More science discoveries

More science news from Sciencebase:

  • Bleachgate – Watch out for this mineral snake oil. It's basically bleach. The vomiting is not a sign that it's working. This is industrial quackery at its worst.
  • Massive galaxy puts years on universe – When I was a kid, the textbooks said the universe was about 13 billion years old, well that's (ahem) three decades ago so it must be 13,000,000,030 years old now. But, oh know the discovery of a massive 10-billion-year-old galaxy hints at the universe being far, far older than we thought.
  • Whale poo is good for you « weird science – In fact it's good for all living things, here's why. Definitely, time to stop killing these beasts for their blubber, you harpoon-wielding b*st*rds
  • Anthropogenic Climate Change: It’s for real – There is consensus among thousands of scientists in "appropriate" fields that ACG is real. But, think about it. Even if it weren't, do we really want to carry on pumping pollution into the atmosphere, stripping away acres of trees, leaving species extinct, fouling the oceans, using up all our mineral reserves, burning filthy fossil fuels and generally failing to make our lives sustainable? Of course we don't.
  • Google Health update – New features make Google health more useful for its users, but do you really want to run the risk of some evil engineer getting hold of your blood pressure charts and knowing how much coffee you drink each day?
  • Understanding antioxidants – New on my SpectroscopyNOW column – Our bodies have various mechanisms to reduce free radical damage and to repair damage that occurs. Antioxidants are key to these defence mechanisms and work by breaking the free radical chain reaction or through metal ion chelation, which inhibits metal-catalysed free radical reactions. Among the most interesting antioxidants are the flavones, a type of flavonoid with the 2-phenylchromen-4-one backbone found naturally in cereals and herbs.