Dec 30, 2006
Over at the American Institute of Physics my colleague Phillip Schewe and his team have been putting together their pick of the physics discoveries for 2006.
Their number one choice had to be the new ultra precise measurement (0.76 parts per trillion uncertainty) by Gerald Gabrielse and his colleagues at Harvard University of the electron’s magnetic moment closely followed by the refinement by the same team of the fine …
Dec 29, 2006
Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and electron microscopy could help diesel engine components manufacturers meet tough new emissions regulations, according to researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Temperature Materials Laboratory (HTML).
The techniques can provide detailed characterizations of materials and allow components to be tested for heat and stress effects more effectively as part of the industry’s preparation for new emissions mandates that come into effect in the US in 2007. Under the new laws, …
Dec 28, 2006
More chemical news from the current issue of Reactive Reports, now online.
Bedwetting Chemistry – A higher concentration of sodium and urea in urine could underlie a type of bedwetting in children that does not respond to the common medication, desmopressin.
Rubber Suits You Sir – Military personnel, chemical workers, and others could benefit from a new synthetic rubber material …
Dec 27, 2006
How does adding salt to water affect its boiling point? You will find several clues and key words below.
But, first check out this great science project you can download now that includes A Pinch of Salt which will help you answer that question.
The fact that dissolving a salt in a liquid, such as water, affects its boiling point comes under the …
Dec 26, 2006
It’s Boxing Day and you’re probably seriously bored playing the “normal” game of Pick-up Monkeys. Rather than heading for the Wii or the PS3, how about adding a little monkey magic, or more seriously some wire binders and following Dr N. Michael Green, Division of Mathematical Biology, of the UK’s prestigious Medical Research Council (MRC) National Institute for Medical Research to do a little bit of science education with those …
What on earth’s a “booyle rocket”, I hear you ask! Well, I haven’t a clue. It’s just a search term that a Sciencebase visitor used in our search box.
Intrigued, I Googled the phrase and it turns out to be a Google Whack Blatt to a rather crude dating site. Fortunately, Google also offered the option that perhaps I’d misspelled bottle…so was the visitor searching for “bottle rocket”, perhaps?
If they were …
Dec 25, 2006
The short answer is no. Despite what you may have heard some snowflakes are exactly the same shape and size as other snowflakes.
The long answer follows:
Jon Nelson, a researcher with Ritsumeikan University in Japan, has studied snowflakes for fifteen years, and has some interesting insights into their delicate structures. He points out that the old adage that ‘no two snowflakes are alike’ might be true for larger snowflakes, but it …
Dec 24, 2006
Many people in the modern Western world delude themselves that their culture is generally free from the effects of intoxicating substances except in the criminal underworld, and that ‘nice people don’t take drugs’. But Richard Rudgley of the University of Oxford, a researcher of the oasis communities of Chinese Central Asia, shows that our culture and other cultures across the world have a rich tradition of using chemicals, mainly from …
Dec 23, 2006
An advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space-time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and computer science easily explains Santa’s abilities to deliver presents to millions of homes and children in just one night, according to professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Larry Silverberg, at North Carolina State University.
Silverberg explains that Santa has a personal wireless connection to children’s thoughts – via a listening antenna that combines technologies currently used in …
Dec 22, 2006
Members of the plant family Ranunculaceae are ever-popular at this time of year, especially in Europe, where the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, is wheeled out as a natural decoration for countless households. Interesting then, that extracts of this plant have been used as a heart tonic in herbal medicine alongside the likes of digitalin (from foxglove) and strophanthin from the West African plant Strophanthus gratus.
H. niger contains …
Dec 21, 2006
The latest bumper Xmas issue of Reactive Reports, actually the 61st issue I’ve produced for the site is now online. In this issue we cover:
Molecular Light Switch – According to Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, “Nanotechnology is the result of the marriage of the synthetic talent of Chemists with a device-driven ingenuity.”
Blood, Light, and Water – Two molecules …
Dec 20, 2006
My good friend Stu Borman and his colleagues at Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) have come up with a fascinating mash up of the most important chemical discoveries of 2006.
First up, is the total synthesis of UCS1025A, this esoteric-sounding compound is actually a potential inhibitor of the enzyme telomerase, and the incredibly compact synthesis was achieved by Tristan Lambert and Samuel Danishefsky of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and Columbia University (J. Am. Chem. …
Dec 19, 2006
Over on foreignpolicy.com they’re reporting the Top Ten non-News Stories of 2006. Among their picks is the non-story of bird flu, or avian influenza as it’s more correctly known. In case you missed it, we didn’t all die of bird flu again this year. However, there were a few people who, having got so scared of the tiny risk that they might catch the H5N1 strain of the disease began taking Tamiflu prophalactically. More …
British-born Dick Lewin Wife followed a traditional educational path, receiving his chemistry first degree from the University of Leeds in 1969 and staying on to do an organic PhD with David W. Jones. Research fellowships then took him to London, New York, and finally California, after which he returned to a job in the UK with Shell in 1976, moving to The Netherlands with the company in 1979. He stayed with Shell until 1987 at …
Dec 17, 2006
Our sense of smell is much better than we give it credit for. A report in Nature Neuroscience puts paid to the notion that the human reputation for having a poor sense of smell compared to other animals.
Noam Sobel and colleagues laid down scent trails in a grassy field, and asked human subjects to find the trail and track it to the end. Subjects were blindfolded and wore …
Dec 15, 2006
A long protein tail found in all influenza A virus raises the possibility of novel drugs that can grab on to it and stop the virus in its tracks. The protein tail is present in common human influenza A which kills thousands of people every year as well as rare forms such as bird flu.
