Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:04:03 +0000

CONGRATULATIONS TO DR. CHEREPANOV & COLLEAGUES AT IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON & HARVARD UNIVERSITY --A TOME OF GRATITUDE AND GUIDE TO EASY READING AND UNDERSTANDING FOR THIS IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT BY REVEREND BARBARA SEXTON February 2, 2010

Talk to someone about the use of 'crystals' in alternative medicine and there is a good chance that they will laugh at you or 'humor you' and perhaps listen out of curiosity. But the scientific use of crystals is so far beyond the imagination of some people, that nothing less than a crazy piece such as what I've written here will open up their minds up to any such understanding.

And open up their minds, they will, if their lives or that of a loved one, depends on it. But before I continue, first some background food for thought. Please bear with me as I stand in awe of the work of researchers DR. CHEREPANOV & COLLEAGUES AT IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON & HARVARD UNIVERSITY. I don't know anything of the 'faith lives' of these brilliant people, but that they have furthered the understanding of all of us in our quest to get closer to understanding God's Master Planning and Design is undeniable. I, for one, am grateful and wish to share some thoughts from a religio-scientific standpoint, easy enough for all of us to understand. If you like puzzles, deductive reasoning, logic and are just plain curious, you will enjoy the intellectual calisthenics. And surely we can all join in THANKING these researchers for the GREAT GIFT they have given all of humanity at a point in history when we need all the encouragement we can get.

So let us begin:

Crystals are used as cleansing, balancing, adjusting, absorbing and energy-dispelling tools in any number of healing traditions, including laying-on-of-hands. In my personal experience, animals and comatose humans are excellent demonstrators of the effectiveness of this extremely effective therapy. Crystals not only help healing and supplement both traditional and nontraditional forms of therapy, but they can also increase energy in a person who is energy-deficient. I'm willing to entertain the skepticism of those who do not believe my claims, but I will point them to any number of scientific references that detail the use of crystals (quartz, specifically, both natural but more commonly man-made, nowadays) in electronics. This will prove to be a case where 'the scientific validates the spiritual', as you shall see!

Our friends at Wikipedia state: "When a crystal of quartz is properly cut and mounted, it can be made to distort in an electric field by applying a voltage to an electrode near or on the crystal. This property is known as piezoelectricity. When the field is removed, the quartz will generate an electric field as it returns to its previous shape, and this can generate a voltage. The result is that a quartz crystal behaves like a circuit composed of an inductor, capacitor and resistor, with a precise resonant frequency. (See RLC circuit.)" AND: "A crystal oscillator is an electronic circuit that uses the mechanical resonance of a vibrating crystal of piezoelectric material to create an electrical signal with a very precise frequency. This frequency is commonly used to keep track of time (as in quartz wristwatches), to provide a stable clock signal for digital integrated circuits, and to stabilize frequencies for radio transmitters and receivers. The most common type of piezoelectric resonator used is the quartz crystal, so oscillator circuits designed around them were called "crystal oscillators".
Quartz crystals are manufactured for frequencies from a few tens of kilohertz to tens of megahertz. More than two billion (2×109) crystals are manufactured annually. Most are small devices for consumer devices such as wristwatches, clocks, radios, computers, and cellphones. Quartz crystals are also found inside test and measurement equipment, such as counters, signal generators, and oscilloscopes" I couldn't say any of this better and you can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator .
The only point I am trying to make with these references is that crystals resonate and under the right conditions can 'manipulate things electrical'.

This said, consider this. The good old human body is nothing more than (albeit an exquisitely intelligent design of our Divine Creator--accident of amino acid soup and lightning, my FOOT!) a big old bag of bioelectrically charged water with a handful of biochemicals thrown in! Our physiology is very much affected by, run by, giving off and resonating with electrical energy. On a 'good day' when I am strong with healing-energy-to-spare, thanks be to God, I can make the skin on your arm 'buzz'. This is nothing extraordinary, actually, for with practice and concentration anyone can do this. Yes, it is a fascinating phenomenon.

Will it surprise you to learn that just as quartz crystals used in electronics can modulate a circuit, humans can use crystals and their own energies to modulate the circuits of the human body? No? Good, because now you're convinced of but one use of crystals and we are on to a second one.

