Science Extra Geeky Bits from David Bradley
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The latest science extra Geeky Bits news from Sciencebase's David Bradley. The most recent 30 days of news snippets, worthies and oddities, as well as other items of interest that didn't make it on to the Sciencebase Science Blog homepage because I was (a) too busy to do a full write-up (b) too lazy to do a full write-up (c) too bored to do a full write-up. Visit the Science Extra Geeky Bits Archive for all items posted during the last year.
- Vitamin D and brain lesions - November 1, 2007 → Could vitamin D be the culprit in suspicious brain lesions?
- High blood pressure from watching TV - October 31, 2007 → Obese kids who watch too much TV develop high blood pressure, apparently, but if they’re obese surely that’s got something to do with eating too much in the first place and not doing any exercise and watching TV, so it’s all cyclic, how can they pull out TV watching as the causative agent, this isn’t Poltergeist, even if it is October 31.
- Get thin, cut cancer risk - October 31, 2007 → Oh, and don’t drink more than a glass or two of wine a day, don’t eat bacon, don’t eat too much red meat, and if you’re not already stuffed to the gills with fruit and veg, eat more, more, more.
- Click chemistry clicks - October 31, 2007 → A new approach to creating new chemicals invoving clicking together building blocks has now been shown to work in living cells.
- Height and health - October 29, 2007 → Your height in adult life significantly affects your quality of life, with short people reporting worse physical and mental health than people of normal height.
- Organic produce better for you - October 29, 2007 → Is that possible? According to Newcastle Uni team, so-called “organic” produce has more antioxidants and less fatty acids than “ordinary” food, although they admit to some variations. But, antioxidants are not the be all and end all of nutritional value and lower levels of some fatty acids may be detrimental to health.
- Elemental Discoveries - October 26, 2007 → New supersize isotopes of magnesium and aluminium have been produced by Paul Henri Heenen and colleagues at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles
- Scottish stone and ET - October 24, 2007 → A quarried rock from Scotland has been blasted into space to test theories that meteorites might harbour life.
- Lab rats’ days are numbered - October 21, 2007 → Arthritis research could go in silico rather than in vivo, thanks to new computer models
- Biggest organism and its biggest orgasm - October 19, 2007 → The sex life of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef was the subject of my first award-winning article, almost twenty years, ago. Now, new research suggests that same genes that trigger this event on the first full moon of the rainy season, or thereabouts, are present in humans too.
- Cave dwellers ate shrimp by the ocean - October 18, 2007 → It wasn’t quite a beach barbecue, but the fossilized remains of de-shelled sea creatures provides evidence that some early humans lived by the sea and enjoyed seafood 164,000 years ago.
- Fixing broken DNA - October 15, 2007 → Research into how the human body repairs damaged DNA has been described as a “major breakthrough”.
- Swearing at work cuts stress → News just in… Swearing at effin’ work improves camaraderie and freakin’ morale. No shinola!
- Eggy stench relaxes arteries - October 16, 2007 → Apparently, garlic can trigger the release of hydrogen sulfide within cells and this has the beneficial effect of helping protect non-vampires from cardiovascular disease. Coincides with news that another toxic gas, carbon monoxide, has been found to have beneficial effects
- Got a cough? Chest pain? It could be acid reflux - October 15, 2007 → A persistent cough and/or chest pain could be down to gastic reflux, acid spilling out of the stomach into the esophagus. They’re not well known symptoms of GERD but you could be suffering unnecessarily and being treated for the wrong disorder if you’re on medication for your cough.
- Lawyers after QUIDs → Russ Swan could soon have a university’s lawyers after him because he was cynical of the value of QUIDs announced in a humourless press release from the University of Leicester claiming that we need something that looks like Star Trek poker chips as currency once we head for the stars. He’s not the only one to call it nonsense, the BBC, Nature, Wired, and others also saw through the PR puff. Those lawyers are going to be really busy chasing their QUIDs
- Doing housework can cause asthma → The perfect excuse
- Life-saving vodka drop - October 11, 2007 → What do you do when you’ve drank ethylene glycol antifreeze and been induced into a coma, but the antidote’s run out? Hope the emergency room people have got plenty of vodka to hand, that’s what!
