lauramarlane, the arm span thing is only for some people. My arm span is 6’6" and I’m about 5 and a half inches shorter than that 
Yay genetics.
Tritone: Its the canker sore one. Its almost the same virus, but the one that 85% of hte people have has a mutation in its gene coding for its envelope protein (think a cell membrain but for viruses, allows for protection and increased infectivity). Its actually really cool… At some point a specific batch of nerves are infected with the simplex virus but they mutate. Now its a latent infection (the cells stay infected, but don’t die (either from viral release or from the immunesystem)). The nerves that are infected are painreceptors in your mouth and gums, when you’re immune system is suppressed (stress, other illnesses and what not) the virus is able to produce a SMALL amount of infectuous particles, the virus travels down the nerve pathway and infects the tissue in your mouth!
There is a danger with this virus however: The nerves that are typically infected are VERY close to some nerves running to the eyes, and in .01% of the cases (or even fewer, can’t remember anymore) an eye infection can result, which may lead to blindness.
Apparently the drug to treat genital herpes outbreaks also works with the mouth sore version.
And I don’t buy the 80% of fecal mass is bacteria.
My useful tidbits:
Using ethanol to disinfect surfaces only works on enveloped viruses and bacteria. Since ethanol disrupts lipid bilayers.
If you try to dilute raw ethanol with water, say making a 75% ethanol solution out of 750 mL of 100% ethanol and 250mL of H2O, your final volume WON’T be 1liter! If I had actually gone to any of my chemistry classes and stayed awake I’d remember why. It has something to do with hydrogen bonding…
In chemistry there are rare reactions that are cyclic. A goes to B goes to A goes to B… The energy for activation for both is similar, and very little or no substraight is lost in the reaction. There’s a cool one where you mix stuff up and its red, add a stir bar and start it stirring and it’ll suddenly go from red to blue, let it go longer and it’ll go back to red. I’ll keep doing that for a while.
There is an old test to determine the properties of a compound to kill living cells where you take a vial of blood diluted with PBS then you add teh compound. You then hold the vial up to a page in a book and when you can clearly read the text through the vial. The amount of time it takes until you can read the text tells you how good of a lytic agent it is.
