January 2009 – David Bradley

Green Mercury Light Bulbs

With regulations set to ban incandescent light bulbs, the illuminating invention we’ve used since the nineteenth century, a replacement is needed. LEDs hold promise but are dim compared with the bulbs they seek to replace. Compact fluorescent tubes, are a bright idea. They are essentially a miniaturised version of the strip lighting by which shoppers and workers everywhere have been lit for decades. These CFLs use a fraction of the power to produce the same level of light as their incandescent ancestors and so are often touted as eco-bulbs in popular commentary.

Unfortunately, as the ban on incandescent tungsten bulbs spreads, so to are news stories in the media warning of the mercury content of CFLs and how breaking one in a child’s bedroom could expose them to serious risk of neurological damage and require a costly cleanup.

Just this week, the same warnings have been trotted out in various outlets including prominent website NowPublic.* To lend some credence to the NowPublic story, the writer cites the case of Brandy Bridges, from Maine, who apparently, went through a nightmare when a CFL broke in her daughter’s room. More fool her. The case was described on the Hoax Slayer site way back in May 2007 (so how this is suddenly now news, I don’t know). Hoax Slayer as the name would suggest, takes popular received wisdom and reveals the inner truth. Apparently, except for the immediate area of carpet on which the bulb had broken, mercury levels were way below the WHO safety limits on this substance.

[* I’m not even going to start on the EMF concerns and references to “dirty electricity” the NowPublic article talks about.]

“CFLs do contain mercury (Hg) but an environmental cleanup crew is not required if a CFL breaks,” Hoax Slayer asserts.

The amount each bulb contains is tiny, especially if you compare it to the amount in countless mercury thermometers used to measure body temperature, or help you decide whether to open or shut your greenhouse windows.

Indeed, mercury sealed within the glass tubing of a CFL amounts to about 5 milligrams, a small full-stop, or period, worth. No mercury is released when the bulbs are intact or being used. The mercury is present in the bulb as a vapour that glows when an electrical discharge is passed through it, giving the bright white light. Those mercury thermometers of which millions have been placed under childrens’ tongues to take their temperature for decades contain several hundred milligrams mercury. You would need 100 CFLs to equate to that amount of mercury. When faced with a feverish child how many people worried about the mercury thermometer breaking and leaking liquid mercury into their child’s mouth?

Mercury is expensive, so CFL manufacturers, ever looking for ways to cut costs, are constantly striving to boost the efficiency of their products but at the same time reduce the mercury content. It’s more about profit than safety concerns. Nevertheless, the next generation of CFLs which will be marketed this year, according to the US National Electrical Manufacturers Association, will have even less than a minute amount of mercury in them.

What to do if you break a CFL

The EPA provides information on what to do if a fluorescent light bulb (compact or strip) breaks, or indeed a mercury thermometer for those yet to go digital or liquid crystal. Basically, clean up involves opening a window, leaving the room for quarter of an hour, and then cleaning up the debris as best you can without using a vacuum cleaner, while wearing disposable rubber gloves and using a piece of stiff cardboard as a scoop or duct tape to pick up smaller fragments. A disposable wet wipe could then be used to clean the affected area. You must then put the debris in a plastic bag seal it, and then dispose of the waste according to local rules. Finally, wash your hands and then vacuum the area where the bulb was broken. All sounds very simple and sensible and pretty much what you would do if you broke an incandescent bulb, but with a little extra caution regarding that small amount of mercury.

Timely, then a review of mercury toxicity is published this week in the International Journal of Environment and Health. In the paper, Iman Al-Saleh
of the Environmental Health Section, at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, discusses the three chemical forms in which mercury is usually found: elemental (liquid mercury, amalgams, or vapour), organic (bound to a carbon-containing material), inorganic (mercury salts).

“Diet, especially fish and other seafood, is the main source of exposure of the general public to organic mercury. Dental amalgam is the most important source for elemental mercury vapour in the general population. Inorganic mercury compounds are known as mercuric salts, which are sometimes used in skin-lightening creams and as antiseptic creams and ointments,” says Al-Saleh.

Thiomersal, thiomerosal

Thiomersal, sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate, is the sodium salt of an organic mercury compound and represents another exposure route. Thiomersal is known as thimerosal and Merthiolate in the US and was commonly used as an antibacterial agent in vaccine packaging. Presumably, thiomersal has saved thousands of lives by preventing potentially lethal Staphylococcus infections in those being vaccinated.

Nevertheless, it is use is now being phased out in the developed world through safety legislation, but it is still in use in Saudi Arabia, Al-Saleh points out, and elsewhere.

Al-Saleh’s extensive review of research into mercury toxicity does suggest that there is a need to evaluate antenatal and postnatal exposure to different forms of organic and inorganic mercury, especially given concerns regarding delayed neurological development in different age groups. This ongoing research will provide science-based evidence, rather than hearsay and scaremongering, regarding mercury exposure and provide healthcare providers and policymakers with the facts. Spurious anecdotes about paranoid parents panicked by environmental cleanup firms out to make a fast buck should not figure in this evidence.

Iman A. Al-Saleh (2009). Health implications of mercury exposure in children International Journal of Environment and Health, 3 (1), 22-57

Autism Saliva Test

autism I recently reported on the spit test being developed for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It’s in the very early stages of development (this is not an antenatal test), but the details were certainly of interest to the target audience on the SpecNOW site.

Of course, the mainstream media picked up on the news of the possibility of such a simple test for autism too and the publication also coincided with literary revelations about Paul Dirac, the twentieth century physicist often labelled the British Einstein, and a debate in The Guardian newspaper concerning the possibility of antenatal testing and independent research by Cambridge University’s Simon Baron-Cohen. Although Baron-Cohen’s work is not looking for an antenatal test for autism, it has certainly led to a call for a public debate on the ethics of such a test.

Obviously, in the course of writing my SpecNOW item I contacted Massimo Castagnola of the Università Cattolica in Rome, Italy, whose team is behind the saliva test and asked him about its potential.

“The analysis of saliva, at least at the moment of the research, cannot detect a subject with autism spectrum disorder (ASD),” he told me, “Diagnosis of ASD is always a task of complex neuropsychiatric tests, made by a specialist in infant neuropsychiatry.” Indeed, Baron-Cohen is on record as saying: “Autistic traits are also normal – it is just a matter of how many of these you have.”

Castagnola explained how his team had discovered that a specific modification of salivary peptides (known as hypo-phosphorylation) is present in the saliva of a small subgroup of ASD patients. Nevertheless, the presence of these abnormal peptides, which suggest a biochemical history of failed protein activation in the patients has high statistical significance).

He pointed out that, “The analysis of a larger group of patients and controls will be necessary in order to confirm the results. Interestingly, low levels of phosphorylation of salivary peptides were observed by us in a previous study performed on saliva of pre-term newborns.”

Phosphorylation, a metabolic process that activates many proteins is under the control of an enzyme known as Golgi-casein kinase. This is a pleiotropic enzyme, which is expressed in several tissues other than salivary glands, including the brain.

“Our hypothesis is that the observed hypo-phosphorylation could be connected to a defect of the kinase, and the defect could reflect not only in hypo-phosphorylation of salivary peptides [which has no effects on the mouth], but also in the hypo-phosphorylation of proteins involved in brain development either during foetal growth or in the first months of life. This is a clue for the molecular basis of disease, at least for a subgroup of patients,” Castagnola told me.

Importantly, hypo-phosphorylation of salivary peptides is not necessarily indicative of ASD, as I mention in my SpecNOW article. Only 18 out of 27 had this characteristic of their salivary peptides. But, hypo-phosphorylation might be present because of another medical problem that may have neurological and/or multifactorial origin.

“Diagnosis of ASD is complex, and ASD is almost certainly a multi-factorial disease,” Castagnola adds, “It would be important to have an early biochemical marker, able to discriminate between different groups of ASD patients.”

