Found By An Alpha Full Story Pdf Free Download
Ashely Wolfgram
It was during a trip to New Zealand with his father that Thomas Platts-Mills, at the ripe old age of 9, decided to be a doctor. There he met his grandmother, Dr. Daisy Platts-Mills, and came to understand the origin of his surname.
Platts-Mills found his focus and a mentor in the 1970s as an allergy fellow at Johns Hopkins University, working for Dr. Kimishige Ishizaka. Ishizaka had just discovered immunoglobulin E, antibodies produced by the immune system in response to environmental allergens.
Platts-Mills, Chapman and Dr. Euan Tovey worked to purify the house dust mite allergen and ultimately determined that mite feces were the source of the allergen. The discovery was transformative, and helped to explain why allergic sensitization to mites was so strongly associated with asthma.
The impact came both from understanding that patients had no awareness of the role of dust mite allergens and that the chronic hyper-reactivity of the lungs was a major target for treatment of asthma.
It started when he realized that the sugar alpha-gal was an ingredient in the cancer drug cetuximab and was causing allergic reactions in patients from certain geographic areas. Expanding on that, his team found that the sugar alpha-gal was also connected to a mysterious red meat allergy cropping up in similar areas. After meticulously testing patients, they determined that the bite of the lone star tick caused the allergy.
His father agrees, noting that believing patients could get anaphylaxis, a severe and potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, hours after eating meat was a huge jump to make when the reaction to peanuts or bee stings is almost instant.
At a stage where many would eye retirement, Platts-Mills remains focused on furthering his work, particularly exploring the possibility of an undiagnosed national epidemic of meat sensitivity among people who show no symptoms of an allergy. He and his team have already linked sensitivity to the allergen spread by lone star ticks to increased plaque buildup in arteries.
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Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom in 1911. We read this in textbooks and in popular writings. But what does that statement mean? Geographical discovery usually means that one sees a place for the first time. But can discovery be the same for a realm hidden from sight? One cannot see an atom in that sense. So this hints that perhaps the story of the discovery of the nucleus was more complicated. The story as it unfolded in Rutherford's lab at the University in Manchester revolved around real people. It involved frustrations and triumphs. It involved hard work and perplexity and inspiration.
Rutherford and Hans Geiger worked closely in 1907 and 1908 on the detection and measurement of α particles. If they were to use α particles to probe the atom, they had first to know more about these particles and their behavior. Rutherford had tried and failed back at McGill to count α particles.
A year later in Manchester, he and Geiger succeeded with two methods of observing α particles. The first method involved scintillations excited by α particles on a thin layer of zinc sulfide. They observed these through a microscope and counted the scintillations at different angles of dispersion. They also developed an "electrometer" that could demonstrate the passage of an individual α particle to a large audience. The instrument, which evolved into the "Geiger counter," had a partially evacuated metal cylinder with a wire down its center. They applied a voltage between the cylinder and the wire high enough almost to spark. They admitted α particles through a thin mica window, where these particles collided with gasses, producing gas ions. These then collided with other molecules and produced more ions, and so on. Each α particle produced a cascade of ions, which partially discharged the cylinder and indicated the passage of an α particle. Geiger and Rutherford published several articles in 1908 and 1909 on these methods and their use.
Although Rutherford suspected as early as 1906 that α particles were helium atoms stripped of their electrons, he demanded a high standard of proof. One kind of experiment was not enough. One kind of detector was not enough. He wanted more proof. For this, Rutherford desired "big voltages" and big electromagnets to divert α particles, but this method was not yet ripe. Lab steward William Kay recalled in the cited oral history interview that Rutherford in 1908 insisted that strong electric and magnetic fields were needed to measure more directly the charge and mass of the α and β particles:
Geiger and Marsden began with small-angle dispersion and tried various thicknesses of foils, seeking mathematical relationships between dispersion and thickness of foil or number of atoms traversed. Marsden later recalled that Rutherford said to him amidst these experiments: "See if you can get some effect of alpha-particles directly reflected from a metal surface." (Reported by Marsden in Birks, 1962, p. 8). Marsden doubted that Rutherford expected back scatter of α particles, but as Marsden wrote
This was Rutherford's playful approach in action. His students and others tried out his ideas, many of which were dead-ends. This idea to look for backscattering of α particles, however, paid off. Rutherford wrote:
Human memory is fallible. Whether Marsden or Geiger told Rutherford, the effect was the same. Rutherford said they should prepare a publication from this research, which they submitted in May 1909. Moreover, this started Rutherford thinking toward what ultimately, almost two years later, he published as a theory of the atom.
