Jun 30, 2006
Posted in Chemistry at 8:46 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
How toxic are nanomaterials? A group of scientists from US and Korea has shown that nanostructured composite microspheres can be easily prepared using ultrasound in a non-toxic manner. These microspheres were created to act as drug carriers, in particular to deliver a potent Alzheimer’s Disease drug which is in clinical trials. Before drug delivery, however, the scientists had to show that their carrier was not itself toxic to cells.
“With increasing concerns that synthetic nanomaterials …
Posted in Chemistry, Science at 12:00 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
You’ve probably seen one of those tedious science videos where do they drop a tiny nugget of lithium or sodium into a toughened glass bowl half full of water and watch the metal fizz and sputter.
Exciting, huh? They might even have gone so far as adding an even smaller nugget of potassium, which in the most exciting moment might smash the bowl with its violence.
However, you’ve probably noticed …
Jun 28, 2006
Posted in Chemistry at 9:10 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
This week, in my news round-up on ChemWeb, we discover a chilly reminder of water’s bizarre behavior that could make cryopreservation science fact rather than fiction, a new understanding of the underlying cause of Parkinson’s disease, and discover that Swiss chemists have peered into their crystal ball to find new materials and explain some old ones. Also in this week’s news, simultaneous sensing for sensitive science and a way to clean up the infernal …
Posted in Health at 2:42 pm by David Bradley -- 3 Comments; add yours
Beer is better for you than wine, apparently. Beer contains valuable B vitamins, such as B12, folic acid and niacin, as well as antioxidants, such as polyphenols and ferulic acid. Which makes it the healthier choice, contrary to popular opinion. eer also contains soluble fibre, which is good for digestion. Even the “active” ingredient in alcohol, whether from beer or wine, allegedly helps keep arteries …
Jun 27, 2006
Posted in Sex at 9:56 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Over on Digg, there’s news that the organ in the brain responsible for female sexual response has been found. As one might expect, there are lots of sexist comments posting very early and at an alarming rate from the members: Female Libido
The actual news item in question can be found here, written by my good friend at New Scientist, Andy Coghlan.
Posted in Environment at 5:07 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
The European Union has been messing with the organs in churches across the land. It wanted to extract all the lead from these instruments, but vergers, vicars and other clergymen starting with a “V” thought the EU wasn’t just extracting the Pb it was taking the P.
The UK’s Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) announced today that Pipe organs are outside the scope of an incoming EU Directive which restricts the use of hazardous substances …
Posted in Bird Flu at 9:30 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Reuters is reporting that general practitioner Steve Hajioff warns that the UK’s preparations for a bird flu pandemic are inadequate.
The UK is on high alert for bird flu following the dead swan incident in Scotland and is stockpiling vaccine. Hajioff, however, suggests that the impact on infrastructure of an avian influenza epidemic would be like a thousand 9/11’s. “In the present day, you are talking about five million people across Europe and hundreds of …
Jun 26, 2006
Posted in Geek at 2:01 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Regular readers may have noticed I’m in a list-making mood these last few days, with the NMR acronyms feature and “what scientists are known for” posts…well over on The Island of Doubt, fellow science writer James Hrynyshyn is discussing the issue of the scientific ethic in rock and mentions the likes of Talking Heads, Rush, and Thomas Dolby as being hot on science.
Well, it got me thinking about actual artist names that betray …
Jun 23, 2006
Posted in Chemistry, Geek at 7:23 pm by David Bradley -- 3 Comments; add yours
Who says chemists don’t have a sense of humour, if you haven’t already seen Paul May’s Silly Molecules site check that out right now, but in the meantime some genuine acronyms from the world of spectroscopy
Insensitive Nuclei Enhanced by Polarization Transfer (INEPT)
Combined Rotation And Multiple Pulse Spectroscopy (CRAMPS)
HOmonucleaR ROtary Resonance (HORROR)
Nuclear Overhauser Effect SpectroscopY (NOESY)
COrrelation SpectroscopY (COSY)
Slice Interleaved Depth Resolved Surface Coil Spectroscopy (SLITDRESS)
Proton Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy (P…you got it)
Variably Adjusted Gamma Inhibiting …
Posted in Geek at 4:25 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment
Has anyone tried this new Coca Cola Blonde? Maybe it’s only available in the UK at the moment. Very refreshing on a balmy English summer afternoon…I suspect the recipe will be just as closely guarded as that of the Real Thing, but I reckon there’s a smidgeon or two of Zingiber officinale in this brew.