US scientists used crystallography to study the long flexible tail of the influenza virus’ nucleoprotein. They found that even seemingly …
The environmental costs of dealing with waste products from old electrical goods will have to be met by the device manufacturers in Europe from July 2007.
Laying the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations before Parliament, UK Science Minister Malcolm Wicks said:
“Electrical waste such as toasters, fridges and washing machines are a growing environmental problem here in the UK with over two …
Dec 14, 2006
With the holiday season almost upon us, that means only one thing, flu is also on its way and if the scaremongers are to be believed the long-forewarned bird flu epidemic might follow in its wake any time soon.
Now, US researchers have put to work the 15-ton 900 MHz NMR machine at Florida State U to help them figure out the mechanics of infection by influenza A virus. The common human form of the disease …
Thousands of children will receive toys this Christmas that could leave them deaf. That’s the message from UK national charity Deafness Research UK.
According to Brad Backus of University College London’s Ear Institute in a report commissioned by the charity, almost every noisy toy they tested produced noise levels above the recommended safety limit of 85dB(A) when held close to the ear. Prolonged exposure to noise levels above 85dB(A) can cause hearing loss. Half …
Dec 13, 2006
Carl Sagan was one of my childhood heroes, watching the Cosmos unfold on his seminal TV show was almost a weekly religious experience.
On 20th December, Sagan fans and bloggers will launch a worldwide blog-a-thon to commemorate the life and legacy of Carl Sagan on the tenth anniversary of his death.
The event has been organized by New York City Sagan fan Joel Schlosberg, and encourages bloggers of all stripes …
Dec 12, 2006
Reuters this week reported that poultry farmers should make sure to prevent sparrows, starlings, and pigeons from entering chicken houses because they could potentially infect poultry with the H5N1 bird flu virus.
I suppose that does make sense, but sounds rather impractical. Small birds have an amazing ability to worm (is that a suitable word?) their way into even the smallest of openings. Chimneys and vents are absolutely no problem for sparrows. It’s …
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) this week launched its new website. Apparently, the web interface has been streamlined on the basis of user feedback. Nothing too exciting in that, except they have also upgraded their search engine and describe it as being at the centre of the site and exhaustive in its breadth.
Underpinning the new site is “EB-eye”, a trendy-sounding and powerful search engine allowing instant searches of all the …
Dec 11, 2006
The classic fish-eye lens gives photographers the visual equivalent of surround sound, capturing an all-encompassing view. But, while the results are dramatic the subject is considerably distorted to fit within the bounds of the circular image formed. This renders such lens ineffective as an all-seeing-eye in a security setting or for providing robots with better navigation.
South Korean researchers have now designed and built an inexpensive optical lens that collects …
Dec 10, 2006
According to the Nanotech Project, more than twenty years of research, has begun to yield the first commercial applications for nanotechnology in consumer products. They explain that nanoscale materials can now be found in electronics, cosmetics, automotive parts, and medical products. Apparently, there are about 350 such products.
But, while the British media is running scared at the idea of nanotechnology turning the world to grey goo (and we’re not talking Second Life here), …
More than forty research papers highlight the effects of emerging contaminants on human health and the environment in the December 2006 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, among their number are reports on nanoparticles, pharmaceuticals, disinfectant by-products, and fluorochemicals.
“It might be tempting to define emerging contaminants as one thing or following certain criteria but it’s not that simple,” says the journal’s guest editor Jennifer Field of Oregon …
Dec 8, 2006
The New York Times this week reported that spam levels have doubled in the last six months. I’m pretty sure there was a lull towards the end of the summer, but we’ll take their word for it. The paper reports on figures released by one of the myriad spam-filtering companies, Ironport, and claims that 90 percent of the 50 billion e-mails sent across the internet (as opposed to internal company emails, which are a …
You may not realize that you don’t have to read all my waffle in between subjects of interest. Instead you can select out only the subject category that you’re interested in. So, if you just want chemistry stuff, then this is the link to bookmark – http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/category/chemistry If you want the newsfeed for just chemistry then, tack on “/feed” without the quotes. I.e. http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/category/chemistry/feed
Here’s a list of the categories with the most posts:
Dec 7, 2006
The fairies at the bottom of my garden have been digging up the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A spokesdog for the Society of Wolves tells me that Canis Lupus is no longer dining on geriatric homeowners nor juvenile females in crimson headgear. Oh, and there is no link between sugar in the diet and diabetes.
The first two statements may seem a little far-fetched but that last one, surely it’s …
Earlier this week scientists reported a strong correlation between obesity and the risk of common cancers, such as cancer of the colon and breast cancer. Today, initial findings from a US study suggest that eating less protein could be a way to protect some people from cancers that are not directly associated with obesity.
The research is published in the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2006, 84, 1456), shows that lean …
Dec 6, 2006
Previously we reported on the case of six medical workers in Libya who face the death sentence having been charged with deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998. The evidence in their defence has now reached the molecular level and is published today online in Nature.
Oliver Pybus and colleagues in an international research team has used the genetic sequences of the viruses isolated from the patients to reconstruct the exact …
Running Windows XP, fancy a change of scene, then download the newly released Zune theme from Microsoft. To my eye, it’s a less juvenile colour scheme than the standard XP theme with its primary colours etc.
There’s a totally pointless video on the web showing you how to install it, but all you have to do is click that link, save and run the MSI file and then hit “Apply” as and when.
Of course, …
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