In the autumn of 1910 he brought Marsden back to Manchester to complete rigorous experimental testing of his ideas with Geiger. They re-established rates of emission and the ranges of α particles by radioactive sources and they re-examined their statistical analyses. Rutherford tried to reconcile scattering results with different atomic models, especially that of J.J. Thomson, in which the positive electricity was considered as dispersed evenly throughout the whole sphere of the atom.
Rutherford concluded in his May 1911 paper that such a remarkable deviation in the path of a massive charged particle could only be achieved if most of the mass of, say, an atom of gold and most of its charge were concentrated in a very small central body. Note: at this point in 1911, Rutherford did not call this a "nucleus."
It's often been said to me that Rutherford was a bad lecturer. I never heard such nonsense. It is quite true that on occasion he would be a bit dull, a bit mixed up, but that was only on very rare occasions. There were other occasions when he was really most stimulating. There was a tremendous enthusiasm about him.
Rutherford did see possible tests of the nature of the central charge. The absorption of β particles, he said, should be different with a negative center versus a positive one. A positive center would explain the great velocity that α particles achieve during emission from radioactive elements. But these were only hints.
We must remember that Rutherford could not directly observe the structure of the nucleus, so his conclusions were tentative. Nevertheless, he was openly considering the possibilities of a complex nucleus, capable of deformation and even of possible disintegration. These thoughts shaped this intense period of experimental researches.
Marco Werman is a Senior Producer with Public Radio International's The World, covering world music. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Werman got his start in radio twenty years ago while reporting in Burkina Faso, West Africa, for the BBC World Service, where he later worked as a producer. And more recently, Werman has reported a number of stories for FRONTLINE/World, including the 2007 Emmy winner Libya: Out of the Shadow.
As a music writer, Jamaica has always been one of the places I felt I had to visit. I love reggae, rocksteady, and ska. And who doesn't love Bob Marley? But I didn't want my love of the music to be the sole reason to visit the island, like those rock fans that traipse blindly past the gravestones of France's cultural greats in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris just to pray at the place Jim Morrison is buried. I wanted to find a story that spoke to Jamaica's musical wealth -- past, present and future -- while still describing what it means to live on the island today.
Then, five years ago, someone from one of the big Jamaican recording companies told me about the Alpha Boys School in Kingston. He said the nun who had turned Alpha into a musical dream factory in the 1950s and 60s, Sister Mary Ignatius Davies, had passed away. The record company was trying to raise awareness and funds to ensure Alpha's legendary music program lived on.
As I started to dig, I found that Alpha began in the late 19th century as an orphanage. With social upheaval in post-colonial Jamaica, Alpha evolved into something of a reform school. Sister Mary, or "Iggy" as many of the boys knew her, amped up the music program, and found that discipline could be fostered if the kids got music lessons and participated in the Alpha's marching band. Soon, the school was graduating artists who would go on to become the stars of the glory days of Jamaican recorded music.
Many of those stars are now gone themselves, but quite a few are still leading successful musical careers. These Alpha Old Boys, as they're known, regard themselves as part of an exclusive fraternity that extends from Jamaica to England and the U.S. With Sister Mary gone, though, I wondered what had become of the Alpha Boys School in Kingston? That's what I went to Jamaica to find out.
--Marco Werman