Almost 1 million pageviews

As of midnight on 31st December 2009, Sciencebase had served 934 176 pages to visitors in that month alone, just shy of a nice round 1 million. Thank you all for joining us during that time.

UPDATE: 2014-06-30 There were months over the years since July 1999 when I first established sciencebase.com from the original Elemental Discoveries webzine/blog started in 1995, where we also had close to 1 million visitors per month, but as far as I can tell that was the peak: December 2009. The site is still very much active though, as I hope you realise, and it must takes one video, one post, one update to catch the zeitgeist and go viral and it may well break through the 1 000 000. So, subscribe to the feed, add us to Feedly, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, circle us on Google+ etc and stay ahead of the crowd!

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Five-step plan for green design

I recently saw a research paper discussing the lack of tools for designers hoping to make their products greener, more environmentally benign, sustainable even. The paper focused more on the likes of coming up with a green espresso machine and offered a five-step scheme for getting the green credentials booked into a the design and manufacturing process from the beginning rather than paying lip service to the eco-buzz further down the line or even just in the after-the-fact marketing session.

  1. A product model is defined generically based on existing products on the market.
  2. The design team considers what might be improved in the generic model.
  3. Suggested improvements are validate based on technical and economic factors and user attractiveness.
  4. Environmental performance and ecological indicators are assessed.
  5. Design results and experiments are interpreted as a hierarchy and assessed.

Although the authors of the paper claim some originality to their eco approach, I asked a colleague in the chemistry world about what kinds of approaches people in that industry were taken. After all, an espresso machine is probably never going to be intrinsically green, given the nature of coffee growing, transport, and the middle-class domesticity and comfort associated with such a luxury device.

Apparently, the Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network has as one of its major priorities getting companies to look closely at sustainable design (given that many of the innovations needed are at the chemistry/chemicals level).

Mike Pitts looks after this area for them and they have put together a Sustainable Design Guide and have been recently piloting Sustainable Design Workshops with companies. So, it seems that while espresso designers may not have been thinking about greening their products chemists most certainly have. In fact, over the last twenty years ago, I’ve probably written well over 100 articles about the greening of the chemical industry through the development of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), supercritical fluids (SCFs), fluorinated reagents, novel non-noble catalysts and much more.

In Europe there are also a couple of European projects around at the moment for helping companies look at Life Cycle Analysis (and thus sustainable design). While European money helped get a program called CCaLC developed that is specifically design to help small to medium-size enterprises with evaluating life cycle impacts of their products. The development team in Manchester have also worked with larger companies).

Research Blogging IconDominique Millet, Nicolas Tchertchian, & Daniel Brissaud (2009). How to identify the most promising areas of environmental improvement at the early stages of the design process? Int. J. Design Engineering, 2 (3), 299-319

Religious science and other science books

Having posted about atheism recently on the SciScoop science forum, it seems quite apt to have received for review a couple of books with a religious theme at this time of year.

The first is The Faith Instinct by Nicholas Wade. Wade is a well-known New York Times writer who presents the case for an evolutionary origin to religious faith. Religion has probably been with us in one form or another for at least the last 50,000 years yet no one, until recently, has asked whether belief might be some kind of evolutionary adaptation that helps form cohesive societies and provide our conscious minds with a metaphysical security blanket against the troublesome thoughts of our own demise.

Second up is Katherine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley’s A Climate for Change in which they offer the facts of global warming within the context of their religious faith.

The next book in the pile on my desk is Your Mind. It offers 10 apparently simple truths that will set you free. Think of it as an owner’s manual for your psyche. The book is co-authored by two leading psychologists and if at first seems like the usual psychobabble, actually is anything but, providing readers with a clear understanding of how to understand their minds, clearly.

Introducing science communication (edited by Mark L. Brake and Emma Weitkamp) is perhaps essential reading for students and practitioners learning to communicate science. It provides the key steps to help science communicators express complex scientific ideas for non-expert audiences.

Supplements Exposed by Brian Clement sets out to debunk the apparent myth that dietary supplements are necessarily a good thing. He discusses what he describes as the “truth they don’t want you to know about vitamins, minerals, and their effects on your health”. Of course, any book that talks about the mysterious “they” always agitates me even before I’ve turned the first page, but I felt even more agitated once I had turned that first page as he waxes lyrical about “synthetic” vitamins, as if the vitamin C found in oranges is somehow chemically distinct from the manufactured substance (it’s not). The cover claims this to be a “provocative” book and certainly there are issues with the whole supplements industry, but I’ve never felt happy reading books that seem to take the paranoid conspiracy theorist’s perspective even if the author is some kind of insider…

Finally, a topic I touched on at the time of the planetary realignments – The Case for Pluto – How a little planet made a big difference. It’s a pocket-sized hardback for a pocket-sized planet, or is it?