- Pollution bad claims - October 11, 2007 → Astounding claims that pollution is bad have emerged from Europe. Apparently, pollution can reduce life expectancy and have a detrimental effect on children. No kidding? Well…hello! Durrh!
- Max garlic goodness with crush and bake - October 10, 2007 → To get the best out of garlic in terms of its health benefits it’s best to crush and then lightly bake the pungent bulbs. Chocolate, which is rich in antioxidants, is a good remedy for post-prandial garlic breath, apparently.
- Walking tall fifteen million years ago - October 10, 2007 → New evidence suggests that the upright body plan of our ancestors first emerged more than 15 million years earlier than most experts believed.
- Dosh in space - October 9, 2007 → Apparently, we’ll need a new currency when we head for the stars, although Lab Talks’ Russ Swan thinks it’s a load of arts-biased media nonsense. They are pretty, these mystical “polymer” coins though…
- A footnote to the appendix - October 8, 2007 → Could the role of the human appendix, once thought a vestigial organ, be as a microbe factory for the gut, creating “good” bacteria that aid digestion?
- Nobel Prize in Medicine - October 8, 2007 → Just announced
- Creation of life - October 8. 2007 → DNA sequencing pioneer Craig Venter claims to have created an artificial chromosome in the laboratory and is on the verge of revealing the world’s first artificial lifeform. Yeah, right.
- Mother’s hips and breast cancer - October 8, 2007 → Could a girl’s mother’s hips affect her breast cancer risk? If the size and shape of her hips reflect exposure to high sex hormone concentrations during fetal development, then perhaps. But, I’d want to see a lot more hips to come to a firm conclusion.
- The industrial space age - October 4, 2007 → Could mining the moon and using unfiltered solar energy in space be the key to solving environmental problems here on earth?
- Bilberry extract and cancers - October 4, 2007 → A paper published today claims there is no evidence that any herbal remedies work. On the same day, another paper reveals that bilberry extract might beat colorectal and liver cancer. Quite bizarrely one of the team is called Dave Berry.
- Grids could help us cope with bird flu - October 4, 2007 → A collaboration of European and Asian researchers launched a new attack against the deadly bird flu virus, harnessing the combined power of more than 40,000 computers across 45 countries to boost the pace of anti-viral drug discovery.
- Sputnik’s 50th Anniversary - October 4, 2007 → Fifty years after Sputnik, the UK is leading the world in pioneering satellite technology.
- Nuclear powered laptop - October 3, 2007 → A new type of battery that needs recharging once every 30 years and utilises beta emission (electrons) from a radioisotope as the energy source could soon be on the way thanks to work being funded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Not sure when it will enter beta testing though. Hahahah
- Detox smoothie - October 3, 2007 → A fruit smoothie manufacturer that claimed its products were the equivalent of five portions of fruit or veg a day and could “detox” the body has been stamped on by the Advertising Standards Authority. There is no food or additive that will detox the body any faster than simply drinking water. Enzymes in our liver are the detoxifying agents, water helps with waste excretion. Don’t be drawn by the hype about detox drinks and regimes, they should all be stamped on by the ASA.
- Basil! - October 3, 2007 → Ever wondered what gives the aromatic herb basil it’s flavoursome zing? Well, researchers have now obtained a three-dimensional snapshot of the enzyme basil eugenol synthase frozen in action as it produces eugenol, the fragrant molecule responsible for basil’s spicy overtones reminiscent of cloves and cinnamon.
- Cometary surprise - October 2, 2007 → a chance encounter between spacecraft Ulysses and Comet McNaught’s ion tail reveals complex chemistry from the dawn of the solar system
- Two killed in Middle East by volcanic eruption - October 1, 2007 → A volcano has erupted on a Yemeni island in the Red Sea, killing at least two people, a search for survivors is underway
- DVT risk and long-haul flights - October 1, 2007 → You’d have to take 4656 long-haul flights to “guarantee” your risk of deep-vein thrombosis, according to an analysis of flight staff by researchers in the Netherlands. You’ve probably got more chance of the plane being involved in an air-rage incident.
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