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Tim, thanks for the memory.
In earlier decades (before I started to 'think'
- or - while I was working in aqueous medium <G>) my ion exchangers pushed
me into speculations about hydration of nonaqueous 'molecules', surfaes, sites,
whatever.
You know: called hydrophilic/phobic. The 11-19 A
hydrate space was a common item, with even more than 'one' thickness of aqueous
distance between sites (checked by electron microscope, I had to make a
circumventing new method, to get results in the high vacuum of the EM.)
For the unimpeded minds: look at a 1 % gelatin
gel, below 37C, it is a jelly. Heat it up: it flows away. Same with pectin,
etc., w/ approriate % of the solute. My polymers were less sophisticated than
proteins, so more regularity could be established in such behavior, I made
'technology' out of it, working on temperature-levels to control the amount of
the bound (structured?) water. (In hydrometallurgy etc.).
However, in the 60s there was a big brouhaha
about a Russian invention of 'poly-water', (SU advertised) what nobody else
could reproduce. This "structured water" was identified in rigorous
repetitions by western scientists as having a slight impurity, imparting the
'structural' stature.
Why I have doubts about the article?
It may be OK, 'good science', but in water
technology incredibly small additives can cause fantastic effects (this comes
from a time, when 'chaos' was only applied to the Greek mythology). E.g. in the
beet-sugar industry we did apply 0.5ppm of a surfactant polymer, to settle out
the otherwise suspendid solids in form of a filterable sludge.
(For those who have a feel for such figures:
0.5g polymer
(=half a thimble) additive mixed into a ton of water.) This was
industrial technology. In fact even much smaller (call: impurities?) amounts can
cause effects, measurable today with more sophisticated scientific instruments
than what we used in the 50s-60s R&D.
This dates back only ½ century, - a reason, why
I double check with scrutiny earlier consclusions in scientific
generalization/philosophy before deeming them (so far!)acceptable - unless
proven obsolete.
Regards
John M
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