User talk:Tsiaojian lee

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Welcome!

Hello, Tsiaojian lee, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, you can post to the help desk or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Samw 03:11, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Hanzi

Thanks for adding all the hanzi! Badagnani 19:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

How did you figure out Ping Chong and all the other Chinese Americans? That could be hard without actually contacting them directly. Badagnani 18:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

  • First I google with the English name plus one Chinese keyword (e.g. "Ping Chong" +劇場 (i.e. theatre)). Some hits e.g. 1, 2 give his name in both English & Chinese, and they are phonetically consistent. Finally, I do another Google search using only Chinese (+張家平 +劇場). Most of the resulting 19 hits are about a Chinese-American theatre artist, so it's pretty much the same person. --Tsiaojian lee 18:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] urea-formaldehyde resin as animal feed additive

If, from reading the chinese sites, you can determine whether this is marketed primarily for use as NPN in ruminant feed, you might want to move the mention of it down into your new NPN section after the ADM info. Purely on style we should try for some consistency. I went with non-protein nitrogen spelled out so that non-industry types wouldn't have to remember yet another acronym ("NPN") but either way it's great to see the additional info. Abby Kelleyite 23:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the editing! The 2 Chinese sites I cited were discussing urea-formaldehyde as an adulteration, so I left that in the "intentional contamination" subsection. Its use in ruminants (which is carried out not only in China but also US, India, USSR, Finland etc.) is moved to the NPN subsection.--Tsiaojian lee 00:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I moved them down to the end of the NPN section for now since they aren't melamine specific and haven't been implicated in the specific ingredients involved in the recalled products. See what you think,. I had also taken out the "adulterant" mention {before reading this. oops!] and I'm going back now to change that. Please make sure what I end up with reflects the chinese original. Thanks for all the great new info.! Abby Kelleyite 14:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Btw, I think a more general article on food adulteration in China would be an excellent candidate for a permanent article (in addition to this current event article). Abby Kelleyite 14:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Saw the further reference you added, which was certainly helpful to me. I just wanted to emphasize: 1) the change I made in moving the urea-formaldehyde down is in the nature of suggestion, that is, if you feel it would be clearer back where it was originally, by all means move it back; and 2) I didn't add the chinese language ref to the PRC response, not because I didn't think it shouldn't be there, but because I can't verify what it says. By all means, please add it if you think it's relevant. This was a lot of verbiage, but given the nature of written electronic exchanges, I wanted to make sure you understood that I am not asseting some sort of "ownership" to the article. Abby Kelleyite 13:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
What you did seems reasonable. I'll continue to follow the changes and add material (esp. those not in mainstream media) when I come across it. I am most interested in examining the surrounding media coverage. Some of my ideas were brought up on the discussion page (thanks for incorporating them into the main article ☺). Some other thoughts may not be suitable here due to wikipedia policy, so I am keeping them in a blog instead. --Tsiaojian lee 02:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the link to your blog. I think we have some points of agreement that as you say are outside of wiki policy and thus not completely appropriate for discussion here. I've blogged some of this as well. [1] Note that the title and the tone of that post are geared somewhat to the intended audience. Back to here, I'm glad you linked the esb powder. Abby Kelleyite 11:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] melamine versus melamine resin

It seems increasingly like Barboza is talking about melamine monomer but perhaps both kinds are used as NPN adulterants. Have you seen any reference anywhere that raises this as a possibility? It would be good to get the debate, if any, into the article for NPOV. Surely someone quotable has raised this possibility but I can't find it in english, anyway. Abby Kelleyite 18:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I haven't seen anybody in mainstream media looking into this. In his Apr 30 article, Barboza said melamine costs "about $1.20 for each protein count per ton". Melamine is about 66% nitrogen while protein has 16%. Assuming a "protein count" = 1% protein, his description means one can replace 1 ton of pure protein by 0.25 ton of melamine at a price of $120. That gives a melamine price of $480/ton, or about 3840 yuan/ton. Compare that with the going price of urea in China (it takes 3 molecule of urea to make 1 molecule of melamine), Barboza's melamine does look more like the monomer. However, from a business point of view, waste melamine plastic would be much cheaper than even monomer (industrial grade of mixed by-product), somewhat less toxic and deliver almost the same amount of NPN... --Tsiaojian lee 21:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I suspect that both may be being used, particularly with what you have reported in regard to the "prior art" of using ground urea-formaldehyde resin. There was mention in one of the barboza pieces, if I remember correctly, that the melamine scrap he was talking about used to be free and now is auctioned off. I seriously suspect that it is a mixture of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen of varying compositions (including melamine and cyanuric acid) produced as a residue in the coal->urea->melamine process, much like the mix of hydrocarbon waste in the standard FT coal gasification. I hope (because of the expected lower toxicity) that ground melamine resin may be the more common contaminant. Both companies he's focused on so far, though, have been chemical manufacturers. I fear there may be a lot of this glop. Anyway, if you find even a chinese language only ref re ground melamine resin, I'd add it for balance. Abby Kelleyite 12:41, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
After doing some research, I re-wrote the synthesis section of melamine. What you suspected indeed looks VERY LIKELY!! The solid from melamine waste water contains mostly melamine but also some cyanuric acid etc. Since it's an unwanted waste it would also be very cheap. That also explains the cyanuric acid... --Tsiaojian lee 20:41, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Btw, feel free to move this stuff back into the articles discussion page if you want. I added the additional comment here just to make sure you saw it, given that the original discussion has gone somewhat dormant. It might be useful to get this stuff all back in there in case anyone else starts looking into the issue. Abby Kelleyite 14:03, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Did we find any english language references while I was away? Abby Kelleyite 15:16, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
On May 07, USA Doday did concede that using chemical-grade melamine in place of protein is not economical, but didn't explain what the "scrap" is either.
P.S. I cannot seem to find reference of melamine as food adulterant (in Chinese or English) prior to the pet food fiasco. That doesn't mean food adulteration is uncommon in China, or melamine is absent in the tainted pet food. But it still begs the question: just how "widespread" is it there?--Tsiaojian lee 19:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outstanding work on the melamine production

If you're still here, I think the pet food crisis article has stabilized if you want to incorporate your findings there. Abby Kelleyite 01:15, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I added the key references to the melamine cyanuric acid waste product in a couple other places on melamine and in the appropriate research section in melamine, 2007 pet food crisis and cyanuric acid. I also added a few small changes in the melamine production section of the 2007 pet foof crisis reflecting your new info. This last, in particular, could use some more work. Abby Kelleyite 02:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Btw, I wanted to mention that I completely understood how you organized the media reports on the melamine page. The only reason I moved a version of the waste product crystallization downpage was so that no one could possibly miss it. I also migrated the cyanuric acid as NPN cites over to the cyanuric acid research summary, which was overdue. Abby Kelleyite 21:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Be very careful of your password.

Someone broke into my account but I think I have goth them stopped. Abby Kelleyite 19:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)