Mineralogists have known for centuries that in the science of crystallography, 'the rule of constancy' applies to crystal geometry from gross specimens down to very smallest of samples. In the modern age, this has included the molecular and atomic levels as revealed by advance x-ray radiocrystallographic equipment. What this means, by way of example, is that the little cubic structure of table salt is reflected in large chunks of natural halite, the salt in our shakers and x-ray diffraction 'patterns' reflect the same cubic structure on a much smaller scale. This is a useful trait, indeed, for the study of not only mineralogy, gemology, geology, and the like, but also for biochemistry. I will explain why in view of this most exciting recent scientific report on HIV research!

The link below details research into an enzyme (a 'catalyst'-like small bit of protein) which allows the HIV virus to 'invade and take over' the nuclear material of host human cells. Scientists believe that if this enzyme known as "integrase" can be interfered with in some way, perhaps the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) will not be able to infect humans anymore! Indeed, there are pharmaceutical drugs in use today that do just that--they interfere with integrase and are somewhat effective. But just HOW these drugs work has been a secret, partly because the complete STRUCTURE of integrase has hitherto been unknown.

Somehow, researchers needed to determine the complete structure of, in crystalline form, the integrase molecule. A note here: enzymes are often 'freeze-dried' in tiny amounts and the crystalline form can either be in an amorphous (free) form or a more structured, crystalline form. You might think of sea salt 'as is' versus crystallized sea salt, for a loose analogy.

Here below is an excerpt of from newly published results of the structure of integrase based on crystal studies:
"Over the course of four years, the researchers carried out over 40,000 trials, out of which they were able to grow just seven kinds of crystals. Only one of these was of sufficient quality to allow determination of the three-dimensional structure.
Dr Peter Cherepanov, the lead author of the study from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, said: "It is a truly amazing story. When we started out, we knew that the project was very difficult, and that many tricks had already been tried and given up by others long ago. Therefore, we went back to square one and started by looking for a better model of HIV integrase, which could be more amenable for crystallization. Despite initially painstakingly slow progress and very many failed attempts, we did not give up and our effort was finally rewarded."
In the case of the integrase, the process of crystallization was a MEANS TO AN END to determining the structure of an intimidating molecule. The researchers realized that if they could sequentially 'crystallize' bits of the enzyme and put these bits together in order to get a 'whole crystal' of the enzyme, they could visualize the thing by modern x-ray microscopy...The true STRUCTURE of the molecule has been deduced. And now that it is, newer and better ways to destroy/interrupt/block the enzyme can be found. The hope then is to make existing pharmaceuticals more effective and to come up with more pharmaceuticals for HIV positive patients in need.

Now, read the link here with this base of understanding and hopefully it will be clear to my readers:
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_1-2-2010-8-59-3
My retrocomputing took a turn for the even more retro this past week. After bringing up an old Ampro Little Board and programming it with nothing more than a simple line editor and non-relocating, non-macro 8080-only assembler I caught myself wishing for a similar experience in something more portable.

Ampro Little Board Plus SBC, before placement in fat box.

I've had several different micro trainers, the COSMAC Elf among my favorites. I enjoy them a lot. The best are small enough to use without a table top, and battery powered. Since I'm presently doing 8080 assembly on the Ampro (it's a Z-80, so it runs 8080 code) I thought it would be nice to have a small 8080-compatible trainer board.

The classic 8080 compatible SBC is the Intel SDK-85. It's a great small system that has started countless numbers of engineers on their path to digital electronics greatness. It comes with a nice keyboard, a decent display, a nice monitor program, and an 8085 core system that's ready to go for plenty of I/O. They're still very popular, which means they are pretty expensive--at least for someone who just wants a small system to use for fun. The PCB is a bit large for portability, as well. But there is excellent support for it, plenty of software and a number of books.

