Readings from Scientific American


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Heat, Cold, and Thermodynamics

2/52 52 "Frostbite." Littell; Deals with studies on frostbite victims treated by "rapid thawing," and concerns itself with remedies that are now thought harmful.
4/54 70 "Heat Death." Heilbrunn; a discussion of the newest proposed cause of heat death (on the cellular level). Also discussion of the connection between the type of fat present in the cell and its heat tolerance.
9/54 64 "Heat and Life." Johnson; discusses the correlation between the temperatures at which enzymes can function and the temperatures at which organisms can survive.
6/56 105 "The Freezing of Living Cells." A. Parkes; experiments done on freezing cells and reviving them to a fully functional state at varying intervals of time.
4/57 96 "The Wonderful Net." Scholander; description of the arrangement of blood vessels which allow animals to conserve heat by the principle of counter-current exchange. See also 5/79 p. 130, this category.
6/57 62 "Fever." Wood; possible explanation of the cause of fever; a substance released by white blood cells affecting the brain "thermostat."
3/58 104 "Hypothermia." Hock and Covino; chilling a patient to slow his metabolism is an important surgical technique.
11/58 145 About a remarkably simple device to attain low temperatures, and various other matters.
1/61 134 "The Human Thermostat." by T. H. Benzinger. A newly discovered sensory organ in the brain measures the body temperature.
8/65 62 "The Production of Heat by Fat." Michael J. R. Dawkins and David Hull. Metabolic activity in brown fat cells produces heat in response to low temperature.
12/65 77 "Heat Transfer in Plants." David M. Gates. Description of temperature-control mechanism in plants.
1/66 94 "Adaptation to Cold." Irving; an explanation of the biological mechanisms for adaptation to cold environments.
1/68 128 "On Equipment to Study Freezing and On Growing Crystals of Salt." (The Amateur Scientist) Stong; how to make apparatus for growing crystals, studying ice pressures and a temperature control device.
5/68 38 "The Heat Pipe." Eastman; discusses a device that is essentially a closed, evacuated chamber whose inside walls are lined with a capillary structure or wick that is saturated with a volatile fluid. The operation of this heat pipe combines both vapor heat transfer and capillary action, making it extremely efficient in heat transfer. The article outlines possible uses.
3/69 19 "Thermal Pollution and Aquatic Life." J. R. Clark; infrared photography used to demonstrate the extent of power-plant heating.
5/70 42 "The Calefaction of a River." Merriman. The warming of the Connecticut by industry has so far done no harm to its life.
5/70 92 "'Second Sound' in Solid Helium." Bertman and Sandiford; The wavelike flow of heat in liquid helium also occurs in solids.
9/70 54 "The Energy Cycle of the Earth." Oort. Energy from the sun is broadly distributed by the atmosphere and ocean.
8/76 "Hot Spots on the Earth's Surface." Action under the earth as indicated by regions of volcanic activity.
8/78 102 "The Thermostat of Vertebrate Animals." H. C. Heller, L. I. Cranshaw and H. T. Hammel; the operation of the hypothalamus.
5/79 130 "A Brain-cooling System in Mammals." M. A. Baker; some mammals have a counter-current heat exchanger, the rete mirabile, in the base of the brain; mammals with this structure can survive extended periods of physical exertion in hot environments.
7/80 92 "Convection." Manuel G. Velarde and Christiane Normand. The spontaneous upwelling of a heated fluid is a good deal more complex than one might think.
5/81 118 "Countercurrent Systems in Animals." Knut Schmidt-Nielsen; an engineering device that nature uses to conserve both heat and water.
6/81 146 "The Regulation of Temperature in the Honeybee Swarm." Bernd Heinrich; a complex feedback system; homeostasis for a population!
11/80 198 See category 10.


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Dick Piccard revised this file (http://ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/scientam/heat.html) on July 15, 1997.

Please E-mail comments and suggestions to piccard@ohiou.edu.