynote speaker, a colleague of Professor Roughton who was then
working in Scotland and had a last name embedded in my own ancestors:
Dalzell. He asked why we were honoring Professor Roughton when
everyone hated him. Oh.
After the conference Dr Forster
and the contingent from Philadelphia flew home, and Lothar and I had
a vacation. My father had a cousin, Rt Rev Maurice AP Wood, who
shared Dalzell ancestry, and is the first person anyone has ever
asked me, “You are related to him? Wow!”
At least half of Maurice’s six
children elicit the same reaction, I have previously written about
Liverpool’s Deputy Mayor Jane Corbett and Rev John Maurice Wood MBE
of Tottenham and St Paul’s Cathedral. Yep, my cousins.
One of Maurice’s sons was a
ballet dancer in London; I knew from Maurice that he had been a
dancer in Cats. Lothar and I met Patrick Wood for dinner in a pub
with friends of his who were discussing an article in Science about
holistic medicine, dancers are well read in London. My wow this time.
Patrick told us he could get us tickets for Cats, really great
tickets, but we would have to pay for them, but the normal price.
Which is how Lothar and I had front row tickets to Cats in London.
Five months later my baby
Allister and I stopped by lawyer neighbors who had a guest from
London. He was a ballet dancer, and he had danced with Patrick. “You
are related to Patrick? Wow.” Amazing.
After the conference Lothar
rented a car and drove us to Portsmouth where are toured the Victory,
Lord Nelson’s ship. The Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s ship, had been
recently restored and I believe was open for tours. I bought a tea
towel that I used to wrap around a casserole I took out of my
microwave oven last night.
Thank you RE Forster III for
reminding me of the Roughton-Forster collaboration. The
Roughton-Forster equation continues to be quoted.
---
Amnesty International 112
https://www.amnestyusa.org/ Philadelphia’s Amnesty International 112 has a dedicated email
address: AmnestyInternationalPhiladelphia@peacescientists.org.
There is a lot going on in AI, please tell me if you are not on
Jessica’s AI112 mailing list, and would like to be. Please let us
know if you would like to join a call on Tuesday evenings at 7pm.
