2010 SEP 11 – (< NewsRx.com) — New research, ‘Overview of anticoagulant activity of sulfated polysaccharides from seaweeds in relation to their structures, focusing on those of green seaweeds,’ is the subject of a report (see also Hematologic Agents). “The anticoagulant behavior of sulfated polysaccharides from seaweeds is reviewed based on their chemical structures. Analysis of the literature suggested that the driving force for the formation of the sulfated polysaccharide/protein complex is the non-specific polar interaction between the negatively and positively charged groups in the polysaccharide and Toggle bracelet, respectively and that the complex is further stabilized by short-range interactions,” researchers in Buenos Aires, Argentina report.

“The polysaccharide binding site should be able to go through the following conformational steps in the formation of the complex: random coil– >ordered conformation– >low distortion of this conformation to form a complementary fitting structure with the protein backbone. The sulfated monosaccharide units with the highest potential for anticoagulant activity should have two sulfate groups and a glycosidic linkage on the pyranose ring with C-2, C-3 and C-4 in 2S, 3R, 4R or 2R, 3S, 4S configurations for galactose, fucose and arabinose and 2S, 3S, 4R, for rhamnose. Three distributions of these substituents appear: 3-linked 2,4-disulfated units, 4-linked 2,3-disulfated units and 2-linked 3,4-disulfated residues. These types of units have the possibility, through the equilibrium of the chair conformations, to place their sulfate groups in adequate special positions to interact with basic groups of the protein. The anticoagulant activity is mainly attributed to thrombin inhibition mediated by antithrombin and/or heparin cofactor II, with different effectivenesses depending of the compound,” wrote M. Ciancia and colleagues, University of Buenos Aires.

The researchers concluded: “Other mechanisms are also proposed and these differences could be attributed to the diversity of structures of the polysaccharides evaluated and to the fact that one compound may have more than one target protease.”

Ciancia and colleagues published their study in Current Medicinal Chemistry (Overview of anticoagulant activity of sulfated polysaccharides from seaweeds in relation to their structures, focusing on those of green Two Hearts pendant. Current Medicinal Chemistry, 2010;17(23):2503-29).

For additional information, contact M. Ciancia, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Agronomia, Departamento de Biologia Aplicada y Alimentos, Facultad de Agronomia, Av San Martin 4453, 1417 Buenos Aires, Argentina.

2010 SEP 11 – ( NewsRx.com) — Current study results from the report, ‘Vaginal estrogen supplementation during Depo-Provera initiation: a randomized controlled trial,’ have been published (see also Hormones). According to recent research from the United States, “Irregular bleeding is often cited as the reason for discontinuation of depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) after the first injection. Estrogen supplementation during DMPA initiation may decrease bleeding and improve continuation.”

“This prospective, randomized, controlled trial evaluated estrogen supplementation during DMPA initiation. Women Two Hearts triple bangle DMPA were randomized to receive an estradiol vaginal ring for 3 months versus DMPA alone. Bleeding diaries and questionnaires at three and 6 months assessed bleeding, continuation and ring acceptability. Seventy-one participants enrolled; 49 completed the first follow-up period. The median number of bleeding or spotting days was 16 in the estrogen ring group (n=26) versus 28 in the DMPA alone group (n=23) (p=.19). Venetian Link bracelet-seven percent of the intervention group received a second injection compared with 70% in the DMPA alone group (p=.56). For each additional day of bleeding and/or spotting reported, women were 3% less likely to receive a second injection (OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.94-0.99). Acceptability of the vaginal ring was high among those in the intervention group,” wrote A. Dempsey and colleagues, University of South Carolina.

The researchers concluded: “Vaginal estrogen supplementation during DMPA initiation is acceptable to women and may decrease total bleeding.”

Dempsey and colleagues published their study in Contraception (Vaginal estrogen supplementation during Depo-Provera initiation: a randomized controlled trial. Contraception, 2010;82(3):250-5).

For additional information, contact A. Dempsey, Medical University of South Carolina, Dept. of Obstetrics and Venetian Link necklace, Charleston, SC 29425 USA.