Jun 22, 2006
Posted in Geek, Science at 3:12 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
This has to be the biggest of small web pages. It’s scalled so that one electron in a hydrogen atom is a single pixel on your computer screen and the proton is 1000 pixels across. Try scrolling across one page at a time to see just how far that electron is from the proton. It will take you quite some time, to say the least as there’s a gap of 11 miles between them!…
Posted in Science at 7:52 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Anyone who has seen the San Andreas fault will be familiar with that section of fencing where the farmer hammered in the posts, put up the slats and then moved 20 feet sideways to do the next section.
Or, maybe it was an earthquake that moved the fence posts. Yes, that’s it. So when is the next big fence moving going to happen? Seismologists really don’t know. There has been no major earthquake on the southern …
Jun 21, 2006
Posted in Health at 12:45 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment
Apparently, “most doctors” have not heard of the “new” killer big that left a nine-year old boy with lungs full of holes after a bad scrape to his knee. At least that’s according to an article in Time magazine. And it seems that readers of the Digg site too were at a loss to understand how this bug could have remained so anonymous. So, what is this mystery bug?
Well, it’s none …
Posted in Geek at 8:21 am by David Bradley -- 7 Comments; add yours
Inspired by orcmagazine.com’s racial profiling site Google
your race) in which they list the results entirely out of context of searching Google
with the phrases "white people are known for", "black people are known for",
"Hispanics are known for" etc etc, we thought we’d give it a try with the phrase
"Scientists are known for". Some interesting results emerged, all of them
totally out of context and not necessarily meaning what you think they mean, …
Jun 20, 2006
Posted in Chemistry at 7:11 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment
The latest issue of the Reactive Reports chemistry news site is now live. In it, I discuss various advances in the chemical sciences including weighty issue of trans fat that has butter lovers everywhere declaring, “I told you so!” Also in issue 56, I report on the basic approach to chemotherapy that side-steps the need for a magic bullet and find out how NASA has lit a fuse under the planetary carbon debate.
Our reactive …
Posted in Chemistry at 7:59 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
A postgraduate student has posted a research problem on sci.chem.analytical, which Sciencebase’s chemically aware readers might be interested in puzzling over.
The student seems to have discovered a new inorganic gas.
Apparently, he heated a zeolite which consists Analcime, feldspar and silica to 500 Celsius. X-ray fluorescence shows the presence of Si Al K Ca Na S Ti and Fe. When the heated material is dissolved in HCl, a gas is evolved with the following properties (summarized …
Jun 19, 2006
Posted in Health at 3:13 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment
Many years ago, when I was writing on a weekly basis for New Scientist, in fact long before the magazine even had a web presence, I wrote a short news item about a new class of drugs for treating the symptoms schizophrenia.
Within days of that issue hitting the shelves I received several letters from desperate readers asking where they could get hold of the drug. Unfortunately, it was very much in the experimental stages and …
Posted in Environment at 12:00 am by David Bradley -- 1 Comment
Looking at prehistoric climatic change may provide new insights into predicted near-future climate. New results for a greenhouse effect that occurred during the late Cretaceous some 75-90 million years ago suggest that very different mechanisms controlled the climate then and that these may be applicable in the near future, perhaps forcing a revision of received wisdom regarding climate change.
Sascha Floegel and colleagues at the IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany working with …
Jun 18, 2006
Posted in Health, spectroscopy at 12:00 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Researchers in Beijing have carried out a meta-analysis of AAS and ICP-MS results published during 1994-2004 to obtain a countrywide picture of how the level of lead in children’s blood is changing and how where they live effects their exposure to this toxic element.
Perhaps predictably, the team found that those children living in urban or industrial regions had much higher levels of lead than those living in rural areas. The figures they reviewed also contrast …
Jun 17, 2006
Posted in Science at 3:00 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Microscopic printing techniques could be used to make the next generation of electronic components for large-area displays with higher definition and covering much larger areas than is currently possible with even the best displays today. The technology could also lead to versatile sensors for a range of applications from the environmental to the medical, all at dramatically reduced costs compared to current micromanufacturing technology.
Researchers can already carry out microcontact printing on metal surfaces a few …
Posted in Chemistry, spectroscopy at 12:00 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
A QSPR (quantitative structure-property relationship) study of the anaerobic biodegradation of chlorophenols could lead to an improvement in the disposal of these potentially carcinogenic industrial waste products.