There are, however, no practical therapeutic consequences of the Italian research at the moment. “If future research provides further information, we hope that salivary analysis could be useful in order to address a subgroup of ASD patients toward specific therapies,” Castagnola says. “In principle, the non-invasiveness of the test should allow its wide use.”

However, even if such a test were demonstrated to have clinical efficacy, there is currently no therapy that could be applied to follow up detection of salivary hypo-phosphorylation state. Perhaps also of concern is that some ASD patients tend not to be cooperative, have a delicate neuropsychiatric asset, and using the test could disturb the patient. “The test, at least at the moment, should be performed only in very specialistic centres that would go in deep on the molecular basis of the disease,” adds Castagnola.

In the Guardian discussion, which is not related directly to the saliva test work, piece, Michael Fitzpatrick suggests that worrying about antenatal testing is premature, because there are dangerous procedures being performed on children now. Apparently, the anti-vaccine lobby and others claim that autism in boys is associated with premature puberty and with toxic levels of mercury, from vaccines and environmental pollution (Baron-Cohen’s research has not yet proven a connection between exposure to high levels of testosterone during foetal development). These testosterone and toxic metal theories have led to the emergence of some very dangerous quackery including chelation therapy to remove heavy metals from the body (of course chelates will also mop up vital trace elements too) and the use of testosterone inhibitors. The claims of at least one advocate, Mark Geier, have been dismissed as intellectually dishonest in a 2006, court case, reports Fitzpatrick.

Indeed, Baron-Cohen has written to The Guardian in an effort to rebalance what he sees as problems with the reporting in The Guardian of his research. His study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry was not, he says, about prenatal screening for autism, and indeed did not test children with autism. “The aim of the study was simply to understand the basic mechanisms causing individual differences in autistic traits in an otherwise typical sample,” he says. But, maybe he protests too much, the BPS press release quotes him as saying such a test would require thousands not hundreds of subjects and then adds, “Our ongoing collaboration with the Biobank in Denmark will enable us to test that link in the future.” So it certainly looks like his team is working towards an antenatal test for autism.

Moreover, a BBC article by Baron-Cohen published before The Guardian reports and discussion certainly makes that clear. From his introduction: “The prospect of a prenatal test for autism, allowing couples to choose whether to have a baby with the condition, is coming closer. And with it also comes the possibility of a prenatal drug treatment being developed.” In that article Baron-Cohen warns that “caution is needed to ensure associated talents, like numerical abilities, are not lost if the test or a ‘cure’ become available.”

Massimo Castagnola, Irene Messana, Rosanna Inzitari, Chiara Fanali, Tiziana Cabras, Alessandra Morelli, Anna Maria Pecoraro, Giovanni Neri, Maria Giulia Torrioli, Fiorella Gurrieri (2008). Hypo-Phosphorylation of Salivary Peptidome as a Clue to the Molecular Pathogenesis of Autism Spectrum Disorders Journal of Proteome Research, 7 (12), 5327-5332 DOI: 10.1021/pr8004088

Catching Obesity

Obesity overweight UPDATED: Is it possible that obesity, like the common cold is infectious? You’d think so if you believed research that’s been carried out over the last decade and hits the tabloid headlines again this week.

The research suggests that a highly infectious virus might be behind some cases of obesity. There is constant talk of an epidemic of overweight in the developed world. Overindulgence, lack of exercise, sedentary lifestyles are usually blamed. Occasionally, the words genetics or glands are mentioned, but rarely is the obesity epidemic thought of as a disease like, flu or winter vomiting virus, a disease you can “catch”, in other words. But, this research detracts from those genuine causes of overweight and might even do more harm than good, giving those with a less than healthy appetite another excuse to over indulge and avoid raising their heart rate above the average.

The research is highlighted today in several UK news papers and apparently lends weight to the idea that a highly infectious cold-like virus, known as AD-36 could cause obesity in some people.

It’s perhaps not surprising that, aside from the Daily Telegraph, most of the other outlets that report this work without real commentary are tabloids, the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, and Fox News, for instance. The original research is by Nikhil Dhurandhar of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Louisiana and colleagues and will also be highlighted on the supposedly reputable BBC Horizon TV program this evening in an episode that attempts to answer the question, Why are thin people not fat?

