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.
- ACS loses court case - Mar 28, 2008 → A Sciencebase reader alerted me to the outcome of a recent ACS court case to LeadScope Inc developed computer software that predicts the toxicity of compounds used in drug discovery. But the ACS, parent of Chemical Abstracts Service for whom the company’s bosses worked previously, sued in 2002, saying company officials had stolen trade secrets from the division. Apparently not, said the Jury.
- Cosmoids - Mar 28, 2008 → A new theory of ubiquitous particles called cosmoids that pervade the universe could explain dark matter and at the same time put paid to the Big Bang theory.
- Beer bellies and dementia - Mar 27, 2008 → Could middle-aged spread be a precursor to old-age dementia? Or, is this just statistical wishful thinking?
- Rubik’s cube, 25 moves - Mar 26, 2008 → Physicists have proved that any configuration of a Rubik’s cube (i.e. any starting arrangement of the coloured squares) can be “finished” in 25 moves. Of course, there are some random configurations that are known to be solvable in 20 moves and trivial configs that require fewer. Finding the next, 24, then 23, will take many CPU months even with several gigs of memory
- Scholarly rights - Mar 25, 2008 → Who owns your research paper? Your or your journal publisher. Check out this brief video on why you should negotiate with your commissioning editor rather than signing over all rights.
- Nanofloss - Mar 25, 2008 → My good friend Andrew Sun has spoofed some scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of dental floss, earbuds, and other everyday items, all on the nanoscale!
- Spoilt children disrupt schools - Mar 22, 2008 → Another from the International Journal of the Bleeding Obvious - Primary schoolchildren spoilt by their parents can cause disruption in the classroom by repeating manipulative behaviour used at home.
- Science of scents - Mar 21, 2008 → Chip technology is helping French scientists to unravel the mysteries behind our sense of smell.
- Folic acid for healthy sperm - Mar 20, 2008 → The B vitamin variously known as folic acid or folate is implicated in the formation of various congenital defects such as the neural tube defects characteristic of spina bifida. As such women planning a pregnancy are recommended taking a regular dose. New research suggests sperm too could benefit
- Eighteen billion Suns - Mar 20, 2008 → A galaxy with an enormous black hole at its centre weighing as much as 18 billion suns has been spotted lurking at the heart of the quasar OJ-287. It’s a killer.
- ET does organic chemistry - Mar 19, 2008 → The first organic molecule to be found on a planet orbiting another star has been discovered by the Hubble space telescope. The tell-tale signature of the simplest organic molecule, methane, reveals itself in the atmosphere of the Jupiter-sized extrasolar planet HD 189733b. The press release hints at this molecule being a key ingredient in prebiotic chemistry. The emphasis should be on the “pre”, there’s no sign of ET just yet…
- arXiv exclusion - Mar 19, 2008 → If you’re a physicist who likes to get their work “out there” as soon as possible and publish your preprints on the arXiv server, you will know that the system has instigated a new licensing system. Choose the wrong license (choice of four) and under current American Physical Society rules you could find your paper rejected by default by APS journals
- Arthur C Clarke dies at 90 - Mar 19, 2008 → Writer and visionary Arthur C Clarke has died at the age of 90 at his home in Sri Lanka. The British-born author came to fame in 1968 when his short story The Sentinel was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by director Stanley Kubrick.
- Heart attack hack - Mar 17, 2008 → There has not been a single case of anyone hacking into someone’s wifi-enabled cardiac pacemaker…yet. But, that doesn’t stop the scaremongers spreading the idea that it might be possible. To what possible use a heart hacker could put their skills I don’t know, but the likelihood of killing someone if you were to crash their pacemaker firmware is probably quite high, and certainly punishable as homicide.
- Science policy and information - Mar 17, 2008 → Science policy and communication information portal launches
- One eye good - mar 17, 2008 → Depth perception is not the preserve of those with binocular vision. The brain can combine visual and non-visual cues in people with vision in only one eye to allow them to perceive depth too.
- Google Sky - Mar 14, 2008 → Google Sky is off the launchpad, but is it as good as Microsoft’s astronomical output?
- SciDev.Net relaunches - Mar 14, 2008 → The excellent SciDev site, which covers science in the developing world, just got excellenter with a relaunch that adds stacks of new features.
- Record-breaking vibrator - Mar 14, 2008 → Researchers at Cornell have broken all records for a vibrator. Their device oscillates back and forth at 4,500,000,000 times a second. That’s 4.5 GHz, a radio frequency, and given that the device is a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) based on a microscopically etched chunk of silicon it’s unlikely ever to feature in the Ann Summers catalogue, but could replace the quartz resonators used in digital circuitry and watches.
- All-American Eves - Mar 13, 2008 → Almost all living Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace their ancestry to just six women whose descendants arrived on the Continent some 20000 years ago, according to DNA studies.
- Professors and politicians - Mar 13, 2008 → UK professors are now earning on average more than members of parliament (MPs) according to THE (Times Higher Education). But, that doesn’t take into account all those consultancy positions, freebie trips, seats on company boards and other jollies, and that’s just the Profs! Don’t get me started on the MPs.
