Of more concern was Pallab Ghosh’s claim that if Baumgartner gets a hole in his protective space suit his blood could begin to boil because of the very low pressure at that altitude. Wrong. He might get cold and could suffocate, his saliva might bubble in his mouth, but the pressure of your blood is sufficient to prevent it from boiling even if you are hurled into a vacuum.

This is what NASA had to say on the subject:

“If you don’t try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury…theory predicts – and animal tests confirm – that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.”

UPDATE: The low pressure lowers the temperature at which blood and other body fluids boil, but the elastic pressure of blood vessels ensures that this boiling point remains above the internal body temperature. Although the blood will not boil, the formation of gas bubbles in bodily fluids at reduced pressures, known as ebullism, can cause pain although tissues are elastic and porous enough to prevent rupture. A flight suit will reduce the effects of ebullism. Shuttle astronauts wore a fitted elastic garment called the Crew Altitude Protection Suit (CAPS) which prevents ebullism at pressures as low as 2 kPa (15 Torr). More here.

Felix Baumgartner to freefall from almost 40 km up is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Kinect is a motion sensing input device for the Xbox 360 and Windows PCs. It is simply a webcam-style device with appropriate software that allows users to control the console or PC without needing to hold a physical game controller, mouse or keyboard: gestures (and words) are enough.

Blundell and colleagues report more details in this video and present their preliminary work at the International Conference of Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (GRAPP).

Kinect could help phantom limb pain is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

The question of granting a posthumous pardon to Mr Turing was considered by the previous Government in 2009.

As a result of the previous campaign, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal posthumous apology to Mr Turing on behalf of the Government, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". Mr Brown said the country owed him a huge debt. This apology was also shown at the end of the Channel 4 documentary celebrating Mr Turing’s life and achievements which was broadcast on 21 November 2011.

A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted.

It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.

via UK Government declines to pardon Alan Turing | John Graham-Cumming.

Testing times, but no pardon for Turing is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

I asked theoretical chemist Pekka Pyykkö of the University of Helsinki, Finland, for his thoughts on the work:

“This combined experimental and theoretical discovery is in my opinion worth of any coverage you can give it. The new record of 10 for an equatorial coordination number, in a perfect symmetry group D10h, will make lovers of records happy,” he told me.

“At a deeper, quantum mechanical level, I find the electronic structure entirely logical and a pretty example of the eighteen-electron (18e) rule,” he adds. “These objects have a classical beauty.”

10 out of 10 for boron's coordinated effort.

10 out of 10 for boron’s coordinated effort is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

I asked the author of the single-layer work, Nikhil Koratkar of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York to compare and contrast his discovery with the Geim work:

“They appear to be working with a film which could be microns thick,” he told me. “The film is comprised of graphene oxide sheets that have aggregated to form a film. Now graphene oxide is very different from graphene. It is strongly hydrophilic and water spreads completely on graphene oxide. Given the fact that the film is an aggregate of graphene oxide sheets it will have a porous structure and hence it is not that surprising that water seeps through these pores. What is very interesting is that helium does not get through! Which means that the pores in the film are very small. Inspite of that water is able to force its way through these pores which is indeed interesting. In our system we have a single graphene (not graphene oxide) sheet and no pores. So there is no question of the water passing through the graphene.”

Layers of graphene, water and helium is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Researchers at Emory University have been testing two techniques for implanting silicone prosthetic breast implants into cadavers. Obviously, the implications of their work will be of relevance to living recipients, rather than the morticians. They have investigated whether the so-called Keller Funnel, which allows the implant to be inserted without the surgeon actually touching it, reduces potential contamination with skin or other bacteria. And, their results show that indeed it does. There’s a 27-fold reduction in transfer of a fluorescent paste smeared on the chest of the cadaver on to the implant surface compared with digital insertion.

Given that microbes such as MRSA could so easily be transferred with the implant using the digital insertion method it is perhaps time for surgeons to switch to this technique and so reduce infection, contracture, and the need for reparative surgery after implantation.

A more technical write-up appears in the 1st February issue of SpectroscopyNOW.

Incidentally, the only difference between industrial grade silicone gel and medical grade silicone gel is one of labelling and certification. As far as I know, surgeons have not been injecting women with the waterproofing material you use to seal around your bath.

Post mortem breast implants is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Of course, that wasn’t even close to the truth, the study tested samples from just 40 women who had had breast cancer mastectomy. All samples were found to contain parabens, but not all the women reported using underarm deodorants. It didn’t analyse the deodorants they actually used nor did it test 40 samples from women without breast cancer, nor did it even imply that parabens are linked to breast cancer.

However, The Sun, another notoriously sensationalist paper, quoted lead author of the paper, Philippa Darbre of the University of Reading as saying: “I ditched my deodorant to lower risk of breast cancer”. I spoked to Darbre and she confirmed that she had stopped using underarm deodorant 15 years ago. Some people switch to those so-called “natural” stone deodorants that are actually composed of aluminium salts to reduce sweating in the hope that they are safer. Aluminium salts inhibit sweating and are widely used in commercial anti-perspirants, but I think the toxicity of aluminium salts is even more prominent than parabens. Back in March 2006, I wrote about some of Darbre’s other work that looked into aluminium-containing deodorants and…you guessed it…breast cancer. If there were a link between deodorants and cancer risk maybe it could be in stifling the underarm sweat pores rather than some spurious chemical connection.