Dhurandhar’s answer to that question is that those people simply haven’t yet caught the obesity bug. Apparently, the “virus goes to the lungs and spreads through the body. It goes to various organs and tissues such as the liver, kidney, brain and fat tissue…causes fat cells to replicate.” Moreover, the team’s latest paper published 22nd January 2009 in the journal Obesity, suggests that fat cells, known as 3T3-L1 cells, accumulate fat molecules (lipids) faster than normal when a person is infected with AD-36.

None of this is new, however. Dhurandhar and colleagues have been searching for an obesity “bug” for at least a decade. They published preliminary results in 1996 and 1997 and since then have apparently tested their theory in chickens, mice and marmosets. My good friend Tabitha Powledge wrote about the theory back in 2000 for Salon). Dhurandhar’s work on the viral theory of obesity also hit the news in the summer of 2007 when he reported details to the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. At the time, the studies revealed that almost a third of people with obesity were infected with the AD-36 virus compared to just over one in ten of lean individuals. But does the presence of such a virus truly imply some obesity is due to catching an infection?

Last year, R.L. Atkinson of the Obetech Obesity Research Center, in Richmond, Virginia, reviewed the field and concluded that, “a portion of the worldwide epidemic of obesity since 1980 could be due to infections with human adenoviruses” (Int J Pediatr Obes. 2008;3 Suppl 1:37-43). More recently, Dutch researchers Vincent van Ginneken, Laura Sitnyakowsky, and Jonathan Jeffery, discussed Dhurandhar’s work in the journal Medical Hypotheses and agree with the findings: “We postulate that AD-36 may be a contributing factor to the worldwide rising problem of obesity,” they say, “We suggest the extension of comparative virological studies between North America and Europe, and studies between discordant twins (both dizygous and monozygous).”

The key phrases are “could be due” and “may be a contributing factor”.

It is very unlikely that, even for a proportion of individuals, will the viral theory prove to be the cause of their obesity. This is not the straightforward case we saw with peptic ulcers and the discovery of Helicobacter pylori. Even the link between gum disease bacteria and heart problems, while tentative, is more substantial.

It’s ironic that this research should come to the fore (again) within a week of the European Union giving the go ahead for pharmacists to sell the obesity drug Orlistat over the counter (OTC).

It is possible that for a small number of people the best defence against obesity would be to avoid catching this so-called obesity bug? Best way to avoid bugs? Enjoy a good diet, do not overindulge, and get plenty of fresh air and exercise and perhaps follow the how to avoid colds and flu tips too. Good nutrition, moderation and exercise will cover you for the biggest obesity risk factors, boost your immune system to a degree, and help you avoid adenoviruses infection. It’s a well-padded strategy, I’d say.

Miloni A. Rathod, Pamela M. Rogers, Sharada D. Vangipuram, Emily J. McAllister, Nikhil V. Dhurandhar (2009). Adipogenic Cascade Can Be Induced Without Adipogenic Media by a Human Adenovirus Obesity DOI: 10.1038/oby.2008.630

More than three decades in science communication

TL:DR – Sciencebase owner, David Bradley, has been in science communication since January 1989.

I’m not retiring just yet, but since before the pandemic, I reduced my client-list and then during the pandemic and in the midst of family crises, i reduced my workload still further.

My focus is more on my wildlife photography and music these days, although I do still have to pay the bills and thankfully have outlets that are still willing to pay for my words. It would be nice to be able to pay the bills with the photography and music, but I don’t think that’s ever likely to happen.

UPDATE: 2019-01-23 – Ten years since I wrote this blog post and now I am fast-approaching my 30th anniversary…I’ve stuck with the science writing and blogging during the intervening years, watched my kids grow into fine young adults and found myself singing and playing in a choir, a band and as a solo act as well as photographing things endlessly, including in the last year or two, birds and moths.

