Spectroscopy – Page 3 – David Bradley

A lot of spectroscopy and a little maths

Uranium hard drive – A new uranium-containing compound maintains its magnetic behaviour at low temperatures. The discovery could take us a step closer to magnetic memory devices with capacities thousands of times denser than current high-end hard drives.
Clouds from both sides – Atmospheric and climate models may have overlooked the fact that exactly how clouds appear to reduce the amount of sunlight available for warming the surface of the earth depends on the wavelength being measured across the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. The finding could now help researchers improve climate models by factoring in the effects of cloud cover more precisely.
Soap story – It is perhaps no real surprise to any chemist who has unblocked a drain clogged with white lardy deposits, but new FTIR spectroscopic evidence confirms that degraded fat, oil and grease (FOG) reacts with calcium compounds in the murky water of drains to form hardened deposits that are, to all intents and purposes, composed of soap, leading to blockages and overflows.
Volcanic ash cloud nanoscience – When Eyjafjallajökull spewed volcanic ash into the atmosphere in 2010, airlines were thrown into chaos as the aviation authorities grounded all planes. But was the move justified, did it stop potentially catastrophic damage to aircraft? A new study that takes a close look at the behaviour of ash particles would suggest so.
SERS calcs – New quantum calculations show how electrical charge can slosh from a target molecule to the metal being used to enhance Raman signals in Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The finding could finally explain the mechanism by which this technique boosts Raman spectra in terms of the chemical contribution to the effect.
Zen and the art of decision making – Buddhists are different from other people, at least when they meditate on an important decision. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that specific regions of the meditating brain become active when confronted with an ethical decision but that these are different from the brain regions apparently active in people of a less Zen disposition attempting to make the same decision.
The mathematics of elections – UK is to vote on a possible new voting system soon. There are good arguments as to why the alternative vote (AV) is mathematically a better system than first past the post (FPTP), but ultimately the decision people make in the ballot box next week is all about politics, not mathematics. Do you want a system that picks a winner with strong support from a minority of voters (FPTP) or one where the leading candidate is vaguely liked by a majority of people (AV)? No amount of equations can help you reach a decision.

The latest seven science stories to hit DB’s virtual desktop @sciencebase.

Recent science news roundup

Optical catapulting for explosive fingerprint detection – Optical catapulting-laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy has been used to successfully detect residues of common explosives in human fingerprints, according to researchers from Egypt and Spain.
Unsettling enzymes – Millisecond oscillations can massively impact how an enzyme functions, a new NMR spectroscopic study in the US reveals. The study suggests that finding ways to control such movements, without altering the overall structure of an enzyme might be useful in disabling an enzyme in disease. Proof of principle was demonstrated with an enzyme from Escherichia coli.
Melanoma lead – Cheminformatics has helped researchers home in on a single compound that could lead to a new approach to treating malignant melanoma. Laboratory tests show that the compound reduces the number of cell types formed by neural crest progenitor cells.
Life on Earth – New hints as to how life emerged from the "primordial soup" have been recovered by US chemists investigating the intramolecular communication within a large RNA-protein enzyme. X-ray data on the system, which is responsible for expressing the genetic code for the amino acid glutamine, point to a deeper origin for this aspect of biochemistry.
Court date for e-waste crime – A court date has been set for the UK's largest ever investigation into the illegal exportation of e-waste. A total of 14 individuals and companies accused of illegally exporting waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) from the UK to developing countries, are due at court on 17 October 2011.

A roundup of recent science news selected by David Bradley Science Writer @sciencebase.

Six science selections

Map mashup reveals world’s top science cities – Combining citation data with Google Maps reveals the cities where science prospers, and those where it doesn't.
9 arguments for (against) herbal remedies – About 40% of pharmaceuticals have a herbal origin but that doesn't mean natural is all good. Here's 9 arguments often posited in support of herbal over pharma. The first one: They’re natural. (So what? Strychnine is natural.), Read on for the other 8.
The long-distance shimmer – The secret to controlling an NMR spectrometer is not to let your mind wander. The mind can play tricks on even an experienced spectroscopist…Chris Blake explains the loneliness of the long-distance shimmer.
Simple salt removal to get fresh water – Simple desalination. Scientists in the US have developed a membrane-free, solvent extraction method to remove salt from seawater that works at low temperatures.
Open Laboratory 2011 – submissions so far – It's time to submit your blog posts to the 2011 Open Laboratory.
Is 10,000 hours practice enough? – Some researchers believe that talent is learned and earned through extended and intense practice of a skill rather than being an innate expression of genes that would otherwise lie dormant. This notion is nowhere more succinctly encapsulated than in the 10,000 hours rule. posited by psychologist Anders Ericsson of Florida State University, and made famous by author Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers”. My latest Pivot Points column for the Euroscientist Blog is now online.

