research

Online Article – GENEALOGY: THE TIME TO START IS NOW!

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Genealogy: the time to start is NOW! July 2013 Written for personal blog Copyright ARLADEAN ARNSON

You want to let your children know where they come from, and, hey, so do you! But where do you start? You know there are online websites and books and things, but you just don’t have any time for those. You have CHILDREN and a family!

The easiest way to start is probably on your social calendar already. The picnics and family reunions that are popping up this time of year, especially around The Fourth, are the BEST time to start on your new hobby: genealogy.

Before going to the gathering do some preliminary note taking. Write down what you do know about your or your significant other’s (SO) family. You probably know your/SO’s mother and father’s name and where/when they were born; write down all siblings and their partner’s names, birthdates and wedding anniversaries, and children’s names, birthdates. You are off to a great start!

Now, try and remember the next generation BACK:  your/SO’s grandfathers and grandmothers names. Names are a great start. Hopefully, you may remember their birthdays, anniversaries, death dates, etc. Even bits and pieces can help put the puzzle together.

If you cannot remember this information, you will now know where to start!

Be sure to gather a couple of extra items to bring with you with that favorite bean dip: A couple of pens, a notepad, a digital recorder or camera. These are all great tools to help you catch all of the information. Recordings are great because you can just sit back and listen to the stories and go back later to write it all down!

“What was Great Aunt Rose’s full name? Did she ever get married? What about Chester? Was he a brother to Great Aunt Rose? Where did he move? What was that story about Papa and the anteater?”

Enjoy the process! Sure, you may want to visit with your closest family but chatting to that distant cousin might bring up some forgotten family history that you will want to record in your notes. Just think of the possibilities!

After you assemble what you can from the members in your family that are living, it is time to then hit the internet! There are several places to start your search from Ancestry.com to the online vital records of the towns, cities, or states where those family members from past generations lived.

Start with what you know. The clues will send you on your journey! Bon Voyage!

 

Science Online Article – HOW DO SCIENTISTS MAKE WATERMELON FLAVOR

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How do scientists make watermelon flavor?   July 2011 Written for TriangleMommies Blog Copyright ARLADEAN ARNSON

It is a summer time favorite -a venerable taste of the season. I have loved the taste of these big delicious red and green melons since I was a kid! The experience is unmistakable-with the juices that run down your neck and the seeds you can spit easily because they are slippery-the flavor unmatched. Or so I thought.
The first candies I tasted with watermelon flavor were way back in the mid 1980’s, Jolly Rancher Hard Candies. I was amazed at the flavor, the color and the smell -oh the smell! However great this new candy tasted, I was ultimately disappointed in the lack of subtlety of the candies’ flavor that can only be found in the fruit itself. It was then that I knew right there in the middle of winter, there would just never be the perfect watermelon flavor to whet my appetite. I tried, though. I tried many times to find it. It never was found.
Today, I sit eating a scrumptious piece of the real fruit and I think back to that moment. And, I wonder why. Why couldn’t there be the perfect blend of odor and taste to bring this fantastic delight to me in the wintertime? Well, besides having the watermelons flown in from the southern hemisphere.I got to work. I looked up natural versus artificial flavors. I looked at histories and chemistry notes. I think I might have the answer.

It all starts with a chemical compound called an “ester”. A chemist can find these esters by boiling down or deconstructing the very fruit, or other natural element, into the chemical components that make it up. Then, when taking the water molecule out of such so that it breaks down even more into a compound made up of the reaction between an acid and an alcohol, one finds the ester.

These esters are the basic building blocks of taste and scent for the flavor. The ester for an orange flavor is called octyl acetate (CH3COOC8H17). The “octyl” is the alcohol and the “acetate” is the acid. So, by adding these esters to a product’s ingredients, the product will taste like an orange. Well, at least to some degree.

I did some further digging and found out that my precious watermelon flavor used to be based on a strong belief that alcohols were the main contributors towards the aroma. The study by some chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign actually found out that a watermelon’s ester, the one that can smell like fresh cut watermelon, is identifiable but not stable enough to flavor anything. It breaks down too quickly. These chemists worked on the problem but found that if you used the ester, nicknamed “watermelon aldehyde”, and bonded it to a synthesized “backbone”, the result still wasn’t good enough to be a suitable replacement for the esters on the market now.