2009-01-23 Today is my twentieth anniversary in #SciComm working as a science writer-editor. And yet, it seems like only yesterday that I walked into the editorial offices of the Royal Society of Chemistry, having abandoned the chemical lab in favour of publishing on 23rd January 1989. A fateful day. Not only did it represent a permanent move to Cambridge and a totally different career direction to what I’d imagined during university days, but it was also the day I first met my then-future and wonderful wife, Mrs Sciencebase.

It’s all been a rollercoaster of a ride in more senses than one, and something of a long-term follicular challenge with respect to building the business. If you visit my CV/resume page you can see a list of past and present publications, magazines, papers, journals, trade pubs, websites, broadcast media companies, and not-for-profits with whom I’ve worked during the last decades.

I suspected from an early age, surreptitiously dismantling watches, building Lego Technics gizmos, messing with magnets and steelies, and reading anything scientific or technical voraciously, that I’d probably end up in science. I love science, see? I love feeling curious about the world around us and that science provides us with explanations as to why things are the way they are and how they work.

My awful passport photo from the 1980s It certainly does unweave the rainbow; and that’s a good thing. To my mind, rainbows are more wonderful because now I have a feeling for how they work as well as an aesthetic appreciation of the natural beauty. I’m sure Newton would agree. A rose by any other name smells sweeter if you can envisage the chemistry that produces its scent, and I’m sure Shakespeare would agree with me on that point too!

Science can predict the future, it can solve problems, it allows us to see further than we otherwise would by providing giant shoulders on which we might stand. Moreover, the giants can walk around and so, unlike received wisdom, archaic dogma and mythological explanations of reality, science can shift its paradigms when faced with new evidence or a predictive failure of a theory.

I discovered quickly enough during lab sessions that I was not cut out to handle test-tubes and Petri dishes. However, I felt I could turn a neat phrase to explain why such things are useful and what the science they enable can teach us. Editors such as Nina Hall at New Scientist, Dan Clery at Science, Rick Stevenson at Chemistry in Britain, Mandy Mackenzie at Gas Jar, and others seemed to agree and gave me the requisite column inches in their publications early in my career to wax lyrical on countless scientific discoveries.

This is about the 1500th blog post on Sciencebase, which started life way back in 1996 as Elemental Discoveries, I’ve no idea how many words I’ve written in total across all those dozens of publications, it literally runs into the millions. A quick Fermi calculation based on my workbook would suggest an average of 1000 words per working day over the course of 20 years covering everything from news of the fundamental chemical discoveries such as buckyballs and conducting plastics to features on supercritical fluids or dark energy.

Full Metal Alchemist

Full Metal Alchemist First story to fall under the gaze of The Alchemist this week is synthetic HDL, a potential alternative therapy for cholesterol problems wrought through gold nanotechnology. Next, we hear of atomic ink that avoids the push and shove of microscopic manipulation by introducing the metallic nano swap meet.

Bed bugs, are apparently evolving resistance to second-generation pesticides, an international team has revealed the channel-swapping mechanism, which could help chemists design alternatives. Mass spectrometry of salivary secretions, surprisingly enough, may one day offer a chemical test for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is revealing how the female brain responds to the odour of male sweat. Oh, okay confession it wasn’t full metal.

Meanwhile, in additional news in my SpectroscopyNOW column:

Wine, rum and lead – Sailors and wine buffs beware. A novel method for the direct determination of lead in rum and wine could reveal their favourite tipple to be contaminated with potentially harmful quantities of the toxic heavy metal. The technique uses a flow injection hydride generation system coupled to an atomic absorption spectrometer with flame-quartz atomizer (FI-HG-AAS).

Bilious NMR – High-field NMR spectroscopy has been used for the first time to analyse human liver bile, as opposed to gall bladder bile, with a view to improving liver transplant success. I discussed this SpecNOW post in more detail on Sciencebase.

Drugs get heavy – Deuterated, “heavy”, pyridine adopts a different crystalline form from that of pyridine with a natural distribution of isotopes. The effect might be exploited in creating novel, more effective, versions of pharmaceutical products, according to researchers in Germany, as well as opening up studies into crystal morphology.

