And, under the December physical sciences Spotlight

It’s all in the marine mix – Mixing of surface waters in the Atlantic Ocean seems to have reverted in the winter of 2007/2008 to “normal” levels for the first time in almost a decade…

Well, wooden you know? – New materials that look and behave like plastics can be produced from a renewable raw material known as liquid wood. The bioplastics promise to displace petroleum as a feedstock for certain applications…

Running with knives – Stabbing is the most common form of murder in the UK and Ireland. However, while forensic scientists understand the basics of the process…

Alchemy Under the Spotlight is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

“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 State University. The following Spotlight editorial reveals some of the issues and diversity of materials studied as well as highlighting a significant technology that might allow decontamination for certain materials to be carried out. An audio summary from the journal’s editors is available as an mp3 download courtesy of ES&T.

Read the full article under Intute‘s Spotlight

Emerging environmental contaminants is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

One area of non-western science that many western medics and scientists say is nothing more than pseudoscientific claptrap is Ayurvedic medicine. This is a holistic healing system that emerged in ancient India. It talks of the mind-body balance and the kind of “energy” and humours that modern science claims not to exist, yet there may be a grain of truth in some aspects of this system for which modern science has not given due credit.

Consider the western approach to the common problem of anaemia in pregnancy. The treatment of choice, according to western medicine, is simply to ingest iron sulfate. In this form, iron can be readily absorbed by the body, assimilated into new red blood cells, and anaemia solved.

Unfortunately, many pregnant women cannot tolerate iron sulfate and regurgitate it so they don’t get to ingest the iron and the anaemia remains.

Now consider the Ayurvedic approach. The sage assesses the pregnant woman, finds she has an imbalance in her energies, humours, whatever, and prepares a herbal infusion aimed at shifting the balance towards a more healthy state. It works, there’s no vomiting, the morning sickness subsides, and that anaemic look is replaced by the flush of pregnancy once more.

So, what is going on? How can a bunch of herbs cure anaemia so readily?

AP de Silva of the Queen’s University Belfast, whom I recently interviewed for Reactive Reports, was once equally as sceptical of the possibilities of Ayurvedic medicin. He told me that, as a fledgling chemist, he challenged an Ayurvedic practitioner to answer the question of validity. The practitioner, however, was entirely confident of his position and turned the tables on AP suggesting that he take away the herbal infusion and analyse it in his lab, which he did.

The result? A standard elemental analysis revealed the infusion to contain a stabilised concentration of iron(II) ions. Natural chelating agents in one of the herbs provide a suitable chemical environment to maintain iron in the II state, as opposed to its more common (III) state. This allows it to be ingested, absorbed, and to cure the anaemia without the sickness of raw iron sulfate.

This is, of course, circumstantial evidence, and does not provide the support of full double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials. However, the chemical analysis provides one possible rational explanation of the efficacy of this remedy beyond a placebo effect.

Perhaps it is time modern science took a closer look at the multitude of alternative remedies that sit under the Ayurvedic umbrella. Ancient herbal remedies evolved from folk knowledge and a huge proportion of modern drugs are based on such remedies, 40% of them, or thereabouts. Instead of instantly assuming isolation of an active ingredient is the optimal approach, perhaps science should consider the holistic approach to drug discovery with a view to coping with the side effects and improving efficacy overall.

Ayurvedic analysis is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

“Comparing sexual arousal between men and women, we see that there is no difference in the amount of time it takes healthy young men and women to reach peak arousal,” says Irv Binik of McGill University Health Centre.

Rather than using manual intervention or genital connections, Binik focused thermographic cameras on his subjects’ genitals while they watched a montage of material from pornography to horror movies to The Best of Mr. Bean to Canadian tourism travelogues to provide a base of control data.

During the arousal experiment, the male and female subjects watched separate sexually explicit films procured from the Kinsey Institute and determined to be sexually arousing to specific genders. They watched the images through special video goggles to minimize distractions.

Binik remotely monitored body-temperature changes to within a 100th of a degree via a computer in a different room. Both the men and the women began showing arousal within 30 seconds. The men reached maximal arousal in about ten minutes, while women took a minute or two longer.

“In any experiment on sexual arousal done in a laboratory, there is some distraction,” concedes Binik. “But compared to previous techniques involving invasive measures or electrodes, this is minimally invasive and the same measurements are used for men and women, which makes it very interesting that the data ended up being the same.”

He says they’re the same, but if women are lagging behind the men by a minute or two in reaching full arousal, that could make all the difference for some couples, surely?

Colleague Tuuli Kukkonen adds that “This will help diagnose and treat sexual dysfunction in women, such as female sexual arousal disorder, which is poorly understood.” Details of the work will appear in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in January 2007.

Women as fast as men, almost is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Art Stewart reckons communication problems are significant obstacles to science but rather than encouraging a stripping away of jargon Stewart suggests science can benefit from a little of that old lyrical wax and perhaps more of an acceptance not to worry about spending more than a little time on matters that seem at first superficial. As such, he’s put together two rather subtly evocative books of poetry and essays that turn the concept of the all-too-common science for poets course on its head and offer up the idea of poetry class for scientists instead.

Superstring theory, katydids at night, natural disaster, and ammonites all succumb to Stewart’s muse in Rough Ascension while respect and care for life are the focus of the second of the pair Bushido – The Virtues of Rei and Makoto. Neither book is much thicker than the layer of dust that accumulated on their covers while I found the time to take a closer look but what they lack in thickness they make up for in depth.

A version of this item is available in our podcast complete with guest appearance by Art Stewart himself with a reading of Superstring Theory. Use the built-in player below to listen, save the mp3 to your hard disk or mp3 player, or subscribe for free with iTunes.

Art for Science Sake is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Programme creator Marlon Lodge found that background music seemed to help his language students remember phrases much better than simply hearing and repeating phrases by rote. Lodge teamed up with his brother Andrew and designed Earworms musical brain trainer (mbt) They reckon the system boosts language retention by up to 80%. I ripped the Earworms Italian CD to my mp3 player and listened every time I went for a run – in an effort to get fit and learn how to order pizza, a gelato, and a cappucino when we went on holiday this year.

It works. Very well. I’d done Spanish and French at school and Italian isn’t so different, but the earworms gave me the necessary extra to be able to confidently book a table, order food and drinks, and find out why the return flight got delayed so badly.

The system uniquely anchors foreign words and phrases into long-term memory by hooking them to music. The company reckons it could provide a learning breakthrough for people with poor sight, dyslexia, or attention deficit problems by taking away the need to concentrate on reading phrase books and other academically based language courses.

“Many people are reluctant to begin learning something new after they leave school, but as Mark Twain once said, ‘My education started the day I left school.’ Earworms is very much about giving people an easy handle on learning, and what easier way to learn than simply by listening to music, something we all enjoy?” Lodge says.

The program is available for French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and now Mandarin Chinese. More information at www.earwormslearning.com. It would be good to see some solid scientific research on how this system works, perhaps a functional MRI study showing the language centres in the brain lighting up more brightly with music rather than without. I’ll cover any such developments on spectroscopynow.com

Anyway, I just ordered the Spanish disc for next year’s holiday and they sent me Mandarin Chinese too…so, maybe I should think about going a little further afield.

Ciao for now!

Earworms burrow into your brain is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

According to the paper, “Little is known of the potential risk to health by the creation through nanoengineering of altered particles.” No doubt, UK tabloids and scaremongers will jump on any future pronouncements as an admission of guilt once the first minute risks are revealed. Forgetting, of course, the enormous risks we face every day simply cross the road or jumping in our nanoparticulate-pumping cars.

Interestingly, there is a get out clause for scientists who may wish to peel back that bureacratic layer. The scheme is entirely voluntary!

So, if you’re an “evil scientist” intent on creating a doomsday scenario on a very, very small scale, then you needn’t worry about being risk assessed, just don’t add your research to the database.

Ironically small is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Welcome to the first Geordie Boffin Podcast from Sciencebase. This irregular and irreverent podcast will bring you audible reporting from the sciences. For most sciencebase readers this will most likely be your first chance to hear my dulcet tones (and those of my wife) as well as a little effected guitar playing for the intro!

You can play the sound file by using the media player built-in to this post, download the mp3 and stick it on your iPod, or subscribe to our feed, it should be in iTunes.

Check out our information sheet for more about the Geordie Boffin Podcast, and for some definitions, in case you’re wondering what any of those three terms actually mean!

Since launching the Geordie Boffin Podcast, circumstances have changed here, and after six episodes I stopped doing the recordings myself. Click the podcast icon in the sidebar to subscribe to the synthetic Geordie Boffin Podcast. It’s not perfect, but a whole lot clearer than my own gluttal stops and diphthongs. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

The legacy GBP mp3 files are still on the server if you really want to hear my voice, leave a request in the comments and I’ll post the relevant links.

Geordie Boffin Science Podcast – #1 is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog