Adsorber o absorber ::::: To adsorb or to absorb

Reading a book, it's common to find words which we assume that are synonyms. That's not the case for "adsorb and absorb", they are similar but not equal.

Adsorb refers to an two-dimensional action, because it means to retain something on the surface, for example:

"Heavy metals are adsorbed by the cell", because they're on the surface, on the cell wall.

Absorb refers to an three-dimensional action because it means to get inside something that was out before, for example:

"Heavy metals are absorbed by the cell", because they are inside the cell, they were trapped in the cell.

See too http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltConsulta?lema=adsorber


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Al leer un libro, es común encontrar palabras similares y asumimos que son sinónimos. Este no es el caso para "adsorber y absorber", que son similares pero no iguales.

Adsorber se refiere a una acción bidimensional, debido a que significa que se retiene algo en la superficie, por ejemplo:

"Los metales pesados son adsorbidos por la célula", porque están en la superficie, es decir, sobre la pared celular.

Absorber se refiere a una acción tridimensional, pues significa introducir algo que antes estaba afuera, por ejemplo:

"Los metales pesados son absorbidos por la célula", porque están dentro de la célula, fueron atrapados en ella.

Vé también http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltConsulta?lema=adsorber

Welcome Back Christian and Gerardo

Christian and Gerardo are back in Torreon after their 5 month research stay at UGA, Athens, USA as a part of USAID-HED funded TIES program. I am sure it must be a great joy to their family. All of us at Bioremlaguna are very happy too to have them back among us. It has to be recorded here that both of them have got their own share of fans at UGA due to their hardwork. We wish both of them and their family all the best for this wonderful christmas and for the incoming New Year.

La otra contaminación :::: The other pollution

No todo es acerca de basura en las calles, derivados de petroleo sobre mares y tierra o emisión de gases invernadero, la emisión de ruido también es un contaminante más en nuestro planeta. El ruido es considerado un contaminante debido a que tiene la capacidad de alterar las condiciones normales del ambiente.Aunque el ruido no se acumula como el resto de contaminantes, este sí provoca diversas enfermedades a las personas y animales expuestos como el estrés y la sordera.

El problema no se limita a las zonas urbanas ni a la contaminación auditiva por medio del aire como vector de las ondas sonoras. El ruido también contamina el agua, y contamina puesto que afecta la calidad de vida de los animales que habitan los mares. En Génova, Italia existe un golfo en el cual es considerado santuario de ballenas, y el ruido de motores y demás artefactos utilizados en la industria marina y petrolera esta interfiriendo con los sonidos de baja frecuencia que utilizan los cetáceos para comunicarse. Así, cada vez más ballenas encallan desorientadas o no pueden encontrar pareja durante su ciclo reproductivo. Una hembra debedría ser capaz de escuchar a 500 Km el sonido de un macho, pero debido a la interferencia sonora, las ballenas han reducido en un 90% el alcance de su canto. El problema es también para los animales como el delfín, que utilizan ondas sonoras como herramienta en la caza de sus presas.



La ONU advierte además que los cambios en el pH del agua marina contribuyen al aumento de la contaminación acústica del océano, ya que el incremento de los niveles de acidez del agua del mar hacen que ésta absorba un diez por ciento menos sonidos de baja frecuencia.

Lee también acerca del tema en:
http://www.ecodigital.com.ar/Noticia.htm
http://weblogs.madrimasd.org/ciencia_marina/archive/2008/12/07/108855.aspx


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Not everything is about garbage on streets, petroleum derivate products above seas and earth or emission of green house effect gases, the noise emission is also one more pollutant in our planet. The noise is considered a pollutant due to is has the possibility to alter the normal conditions of environment. Though the noise doesn't accumulate as the other pollutant agents, it does cause illness to people and animals exposed to it like deafness and stress. The problem doesn't end in urban zones either as a pollutant through air as vector for the soundwave. The noise also pollutes water, and it does because it affects the life quality of animals which inhabit under the sea. In Genoa, Italy exists a gulf which is considered a whale sanctuary, and the noise of motors and other devices utilized in marine and petroleum business is interfering with the low frequency soundwaves that are emitted by cetacean to communicate among themselves. More whales are running aground disoriented or they cannot find partner to reproduce. A female whale should be able to listen at the sound of the male whale at 500 Km along but due to sound interference, whales have seen reduced in a 90% the range of listening. The problem is also for animals like dolphins that use wavesounds to localize its prey.

UN advices that changes in pH of sea water contributes with sound pollution in sea, because the increase in acidity of sea water makes it to absorb 10% less low frequency wave sounds.

Read also about this topic at:
http://www.ecodigital.com.ar/Noticia.htm
http://weblogs.madrimasd.org/ciencia_marina/archive/2008/12/07/108855.aspx

Trópico de cáncer : : : : Tropic of cancer

This a song I have been listening since several years ago, it is from 1994 year in that Cafe Tacuba launched its CD called Re. It is a kind of ecologist song and I hope you like it as much as I like. Here is the lyric and enjoy it:



Como es que te vas Salvador de la compañia,
How is that Salvador you're leaving the company
si todavia hay mucho verdor.
if there's still a lot of green

Si el progreso es nuestro oficio
if the progress is our profession
y aún queda por ahi mucho indio*
and there are still around there many indian*
que no sabe lo que es vivir en una ciudad
who don't know what is to live in a city
(como la gente)
(like people)

Que no ves que eres un puente
You don't know you're a bridge
entre el salvajismo y el modernismo,
among the savagery and the modernism
salvador el ingeniero, salvador de la humanidad.
saviour the engineering, savior of the mankind

Esta muy bien lo que tu piensas
It's very good what you think
pero porque no tu te acuerdas
but why don't you remember
que la nuestra es una civilización muy avanzada
that our civilization is a very advanced one
(como dice la gente)
(as they say)

Que no ves que nuestra mente
You don't see that our mind
no debe tomar en cuenta
doesn't have to take care about
ecologistas, indigenistas, retrogradistas ni humanistas.
ecologists, indigenous studiers, retrogrades either humanists.

Ay mis ingenieros, civilies y asociados
Ay my engineers, civil and associated
no crean que no me duele,
don't think it doesn't hurt me
irme de su lado, pero es que yo pienso,
going from your side, but what I think is,
que ha llegado el tiempo,
the time has arrived
de darle lugar, a los espacios sin cemento,
to give importance, to places with no cement,

Por eso yo ya me voy,
For that reason, I'm leaving
no quiero tener nada que ver
I don't want to have any relation
con esa fea relación de acción, contrucción, destrucción
with that nasty relation about action, construction, destruction

Como es que te vas Salvador de la compañía
How is that you Salvador are leaving the company
si todavia hay mucho verdor.
if there's still a lot of green.

Ay mis compañeros Petroleros Mexicanos,
Ay my partners Petroleros Mexicanos
no crean que no extraño, el olor a oleo puro,
don't think I don't miss, the pure oil odor
pero es que yo pienso que nosotros los humanos,
but I think we as human beings
no necesitamos, más hidrocarburos
don't need, more hydrocarbons

Por eso yo ya me voy,
For that reason, I'm leaving
no quiero tener nada que ver
I don't want to have any relation
con esa fea relación de acción, contrucción, destrucción...
with that nasty relation about action, construction, destruction...



*indio. Indio es un adjetivo usado en México para discriminar indigenas que "se supone" son ignorantes.
* indian. Indian is and adjective used in Mexico to discriminate natives who "are supposed" to be ignorants.

Just a small step to become engineers

Last week we celebrate our traditional "quema de batas" or "burn of robe" every year the school of biological sciences makes this big party in honor of the students graduating . It was a lot of fun breaking the piñata, burning the robe, dancing and singing with mariachis. I think we all should feel proud of our school, and realize all the knowledge that we gain. Thanks to all our profesors, our classmates and friends. Now we are about to get into the real world .. lets keep the hard work. Congratulations to Susan, Lucy, and Cheve that are graduating this december, and to my other classmates..we made it guys !!

Crazy green idea

Hello everybody!!

I was looking at videos in Youtube this morning and I found a very interesting one. Is about an organization named X Prize that called on youtube viewers for their crazy green ideas. Many people uploaded their videos and now this organization has 3 finalist for us to vote. All the videos are intersting. I am posting the link so that you could follow it and vote.

http://www.xprize.org/crazy-green-idea

Would be great if we all as a group could prepare one video with our ideas for environmental care.

Scanning Electron Microscope.

This last week was an amazing one for our experience in our 5 months intership at the University of Georgia at Athens, Georgia.
Our professor Dr. Nagamani spend 2 weeks of hard work with us at the laboratory, he found very interesting facts about our preliminary results obtained from our research on anaerobic co-digestion of dairy manure-algae and poultry litter-dairy manure, so we decided to make a checking on a fluorescence microscope, we found a very pretty Methanosarcina archea present in most of the reactors. So this lead us to realize a more specific analysis, and we had one of greatest experience in life science, checking our anaerobic consortium in an Electron Microscope or Scanning Electron Microscope.
We realized all the process on preparing our samples to this fascinating analysis.
It consist in 1) Fixation of our sample, this step is to maintain intact all the sample structure, 2) Critical Point Drying, this is necessary to keep our sample without moisture after fixation because it can affect our sample structure. 3) Gold coating, we realized a gold coating to make our sample visible to the Electron microscope, without this it can not be possible to observe the sample structure. We realized this sample preparation in the Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Division of Biological Sciences and Center for Ultrastructural Research, under the direction of Dr. John Shields. And we realized the scanning at the School of Veterinary in the Electron Microscope Laboratory. We found a lot of small aggregation form of methanosarcina sp in the dairy manure-algae reactors, and a lot of big aggregation forms of methanosarcina sp in the poultry litter-dairy manure reactors. We want to say thank you to our professor Dr. Nagamani Balagurusamy for all his support and suggestions to our research. And I just want to say that we have a lot of work to do in our laboratory (Bioremediation Group Laguna) to make our planet a better place to live and make all the effort to convert our lab in one of the most important Environmental Biotechnology labs in Mexico and why not one the best in the world...