Melamine Milk Update

UPDATED UPDATE: Two men have been served a death sentence for their involvement in China’s melamine contaminated milk scandal. The former boss of the Sanlu dairy at the centre of the scandal was given life imprisonment. 19 other sentences handed down by the court in northern China, where Sanlu is based, are of lower severity.

More than 200 families whose babies were hospitalised after drinking infant milk formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine are taking their case to China’s highest court after being repeatedly ignored by lower courts, according to an AP report.

An earlier report revealed that the parents of an infant who died after drinking melamine milk have been paid 200,000 yuan (about $30,000) in compensation by the dairy company at the heart of the scandal, New Zealand owned Sanlu.

A report from Reuters says that the contaminated milk powder killed at least six children and sickened almost 300,000 last year. Many parents whose children were affected are hoping those responsible for the contamination will face the death penalty.

Now that the scandal is not so prominent in the media, investors are moving back in on China, Farming UK reports that Henry George Roberts company KKR & Co intend to invest US$100 million into the dairy industry in China. “Investing in China’s largest producer and distributor of fresh milk, the American company are gambling on the recent melamine scandal being behind them,” the magazine says. “The recent scandal in China over the use of melamine in milk, to raise the protein levels, has seen the values in the industry plummet.”

Reuters and others report that China now plans to impose production controls on melamine so that the melamine in milk scandal may never happen again. At the height of the debacle hundreds of products, not just infant formula, on supermarket shelves across the globe were tainted with the “Made in China” label. Thousands of visitors to the Sciencebase site over the last few months have arrived to get more information as the story unfolded. I will report on any subsequent developments as soon as they happen.

Transplant Spectroscopy

Yellow and black bile were considered by the ancients as two of the four vital humours of the human body along with phlegm and blood. Ancient and mediaeval Greco-Roman alternative medicine. Imbalances in these humours caused illness. The Greek names for the terms gave rise to the words “choler” (bile) [the prefix in cholesterol, of course] and “melancholia” (black bile). Excessive bile was supposed to produce an aggressive temperament, known as “choleric” and cause “biliousness.” Depression and other mental illnesses (melancholia) were ascribed to a bodily surplus of black bile.

We now know that bile is far more complex than that. The liver secretes bile into the gall bladder, which concentrates it and releases it into the duodenum. It is mainly composed of bile acids, which are an essential component of the digestive juices needed to absorb fats, proteins and fat-soluble vitamins. Bile also plays an excretory role in getting rid of cholesterol, bilirubin and worn out proteins, eliminating drugs, metabolites, toxins and heavy metals.

Bile also contains phospholipids (predominantly phosphatidylcholine), proteins, amino acids, nucleotides, vitamins, bilirubin and other organic anions and various inorganic substances. The overall composition is regulated by the liver but liver disease and malignancy of the biliary system can disrupt its chemical makeup. Now, researchers are looking at the NMR spectra of bile and other bodily fluids to help them diagnose and monitor illness and potentially to improve the outcome for liver transplant surgery.

I report details of the study in the new issue of SpectroscopyNOW’s NMR ezine.

“The study is just a small part of a much bigger project where we are examining the usefulness of metabonomics to monitor the outcome of liver transplants,” team member John Lindon of Imperial College London told me. “We have already published a paper on using NMR spectroscopy of intact human liver tissue biopsies in Analytical Chemistry (using high resolution magic-angle-spinning proton NMR) and we have several more publications submitted and in preparation,” he added.

The bile research is part of a collaboration between Lindon’s team at IC, Elaine Holmes and her team and the Liver Transplant team at King’s College Hospital, London. Colleagues from Portugal, with funding from the British Council, visited IC and also worked on the project there, as well as doing some of the analysis back in Portugal.

This particular study provides a baseline so that researchers know precisely what constitutes bile. “We plan to look for differences between biles from livers before transplantation and after transplantation,” adds Lindon, “knowing clinically what the liver status is.” This work could reveal biomarkers that could be used to distinguish between good graft function and poor function.

