Silent killer: Shield your family from carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide is a silent, odorless killer, but even during winter heating season, it's possible to stay safe.
19 hours ago
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Carbon monoxide is a silent, odorless killer, but even during winter heating season, it's possible to stay safe.
19 hours ago
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Anesthesiologists can play a role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming by decreasing the amount of anesthetic gas provided during procedures without compromising patient care, suggests ...
Jan 27, 2023
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Natural gas stoves have become the latest flashpoint in America's increasingly volatile political culture, after a top federal regulator publicly mulled over banning the appliances.
Jan 27, 2023
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The fight-or-flight response evolved to keep us safe from predators, but it can sometimes cause us to overreact in modern life when we don't face the same dangers we once did. Now, researchers from Japan have found that a ...
Jan 24, 2023
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Prenatal exposure to non-tailpipe air pollution emissions is associated with development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young children, according to a study published in the January issue of Environment International.
Jan 20, 2023
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If you live in Los Angeles, there's an 80% chance you use a gas cooktop for cooking. New York City? A 73% chance. And in my own backyard, Detroit, roughly 50% of households use gas stoves for cooking.
Jan 20, 2023
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New evidence pointing to the potential health risks associated with gas stoves now has many people asking: Should I get rid of mine?
Jan 16, 2023
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A study by UC Davis Health researchers assessed telehealth visits' carbon footprint and their potential savings in lives, costs and time compared to in-person visits. It included data from five University of California health ...
Jan 10, 2023
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Herbal cigarettes: They carry a certain "coolness factor" and sound like they might be a healthier alternative to tobacco, but are they really safer to smoke?
Jan 6, 2023
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In August President Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant measure ever adopted by the U.S. Congress to combat climate change. While the Act's measures to mitigate climate change have ...
Dec 21, 2022
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Carbon (pronounced /ˈkɑrbən/) is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of about 5730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. The name "carbon" comes from Latin language carbo, coal, and, in some Romance and Slavic languages, the word carbon can refer both to the element and to coal.
There are several allotropes of carbon of which the best known are graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form. For example, diamond is highly transparent, while graphite is opaque and black. Diamond is among the hardest materials known, while graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper (hence its name, from the Greek word "to write"). Diamond has a very low electrical conductivity, while graphite is a very good conductor. Under normal conditions, diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of all known materials. All the allotropic forms are solids under normal conditions but graphite is the most thermodynamically stable.
All forms of carbon are highly stable, requiring high temperature to react even with oxygen. The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and other transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil and methane clathrates. Carbon forms more compounds than any other element, with almost ten million pure organic compounds described to date, which in turn are a tiny fraction of such compounds that are theoretically possible under standard conditions.
Carbon is one of the least abundant elements in the Earth's crust, but the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA