Pyrotechnic snakes

Abstract

sale of the mercuric thiocyanate Pharaoh's Serpents,1 with which many of us amused ourselves as children, is now forbidden by law in several of the states, for the vapors from these toys are poisonous, and, more serious, children have been

Carbon nitrides: synthesis and characterization of a new class of functional materials

“…33,34 Wöhler reported a characteristic ''snake-like'' appearance of the voluminous porous solid residue that emerged as the salt was burned in air. 38,39 That remarkable and seemingly magical property later led to the development of pyrotechnic materials that were packaged and sold as ''Pharaoh's serpents'' eggs, following a loose reference to the mystical behavior of Moses' staff. 40 The commercial enterprise ended as the health and safety implications of releasing mercury and cyanide into the atmosphere became better appreciated, in addition to unfortunate reports of people confusing the wrapped pellets with ingestible sweets.…”

“…Informative reviews of this early history were published by Irving 38 and Davis. 39 A recent YouTube video shows the process of producing and then igniting Hg(SCN) 2 to form ''Pharaoh's serpents'', including the safety considerations that must be respected to carry out the reactions. 41 The overall decomposition reaction is written as:…”

Tobacco MAP Kinase: A Possible Mediator in Wound Signal Transduction Pathways

“…However, the molecular mechanism responsible for act~vation of these pathways in response to wound stress remains unknown. Here, we report identification and characterlzation of a M A P klnase homolog 19. Leaves that had just reached full expansion at the same posltlons of Ps, , , , -I PT or w~ld-type plants were cut from the plants, Immediately inserted into a jar filled with water, and maintained in a growth chamber at 23°C and 70% relative humidity under 120 ~m o l m-'s-l of continuous light.…”

zeta PKC induces phosphorylation and inactivation of I kappa B-alpha in vitro.

“…Because rPKC has an overall structure very similar to that of Raf-1, and because the latter associates with and activates mitogen activated protein kinase kinase (MKK) (Howe et al, 1992;Kyriakis et al, 1992Kyriakis et al, , 1993Muslin et al, 1993), we performed experiments to determine whether PPKC had associated with components of the MKK-MAP kinase (MKK-MAPK) cascade. MAPK was detected in precipitates of MBP-PPKC which had been exposed to oocyte ( for the stimulation of MAPK is the protein kinase MKK (Crews et al, 1992;Dent et al, 1992;Davis, 1993). In order to test this possibility, recombinant MBP-PKC was incubated with oocyte extracts and then recovered using amylose beads.…”