This process goes for every flavor you can imagine. The chemists find the esters. The food producers add the ester compounds to the products. The public figures out if the product does taste like the food producers want you think it tastes. And, we all happily go about our business.

Of course there is a huge debate whether these artificial flavors are a good thing or a bad thing. This follows along the same lines as the debate on artificial colors or news of the development of the Local Food Movement. These ideas will have to be addressed in other blog posts. In this article, I just wanted to find out “how?”

As a result of all my research, here we sit, with a mock watermelon flavor that just cannot satisfy my cravings for this summer fruit during the summer. The real thing is still the best! But, it might just do in a pinch come Halloween!

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY-Preeclampsia Research

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Executive Summary: Preeclampsia Research

January 2006, Copyright ARLADEAN ARNSON, researched and written for client

Project Overview

The focus of the attached research is to find “key relevant medical articles” on the subject of preeclampsia, with a focus on information regarding antithrombin and preeclampsia.

The HELLP syndrome, a close “sister” to preeclampsia, is another topic that researchers like to link together with the studies on preeclampsia, itself, or antithrombin. A small portion of the research covers this subject also.

Research Methodology

The traditional route to medical research is by using Pub Med. This route and a new (beta) Google search, called Google Scholar, were utilized. A large amount of information was provided, therefore, the limits set for articles narrowed to those only going back five (5) years.

Also chosen to be included is both a group of articles from the year 2000 that looked to be important to the focus of the research and a second group of articles, “Articles mentioned in the Articles Above”, that obviously influenced the researchers of our focus topic. These are found in separate folders in the “zipped” material.

Included in the Pub Med and Google Scholar search is forty-six (46) articles on the subject of antithrombin and preeclampsia. The file folder titled “Articles from 2000” presents eight (8) articles. And, the file folder titled “Articles mentioned in Articles Above” offers thirteen (13) articles.

Six (6) articles on the subject of the HELLP syndrome are displayed in the file folder titled “HELLP”.

Page 2 Executive Summary

Alternative databases and web sites have also been explored for any articles on the focus topic. The Cochrane Library’s Cochrane Database for Systematic Reviews revealed two articles of note. Reach both articles and their abstracts in the file folder titled “Cochrane Library”.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality produces several health pages starting at

http://www.ahrq.gov . The web page featuring women’s issues, AHRQ Women’s Health Page, conveys information via documents on research in several areas. Featured in the section titled “Maternal Health & Pregnancy”, a document called “Chronic Hypertension During Pregnancy” can be found. In this document, preeclampsia is mentioned and the management of this and other pregnancy complications are discussed. In spite of the ease at which the document can be reached, it is not feasible to get a copy of it from the web site.

KOL Identification Methodology

The research easily established key opinion leaders among the authors of the articles. Twenty (20) KOLs have made the list. The KOLs have been identified using a three tiered method.

The first tier of researcher/authors is the most important to the focus topic. These prominent men and women have been selected by being mentioned as a contributor in more than one of the articles and/or publishing articles on antithrombin and preeclampsia.

The second tier researcher/authors, still an important classification, have been mentioned as contributors in those articles cited by the first tier group. These authors’ work clearly influenced the further research in the focus topic.

The third tier of researcher/authors denotes those people who have written on the topic of the HELLP syndrome.

The KOLs are arranged alphabetically in the data listing along with a column noting the tier in which they should be considered.

Page 3 Executive Summary

Additional Notes

Among these seventy-five (75) articles are several different key issues. In the general research you can find studies from preeclamptic pregnancies and thrombophilic disorders to Activated Protein C resistance. In the cases of articles about the HELLP syndrome, the articles were separated into a specific file folder.

The file folders titled “Articles from 2000”, “Articles mentioned in Articles Above”, and “Cochrane Library” contain a variety of subjects all associated to the focus topic of antithrombin and preeclampsia.