Word: potassium
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...module for another rest period, the astronauts exchanged notes, unaware that their voices were being picked up by a live mike. "I got the farts again, Charlie," Young was heard to say. "I think it's acid in the stomach." He blamed it on the large doses of potassium-spiked orange juice prescribed by doctors to counteract the effects of weightlessness (see MEDICINE). The strange potion did not seem to bother him on the second moon walk, when the astronauts took more core samples, picked up rocks, and pushed over a large boulder to collect soil from underneath...
...their health during their extraterrestrial explorations, U.S. astronauts routinely go on special diets prior to launch. The Apollo 16 crew that landed on the moon last week has been on an even more highly specialized diet than usual. For three days before blastoff, the trio ate foods laced with potassium, and even the eggs in their farewell omelets came from hens raised on high-potassium feeds. Their in-flight food was similarly seasoned. The astronauts are not complaining; Ken Mattingly told Mission Control that the potassium even added a certain zest to his tomato soup...
...reason for the astronauts' unusual diet is cautionary rather than culinary. Two members of Apollo 15's crew went through brief periods of heartbeat irregularities, and NASA doctors suspected the reason. The two men who suffered the problem had lost 15% of their normal potassium. They were also the ones who landed and worked on the moon. Potassium, a body salt that affects the electrical conductivity of the heart, is essential to controlling cardiac rhythm...
Working in cooperation with other researchers, Wolf and Nalbandian discovered chemicals that would react to hemoglobin S and other less harmful sickling substances, making a quick screening test possible. A small blood sample is dropped into a tube containing a solution of potassium phosphate, sodium dithionite and saponin. Clouding of the solution is a danger signal but does not specifically identify hemoglobin S. If the first round arouses suspicion, a second test, also based on Murayama's work, is performed immediately. Urea, a natural waste substance produced by the normal liver, breaks some molecular bonds in abnormal hemoglobin. When...
...nuclei for slowly condensing droplets of water-an essential ingredient for all earthly life. The tiny organisms also have an amazingly varied diet available even in unpolluted clouds: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, ammonium, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, butane and acetone. Such necessary minerals as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iron and magnesium could be transported to the clouds in airborne soil and dust particles...