Babel: Tower

C. Piguet and J.-C. Biinzli draw the attention of the reader on the fascination for helical edifices and objects which appears to be as old as humanity, cf. the single-stranded helical construction of the Babel tower, the helical patterns displayed by the secondary structure of proteins pointed out by L. Pauling in 1951, or double-stranded DNA. In the mid-1980s, J.-M. Lehn relied on coordination bonds for helically wrapping ligand strands around a central axis defined by metal ions helicate science was bom. 

Bitumen or asphalt is well known and used since ancient times, because it is the oldest and widely accepted structural material. It is used since 6000 BC as a waterproofing and binder material of great quality. A prominent example of bitumen use is cited in the Old Testament, since it was used as coating for Noah s Ark. The Sumerians used to use it in the prosperous shipbuilding industry, whereas the Babylonians used it as a binder in the mixture production for castle construction (Babel Tower). Asphalt was also used by the Egyptians both to mummify the dead bodies and to waterproof tanks. Around 3000 BC, the Persians also used bitumen for road construction. Finally, Herodotus and Plinius describe bitumen s export and use. 

Table 1 displays the properties thatcan be discussed in terms of the tram effect (or cis or metal effect) together with some terminology, in order to allow the reader to connect this article to the literature concerning the simpler metal complexes (9-11,16-19) and to prevent some Tower-of-Babel confusion of language into which an ill-prepared reader might fall. The most general and appropriate terminology is the one used by Hill, Pratt, and Williams (Table 1, Column 2) it correlates with the properties to be discussed. Pratt additionally states that the cis or trans effects cover the three levels of properties, A-C (Table 1), and that these levels show diminishing...

Because of the recent rash of hurricanes like Katrina and tsunamis, we have become more aware of the need for protection against their violence. Geotextiles play a major role in this protection. Reinforced soil was used by Babylonians 3000 years ago in the construction of their pyramid-like tower, ziggurats. One of these famous towers, the Tower of Babel, collapsed. For thousands of years, the Chinese used wood, straw, and bamboo for soil reinforcement including the construction of the Great Wall. In fact, the Chinese symbol for civil engineering can be translated as earth and wood. The Dutch have made extensive use of natural fibrous materials in their age-old battle with the sea. The Romans employed wood and reed for foundation reinforcement. By the 1920s, cotton fabrics were tested as a... 

The inhabitants of ancient Nineveh used an asphaltic mortar prepared from partially evaporated petroleum (8). In some translations of the Old Testament, this substance is called pitch or slime. When Noah built the ark, he was told to pitch it within and without with pitch. For building the Tower of Babel, Noah s descendants had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar (9). 

Ever since the Tower of Babel, humans have built, created, and sought beauty. Alas, the Tower makers were scattered, their language confounded, and the Tower abandoned. In this book, let s rebuild some of the lesser-known staircases of the Tower. After all, even after our expulsion from Eden and the flight from the Tower, God gives us back our creativity in Exodus 35. He gives it all to a man named Bezalel of the tribe of Judah, and Bezalel opens the gates for all humankind ... 

Dead Sea, is reported. There is also reference to the use of tar as a mortar when the Tower of Babel was under construction (Genesis 11 3). Another example of the use of pitch (and slime) is given in the story of Moses (Exodus 2 3) where the basket in which he was placed to float in the river was caulked with a derivative. Perhaps the slime was a lower melting bitumen whereas the pitch was a higher melting material the one slime) acting as a flux for the other pitch). 

In 1999 the philosopher of science Robert Pennock argued in Tower of Babel that irreducible complexity was no problem for Darwinism. As philosophers will do, he focused not on the science, but on the definition, or at least what he construed as the definition ... 

Pennock R. (1999). Tower of Babel The Evidence Against the New Creationism, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 267-268. 

In one of many examples of the Darwinian echo chamber, in Tower of Babel Robert Pennock approvingly quotes Orr s reasonsing about hypothetical part A and part (B), but is equally reticent about spelling out how such reasoning applies to real mousetraps or biochemical examples. 

