Imponderable

The amounts of ointments and creams people apply are highly individualized. So are the techniques of application. Some patients vigorously rub semisolid formulations into the skin, while others just spread films until they are more or less uniform over the desired area. While pharmacokinetic assessments of a system s delivery attributes is ordinarily done using normal skin (in vitro) or on healthy volunteers (in vivo), the site of its clinical deployment is usually anything but normal. Rather, it is determined by the skin condition to be treated. Clearly, the manufacturer is without control over how a disease is expressed in a particular patient. For many diseases, disease manifestation can be anywhere on the body. Moreover, from individual to individual it varies in intensity and vastness. Thus, more area may be involved in one case than in another, and the barrier function of the skin may be more or less intact in any instance. This creates a set of imponderables with respect to delivery, efficacy, and safety. 

It is easy to see that the employee may by no fault of his own be forced to look for a new job. Any of these factors, if proved, could sway the equities and the sympathy and holding of the court or jury. Obviously, a jury is more sympathetic to an employee who is thrown out than to one who is trying to doublecross his employer. These imponderables and the relationship of a trade secret to the employee s chances of obtaining a job elsewhere influence the likelihood of an injunction or fine being imposed for compromising a trade secret. 

Figuratively speaking, just as hydrogen is said to bum, we may say that helium is the ash left over from the reaction. The imponderable separates from the ponderous, photons and neutrinos take flight, leaving the heavy helium ash to accumulate gradually. The ample energy disgorged (26.7 MeV) makes this reaction chain one of the most generous known. For example, thermonuclear fusion of 1 g of hydrogen releases some 20 milhon times more energy than the chemical combustion of 1 g of coal.

Empedocles four elements do not represent a multiplication of the prote hyle, but rather a gloss that conceals its complications. Aristotle agreed that ultimately there was only one primal substance, but it was too remote, too unknowable, to serve as the basis for a philosophy of matter. So he accepted Empedocles elements as a kind of intermediary between this imponderable stuff and the tangible world. This instinct to reduce cosmic questions to manageable ones is one reason why Aristotle was so influential. 

In spite of the apparent acceptance of the particulate nature of solid matter, the imponderable fluids of heat, magnetism, and electricity of Newtonian tradition were still indispensable instruments of discussion. In chemistry, phlogiston and the matter of heat, later called caloric, were typically treated as continuous fluids. John Dalton, who finally made the atomic idea functional for chemistry, continued to utilize heat or caloric as a fluid atmosphere that surrounded each atomic particle in the gaseous state. Though he did speak of the caloric as having particles, he always treated those particles collectively, never as discrete entities as he did the atomic particles of ponderable matter. Hence, early in the nineteenth century the vocabularies of both particulate and continuous views of matter remained in simultaneous usage. 

Nature and Properties op Caloric,—Of the three imponderables—calorie, light, and electricity— calorie is that which produces the sensation of heat or warmth in animal bodies. It exists, however, in considerable quantities, even whan it cannot be distinguished by this teBt. 

The phenomena of heat require explanation, however, and he expresses himself in favor of the material theory of heat—as an imponderable fluid pervading all space, which condensing in the pores of a substance accounts for the various phenomena of absorption or evolution of heat. The physicists, in fact, were divided for a long time after Lavoisier upon the nature of heat—whether it were a mode of motion or an imponderable fluid. An English writer, Metcalfe, in a two volume work on caloric, 1837, presents the material theory about as strongly as possible. 

So most atoms are ancient. They have existed through imponderable ages, recycling through the universe in innumerable forms, both nonliving and living. In this sense,you don t "own the atoms that make up your body—you are simply their present caretaker. There will be many caretakers to follow. 

Since heat is imponderable and not directly observable, it is necessary to measure the size of a given quantity of heat by its effect on another hody. If this effect is the production of a rise in temperature from some iniliul temperature, q. to a final temperature, t. then the rise it - i, > is found to vary inversely w ith the mass of the test body, it is thus natural, following the calorists. to regard the quantity ol heat, say Q. as determined by the product of m and (t — I I. Thus wc say... 

There are still a number of imponderables, such as the sustainability of the current high prices of conventional feedstock, and the availability of competitively-priced bio feedstock. However, it would certainly seem advisable for all incumbents to be investing in some biotechnology intelligence, if only to understand the developments. Alliances with companies with biotech expertise might also be wise. If biotechnology has the potential to become an 800-pound gorilla, say, five years down the track, it may be best to treat it with respect and courtesy now. 

The actual cyclisation stage is not as imponderable as it appears. The first step is the acid-catalysed equilibration between hydrazone 7.8 and ene hydrazine 7.10. The next step, which is irreversible, is a concerted electrocyclic reaction, forming a strong carbon-carbon bond, and breaking a weak nitrogen-nitrogen bond. The resulting imine 7.11 immediately re-aromatises by tautomerisation to aniline 7.12. Finally, acid-catalysed elimination of ammonia forms indole 7.9, reminiscent of the last step of the Knorr pyrrole synthesis (Chapter 2). 

The notion of imponderable fluid substances was common in the eighteenth century. Lavoisier s quantifying approach was distinctive. See Chapter 6. 

When Lavoisier invited the younger Laplace to collaborate with him in a quantitative study of heat, the invitation was a great compliment to the younger scientist. The results of their joint research were presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1783. The collaboration was symbolic of the union of chemistry with physics and a landmark in the quantification of what Lavoisier regarded as an imponderable substance, that is, a substance without weight. Both scientists were committed to the search for precise measurements, at a time when instrument makers were producing apparatus of unprecedented accuracy. 

Imponderable tension in the dark Consummate matter of eternity. 

Impediments, Imponderables and Alternatives in the Attempt to Develop an Effective Vaccine Against AIDS Vaccine 10 1053-1058, 1992... 

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