Since I couldn't see paying for an SDK-85 when I've got parts drawers with 8085s and Z-80s in them, I decided to build my own system. Even though I like the advancements the Z-80 added to the 8080, I decided to go with an 8085 as the heart of my home-made system. To some degree, it was the retro thing striking. The Z-80 feels a bit "new" (actually it and the 8085 came out about the same time, but I didn't get a chance to use a Z-80 myself in my own designs until a few years after putting together a couple 8085s.) If I had had an 8080A, I would not have used it. I'm not that retro-foolish. It is much more of a pain to build a system around than either an 8085 or a Z-80. I'd rather build an 8088 or 8086 system, to tell the truth, or, rather, a V-20!

So I pulled my newest datecode 8085 out of the drawer and got going.

The simplest possible 8085 microprocessor circuit-a free run circuit.

The picture shows what I accomplished on the first evening. I decided to take things in little baby steps, since I haven't worked with this microprocessor except in established designs in many years.

Since I'm doing the initial build on a logic lab with power built in, I didn't have to worry about a power supply for now. Next was to get the clock circuit sorted out. A crystal oscillator makes that easy. I put its signal through a 7400 to get a push-pull design since I intend to run it up to 6MHz, and the 8080-85 Family manual recommends this for 6MHz and above.

The next step was to drop in the CPU. If I'd had to build a complete core system right off the bat it would have taken longer than one short evening to get something going. And it would have introduced countless opportunities for error, which I am very adept at inadvertently locating. So I built what's called a "free run" circuit. You hardwire in an opcode that doesn't stop or redirect the processor, then it runs through its entire address space when you fire it up. It allows you to make sure you have the clock and CPU control wiring working, at least in a nascent form.

The resistors above are the hardwired instruction. They allow the CPU to put a value on those lines without forming a short to a power rail, then pull the lines to the instruction value when the 8085 is reading it. The instruction is 00, a NOP or no-op in 8080-85 terms. The CPU does nothing and moves on to the next address.

The yellow wires at the top wire some of the address lines to LEDs so I can watch the 8085 step through its address space.

After one fix of an improperly placed wire (/RESET), it worked fine.

Evening 2 had me adding an address latch. Again, moving by baby steps. Evening 3 added an EEPROM with a four byte program:

0000 3E C0 MVI A, 0C0H ; enable SOD, set it high
0002 30 SIM
0003 76 HLT ; stop

Hand assembled and typed into my Xeltek Superpro/L's buffer directly for programming the EEPROM (as are all the programs for my 8085 to date.)

I got that working to demonstrate the successful interface between the 8085 and a memory. I turned up another wiring error while I was at it (address lines A1 and A3 were swapped coming off the latch.)

Next, I was going to add a RAM but decided to replace the EEPROM with a NOVRAM instead. I've got some Dallas DS1225Ys that I pulled off some scrapped SCSI controllers years ago. They're ten years past their expiration date, but most of them are fine. Using a NOVRAM lets me reduce system memory to a single chip. It also sets me up for all sorts of amusing misadventures (like all memory going *poof* if the /RESET circuit isn't rock solid.) Trade-offs are part of the design process. If I get too annoyed with cleaning out system code in interesting ways, I'll add an EPROM once I've got a simple monitor program written.

Next was testing the RAM with a simple program (presented here un-assembled):

MVI L, 0F0H ; set up memory pointer
MVI H, 1FH
MVI M, 5DH ; write out some easily recognizable bytes
INX H
MVI M,41H
INX H
MVI M, 52H
INX H
MVI M, 5BH
MVI A, 0C0H ; show we did something, turn on LED on SOD
SIM
HLT ; stop

Then i pulled the NOVRAM and read it on my programmer. It showed that the program ran fine, verifying that I'd rewired for the DS1225Y properly. I even got the circuit to stop futzing the RAM up at power-on when I put a pull-up on the RAM's /WE line. ;)

Now I've got switches connected to the interrupt lines on the 8085 to provide me with "interactive input." I wrote a program that blinks the SOD LED a different number of times depending on which interrupt it's servicing.

Next is adding I/O for a keyboard and multidigit LED display. I did consider the idea of using just the interrupt lines for user input. An old telephone rotary dial switch and a little code would do the trick. But then I decided it'd be too noisy, compared to a keypad. And maybe just a wee bit too retro for daily use.

Edit: I've done a complete write-up of thise project at saundby.com. This includes assembly instructions, design notes, project code, and so on.