The metabolic profile of any biofluid is very complex and changes in this can be used for disease diagnosis or for looking at the beneficial effects of drugs or the detrimental effects of toxins. The changes can be subtle and complex and so the researchers use cheminformatics, in the form of multivariate statistics, to tease out the most significant effects. They are also studying the liver tissue itself and blood plasma.

Iola F. Duarte, Cristina Legido-Quigley, David A. Parker, Jonathan R. Swann, Manfred Spraul, Ulrich Braumann, Ana M. Gil, Elaine Holmes, Jeremy K. Nicholson, Gerard M. Murphy, Hector Vilca-Melendez, Nigel Heaton, John C. Lindon (2009). Identification of metabolites in human hepatic bile using 800 MHz 1H NMR spectroscopy, HPLC-NMR/MS and UPLC-MS Molecular BioSystems DOI: 10.1039/b814426e

Win Sputnik Mania

sputnik-mania On 4th October 1957, the Soviets made the shock announcement that they had sent the first craft ever into orbit around the Earth. The Americans were stunned, how could the USSR have stolen a march on them in this way. That shock then turned to fear with the realisation that the Soviets were obviously that much more technologically advanced than they had suspected.

This revelation led to the advent of the space race with the birth of NASA in the US a year later, a policy change that culminated in 1969’s descent of man to the lunar surface. But, it was also the techno trigger that started the cold war that ended twenty years later with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Now, 20 years on, the world is still in political and economic turmoil. from the vantage point of the gutter we may not be able to reach for the stars, but we can still watch them.

In the excellent Sputnik Mania (now on a double DVD from History Films with an hour and a half of bonus footage), the vivid impact on the American psyche following the successful launch of Sputnik is played out.

I’ve got a spare copy, courtesy of History Films, to give away, if you’d like a chance to win the DVD sign up for the free Sciencebase email newsletter. The winner will be picked at random from the next 100 subscribers. Your email address will be used only to deliver the newsletter and to notify the winner.

Physical Spotlight

The January issue of my Intute Spotlight column is now live

3D astrophysics – Astrophysicists are using a novel 3D computer visualization technique to help them understand the role of gravity in the formation of vast, stellar nurseries, also known as molecular clouds. …

Cosmic nanodiamonds – Tiny particles of crystalline carbon found in sediments at six sites in North America dating back almost 13000 years, suggest that a swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets …

Microbial power – New insights into the workings of a metal-munching bacteria and how it exploits semiconducting nanominerals could provide a new approach to making biological fuel cells …

David Bradley, Actor

All the world’s a stage, and we are merely players. But, some of us play more than others. Take yours truly for instance, David Bradley Science Writer, also known as David Bradley Lover, Player, Puller, Guitarist, Photographer, Singer (but thankfully not Killer, see BBC news recently). I like to play with extramural pages on the Sciencebase website, creating little vignettes outside the conventional science blog. One of the aims is to ensure that my rather common name is seen more widely in the context of my website rather than web surfers heading elsewhere.

Of course you may actually be looking for the Shakesperean actor David Bradley who most famously plays Argus Filch in the Harry Potter movies. It’s rather a peculiar coincidence that David Bradley the actor is a member of the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) as David Bradley Science Writer is also a member of the RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry). [UPDATE: I met that David Bradley in a pub once, he told me had had my book and we swapped autographs.

Of course, you may be looking for the other David Bradley actor, known now as Dai Bradley (because of Equity rules) who played Billy Casper in Ken Loach’s movie Kes, adapted from the story A Kestrel for a Knave.

So, here’s the link to Filch the actor – http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0103195/

and here’s the link to the Kes actor – http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0103193/

There may be other David Bradley actors out there and there may be other links on this page that are of more interest to anyone looking for information on David Bradley, either way, this has been David Bradley Science Writer playing.

This post may have appeared long before 8th January 2009, but that’s the most recent timestamp I have for it in the archives, so that’s the date it gets in the blog.