MEDICAL SCIENTIST AND AUTHOR
GAVIN HAMILTON, MD, FRCPC
ARTICLES
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OTHER ARTICLES & LETTERS
Blink and Blank Subtraction Sky Scanning
February 21, 2023
A radiographic technique was discussed in a talk at the 1973 Scientific Session of the Canadian Association of Radiologists, “The demise of trans-lumbar aortography.” To illustrate the film subtraction technique, a negative translucency of a photograph of a page with 99 silver stars, pasted randomly on a sheet of paper, was superimposed on a positive photograph of the same page, to which a 100th star was pasted. The resultant “subtracted” image revealed one single star on a jet black background. The film subtraction technique was then used on an intravenous aortogram, markedly enhancing the added image material (radiopaque contrast medium) to reveal the abdominal aorta and its divisions in black, instead of in pale white ("The Nurses are Innocent,” Dundurn Press, 2011, pages 29-40). This image of a star on a black background was used in this unpublished paper to reveal how digital subtraction computerized imaging of the night sky could reveal non-fixed images (satellites, asteroids, planets): Stars are at astronomic distances (measured in many light years), thus maintaining images of stars in exactly the same positions and light intensity over minutes, hours, months, even years. Thus, as indicated in this paper, computers – programmed adequately – should be capable of totally eliminating stars that remain in the same relative positions to one another (e.g., the Big and Little Dippers – and all other stars in the same field of view). This had not been done in astronomy at the time of the article’s submission (and still isn’t being applied to eliminate stars currently).
Water Particle Kinetics
October 21, 2022
Poly-frequency, omni-directional, multi-amplitude sounds permeate our surroundings. A sound wave transfers a compression-decompression vibrational motion through all matter – air, water, tympanic membranes – and, in this particular case – through a Brownian particle.
Aerodynamic Sound Cone Physics
October 21, 2022
Well-recognized aerodynamic Mach 1 sound-induced phenomena – the “wall” of high resistance air (the “sound barrier”) and the explosive noise of the sonic boom – have remained inadequately explained. On examining the relationship between Mach 1 phenomena and the the physics of sound, several points reveal themselves which sheds new light on this phenomenon.
The 4th Law of Motion
November 13, 2021
Currently held ideas concerning Brownian motion and the kinetic theory conflict with fundamental physics and with randomness and large numbers in statistical analysis. The theoretical discussions deal with collisions between objects that are already in contact. A 4th Law of Motion is proposed: masses that are in contact cannot collide.
Nuclear solutions National Post letter
December 26, 2020
Major problems associated with nuclear power generation are the risk of a meltdown in large nuclear power plants and the safe and acceptable disposal of spent radiactive waste. Multiple small nuclear power plants (such as those in nuclear-powered submarines) minimize the first risk. Burying the spent fuel deep underground in radioactive soil from which the original nuclear fuel was mined solves the problem of other potential disposal sites where soil is not already radioactive.
Reversing global warming by the miracle of photosynthesis
May 27, 2019
Leaf photosynthesis extracts atmospheric CO2 and absorbs the sun’s radiant energy to create the wood in trees worldwide. Shaded soil under trees and on the forest floor cool the air. Man’s 400 years of increasing deforestation can cause rising CO2 and atmospheric temperature. Burning wood or fossil fuels releases the stored CO2 and sequestered solar radiant energy.
Puns and the subconscious mind
August 3, 2017 - Dundurn Press Blog for Dundurn Press authors
The subconscious mind teases us, by selecting from its stored vocabulary, words with double meanings to amuse, not just the audience, but also the speaker, who recognizes the uttered pun a few seconds before the listener(s).
Newton’s laws in Brownian motion
July 21, 2017, Submitted to Nature Communications
Because a Brownian particle can be many million times the mass of a water molecule, it is untenable that it can be visibly displaced by multidirectional collisions, on all surfaces, with innumerable randomly moving water molecules.The impacts of wavefronts of innumerable water molecules conducting the many frequencies, multiple directions and varying volumes of environmental sound could cause random knee-jerk motion in Brownian particles.
The Matter of Light in the Universe
June 14, 2017
Logic suggests that Newton’s concept of light as particles (that might be propagated in particle waves, like sound waves) is correct. Particulate photons make photometer vanes move, and are deflected by the grav-ity of massive stars. It explains how particulate photons might be susceptible to polarization.
A Brownian motion parable: The Zigzagging Ball in Blind Pollywog Lake
April 10, 2017
This allegory proves that the currently held concept of Brownian movement is impossible.
The SST Sound Cone Cloud Disc
May 16, 2016
As an aircraft accelerates through Mach I, the Doppler effect raises the sound frequency into extreme ultrasound within the anterior sound cone. Water “particles" (mist and ice mist) are propelled forward, filling the sound cone, which at Mach I, encloses a cone angle of 90 degrees (a conical cloud disc). By the Doppler effect, the power and increasingly ultra high ultrasound, compressed into the sound cone as Mach is being exceeded, is released to a stationary observer, dropping to the lowest possible frequency – one single massive vibration (per infinity) – the "sonic boom.” Intense ultrasonic vibration of air molecules inhibits laminar flow, creating a second, higher air viscosity (like Lieberman produced in water in an ultrasound beam). In turbulent cylinder water flow, in which entrapped re-echoing transverse standing wave ultrasound freezes inter-laminar slip – the laminar interlocking of turbulence – Prandtl’s high-resistance plastic, or “plug” flow (turbulent flow viscosity = the second viscosity of water). The “sound barrier,” the second viscosity of air, is caused by resistance along aerodynamic boundaries – paradoxically – behind the sound they produce.
Light as Dark Matter
October 20, 2015
It is proposed that light might consist of mass-bearing particle waves transmitted as photon-particle waves like sound transmission by air molecules – as postulated by Isaac Newton.
“Be Prepared,” with a “super-Heimlich”
December 5, 2014
Modifying a vintage Boy Scouts St. John’s Ambulance First Aid technique offers a simple method of suddenly increasing tracheal air pressure (“pop gun” physics) to dislodge a food bolus.
Thalidomide Globe and Mail Letter
November 29, 2014
A casual remark by a pharmaceutical representative saved my family practice obstetrical patients from exposure to the adverse fetal-anomaly effects of in utero exposure to the anti-nauseant drug, thalidomide in the 1960s. The drug “rep” stated that computerized processing of data on adverse effects gave results in six months that otherwise would take years. I refused to prescribe thalidomide because six months was far too short, since a pregnancy takes ten lunar months and even two years would be too short to assess any new drug’s adverse effects. By very vigorous lobbying, the pharmaceutical industry persists in persuading ledislators to fast-track their new drugs, setting the stage for many repeats of the thalidomide catastrophe.
National Post "Letter to the Editor"
March 21, 2013
The Rising Menace of Toxic Enterocolitis of Clostridium Difficile et al
2007
In defiance of Alexander Fleming’s warning about inappropriate use of antibiotics (Nobel Prize speech, “Penicillin”), since the mid-1950s, massive amounts of sub-therapeutic doses of broad spectrum antibiotics have been fed to livestock (cattle, poultry, fish) in North American factory farms as “growth promoters.” Bacterial pathogens remaining alive in the manure must be antibiotic resistant! With rainfall, manure runoff contaminates streams and lakes. Antibiotic resistant genes cross over from one bacterial species to unrelated species by “gene-jumping – in the manure pile, in contaminated water and in the throats and colons of patients and nurses in infectious disease wards in hospitals, creating the multi-antibiotic resistant “superbugs” that increasingly menace our world, just as Fleming predicted.ounts of antibiotics have been administered in factory farms (cattle, poultry, fish) as “growth promoters.“ Since the late 1950s, more antibiotics are used in factory farms than have been used to treat human disease, creating the antibiotic-resistant toxin-producing “superbugs” that Fleming predicted in 1945.