Youzhi Dai, Dasen Yang, Fei Zhu, Lanyan Wu, Xiangzheng Yang, and Jianhua Li of the Department of Environmental Engineering, at Xiangtan University, People’s Republic of China have based their analysis on quantum chemical and physicochemical descriptors, using partial least squares analysis to obtain a good prediction of the QSPR …
Jun 16, 2006
Posted in Physics at 7:00 pm by David Bradley -- 7 Comments; add yours
The ultrasound equivalent of a laser could lead to important new discoveries in materials science by providing researchers with a non-destructive way to detect even the subtlest of changes, such as phase transitions deep in their samples. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the University of Missouri-Rolla have built just such an ultrasound analogue of the laser - the uaser, pronounced way-zer.
Light amplification by stimulated …
Posted in Science at 2:39 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment
It always seemed odd that a guy called Gates would fill his life with windows but today Microsoft Corp. announced that as of summer 2008 chairman Bill Gates will drop out of his transition day-to-day role in the company and begin to focus on his global health and education work through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Apparently, it’s going to take two years for the “transition” to happen, …
Posted in Chemistry at 12:00 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Wide angle X-ray scattering, photoluminescence, polarizing optical microscopy, differential calorimetry, and dielectric spectroscopy have been used to study the optical properties of a range of blue-light emitting organic compounds. The mechanism of the self-assembly of these oligoindenofluorenes up to the polymer, their thermal properties, and associated molecular dynamics also reveal important clues about their behaviour and potential for applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS) and other devices.
More…
Jun 15, 2006
Posted in Bird Flu at 7:23 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Elena Govorkova and colleagues at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, have developed a vaccine against the potential lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza. The vaccine protects, it seems, without triggering antibody production as is normally the case.
While lab tests show the vaccine to be effective, there is a problem with this preliminary study. It was not carried out on humans, so we shall not know whether it would …
Posted in Cancer, spectroscopy at 3:39 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
Rather than relying on MRI and follow-up biopsy to provide information about a suspect abnormality in the breast, researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have demonstrated in preliminary trials that NMR spectroscopy could be used to significantly reduce the number of biopsies required to detect the early stages of breast cancer. NMR can lock on to the choline peak associated with malignancy during the MRI scan….
Posted in Education, Science at 8:31 am by David Bradley -- 2 Comments; add yours
A friend of mine is into nature conservation in a big way and one of the tools of the trade, which to the outsider may seem rather odd, is owl pellet dissection.
Owl pellets are the regurgitates remains (bones, feathers and other indigestibles) that accumulate in this bird of prey’s gizzard after it dines on small rodents and other critters. The dessicated pellets are to be found lying where they …
Jun 14, 2006
Posted in Chemistry, Science at 8:26 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
In my guise as ChemWeb’s Alchemist this week I report on how there may be no need for a magic bullet in cancer chemotherapy and a basic (as opposed to acidic) approach could be all that is needed. Also spotted a smashing discovery that could explains glassy substances and precludes an ideal standard for physicists.
The Alchemists all sees the swirling clouds clearing as various holes in the ozone layer finally seem to be on …
Posted in Science at 3:39 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment
These two birds I photographed in a friend’s garden were anything but lovebirds, although they might look like they were dancing seconds before and seconds after they were tearing each others feathers off and spitting blood. This didn’t seem to be a bar-room brawl between chums fighting over fishy scraps, these two were at it for a good half an hour. It has to have been a territorial or mating …
Jun 13, 2006
Posted in Health at 3:09 pm by David Bradley -- 2 Comments; add yours
An extract of the gardenia fruit, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine, could provide a new lead in the search for drugs to treat the symptoms of type 2 diabetes. The extract contains a chemical that apparently reverses some of the pancreatic dysfunction that underlies the disease, according to researchers writing in the June 7 issue of Cell Metabolism.
The chemical in question is genipin. This compound was …
Posted in Science at 10:30 am by David Bradley -- 2 Comments; add yours
It would be ironic, to say the least, if fossil fuels, such as coal turned out to be the saving grace in the future hydrogen economy, in which this purportedly clean fuel powers our cars and homes through the essentially Victorian technology of fuel cells.
Nevertheless researchers at Pennsylvania State Universityhave demonstrated that coal might be the most convenient storage medium for this explosively elemental gas. More importantly, the production and storage of hydrogen take place …
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