User:Gschuette/sandbox

Article Evaluation
This is obviously late, but I'm doing it now.


 * Article: Tetrabromomethane
 * For a couple sentences, the article seems to stray a bit from tetrabromomethane in the "Plastic Crystallinity" section and, instead, seems to discuss the generalities of Frenkel Disorder. I think it could simply state the consequences of Frenkel Disorder, then say how it applies to tetrabromomethane, allowing the reader to go to the Frenkel Disorder article for more information, if so desired.
 * The information seems up to date. For example, when discussing the plastic crystallinity of the substance, it talks about how recent findings have shown the possible orientations allowing the relatively-free motion instead of the formerly-believed truly-free motion hypothesis.
 * The summary section could be improved. According the the wikipedia training modules, it should give a brief outline of everything that can be found on the page. However, it really only introduces tetrabromomethane by its different names.
 * The article does not seem biased. In fact, it seems to list only factual things about the compound.
 * All of the website links in the references area link to reliable chemical websites, two run by the government. These are reliable. The other sources are academic in nature and come from off the web, so I couldn't directly analyze them.
 * There is no conversation going on to improve the page on the talk page. In fact, there is only one comment -- unsigned -- simply stating that they like "carbon tetrabromide" more than "tetrabromomethane." It's sort of a silly point, and possibly made by someone who isn't comfortable with different IUPAC names.

Article Selection and Bibliography
1) Bacillosamine (stub) is an aminosugar whose page has only one sentence. Some articles for this include:"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bi401546r A study on bacillosamine and its derivatives undertaken by researchers at MIT under a grant from the NIH""https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0008621514001724 A study that talks about potential applications of this aminosugar in medicine for use in a vaccine for meningitis. The article focuses on synthesis of a compound including bacillosamine that could be used to hasten the development of effective vaccines."2) p50 (pressure) is a stub that directly relates to what we've worked on in class. Some Articles: "http://www.chembio.uoguelph.ca/educmat/chm356/3560L2.pdf A lecture from a university in Canada discussing hemoglobin"""3) Physical Biochemistry. This is another very short article with lots of room for improvement. I think it could be a good fit for me considering I am a pchem major. Some good sources to expand on the page to describe the field: "Quantum Biochemistry Volumes 1&2. Edited by Cherif F. Matta and published by Wiley-VCH. These are physical books that a lab-mate happens to have copies of. These are FULL of papers on the subject, and they also have good introductions. With these resources, I think I could at least expand Physical Biochemistry to list the branches of it, and expand on Quantum Biochemistry specifically."4) Uncoupling Protein. This is another stub, albeit with a bit more material. "Differentiate between the different locations/purposes of the homologues found in humans.""Explanation of functions of UCP1 and UCP3 and potential uses in obesity/related disease therapy.""Evolutionary background of UCPs. Honestly, I've never taken courses related to the concepts this paper, so it seems like it may be a bit too difficult for me to utilize this paper effectively. However, I'm adding it just in case details here and there prove useful.""Thermodynamic inefficiency and weight loss. Essentially, this paper talks about the thermodynamics of calorie breakdown in the body, and it talks about how, thermodynamically speaking, uncoupling protons leads to completely inefficient use of energy taken in. Also, it's just kind of a cool paper to read for fun.""Thermodynamics of diffusion. I don't plan on doing any real math on the page, but mentioning a general equation or two (which this paper provides) and explaining the thermodynamics of diffusion (which this paper provides) to relate to the heat generated by proton diffusion propagated by UCPs (not directly provided by the paper, need another source) could be physically useful."""5) Klara Dan von Neumann. This is a female scientist whose page is considered a stub. Some resources for expanding her article:"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/meet-computer-scientist-you-should-thank-your-phone-weather-app-180963716/ Article from Smithsonian Magazine discussing the programming performed by von Neumann and discussing why it was so significant.""I'm not sure there will be enough information for #1. #3 may require expertise in teh field to understand the information and synthesize it. Other than that any of 2-5 would be fine. Choose the one you are most interested in. -Dr. Tienson-Tseng"

Maintaining body temperature
The first uncoupling protein discovered was UCP1. Initially known simply as "Uncoupling Protein," UCP1 was discovered in the brown adipose tissues of hibernators and small rodents, which provide non-shivering heat to these animals. These brown adipose tissues are essential to maintaining the body temperature of small rodents, and studies with (UCP1)-knockout mice show that these tissues do not function correctly without functioning uncoupling proteins. In fact, these studies revealed that cold-acclimation is not possible for these knockout mice, indicating that UCP1 is an essential driver of heat production in these brown adipose tissues.

Elsewhere in the body, uncoupling protein activities are known to affect the temperature in micro-environments. This is believed to affect other proteins' activity in these regions, though work is still required to determine the true consequences of uncoupling-induced temperature gradients within cells.

Role in ATP concentrations
The effect of UCP2 and UCP3 on ATP concentrations varies depending on cell type. For example, pancreatic beta cells experience a decrease in ATP concentration with increased activity of UCP2. This is associated with cell degeneration, decreased insulin secretion, and type II diabetes. Conversely, UCP2 in hippocampus cells and UCP3 in muscle cells stimulate production of mitochondria. The larger number of mitochondria increases the combined concentration of ADP and ATP, actually resulting in a net increase in ATP concentration.

Maintaining concentration of reactive oxygen species
The entire list of functions of UCP2 and UCP3 is not known. However, studies indicate that these proteins are involved in a negative-feedback loop limiting the concentration of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Current scientific consensus states that UCP2 and UCP3 perform proton transportation only when activation species are present. Among these activators are fatty acids, ROS, and reactive ROS byproducts. Therefore, higher levels of ROS directly and indirectly cause increased activity of UCP2 and UCP3. This, in turn, increases proton leak from the mitochondria, lowering the proton-motive force across mitochondrial membranes, inhibiting the electron transport chain, and, therefore, limiting ROS production. This theory is supported by independent studies which show increased ROS production in both UCP2 and UCP3 knockout mice.

This process is important to human health, as high-concentrations of ROS are believed to be involved in the development of degenerative diseases.

Functions in neurons
By detecting the associated mRNA, UCP2, UCP4, and UCP5 were shown to reside in neurons throughout the human central nervous system. These proteins play key roles in neuronal function. While many study findings remain controversial, several findings are widely accepted.

For example, UCP's alter the free calcium concentrations in the neuron. Mitochondria are a major site of calcium storage in neurons, and the storage capacity increases with potential across mitochondrial membranes. Therefore, when the uncoupling proteins reduce potential across these membranes, calcium ions are released to the surrounding environment in the neuron. Due to the high concentrations of mitochondria near axon terminals, this implies UCP's play a role in regulating calcium concentrations in this region. Considering calcium ions play a large role neurotransmission, scientists predict that these UCP's directly affect neurotransmission.

As discussed above, neurons in the hippocampus experience increased concentrations of ATP in the presence of these uncoupling proteins. This leads scientists to hypothesize that UCP's improve synaptic plasticity and transmission.