PS I also received an enormous poster in an enormous cardboard tube airmailed from Scottsville, Virginia. It’s a truly astounding poster from Chronaca.com and represents the Chronologium Academicus by Guy Cutrufo. It is to academia and time what a world map is to geography and place. I just wish I had the wallspace to hang it…

Myrrh, bones, and medical waste

Hepatic epiphany for myrrh – A statistical analysis of experimental data on laboratory animals shows that the resin of the middle-eastern tree Commiphora, better known as “myrrh” can act as a protective antioxidant against liver damage caused by organic lead compounds. Myrrh is a rust-coloured resin obtained from several species of Commiphora and Balsamodendron tree, native to the Middle East and Ethiopia. It is perhaps best known as one of the gifts of the Magi offered to the infant Jesus, along with gold and frankincense in the Christmas legend. During that time, myrrh was revered as an embalming ointment and is also an ingredient in incense.

Crystal first for enzyme – For the first time, researchers have used X-ray crystallography and NMR to directly visualize an enzyme in its low and higher-energy state and demonstrated the crucial role of interconversion between these states for catalysis. The study offers up new molecular sites as potential drug targets.

Boning up on NMR – Solid-state NMR spectroscopy can analyse intact bone and could lead to atomic-level explorations of how disease and aging affect bone. It could show, for instance, how age-related water loss leads to structural changes.

Medical fly guys – Inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence have been used to investigate the content of incinerated medical waste fly ash revealing important details about elemental concentrations in this problematic waste.

25 Scientific musos or 25 musical scientists

Science is fun, but there are times when even the most dedicated begoggled labcoat wearing bench monkey has to relax and lots of science types seem particularly drawn to playing music. Now, I’m not saying any of these people are bench monkeys, but they do all play music, as far as I know:

London
Harpist, musician, science writer, cake baker and knitter
oh_henry Henry Scowcroft
London
I write and geek for Cancer Research UK. This has nothing to do with them. Oh I play music too.
London, United Kingdom
A Royal Society of Chemistry PR, I like science, technology, media, journalism, Mac, PC, iPhone, guitar, jazz, rock, comedy and miscellany.
CameronNeylon CameronNeylon
N 55°56′ 0” / W 3°11′ 0”
Open Science, Open Access, and bringing more experimental techniques to the biosciences. I work for the UK STFC but tweets are my personal opinion.
UK
David Bradley Science Writer, Cambridge, UK, loves family, conversation, guitar, photography, singing, walking, cycling…science
iPhone: 52.509792,13.377736
physicist, hacker, opensource dev, family guy, piano player
Erlangen, Germany
Physicist (PhD, Priv.Doz.), Theory of Complex Systems, Biophysics. Plays Jazz piano. Loves Japan.
lmuzzi luigi muzzi
Rome – Italy
physicist (superconductors; energy; nuclear fusion); piano player; critical consumer (GAS-Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale); hope in a more sustainable society
renehh René Steiner
Hamburg, Germany
I'm piano player, physicist, bridge player, husband, tekkie, golfer, father and finance director
Málaga! SPAIN!!
20 years old, I play guitar in a band called THE CRUSH, I study biology…and I love the music more than all 3
pathoadaptation MarkStrom
Seattle, WA, USA
Microbiologist/molecular biologist, genomics applications, Mac User, part-time blues guitar player
arareko Mauricio Herrera C.
Mexico City
alpinist. biologist. climber. dirtbag. geek. guitar/bass player. hacker. headbanger. photographer. traveler. ultrarunner. viking. ex-yahoo!.
robajackson Rob Jackson
Keele, United Kingdom
Chemistry Lecturer and Researcher in Computational Solid State Chemistry; Chemistry Recorder, British Science Association; trombone player.
mndoci Deepak Singh
Between a molecule and a byte
Manage biz dev for Amazon EC2. Scientist, musician, wannabe hacker, Open Data geek
ngeise Nick Geise
Tacoma, WA
scientist, musician, vegan, DIYer
Wirral UK
dad, chemistry teacher, plays guitar in soul/funk band, also into bach and mozart, movie fan
Sarokrae Chengy
Cambridge, UK
Nerd girl. *heart* Maths, Physics, Music, Piano, Clarinet & Internet
Exeter, UK
The name's Ken. I'm studying for a BSc in Maths at Exeter University. I am a gamer, Arsenal fan and dispenser of wisdom. I play guitar, piano, cello, drums.
London, UK
Musician, physicist and podcaster. Not necessarily in that order.
San Diego, CA
Musician, aspiring Biologist, and amateur disc golfer. I like sports
formerly of Albany
Biologist, Webmaster, Mommy. Musician (vocalist), LIT (Librarian in Training) :-)
Adamleeguitar Adam Lee
UK
Guitarist, prodcucer, musician, biologist! :-D
Preston, Lancashire
Biologist, Botanist, Writer, Illustrator & Musician, but not necessarily in that order.
Beaufort, NC
Marine Biologist, Writer, Musician, Purveyor of the Spineless, Evangelist of Open Access
bobmaccallum Bob MacCallum
London
The original, and best uncoolbob…

This is the original list of 25 scientific musos on Twitter, I won’t be updating it here. I will be adding to the actual live list on Twitter, at least until I have 500 members and then I’ll stop (that’s the twitter list limit).

I found out about this musical scientific site after I started compiling my list – http://scientistmusicians.wordpress.com/

Thinking about electric vehicles

Electric vehicles reduce noise and local air pollution, such as nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and ground-level ozone, but do they simply relocate the carbon tire-tracks to fossil-fired power stations or are there benefits on the global scale?

Fundamentally, an electric engine can achieve 85 to 90% energy conversion efficiency, which contrasts starkly with the internal combustion engine, which can achieve at most 20%, requiring the conversion of oil-derived fuel (diesel or petroleum) into mechanical motion. So, there it might just be possible that electric vehicles could be greener, but only if the carbon tire-tracks are smaller when all energies and emissions are added into the equation.

Ã…sgeir Helland of Think Global AS (manufacturer of the Think City electric car), based in Snaroya, Norway, thinks so. He has carried out a “well-to-wheel” carbon dioxide analysis of the usage phase of electric vehicles compared with vehicles using an internal combustion engine. His study confirms that electric vehicles do indeed relocate the carbon emissions from the transport sector to the electricity sector. Of course, as electricity generation becomes increasingly based on renewables that will matter less.

Nevertheless, Helland’s research shows that urban driving leads to total carbon emission reductions from 30 to 95% depending on the country in question. “In rush hour the electric vehicle outperforms all other fossil-fuelled alternatives even if charged on electricity from hard coal,” says Helland.

Now, I know this blog is all “science part”, but here’s a bit of data just to rev up the date. At the fuel station, the associated well-to-tank emissions for the supply of 1 litre of fuel are almost 0.5 kg (478.5 g) for petroleum (gas) and 420 g for diesel. The carbon dioxide emissions per litre of fuel combusted are 2.4 and 2.7 kg for petroleum and diesel, respectively. The total emissions associated with consuming 1 l of fuel were 2.88 kg for gasoline (0.48 kg/l + 2.40 kg/l) and 3.08 kg for diesel (0.42 kg/l + 2.66 kg/l).

An electric vehicle, exemplified by the Th!nk City car, will reduce global carbon dioxide emissions compared with internal combustion engines. “This is true for all countries and urban driving patterns regardless of the electricity mixes analysed in this study,” Helland says, “For urban driving, the reductions amount to about 95% in Norway, 90% in Switzerland, 40 to 60% in the UK, and 30 to 50% in the Netherlands.

There are 215 million cars in the European Union with average emissions of some 160 grams per kilometre and related well-to-wheel emissions of 186 g/km. Replacing only 10% of the European car fleet would reduce the yearly carbon dioxide emissions to almost 50 million tonnes with a relatively modest increase in electricity generation requirements.

“The electric vehicle outperforms all internal combustion engine alternatives if charged on electricity from a renewable source,” concludes Helland, “Moving from a combustion engine to an electric engine for vehicles will be a necessary change to reduce the impacts of transport on climate change. The electric vehicle’s environmental benefits are significant.”

But, then he would say that…

What are you thoughts, are electric vehicles an environmental panacea or do we need a paradigm shift in attitudes towards transport?

