Qualitative and quantitative analysis of cresols found in maskwio'mi (birch bark extract)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Maskwio'mi (Mi'kmaw language for “oil made from birch bark”) is a traditional topical skin medicine of the Mi'kmaq people of Atlantic Canada and is produced in a torrefaction process by heating birch bark ( Betula papyrifera, paper birch) inside a metal container in a fire. The resulting viscous, oily mixture is traditionally mixed with goose fat or bear grease to create a topical salve that is subsequently applied to affected skin areas. When birch bark is exposed to high temperatures, pyrolytic chemical processes produce a complex mixture of pharmacologically active compounds, including potentially harmful side products such as ortho-, meta-, and para-cresol. This study discusses the qualitative and quantitative GC-MS analysis of cresols found in maskwio'mi and the challenges of the complex organic matrix. Using caffeine as an internal standard, ortho-, meta-, and para-cresol in birch bark extract were determined to be in the approximate order of 50–1500 ppm range with 3.24 ± 0.09 × 102 ng mg−1 (324 ppm), 8.7 ± 1.0 × 102 ng mg−1 (87 ppm), and 12.4 ± 1.6 × 102 ng mg−1 (1240 ppm), respectively, and thus suitable by Health Canada and FDA cosmetics regulation standards when the extract is co-formulated in creams to concentrations of 0.1–5 wt.% for topical use.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".