User:Enbeedee/sandbox

Silly stuff for silly gruff
Me.

Critique an article
Modafinil

The introductory paragraph links to INN, USAN, BAN, and JAN without context, unlike on other similarly pages with internationally recognized nonproprietary names as their title subject, with reasoning linked to chemical structure given in line if any is given (see Amphetamine for example). Onset of action data is lacking from the page, found in neither the sidebar nor under the pharmacokinetics heading. The article has a section describing off-label uses, but does not sufficiently separate those from the later discussed uses being researched, despite citing several of them (drug-induced fatigue for example). Overall the article is better than most pharmaceutical wiki pages, with an extensive research section, though generally lacking in supporting images when compared to similar articles, without a picture of Modafinil tablets nor a visual for its pharmacodynamics, which is of particular importance due to the longtime mystery surrounding it, and research into it described within [the article].

Add to an article
Caffeine

Added the following section, replacing a previous sentence on inhaled caffeine products that contained a dead link as its citation.

Inhalants
There are several products being marketed that offer inhalers that deliver proprietary blends of supplements, with caffeine being a key ingredient. In 2012, the FDA sent a warning letter to one of the companies marketing these inhalers, expressing concerns for the lack of safety information available about inhaled caffeine.

Mass Spectrometry
The macro-scale versions of many applications of droplet-based microfluidics; incubation of cells within single droplets, droplet-based reaction vessels, sorting of small volume samples, etc., are typically verified by some form of per-sample assay, often using a mass spectrometer (MS). This remains true for micro-scale systems, with per-sample assays being scaled down to the detection and mass analysis of single droplets. The utility of MS detection of droplets is of particular relevance in cases where the often cheaper and more resource efficient methods of fluorescence-based or optical detection are not viable due to the particular chemical composition of the droplets, which are often sensitive to fluorescent labels or otherwise unsuitable for optical detection. Fields in which these cases where MS detection is necessary include proteomics, where scarcity and difficulty of separation/purification make entirely-microfluidic scale systems ideal, enzyme kinetics, drug discovery, and newborn disease screening. The two methods of droplet ionization for spectrometric analysis most commonly used in droplet-based microfluidics today are matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI).

The primary advantages of MALDI detection over ESI in microfluidic devices are that MALDI allows for much easier multiplexing, which even further increases the device's overall throughput, as well as less reliance on moving parts and the absence of Taylor cone stability problems posed by microfluidic-scale flow rates. The speed of MALDI detection, along with the scale of microfluidic droplets, allow for improvements upon macro-scale techniques in both throughput and time-of-flight (TOF) resolution. Where typical MS detection setups often utilize separation techniques such as liquid chromatography, MALDI setups require sufficient sample purification to be mixed with the organic matrices necessary for MALDI detection. This can be the determining factor for the use of ESI over MALDI.

When device specifics do not allow for mixing with the organic matrices required by MALDI, possibly due to device fabrication or too-low of an analyte mass, ESI offers a similarly high throughput answer to the problem of label-free droplet detection. Additionally, because of the advantages of online droplet detection with ESI, other problems posed by segmented or off-chip detection based systems can be solved, such as the minimizing of sample (droplet) dilution.

[need transition sentence relating to below topic in wiki article. waiting on conference with classmates]

Mass Spectrometry
Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique in which chemical species are ionized and sorted before detection, and the resulting mass spectrum is used to identify the ions' parent molecules. Spectroscopy is often used in conjunction with many techniques that are seen in microfluidic applications; incubation of cells within single droplets, droplet-based reaction vessels, sorting of small volume samples, etc., to identify experimentally relevant species. This makes scalable spectroscopic techniques relevant in the field of microfluidics to reduce the overall workload and resource utilization necessary in carrying out microscale fluid-based experiments. There are many cases in which other spectroscopic methods, such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), fluorescence, infrared, or Raman, are not viable as standalone methods due to the particular chemical composition of the droplets, which are often sensitive to fluorescent labels, or contain species that are otherwise indeterminately similar, where MS may be employed along with other methods to characterize a specific analyte of interest. Fields in which MS detection is necessary include proteomics (where scarcity and difficulty of separation/purification make entirely-microfluidic scale systems ideal), enzyme kinetics, drug discovery, and newborn disease screening. The two methods of ionization for spectrometric analysis most commonly used in droplet-based microfluidics today are matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI), with surface acoustic wave nebulization (SAWN) approaches being developed as well.

Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization
MALDI is typified by the use of a ultraviolet (UV) laser to trigger ablation of analyte species that are mixed with a matrix of crystallized molecules with high optical absorption. The ions within the resulting ablated gases are then protonated or deprotonated before acceleration into a mass spectrometer. The primary advantages of MALDI detection over ESI in microfluidic devices are that MALDI allows for much easier multiplexing, which even further increases the device's overall throughput, as well as less reliance on moving parts, and the absence of Taylor cone stability problems posed by microfluidic-scale flow rates. The speed of MALDI detection, along with the scale of microfluidic droplets, allow for improvements upon macro-scale techniques in both throughput and time-of-flight (TOF) resolution. Where typical MS detection setups often utilize separation techniques such as chromatography, MALDI setups require a sufficiently purified sample to be mixed with the organic matrices necessary for MALDI detection. While MALDI matrices are preferentially in much higher concentrations than the analyte sample, which allows for microfluidic droplet transportation to be incorporated into online MALDI matrix production, matrix composition must be tuned to produce appropriate fragmentation and abltation of analytes. Due to the low number of known matrices and trial and error nature of finding appropriate new matrix compositions, this can be the determining factor in the use of ESI over MALDI.