Research Blogging IconÃ…sgeir Helland (2009). Well-to-wheel CO2 analysis of electric and ICE vehicles: are global CO2 emission reductions possible? Int. J. Global Warming, 1 (4), 432-442

  • Energy storage key to electric car plan, committee says (cbc.ca)
  • Study: Electric Cars Produce 30 Percent More Emissions Than Ethanol Cars (simplygreen.co.za)
  • Earth’s greenhouse gases reach record highs (cbc.ca)

SEVI and HIV

Kicking off my SpectroscopyNOW ezine updates this week with an item on how NMR may have unravelled why some people are more susceptible to catching HIV than others. Then there is the MRI work that shows that for obese people BMI (body mass index) is a very poor indicator of heart disease risk based on internal fat distribution.

Next up is work that could tell olive growers the best time to harvest for optimal nutritional benefits and the best olive oil quality without their having to guess based on colour and other subjective factors. In very different research, diamonds and microwaves could herald the advent of quantum computing. While the insidious environmental threat that is arsenic in groundwater on which first reported way back in 1995 still persists but could be so easily handled by new detection techniques. Finally, new clues provided by X-rays about the biochemistry of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease might one day lead to new approaches to treatment.

Enigmatic viral promotion – An enigmatic component of human semen, SEVI, semen-derived enhancer of virus infection, boosts infectivity of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS. Since its discovery in 2007, researchers have been hoping to learn more about its structure with the aim of inhibiting its infection-promoting activity; NMR spectroscopy has now produced new clues.

MRI reveals BMI as bogus heart health indicator – Body mass index, BMI, is not a reliable indicator of overall fitness for obese individuals as assessed by internal, or visceral, fat. An MRI and NMR study reveals that fat accumulation in different parts of the body, such as around the heart and the aorta and within the liver, is associated with decreased heart function, but BMI offers no correlation for this problem.

Olive ripening – Nutritionally useful carotenoids and phenolic compounds increase as olives grow but then decrease as they ripen. Now, researchers have demonstrated that monitoring two Raman bands can help growers keep an eye on these changes and so optimise their product for olive oil production.

Resonant approach to quantum problem – Microwave waveguides on a diamond-based chip can generate a magnetic field large enough to change the quantum state of an atomic-scale defect in less than one billionth of a second, using a process that is similar to the one in magnetic resonance imaging and potentially leading to a new approach to quantum computing.

Golden arsenic assessment- A new light-scattering technique that uses gold nanoparticles can selectively detect arsenic ions, without interference from dissolved alkali and alkali earth metals, improving on water tests based on Raman and SPR. UV-Vis spectroscopy was used in conjunction with tunnelling electron microscopy to characterise the nanoparticles themselves.

Parkinson’s X-ray – US researchers have used an X-ray technique to solve the molecular structure of a key portion of a cellular receptor implicated in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other serious illnesses.

Party tricks for scientists

Any one of these tricks from Richard Wiseman is sure to get you dozens of swooning fans at a solstice-event party, as long as you don’t burn down the house while doing the tricks with lit matches.

Classic tricks including balancing forks on a matchstick, relighting a candle without touching it, snuffing candles with bicarb and vinegar without spilling a drop, and several more. The neat finale was the one trick I hadn’t seen, it’s so cute you will want to try it as soon as. But, like I say be careful with those matches.

Sciencebase blogging schedule

This is the Sciencebase blogging schedule for the remainder of 2009:

Sciencebase.com Dec 8Science news round-up with a spectral twist

Sciencebase.com Dec 9 Electric vehicles better than hybrids?

ImagingStorm.co.uk – Dec 10 Science of sepia-toned photography

Sciencetext.com Dec 15 Cathartic emails for overworked journalists

Sciencetext.com Dec 16 Tips for Twitter brutes

Sciencebase.com Dec 17 Pre-Xmas science book reviews

SciScoop.com Dec 22 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) diatribe (anon guest post)

Sciencebase.com Dec 23 Green by design

Sciencebase.com Dec 24 Happy Solstice Event

Nothing’s fixed and I will undoubtedly slot a few extra posts in here and there depending on what science and technology news catches my attention. Headlines will all appear in my @sciencebase Twitter Feed and intros will also appear on the Sciencebase Facebook Fan Page. Service may be intermittent during the coming solstice event celebrations but will resume as per normal in 2010.