- Another alternative annihilated - Mar 12, 2008 → Another alternative therapy falls to close scrutiny, revealed as little more than placebo. Results from a study at the Ohio State University Medical Center showed that while aromatherapy may induce a feeling of wellbeing, it does nothing for the actual symptoms of disease. The researchers looked for physical changes in heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones, or immune function when volunteers were exposed to mild stress. Aromatherapy standards - lavender and lemon oil had no more effect than distilled water.
- MySpace for medics - Mar 12, 2008 → Is BioMedExperts.com (what a creative name) a good place to network if you’re a biomedical researcher or practitioner? According to the press blurb that just arrived (although the site was launched in January) it is “changing the way scientists and researchers around the world connect with one another”. The site apparently has 1.4 million biomedical experts with 21 million pre-established network connections from more than 137 countries. Anyone tried it? Is it worth a more detailed look or is it just another login to learn?
- Seven deadly sins of genetics - Mar 11, 2008 → More on the new seven deadly sins and a bit of a rethink suggested by Hsien-Hsein Lei at the all-seeing Eye on DNA.
- Talk like a chemist day - Mar 11, 2008 → We’ve had Talk Like a Pirate Day for years, recently physicists have jumped on the bandwagon, with the originally named TlaPD, but Periodic Tabloid reckons we need a day just for enunciating pronouncements in the manner of a molecular architect too. Best taken with a pinch of crystalline sodium chloride methinks.
- Spotlight on science - Mar 10, 2008 → The latest issue of my Spotlight webzine produced on behalf of Intute Sciences is now online. In this issue, Burgess shale fossils, left- and right-handedness in nature, and three-dimensional photonic crystals.
- PageRank for biodiversity - Mar 10, 2008 → Curious mashup of search engine terminology and taxonomy. Interesting though!
- Watching quantum entanglement - Mar 10, 2008 → The human eye is sensitive enough to see just a handful of photons, so would it be possible to “see” quantum entanglement of those photons? Nicolas Gisin’s team at the University of Geneva think so.
- Breaking Bad - coolest and geekiest - Mar 9, 2008 → The lead character is a middle-aged chemistry teacher, down on his luck, with a pregnant wife, a special needs son, and lung cancer. He turns to synthesising and selling high purity crystal meth as a way out. The chem references to mercury fulminate, phosphine, and the meaning of life, are just, just, just…so…..
- Treating nicotine addiction with cannabis - Mar 7, 2008 → A cannabis-derived medicine might be useful in treating nicotine addiction in smokers who simply cannot quit. University of Nottingham’s Steve Alexander says, “It is clear that there is very realistic potential for cannabinoids as medicines.”
- Universe aging well - Mar 7, 2008 → The Universe is 13.73 billion years old today (plus or minus +/- 120 million years or so. That’s an awful lot of candles for the birthday cake.
- Seroxat and suicide - Mar 6, 2008 → Does it strike Sciencebase readers as ironic that a week after some antidepressants are shown to be nothing more than placebo for most users, that revelations about how these very same compounds have suicidal side effects are in the news again?
- Aromatic ion catcher - Mar 6, 2008 → A dream molecule that can catch chloride ions has been built with “click” chemistry.
- Chilly winters and global warming → Cold snaps wreak havoc on plants and animals that blossom early because of global warming, but how do we reconcile repeated chilly winters with claims of rising global temperatures.
- Hacking the tree of life - Mar 6, 2008 → Shocking news in evolution this week. A new study by Brown Uni and others shows that comb jellyfish diverged from other animals even before the lowly sponge. The finding could shake the animal tree of life to its roots.
- Earth’s extremities - Mar 5, 2008 → Photographic evidence of just how amazing this little blue-green planet of ours really is.
- Nuclear cannibals - Mar 4, 2008 → Even if we increase nuclear power output over the next few decades it will not be sustainable with current approaches to ore mining/processing and waste heat use etc because the energy produced will be offset by the energy costs of building and running the next power station after that.
- Glucosamine for your nads - Mar 3, 2008 → Glucosamine, chondroitin and combinations of the two are proved yet again to not benefit sufferers of joint stiffness and/or pain any more than placebo. Who’d have thought? This time the trial was carefully double-blinded, had a significant number of subjects and used the products most commonly mentioned by advocates. Will this end the glucosamine debate? It’s doubtful there are too many companies making a small fortune selling this snake oil.
- Connotea connotations - Mar 3, 2008 → An alpha script from Berkeley’s Mitch Garcia brilliantly pulls out the 25 most recently tagged papers from Nature’s scientific social bookmarking service Connotea.
- Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos - Mar 3, 2008 → By sheer coincidence another Wired-related email just arrived, this time alerting me to a top ten of chemistry videos. These are sure to set any classroom alight and demonstrate once again just how useful an educational resource Youtube can be.
- Science meets photographic art - Mar 3, 2008 → Dave Bullock emailed to tell me he recently visited Omar Yaghi’s laboratory at UCLA where “some amazing nanotechnology” research is underway “that has nearly unlimited potential.” Check out his gallery in Wired magazine online.
- No Gingko memory benefits - Mar 1, 2008 → Taking the supplement ginkgo biloba had no clear-cut benefit on the risk of developing memory problems, in elderly volunteers, according to a new study.
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