Category: Science

The Sciencebase science category, updates on scientific happenings from around the world. Check out the Sciencebase Twitter and Facebook pages for even more.

Black holes are intergalactic

According to a Cambridge U press release just in, the longest ever X-ray observation (1 million seconds) of a galaxy cluster proves that black holes can span intergalactic distances and actually block growth of the largest galaxies.

The Cambridge team has obtained new evidence that black holes are far more powerful cosmic entities than previously thought. Their influence can span vast distances, the researchers claim, heating the gas between galaxies and putting a restraining order on galactic size as stars can only form when gases cool. “It’s as if a heat source the size of a fingernail heats up a region the size of Earth,” team member Andrew Fabian explained.

Don’t you just love these comparisons? Why not say a gas fire heating up Jupiter instead, or an LED heating up the moon, or something equally unimaginable…oh well…the research replete with simile I assume is published in the December “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”. It’s like a single research paper illuminating a pan-galactic civilisation, or not as the case may be.

How to avoid colds and flu

These past few days I’ve felt rather listless, had vaguely aching limbs, a mild headache that comes and goes, and a dull, throbbing ache where I had my flu jab more than a month ago…could it be that I’ve actually caught flu, and that the vaccine has held off the worst of the symptoms? That throbbing pain at the site of the jab seems to be the smoking gun, but I’m not sure whether there is some persistent immune response at the site of an injection that might cause recurrent symptoms when one is struck subsequently by the live virus…

Anyone know for sure? I’d be interested in qualified comments

Meanwhile check out our practical tips on how to avoid colds and flu.

Golden Anniversary for Chemistry News

Reactive Reports, the chemistry Webzine from science writer David Bradley and software company ACD/Labs, celebrate its fiftieth issue this month. The Webzine grew from discussions between ACD/Labs VP and Chief Science Officer Antony Williams and David Bradley and were aimed at finding a way to bring the best chemistry news to a growing Web audience.

The first issue was published in September 1999 and covered issues that are as topical today as they were then – novel anticancer drugs from natural products, how to improve battery life to cut energy costs, and nanotechnology for building the next generation of electronics.

Reactive Reports has picked up several prestigious awards in its almost seven-year history including being a finalist in the Pirelli Awards for the innovative use of multimedia in science, a Scientific American sci-tech Web award, and a Scout Report Selection.

The Webzine’s growing archive now contains more than 200 chemistry news items as well a humor section, reviews of 150 chemistry Websites, and a links section to point readers to other useful chemistry resources.

With Issue 50, Reactive Reports changes course slightly, gone are the Star Picks and in their place we present a new profile section featuring a different chemical innovator each month. This month it’s chemical Web pioneer Peter Murray-Rust of the University of Cambridge who has much to say about open source issues and how chemists can make the most of new technology.

We also have the usual round-up of chemistry news and a news feature on Chmoogle the chemical search engine.

We hope the new format of Reactive Reports will make the next 50 issues even more educational and stimulating for our readers. Get a sneak preview of Issue 50 and check our reactions now!

Beyond Einstein

As Einstein Year draws to a close, CERN celebrates the big man with an epic 12-hour live webcast looking at relativity and beyond. Sciencebase contributor Michael Marshall is helping with the publicity and tells us the webcast offers a unique chance to chat with scientists and find out how a century-old bright idea has changed the world in which we live.

1st December: 12h00-00h00 Central Eur Time

Treating Drug Addiction

There is not much in the plant world that people have not sniffed, snorted, smoked, rubbed in, injected or attempted to get inside their bodies in other ways in the hope of eliciting someone kind of magical response. The well-known plants that gave a positive result in the primitive tests – the coca plant, poppies, marijuana, tobacco, betel trees, coffee beans – have since grown infamous leaving the air heavy with their tragic scent in so many places. Find out about the plant that itself could be used in the fight against drug addiction.

Monster black hole

SciScoop member “barakn” commented on a recent posting about the massive black hole that astronomers claim to have found. As ever, there are two sides to a story and, as barakn points out, conflicting research has now been published that suggests it would have taken three galaxies colliding to eject such a large black hole, so it is perhaps more likely that what at first looked like such an astronomical object is in fact a common or garden quasar…

Blogging to Save the World

Imagine a blog that does more than flatter the ego of its creator and those it links to…imagine a blog that might actually be useful!

Dr Jean-Claude Bradley [no relation] an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University emailed to tell me that he has set up a blog that will join the dots between real scientific problems and concrete and actionable solutions.

For example, one posting presents 90 molecules that stand a good chance of being inhibitors of the enzyme HIV protease, which is essential to viral replication. “To the best of my knowledge,” Bradley told me, “these compounds have not yet been tested.”

However, in order to complete the trail from problem to solution, he says we need a cheap and efficient synthesis for each of these leads, so that they can be tested in vitro for activity against HIV. “The intended audience for the blog is mainly chemists,” he confesses, “and I would like there to be as much experimental detail provided as required for a chemist to understand fully how to reproduce the porposed and executed syntheses.”

Bradley also revealed that, as you’d expect, he has an organic chemistry lab at his disposal and is willing to execute proposed syntheses, if they make synthetic sense.
Bradley hopes to find similar specific problems in which a chemical synthesis or a specific compound or class or compounds is needed that could make a difference to solving the most important problems facing humanity today.

So, if you’ve got a chemistry degree don’t hang around, go to his blog and save the world!

Elemental Discoveries on the Radio

Sheffield University’s WebElements guru Mark Winter alerted us to a recent BBC Radio 4 [link dead] series touching on Periodic Tales told by members of the cast of long-lived rural radio soap The Archers…

  • Krypton: Hedli Nicklaus on the Superman element, krypton
  • Helium: Brian Perkins dramatises the effects of Helium
  • Silver: Trevor Harrison finds some unusual properties of Silver
  • Cobalt: Nicklaus takes on the goblin element of cobalt
  • Selenium: Carole Boyd unearths selenium
  • Oxygen: Perkins bravely dramatises the effects of oxygen
  • Arsenic: Charlotte Green takes on the deadly history of arsenic
  • Mercury: Boyd reflects on mercury, the poisonous liquid metal
  • Iodine: Green on the discovery of iodine’s essential place in brain development
  • Nickel: Harrison reveals that the space station Mir is largely made of nickel.

It seems a little more worthy than recent efforts to connect and elements and celebrities, which I mentioned recently, despite the fact that they got radio soap stars to do the task, but presumably has the same conceptual origins of getting chemistry a better name, which can only be a good thing.