Sep 29, 2008
A brief summary and update to the Sciencebase original posts on Melamine in Milk and Melamine Scandal Widens.
Dairy farmers have been feeling the squeeze for years, particularly in parts of the world where technological advancement has been slow in coming and so their profit margins on their milk output have not been lifted by improved efficiency. In order to boost profits milk has been diluted. However, …
Sep 26, 2008
Gossip and rumours, they are the life force of cultural interaction. Just ask Guy Kawasaki, whose Truemors.com website took off last year, the hundreds of hacks who peddle the minutiae of celebrity lifestyles complete with the Photoshopped products of the paparazzi, or Perez Hilton. But, there is a serious side to rumours. In the midst of a natural disaster, terrorist atrocity, or war-torn location, the spread of …
Sep 24, 2008
This week in my SpectroscopyNOW column, I have four new posts covering, as usual, a wide range of solutions to scientific and technical problems. First up, is the discovery that compounds found in cannabis could lead to novel antibiotics that are less susceptible to resistance than conventional drugs. Then, we have a new type of spectroscopy that allows scientists to carry out broadband analysis of artificial atoms held at temperatures close …
Sep 22, 2008
Four infants in China have died and at least 53,000 are reportedly ill, many seriously so, having been fed milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. A three-year old girl in Hong Kong is also ill, but has now been released from hospital, she was the first reported case outside mainland China. Major formula milk producer Nestle says none of its products in China has been contaminated with melamine, …
Today, is the first day of autumn, the fall, and Google is celebrating with a new leafy logo. But, why do leaves turn red in the fall? It’s all down to chemistry. Red pigments known as anthocyanins form in leaves from many plant and tree species at the same time as the green photosynthetic apparatus is dismantled by the plant. During this process nutrients containing nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are …
Sep 19, 2008
Chernobyl. The very name strikes fear into the hearts of those who hate everything about the nuclear industry. It conjures up images of an archaic, burning industrial site spewing out lethal fumes, of farm animals dying of radiation poisoning in their thousands and contaminated meat, of ecosystems devastated, and of people with radiation sickness and for those spared the acutely fatal toxicity, the prospect of cancers to come and perhaps generations …