Electrospray Ionization
ESI offers a similarly high throughput answer to the problem of label-free droplet detection to MALDI, with less intensive sample preparation and fabrication elements that are scalable to microfluidic device scale. This ionization technique involves the application of a high voltage to a carrier stream of analyte-containing droplets, which aerosolizes the stream, followed by detection at a potential-differentiated analyser reagion. Droplet size, Taylor cone shape, and flow rate can be controlled by varying the potential differential and the temperature of a drying (to evaporate analyte-surrounding solvent) stream of gas (usually nitrogen). Because ESI allows for online droplet detection, other problems posed by segmented or off-chip detection based systems can be solved, such as the minimizing of sample (droplet) dilution, which is especially critical to microfluidic droplet detection where analyte samples are already diluted to the lowest experimentally relevant concentration.

Reflective Essay

 * 1) I worked on the article for Droplet-Based Microfluidics, which is a new article created by Nora and fleshed out by various classmates who chose related topics under that umbrella. It is, at the time of writing this essay, an orphan article.
 * 2) My contributions to the article are found under the sub heading "Mass Spectrometry" which itself is under the "Droplet Detection" heading. In this section I briefly describe what mass spectrometry is, and what methods for ionization that are currently being used in the field of microfluidics. I describe the two most popular methods for ionization used in microfluidic workflows, and their benefits and drawbacks in a microfluidic context, as well as giving examples of the methods being used in microfluidic devices. Aside from writing contributions, I conferred with my classmates working on the article as well; giving feedback both in the form of peer review (per our in-class assignment) and in relation to group workflow and task division.
 * 3) In response to Vivian's peer review of my article, I went through and linked to as many wiki articles as I could, including her specifically-mentioned examples regarding other spectroscopic detection methods, fields of interest, and ionization methods (though the last of these was present in my original draft). Some links that would have been relevant but don't yet have sufficient wiki pages for include the suggested 'droplet-based reaction vessel' and 'newborn disease screening'. In response to her initial comments regarding my article being too much of a comparison and not going into enough description of the related ionization methods, I included short descriptions of mass spectrometry as a whole, as well as the two ionization methods compared within. Regarding Vivian's comment on microfluidic flow rates affecting Taylor cone stability, I do not feel that the amount of research on the topic was sufficient for it to get treatment beyond the given cited summary.  In response to Mitchell's peer review of my article, I made many wording and grammatical changes, for the most part keeping perfectly in line with his suggestions, the sentence describing MALDI matrix creation being a good example. Expanded descriptions were given where he pointed out they were lacking, resulting in a better description of the problems in MALDI matrix creation, as well as a reworking of the section that details the benefits of electrospray ionization in microfluidic devices. Also, some citation errors and duplications were fixed due to him pointing them out.
 * 4) This assignment was extremely valuable to my learning and appreciating of the course material. The research required gave me a good feel for the current state of the field of microfluidics, as well as the methods many researchers are using to advance the field. The specific task of creating a wiki article and peer reviewing and editing others was also valuable, as the neutral language used on wikipedia is also very helpful in scientific report writing, specifically that of carefully examining each sentence for valuable and novel content. In this vein, my ability to write concisely and without bias has improved dramatically over the course of this course. I've always felt myself to be a very strong reviewer of my peers writing, but this assignment offered a new challenge in that I was not necessarily familiar with the content of the reviewed writing, allowing me to give greater focus on the logical flow of the articles reviewed. Additionally, the context of these articles being on Wikipedia allowed me to compare my own writing, as well as my peers, against published good examples, both in terms of concision and arrangement.  The article that I submitted to will be as useful, I think, as the average high level science wikipedia article is to the average reviewer. To expand on that metric, I'm referring to the fact that most visitors to our page will be quite familiar with the field of droplet-based microfluidics and likely many of its applications as well, thus the page will serve as a quick-and-easy source for verifying known information, filling in logical gaps, or supplying related scholarly articles (which, in my experience, is the vast majority of science students' wikipedia use). For example, a novice researcher designing a microfluidic device to be employed in their research might use our article as a starting point, using our citations to compare and contrast possible design features with the scope of their project in mind. For the layman, our article offers little other than food for thought, and maybe a better grasp on certain terms that are defined in different contexts in our article than in other places they may have heard them, such as throughput, multiplexing, and analytical chemistry methods. The article for multiplexing itself would be another good example of a high level article that offers exploration for the layman, as well as many terms being defined in new contexts.  This assignment was, I thought, very well designed for both student learning and engagement. I think the concept could easily be adapted to many other undergraduate classes, particularly those with emerging or specific topics such as ours (meso/microfluidics). I think perhaps a bigger emphasis could be given to editing existing articles, as I found that process very rewarding and would have undoubtably learned from having to iterate it on a microfluidics related article. Also, I feel like the way in which we were able to sign up for specific sub topics pigeon-holed many sections, and created many gaps in our class' articles. Perhaps it would be better to instead have students sign up for their topics later in the quarter, after having been more exposed to the class topic, so that more specific areas of interest could be expanded upon. That said, this assignment was so influential that I brought it up in casual conversation with many friends and coworkers, proudly displaying mine and my classmates contributions and edits.