At the time Kat Arney, cancer information officer at Cancer Research UK told me that “…the main risk factors for breast cancer are age, reproductive history and a strong family history of the disease.” Other factors, such as excessive alcohol consumption, hormone replacement therapy, and menopause weight gain can also increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer. She adds that, “In the case of deodorants and breast cancer, there is little scientific evidence to link the two.” Others have confirmed this and NHS Choices says as much in its debunking of the latest tabloid nonsense about parabens.

Nothing’s changed. This latest paper seems to be just another iteration. I reported on Darbre’s earlier work on parabens for Spectral Lines (now SpectroscopyNOW.com) back in June 2004, but even by then there had been epidemiological studies dating back to 2002 that showed pretty much conclusively that there is no link. Indeed, studies show that if you test the urine of anyone in the west you will most likely get a positive for the presence of parabens.

I asked Colin Sanders a cosmetic chemist who blogs at Colin’s Beauty Pages, based in Petworth, UK, to comment on the issue of parabens and the reporting of the Darbre study. “Parabens are still the most widely used preservative in cosmetic and personal care products,” he told me. “If you launch a product that is going to sell millions of units you know that you are going to get a few people reporting allergic reactions. It doesn’t take long to notice that formulations preserved with parabens get fewer skin reactions than other preservatives.”

Sanders adds that, “Bizarrely enough, antiperspirants generally don’t need to be preserved. A few contain very low levels of parabens, but most don’t have any kind of preservative. It doesn’t seem very likely that they would cause breast cancer. A couple of them are weakly estrogenic. If they do indeed accumulate in breast tissue then that might be a cause for concern. Darbre’s work suggests they do [accumulate] but it has not yet been confirmed by any other group.”

He also suggests that there is a philosophical flaw in taking that approach to investigating the causes of breast cancer. “The trouble is that if you ask the question ‘are parabens safe?’ we don’t have enough information to say definitely yes. But that isn’t the question that the people researching cancer would ask. They would start by asking which factors are most likely to cause cancer. If you look at it from that point of view, what case is there for looking at parabens? Not very much really. There are stronger estrogen mimics that we are exposed to in much greater quantities, especially in food.”

Sanders adds that, “As a cosmetic chemist I would love parabens to be investigated more thoroughly. But if I was trying to reduce the incidence breast cancer I would have bigger fish to fry. It is easy to write a story knocking a particular chemical, but if that diverts research away from the most profitable areas to work in it could delay the development of effective treatment.”

Some chemicals are hazardous and definitely cause harm, the hepatotoxic volatile organic solvent ethanol, for instance, found in wine, beer and spirits. Similarly, the natural products of combustion of the dried leaves of Nicotiana tabacum are well known carcinogens. The tabloids will be tabloids. Take all they print with a pinch of salt…although not too much, mind you, it will make your blood boil!

Barr, L., Metaxas, G., Harbach, C., Savoy, L., & Darbre, P. (2012). Measurement of paraben concentrations in human breast tissue at serial locations across the breast from axilla to sternum Journal of Applied Toxicology DOI: 10.1002/jat.1786

You can read a more detailed discussion from yours truly in my latest Research Highlight article for the magazine Chemistry Views.

Deodorants still don’t cause breast cancer is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

From my fortnightly column The Alchemist.

Alchemist Chemistry News is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Snowflakes have at their heart a minute grain of dust that was once floating in a cloud, this speck of dust is the nucleation centre around which water vapour from the atmosphere can condense and if it is cold enough crystallise as ice. As with any crystallisation process it follows a symmetry intrinsic to the atoms or molecules from which the crystal is formed. In the case of water, the underlying symmetry is hexagonal symmetry. There’s more on this in the snow crystal primer.

Caltech’s Kenneth Libbrecht’s is the snowflake guru, here’s a video montage of his snow crystal gallery set to the tune of A Guy Called Gerald by Humanity (Borngraber & Struver Remix):

One question that puzzled me as a child is how each of the six arms “knows” to grow in the same way? Well, they’re growing under almost identical conditions so that might be expected, except, of course, that pretty drawings and diagrams aside, the six arms of snow crystals don’t actually grow symmetrically at all. At first glance they might look nice and symmetrical but under the microscope a single snow crystal will be seen to be far less than perfect in its symmetry. Symmetrical snow crystals are very rare except on Christmas cards. Speaking of which I abandoned my Christmas rant about octagonal and pentagonal snowflakes which are common in those pretty pictures but are physically impossible in the real world of snow because of symmetry constraints.

Shape of snowflakes is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

The aurorae are a natural light show in the sky, most commonly seen at high latitudes (Arctic and Antarctic). They are caused by the collision of energetic charged particles from the sun (the solar wind) at high altitudes (thermosphere). The northern lights are named for the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas, after Pierre Gassendi, 1621.

“The northern lights are in my mind, They guide me back to you” – Renaissance

Photo: US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang. Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, Aurora Borealis glowing above Bear Lake.

The Northern Lights are in my mind is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog