Biomonitors

Posted in Environment at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment

 

Autumnal grasses

Keeping a weather eye on atmospheric pollution is a large-scale, costly and time-consuming activity. However, there just happens to be a vast network of self-contained, self-powered units around the globe that can respond to the presence of toxins, radioactive species, atmospheric particulates and other materials in the environment and could be used to build up a local, national or international picture of environmental conditions - the …

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Taking the P (and the N)

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 4 Comments; add yours

 

SpirulinaUrine is a problem. Huge volumes are flushed, with fresh water, into the world’s sewage systems and then enormous volumes of yet more water are used to treat the waste along with solids. However, writing in a forthcoming issue of the Inderscience publication, International Journal of Biotechnology (2008, 10, 45-54, in press, fellow journalists can email me if they want an advance copy of the paper) researchers in China and Russia …

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Interview with Egon Willighagen

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment

 

Egon Willighagen

Most of you who orbit the chemical blogosphere will be well aware of Egon Willighagen’s efforts in helping us build the chemical web. Willighagen is a post-doc at the Wageningen University & Research Center in the Netherlands and cites open source programming as his main hobby.

He runs a chemical blog and founded the all-encompassing Chemical Blogspace (elementally designated Cb). For this month’s Reactive Profile, I asked him about …

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Rebuilding the Periodic Table

Posted in Science at 10:20 am by David Bradley -- 45 Comments; add yours

 

Periodic Table Ban

I’m bored with looking at the standard periodic table on my office wall. It has been useful over the years, of course, and has been exploited and sexploited too in the form of a periodic table of yoga and a sexy PT. It has also been hacked apart, cut and paste into different formats, created as illiminated wall cases, woodworked into furniture, spiralled, spherized, and generally …

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Alchemy, Hydrogen Economics, Lead-free Crime

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment

 

Toy gun crime

In my ChemWeb Alchemist column this week, German chemists have constructed nanoscopic balls from DNA, researchers in the UK have discovered natural antibiotics in Greek cheese that could prevent food poisoning, and Stateside, researchers have developed a low-pressure hydrogen storage material that might pave the way to a hydrogen economy (if we want it). I also report on ancient color in statues and relief as well as …

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Colourful Scare Stories

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 5 Comments; add yours

 

Strawberries and creamThe British media had a feeding frenzy over artificial food colourings again last week, following pronouncements from the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) urging manufacturers to voluntarily remove six additives from their products. The additives in question were linked in a Southampton University study funded by the FSA and published in The Lancet that linked them to hyperactivity in children.

Ingredients with bright names, such as …

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Science and Business Meetingplace

Posted in Science at 3:00 pm by David Bradley -- 2 Comments; add yours

 

Science and business meetWhere do business and science best meet, an apparently simple question with apparently multifarious answers. For instance, chemical industry consultant Hamish Taylor says that they meet, “At the crossroads of human need and scientific curiosity where meaningful breakthroughs can advance human lives, whereas bioinformatician Mark Pitman believes that, “Science and business meet best when they both understand the role of the other party instead of just assuming the …

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