2010 SEP 11 – (NewsRx.com) — Scientists discuss in ‘No-needle local anesthesia for adult male circumcision’ new findings in anesthesia (see also Anesthesia). “We used a local anesthetic jet injection technique for adult male circumcision. This method eliminates needle use and may decrease the fear of local anesthetic injection used for male circumcision,” scientists writing in the Journal of Urology report.

“We recruited 60 men seeking voluntary adult Tiffany Notes locket and chain circumcision into the study from June to September 2009. We used a MadaJet Medical Injector to deliver a high pressure spray of 0.1 ml 2% plain lidocaine solution directly through the penile skin circumferentially around the proximal third of the penis. All men underwent circumcision using the Shang Ring and were evaluated for anesthetic safety, efficacy and acceptability. Pain was measured on a visual analog scale. The average volume of 2% lidocaine anesthetic solution delivered by jet injection was 0.1 ml with a mean total of 0.9 ml per circumcision procedure. More than 85% of men did not require supplemental anesthesia. Anesthetic onset required approximately 45 seconds from the time that injections were completed. Mean pain scores for immediate postoperative, 24-hour postoperative, ring removal and post-ring removal events were 0.1, 6.8, 2.2 and 0.9, respectively. In 4 patients (6.67%) mild urethral bleeding resolved with pressure, resulting in technique modification. No-needle jet injection is safe and effective for adult MC. The technique efficiently delivers local anesthesia with rapid onset in men undergoing circumcision,” wrote Y. Peng and colleagues, Wannan Medical College, Medical College.

The researchers concluded: “This needle-free approach may enhance the popularity of adult male circumcision.”

Peng and colleagues published their study in the Journal of Urology (No-needle local anesthesia for adult male circumcision. Journal of Urology, 2010;184(3):978-83).

Additional Tiffany Notes Pendant can be obtained by contacting Y. Peng, Yijishan Hospital-Wannan Medical College, Dept. of Sexual Medicine, Wuhu, People’s Taiwan.

Keywords: City:Wuhu, Country:People’s Republic of China, Anesthesia, Central Nervous System Agents, Central Nervous System Depressants, Chemical Actions and Uses, Drug Administration Routes, Drug Therapy, Jet Injections, Local Anesthetics, Male Circumcision, Non Therapeutic Body Modification, Pain Medicine, Pharmacologic Actions, Physiological Effects of Drugs, Subcutaneous Injections, Surgery, Therapeutic Uses, Therapeutics.

Data detailed in ‘Bacterial phenylalanine and phenylacetate catabolic pathway revealed’ have been presented (see also Aromatic Amino Acids). According to recent research from Freiburg, Germany, “Aromatic compounds constitute the second most abundant class of organic substrates and environmental pollutants, a substantial part of which (e.g., phenylalanine or styrene) is metabolized by bacteria via phenylacetate. Surprisingly, the bacterial catabolism of phenylalanine and phenylacetate remained an unsolved problem.”

“Although a phenylacetate metabolic gene cluster had been identified, the underlying biochemistry remained largely unknown. Here we elucidate the catabolic pathway functioning in 16% of all bacteria whose genome has been sequenced, including Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas putida. This Tiffany Notes ring is exceptional in several aspects. Intermediates are processed as CoA thioesters, and the aromatic ring of phenylacetyl-CoA becomes activated to a ring 1,2-epoxide by a distinct multicomponent oxygenase. The reactive nonaromatic epoxide is isomerized to a seven-member O-heterocyclic enol ether, an oxepin. This isomerization is followed by hydrolytic ring cleavage and beta-oxidation steps, leading to acetyl-CoA and succinyl-CoA. This widespread paradigm differs significantly from the established chemistry of aerobic aromatic catabolism, thus widening our view of how organisms exploit such inert substrates. It provides insight into the natural remediation of man-made environmental contaminants such as styrene,” wrote R. Teufel and colleagues, Albert Ludwigs University.

The researchers concluded: “Furthermore, this pathway occurs in various pathogens, where its reactive early intermediates may contribute to virulence.”

Teufel and colleagues Tiffany Notes Round earrings their study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Bacterial phenylalanine and phenylacetate catabolic pathway revealed. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010;107(32):14390-5).

For additional information, contact R. Teufel, Fakultat fur Biologie, Dept. of Mikrobiologie, Albert-Ludwigs-Tiffany Notes tag bracelet Freiburg, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany

2010 SEP 12 – (VerticalNews.com) — According to recent research published in the journal Laser Physics, “A new, simple and efficient L-band erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser with polarization-maintaining ring cavity is proposed and experimentally demonstrated.”

“The laser offers the unique advantage of being a Tiffany Nature Dragonfly pendant-maintaining lasing, which meets the requirement of external electronic-optical intensity modulation for DWDM communication and interferometric fiber sensors. Theory has been established,” wrote K.J. Zhou and colleagues, Zhejiang University.

The researchers concluded: “Experimental results are given to show that the laser has long-term stability over a couple of hours with 35 dB signal-to-noise ratio at 1598.644 nm and tunable from 1572.167 to 1608.480 nm.”

Zhou and colleagues published their study in Laser Physics (L-band Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser with Polarization-Maintaining Ring Cavity. Laser Physics, 2010;20(7):1632-1635).

For additional information, contact K.J. Zhou, Zhejiang University, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Hangzhou 310027, People’s Republic of China.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Laser Physics is: Maik Nauka, Interperiodica, Springer, 233 Spring St., New York, NY 10013-1578, USA.

2010 SEP 12 – (VerticalNews.com) — According to a study from Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China, “We present a novel configuration of multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber ring laser (MW-EDFL) using a LiNbO3 multifunction chip for fiber gyros at room temperature. The polarizer incorporating a piece of high-birefringence fiber in the input port of the Y-type chip forms the Lyot periodic filter at Tiffany Notes band ring of 0.5 nm wavelength.”

“One of two modulators inserted in the ring cavity has been used as frequency shifter by applying a sawtoothed signal, while the output port of the other is used as the output port of the laser. Simultaneous multiwavelength lasing is experimentally demonstrated by applying a sawtoothed signal with the order of 10 kHz to the phase modulator to prevent single-wavelength oscillation,” wrote K.J. Zhou and colleagues, Zhejiang University.

The researchers concluded: “The MW-EDFL output is linearly polarization light that meets the requirement of external modulation for wavelength-division-multi-plexing applications.”

Zhou and colleagues published the results of their research in Laser Physics (Multiwavelength Erbium-Doped Fiber Ring Laser Using a LiNbO3 Multifunction Chip for Fiber Gyroscope. Laser Physics, 2010;20(6):1428-1432).

For additional information, contact K.J. Zhou, Zhejiang University, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Hangzhou 310027, People’s Republic of China.

The publisher of the journal Laser Physics can be contacted at: Maik Nauka, Interperiodica, Springer, 233 Spring St., New York, NY 10013-1578, USA.

2010 SEP 12 – (VerticalNews.com) — Tiffany Notes bangle to recent research from Halle, Germany, “We report on the block copolymerization of two structurally different norbornene monomers (+/-)-endo,exo-bicyclo[2.2.1]-hept-5-ene-2,3-dicarboxylic acid dimethylester (7), and (+/-)-endo,exo-bicyclo[2.2.1]-hept-5-ene-2,3-dicarboxylic acid bis(1-oxyl-2,2,6,6tetramethyl-piperidin-4-yl) ester (9) using ruthenium based Grubbs’ type initiators [(PCy3)(2)Cl2Ru(benzylidene)] G1 (PCy3 = tricyclohexylphosphine), [(H(2)IMes)(PCy3)Cl2Ru(benzylidene)] G2 (H(2)IMes = 1,3-bis(mesityl)-2-imidazolidinylidene), [(H(2)IMes)(py)(2)Cl2Ru(benzylidene)] G3 (py = pyridine or 3-bromopyridine) and Umicore type initiators [(PCy3)(2)Cl2Ru(3-phenylinden-1-ylidene)] U1 (PCy3 = tricyclohexylphosphine), [(H(2)IMes)(PCy3)Cl2Ru(3-phenylinden-1-ylidene)] U2 (H(2)IMes = 1,3-bis(mesityl)-2-imidazolidinylidene), [(H(2)IMes)(py)Cl2Ru(3-phenylinden-1-ylidene)] U3 (py = pyridine or 3-bromopyridine) via ring opening polymerization (ROMP). The crossover reaction and the polymerization kinetics were investigated using matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectroscopy (MALDI-TOF) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), respectively.”

“MALDI showed that there was a complete crossover reaction after the addition of 25 equivalents of the second Tiffany Notes cuff. NMR investigation showed that U3 gave a faster rate of polymerization in comparison to U1,” wrote O. Adekunle and colleagues, University of Halle.

The researchers concluded: “The synthesis of block copolymers with molecular weights up to M-n = 31 000 g/mol with low polydispersities (M-w/M-n = 1.2) is reported.”

Adekunle and colleagues published their study in Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry (Synthesis and crossover reaction of TEMPO containing block copolymer via ROMP. Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2010;6():59).

For additional information, contact W.H. Binder, University of Halle Wittenberg, Institute Chemical, Faculty Nat Science Chemical & Physics 2, von Danckelmannpl 4, D-06120 Halle, Germany.

Publisher contact information for the Beilstein Tiffany Notes I Love You bangle of Organic Chemistry is: Beilstein-Institut, Trakehner Strasse 7-9, Frankfurt Am Main, 60487, Germany

The museum itself is simply a single large room filled with artifacts and paintings of ships tossed at sea, recreations of those last desperate moments before they slip beneath the waves. In the center of the room, sparkling in the light, is the refracting glass of a lighthouse, designed to intensify lamplight in the days before the incandescent bulb.

I’m reading a nineteenth-century survivor’s tale when the nondescript orchestral music that plays softly overhead winds down, and a song starts up. The guitarist picks out a simple pattern of notes on his strings, and somewhere in my memory a light Tiffany Key Trefoil key pendant on-I’ve heard this before, but can’t place it anywhere.

“The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead,” a man’s voice sings from hidden speakers, “when the skies of November turn gloomy.”

You’ve got to be kidding me, I think. They’re playing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”? They’re playing Gordon Lightfoot? Really?

Although the ballad’s at a fairly low volume, and I’m doing my best to ignore it, I still can’t help but notice when, at the end of some verses, Gordon sings the song’s title in 6/8 time-the WRECK of the EDMUND FitzGERALD!

The song is now firmly lodged in my brain, where it won’t leave until I’ve driven back over the Mackinac Bridge and off the Upper Peninsula.

More distracted than before, I move in a circle around the room, coming closer and closer to the present day in the museum’s chronology. The final exhibit, of course, is about the Edmund Fitzgerald. A painting of the ship hangs on the wall, all storm-tossed gloom and drama, and the accompanying text tells the story of the storm that sank the ship nearly 30 years ago. Rafferty’s name-Robert’s, not mine-is on a list of the crew; at 62, he was the third oldest man on the boat, after the captain and the first mate.

Turning away from the exhibit, I see the museum’s main attraction: the Fitzgerald’s bell, brought up by scuba divers ten years earlier. It shines, practically glows in the light, looking brand new, not Tiffany Key Vintage oval key pendant after 20 years under water. The ship’s name curves across the metal, and for a moment I want to reach out and touch it, to ring the bell and hear the sound that Rafferty must have heard dozens of times each day. I want to make some sort of connection with Rafferty; like most memorials, the bell, raised from the ship he died on, is the aid for remembering and connecting with the lost.

On board a ship, a bell marks the passage of time, ringing to mark out the hours. This bell marks stopped time-the moment, just after 7:10 p.m., on November 10, 1975, when it slipped under the waves off of Whitefish Point. It remembers the stopped minute, the moment when everything changed. Like all memorials and monuments, it charts, like measurements on a ship’s charts, the intersection of time and place.

But this bell, surrounded by artifacts from other shipwrecks, crushed compasses and faded life rings, is the ersatz memorial, for the living to see and navigate their memory by. The true memorial to the dead of the Edmund Fitzgerald hasn’t been seen in years, could only be seen by a few. The memorial bell, the one 535 feet beneath the waves, serves its function the same way that the plaque one of the Apollo crews left on the moon does; we know it’s there, even if we can’t reach it. And in a time when everything seems mutable and changing, a time when a ship large enough to hold 50,000 gallons of fuel can vanish from the face of the earth in less time than it takes to pick up a radio and call for help, the impossible monument, the one we cannot see, reassures us that it remembers.

I am Colin Rafferty. I am not Robert Rafferty. I am not his son, not his nephew, not his cousin. I am from Kansas City. I am not from Ohio. I am not a sailor. I grew up landlocked. I get seasick, badly, while on a boat. I am a reiteration of Robert Rafferty. I am not a reiteration of Robert Rafferty. I am not of his family. I am of his family. I was born when he died. I breathed in the sea while he choked on it.

Mark L. Thompson, in his book Graveyard of the Lakes, theorizes that Captain McSorley would have ordered his men to don lifejackets and wait in either the foreward recreation room or the messroom, depending on where they were when the call came. Since Robert Rafferty was the ship’s steward, he most likely would have been in the messroom when the ship went down, and then would have either drowned or been crushed by the pressure of the water rushing Tiffany Knots cuff the ship.

Rafferty and I might be related, though I can’t prove it beyond a hunch and a guess. My several-times-great-grandfather Owen Rafferty came over from County Roscommon, Ireland, during the mass emigrations of the potato famine, and my branch of the Rafferty family passed through both Ohio and Illinois before settling in Carroll County, Iowa, for a number of generations. They came on boats, and once they’d arrived, they moved inland, far away from the seas that tossed them for weeks. They moved to a state where waves meant corn and soybeans, not water. Not something that could drown.

So it’s possible that one Rafferty stayed in Ohio while another went to Iowa, or that the gene for mobility that took my father to Kansas City, my uncles to Colorado, and me to Alabama was already in place in the nineteenth century, and someone made his or her way back east from the farms. But I cannot know for sure. The trail of memorials our families leave behind us-properties, tombstones, paperwork-it’s all too faint for me to find a path between me and Robert Rafferty, if one even exists.

If a memorial’s purpose is to act as a conduit for understanding history, helping those who view it to identify with the victims of whatever’s happened, to demonstrate that real lives, individual lives were affected by history, then the Fitzgerald’s memorial, a memorial to Robert Rafferty and the rest of the crew, frustrates me. With Robert Rafferty, I’ve found a means to connect personally with the TIFFANY KNOTS EARRINGS, to bypass the monument. This could be my family member; I could lay possession to him, call him my own, if I only knew. Without that knowledge, the memorial bell is all I have, a cenotaph, a tombstone without a grave or body.

Robert Rafferty may be my cousin many times removed, or we may share nothing more than a last name. Our relationship is as unknowable to me as the bell engraved with his name and 28 more, ten years sunken and attached to the ship in which his body, lifejacket on, still floats.

There is some controversy about the Edmund Fitzgerald; three members of the National Transportation Safety Board, in their 1978 report on the accident, placed responsibility for the ship’s demise on faulty hatch covers that let in water during the course of the storm. That water then settled in the spaces between the taconite pellets, where it couldn’t be detected by the sailors, and when the massive wave hit, the ship was already water-laden enough to drop, bow first, to the bottom of the lake.

The board’s fourth member, however, wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the ship, carrying a heavy load, had scraped the shoals near Caribou Island and then taken on water. This, he wrote, accounted for the list that McSorley reported. Several authors have written books, often self-published, in the attempt to get at the truth of what happened.

But what happened, ultimately, is that 29 men died in a storm on November 10, 1975, and that they were mourned, the bell ringing at the Mariners’ Church in Detroit for them the next day. They were the last men to die in a shipwreck in Lake Superior; for over 30 years now, as long as I’ve been alive, no one has died the way that Robert Rafferty and his shipmates did.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publishes a factsheet on the Fitzgerald; at the end of it, a section for children asks what they would do if they were a salvager who raised part or all of the ship. It also states, in the section ostensibly for adults, that the Fitzgerald won’t be raised, and that the men aboard it are considered “buried at sea.”

Here is something I have hidden from you this whole time, something settled in the spaces between these words, something you have not been able to detect: I am not alone here. My girlfriend-a Michigan native-and I have traveled here together. It was her idea; her grandfather had served in a CCC unit in the Upper Peninsula during the Depression, and she wanted to see the town he’d lived in then.

We have dated for almost three years, the last two at a distance while we earn degrees at different schools. We have talked Tiffany Knots pendant marriage; she is ready, more than ready, and in my quiet agreement, we have assumed-both of us-that I am ready, too. She loves me, tells me so often. I love her, and I tell her so often.

I will break up with her a few weeks after we return from Whitefish Point.

What does drowning feel like? I want to hold my head under the water in the bathtub, pushing myself under, trying to understand what that first moment of panic feels like when I need a breath and can’t find a place to take one, but I can’t bring myself even to try.

The language of drowning is quiet and beautiful; the idea of lungs filling with water a placid image, like a gentle pool fed by a small stream. I’m tempted to think of hundreds of candles in the lungs, each one quietly snuffed out by the rising water. But survivors of near-drownings describe the pain as excruciating. There is a moment of peace, they say, but it doesn’t last for long. It’s a painful, violent, awful death. My government, the newspaper says, has approved waterboarding, a near-drowning, a simulated drowning, as a means of gathering information from unwilling prisoners.

WHEN HISTORIANS LOOK BACK ON the impact that Ozzy Osbourne has had on the world of guitar, it’s going to be pretty damn impressive for a guy who doesn’t even play. Whether by default or by design, his Ozzness has always been associated with a totally badass-if not completely game-changing-ax slinger. In the beginning there was Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath, who basically invented heavy metal, and then Randy Rhoads, who was one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. The other 6-stringers who have drifted through Ozzy’s transom include Brad Gillis, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde, all of whom have managed to bring their own unique trip to the party. Add to that list Gus G, whose playing is all over the latest Ozzy offering, Scream [Epic]. Gus gets huge tones and shreds through clever, memorable solos on the 11 tunes. Tiffany Cushion Toggle necklace fans may recognize the Greek guitarist from his work with Firewind, but it seems certain that he’ll soon be known to a much larger audience.

What was the audition like for the Ozzy gig?

There was an audition last summer. I learned a bunch of songs and went down to L.A. Obviously I was very excited and stressed about it, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I figured it was going to be a bunch of guys in there and you get your 15 minutes and that’s it. But I actually had a couple of hours to spend with the band. We just jammed and went through all the parts in all the songs and fixed parts that I may have had questions about. A couple of hours later Ozzy came down and we jammed and it went pretty good. We did “Bark at the Moon,” “Crazy Train,” “I Don’t Know,” “Paranoid,” and “I Don’t Want to Change the World.”

How big an influence was Ozzy’s music on you?

Very big. I’m a huge Black Sabbath fan. I’m a bigger Sabbath fan than Ozzy fan to be honest, not to put any of Ozzy’s music down because I grew up with his solo records as well and I studied all the guitar players that have played in his band. But I have a certain love for Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi. I think I totally come from that school of guitar- that traditional, heavy, hard rock Tiffany Cushion Triple drop pendant playing.

Ozzy wrote this record with the producer, Kevin Churko. How complete were these tunes when you heard them for the first time?

They were written already so they just needed someone to play the riffs. I play all the main riffs and solos, but I didn’t really have much to do with all the weird intros and stuff like that. The intro to “Fearless,” the sounds at the beginning of “Let It Die,” that’s all Kevin.

Do you feel like you still got to put enough of your personality into the songs coming into it at that stage?

Well, as much as I could. Actually it’s the first record that I’ve done that I haven’t written anything on it. Usually I write the records that I play on or cowrite with other people. But this one was all done. They told me, “Be you and do your thing.” I was just happy that I had the chance to even play some leads. That was my mentality. It was a big learning experience for me. Just the fact that they asked me to redo all the guitars was a big honor. I went in there and Kevin definitely had some stuff that in my opinion didn’t sound like how a guitar player would do it, so he was open to my ideas. A good example of that is the riff on “Soul Sucker.” When I heard it I thought it was a good riff but it was pretty generic. It was just like a slow heavy riff. So I said, “Why don’t we do a talk box thing here?” There were a lot of those good chemistry moments in the studio where you come up with stuff. I came up with all the leads. I changed a couple of riffs here and there, but nothing major.

What was your rig?

My rig for the whole record was a combination of two amps. One was a Blackstar Series One 200 head through a Blackstar cab with Celestion Vintage 30s. I did two rhythm tracks with that. Then I did another two rhythm tracks with a Marshall JCM800 through a Marshall cab with EV speakers. Those two tones complemented each other and they produced this really massive sound. I played my signature model ESP Random Star guitar with Seymour Duncan Tiffany Cushion Two-row bracelet. Usually I’m a passive pickup guy, but for the last year I’ve been using these active Blackouts and they’re the best I’ve ever played. They’re really loud and very heavy with a lot of distortion. It makes it almost effortless to play. I was never really an active guy because I hated the fact that you kind of lose the harmonics and a little bit of the sound of the wood of the guitar. But somehow they managed to come up with this pickup that lets you hear all the harmonics in the guitar-you can hear the classic sweet Seymour tone.

Your tone is really heavy. Is the gain fully cranked on your amps?

I don’t use too much distortion. It’s usually around 12:00 or so. For the leads I use this BBE Green Screamer. It’s kind of like a replica of an Ibanez Tube Screamer pedal and I just step on it for a boost on my leads.

Let’s talk about a couple of the solos. I noticed that both in “Let It Die” and “Let Me Hear You Scream,” you play solos that have these really wide intervals, where you’re sliding around and jumping as much as an octave. What’s going on there?

It’s not actually Tiffany Cushion Drop earrings. Those intervals are actually fourths, fifths, and sixths but I’m skipping positions back and forth so it almost sounds like octaves even though it’s not. To get that sound I might go from, say, the 22nd position, down to the 17th, then back up to the 20th, then down to the 15th, and so on.

Was it hard to get that technique so smooth?

I practiced for many years with a metronome in my room for stuff like that when I was a teenager. When I went to the conservatory, the first thing my teacher said was, “Buy a metronome and anything you practice, practice it slowly first and gradually raise the BPM.” Later on, when I was giving lessons, I saw that everybody wanted to play fast right away and that’s not the way to go. If you practice everything to a metronome, you get great rhythm from that. You get tight, you build your precision, and you become accurate with your playing. I think you should play everything-from riffs to clean chords to strumming to shredding licks-with a metronome.

What’s the tuning on “Soul Sucker”?

It’s in dropped-B. The guitar is tuned down to C# , then you drop the low E another step to B. The big growling bends are actually played with a slide on my ring finger. I’m sliding from the 3rd to the 4th fret.

What are the challenges to playing parts that were originally laid down by Tony Iommi, Randy Tiffany Cushion Hoop earrings, and the others?

For a Tony Iommi part, you need to sound f**king heavy, that’s for sure. That’s what Black Sabbath is all about-being heavy and dark. As for Randy, Jake, and Zakk, they’re all great players. I love them all and everybody was different. I grew up with that stuff so it’s great just being able to play these songs. I stick to the originals the way they were recorded. I feel that I have a very important spotlight here next to Ozzy Osbourne so I need to play this music accurately because it’s all classics-the stuff that defined heavy metal and hard rock. There’s always a little bit of space to do your own thing obviously, but “Crazy Train” is “Crazy Train.” You don’t f**k with that.