Fig. 4a—d. Lamellar structures in thin films that are not considered further in detail in the present article a Thin film confined between inequivalent walls, where the lower one favors the B-rich domains and the upper one the A-rich domains. Then an arrangement where the interfaces run parallel to the walls requires that thickness D and wavelength X are related as D=(n+1/2)A, n=0,l, 2... b Thin film on a substrate that favors B-rich domains undergo at the order-disorder transition (ODT) of the block copolymer melt a phase separation into a fraction x of thickness nXh and a fraction 1-x of thickness (n+1) Xh, such that D=[xn+(l-x) (n+l)] K if the air also favors B-rich domains, c If the air favors A-rich domains instead, the phase separation happens in a fraction x of thickness (n-l/2)A and a fraction 1-x of thickness (n+ 1/2)X with n= 1,2,3... d If the block copolymer film undergoes dewetting at the substrate, droplets form with a step-pyramide like structure ( Tower of Babel [30]). 

The first conference round table Was the famous tower of Babel, And the languages used Were already confused. 

The time is coming where the tower of Babel of Aromaticity must be destroyed. 

The field of nomenclature is one whose orismological characteristics both deserve and require the best efforts of all persons concerned with chemistry. Here indeed we must truly develop a science of definition, or soon we shall become the victims of a confusion of tongues beside which the Tower of Babel will seem a room of silence. 

These models [also] have been applied successfully to soil colloids to bring matters full circle but, like their predecessors, they rely solely on prior molecular concepts and are tested only by good-ness-of-fit to adsorption data. Since the model assumptions are so different and the models so plausible, one is left to wonder what physical truth they bear. One fears that the fog will lift only to reveal a Tower of Babel. 

Legacy healthcare systems. The healthcare and health insurance systems of today, which are often entrenched and bureaucratic Towers of Babel and yet typically beset by mountains of paper, high rate of medical error, and the challenge of the aging baby boomer population, and internationally polarized between managed healthcare and socialistic philosophy. 

Vision is not the sole prerogative of the modern world. This is manifestly obvious in regard to great engineering feats. Stonehenge had to be planned. Yet the cautionary biblical story of the ill-fated Tower of Babel reminds us... 

The multiversity has now become the modern tower of Babel, each of whose departmental languages grows ever less understandable to members of all other departments."... 

FIGURE 1 (A) Representation of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder... 

Typically, when a new protein with a role in signal transduction is discovered, it is given a name, which makes sense to members of the laboratory concerned. These names are often abbreviated, and different laboratories, studying different facets of signaling pathways, may give the same protein different (abbreviated) names. The resulting tower of Babel effect can hinder rmderstanding, especially as different textbooks and research papers may use different names for the same protein or class of proteins. 

Shem s son Tarban, his thirty brothers, fifteen sisters and their husbands are reputed to have settled in the same area. Another of Noah s three sons, Japheth, had a descendant called Hayk." This giant-man reputedly helped build the Tower of Babel. Folklore suggests that he became the patriarch of the Armenians in this province on the northwest shore of Lake Van. 

Bituminous cements were used to fasten ivory eyeballs in statues in 6000-year-old Babylonian temples, and combinations of egg whites and lime were used by the Goths 2000 years ago to fasten Roman coins to wood, bonds that remain intact today [2, p. ix]. Bitumen was supposedly the mortar for the Tower of Babel beeswax and pine tar were used in caulking Roman vessels that dominated the Mediterranean Sea [3, p. 62]. Plant gums and mucilage have been known and in use since very early times, reference being made to them in the Bible they seem to have been of commercial value for several thousand years, especially in India, Asia, Africa, Australia, and China [4, p. viij. 

It is reckoned that there is a lack of communication here something is missing in translation between the engineer and the microbiologist, and between the researcher and the engineer. Schematically, this Tower of Babel can be shown as in Figure 4.52. 

FIGURE 4.52 As long as the engineer wants his or her problem solved, the researcher wants to know the involved mechanism, and the microbiologist is interested in knowing the bacteria, the Tower of Babel of MIC will continue to exist ... 

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