These are the latest science news links and snippets from Sciencebase:
- Healthy antioxidants may do more harm than good – This has been my hunch for years. Now, scientists (J Agric Food Chem, ACS) are calling for more research on the possibility that some supposedly healthy plant-based antioxidants – including those that supposedly prevent cancer – may actually aggravate or even cause cancer in some people.
- Intelligent Fingerprinting – Testing for illicit drugs often falls foul of fraud and mislabelling of urine or blood samples. New technology from Cambridge company Intelligent Fingerprinting could avoid all that simply by taking fingerprints from a suspected user and testing those instead of a urine sample for recent drug abuse. The fact that their fingerprint represents is the sample means no more mixups and no chance for fraudulent swapping of samples.
- Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley (no relation) on the impact of open notebook science – Jean-Claude Bradley is an organic chemist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. As with most scientists, Bradley used to be very secretive. He kept his research under wraps until publication and frequently applied for patents on his work in nanotechnology and gene therapy.
- Write for Oprah? Wrong for Me – Sounds like debunking health myths has a different meaning when it comes to the big O. Can you define "good morning" what do you mean by good and what hours constitute the pre-afternoon period?
- Peer to Peer Mentoring – Peer-mentoring schemes have been around since ancient times, they even get a mention in Greek texts, but today they are becoming increasingly popular in academic environments as educators begin to recognise the benefits for their students of learning with a little help from their friends.
- Why scientists are waiting for Web 3.0 – Personally, I'd be happy with web 2.1, but it seems that scientists in general are holding out their enthusiasm for web 3.0