Just little about informatics :::: Solo un poco de informatica

Around three months ago I discovered the concept of free software throughout Ubuntu (and a Colombian man who talked about it with us). Ubuntu is an operative system based on Linux, or with core in it, I'm not good in this. So the point is that I decided to try a new OS because I was tired of virus in my laptop with XP, so as the last resource I looked at it. But what was my sorprise when I realized that Ubuntu worked much better than Windows XP in my laptop, it never broke down, it didn't have virus, and even there were many useful programms which ran better and had more options and utilities. The only problem was that I downloaded a newer version of the Ubuntu that didn't worked with my laptop and by that moment I had three OS Ubuntu 8.04, the newer Ubuntu and Windows XP. So I decided to change to Win Vista which was very heavy, what did my computer slower than before. So, again I returned to Windows XP.

Now I worked with XP but today I looked for some programms that I used to use in Ubuntu like Pidgin, that launch accounts of Gtalk, msn, yahoo messenger, My space and more in the same messenger program; Open Office that is almost the same than Microsoft Office, but totally free; Gimp, a powerful image editor, just to mention some of them. So I let my self to suggest you to use free software and you won't have to look for serials illegally any more. Jaja

Well if you want to try some of those programms, this web site will be perfect to begin http://softlibrewin.org.ar, thanks.

Cerca de tres meses atràs, descubrí el concepto de software libre a través de Ubuntu (y un Colombiano que nos hablo al respecto). Ubuntu es un sistema operativo basado en Linux o con al menos con su núcleo, no soy bueno en esto. Pero bueno, el punto es que decidí probar un nuevo OS debido a que estaba fastidiado de los virus en my laptop con XP, así que como último recurso lo probé. Pero cual fue mi sorpresa cuando me dí cuenta que Ubuntu trabajaba mucho mejor que Windows XP en mi laptop, nunca se trababa, no tenía virus, e incluso había muchos programas útiles que corrían mejor y tenían mas utilidades y opciones. El único problema fue que baje una versión más nueva de Ubuntu que no funcionó en mi laptop y entonces ya tenía tres sistemas operativos, Ubuntu 8.04, la nueva versión de Ubuntu y Windows XP, lo que hacía mi computadora un poco lenta. Así, decidí cambiar a Windows Vista, el cual era muy pesado, así que regrese a Windows XP.

Ahora trabajo con Windows XP, pero hoy busqué algunos de los programas que usaba en Ubuntu como Pidgin, que carga cuentas de Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo, messenger, My Space y más en el mismo mensajero; Open Office que es casi igual a Microsoft Office pero totalmente gratis; Gimp, un poderoso editor de imagenes, solo por mencionar algunos. Así que me permito sugerirles usar software libre y ya no tendrán que buscar más numeros de serie ilegalmente. Jajaj

Bueno si quieren probar algunos de esos programas, esta página será perfecta para iniciar http://softlibrewin.org.ar, gracias.

A rather nice looking picture ::: Una foto mas bien chida

At work, waiting for the hour to get out of there, I discovered this picture that I saw nice. The important point is to support Argelia about Batopilas where is one of the biodigesters of La Laguna; don't forget that there's also biodigesters in San Rafael and some farms in Gomez Palacio like Los Olivos, which we have visited.

Well, just enjoy the image I found


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En el trabajo, esperando la hora de salir de ahí, descubrí esta foto que me pareció bonita. Lo importante de esto es apoyar a Argelia en lo de Batopilas donde esta uno de los biodigestores de La Laguna; no olviden que también hay biodigestores en San Rafael y en otras granjas de Gomez Palacio como en Los Olivos, las cuales hemos visitado.

Bueno solo disfruten a imagen que encontré.



More information visit http://www.nomadica.com.mx/38_01.html

Para más información visiten http://www.nomadica.com.mx/38_01.html

Methanogen cartoon

I prepared this video with some help of my brother

You will find it also in this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrpKD5L626c

Best wishes to everybody