My latest selection of six science stories, picked up by David Bradley Science Writer @sciencebase.

Heptastic science news

The full list: The Twitter 100 – Its 200 million users share 110 million messages a day – and if you don't know who rules the twittersphere, you don't understand the 21st-century world. This guide is a definitive who's who of the UK's tweet elite. Although for some reason they included me on the list (at #47, same as Armando Ianucci).
Why haven’t we cured cancer yet? – How many times have you been asked this question, how many times have you asked this question yourself? The answer boils down to the fact that cancer is not a single disease, it's hundreds of different diseases. Asking that question is like asking, "why haven't we cured viral infection?" or "why haven't we cured car accidents?". Even if we can cure one type effectively, there are hundreds of other types to deal with. Even the umbrella term "breast cancer" belies the fact that there are many different types of disease that lead to malignancy in breast tissue.
Recycling carbon – Technologies that can use carbon dioxide as a chemical feedstock are high on the agenda in the face of rising atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas. A novel iron-based catalytic process studied using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) atomic emission spectrometry shows how carbon dioxide can be converted into the industrially useful formic acid at an 80% yield. Formic acid might also be used as a fuel cell fuel. The metal oxide by-product is readily reduced using glycerin derived from renewable sources releasing lactic acid, which could be used for biopolymer production.
Feverish research – There is neither vaccine nor cure for the Ebola and Marburg viruses, which cause fatal haemorrhagic fever in humans. However, a new NMR spectroscopic study by US researchers scientists has led to the discovery of a family of small molecules that apparently bind to the outer protein coat of the virus and halt its entry into human cells, so offering the possibility of an antiviral medication against the disease.
Structural biologists catch the pulse – Researchers have discovered that ultra-short X-ray pulses can produce exquisite measurements at the molecular level of biological objects by grabbing a "snapshot" just before the sample succumbs to radiation damage.
Enzymes against cocaine – The interaction of novel substrates for the enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and mutants have been investigated using computational and correlation studies. The insights revealed could improve our understanding of how this enzyme, which metabolizes cocaine, might be modulated in drug therapy and the development of anti-addiction drugs.
Spectroscopy & Separation Science – We need the page to get 25 members so that we can switch to a nice short URL…please "like" the page.

From David Bradley Science Writer – seven science selections

Canned heavy metal and more

My latest science news updates on SpectroscopyNOW – covering heavy metal sardines, pain relief and sleep problems, oral insulin and a new male infertility test that could explain the issue problem.

Canned heavy metal – Samples of tinned sardines, originating from six countries have been analyzed for total arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury content using spectroscopy. The analysis provides a useful baseline for a foodstuff – small pelagic fish – that could become increasingly important in a possible sustainable future and shows that arsenic rather than mercury could be the main concern in eating such small fish rather than predators.
The near and FAAH of drug discovery – A new mathematical approach to drug discovery that can test a huge number of molecular structures using a computer only could uncover inhibitors for an important enzyme involved in sleep, pain and body movement.
Oral insulin microspheres – A simple, inexpensive, and gentle process to make tiny spheres of therapeutic proteins, such as insulin, might allow these agents to be delivered by mouth without the need to encapsulate them in a nanotech coating or other Trojan horse type system to get them past the hazards of the gastrointestinal tract and into the bloodstream.
Fertility testing issues circumvented by spectroscopic technique – Traditional clinical tests on seminal fluid for infertility and sub-fertility prediction do not provide many insights into the underlying medical problem. But, metabolic spectroscopic tests could offer a less time-consuming and less labour-intensive alternative to address this shortcoming and provide a non-invasive and more useful test for infertility that might hint at biological issues.

Airbus A380 engine failure

A380 engine failure – Qantas flight 32 en route to Sydney, Australia, forced to make an emergency landing after an engine failure. Qantas has grounded all of its Airbus A380 “superjumobo” fleet as a result. There are 20 other A380s around the globe that have the same Rolls Royce engines as Qantas flight 32.
Rosalind Franklin and DNA: How wronged was she? – Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology in 1962 for this work, four years after Franklin’s death of ovarian cancer, possibly induced by her work with x-rays. But, shouldn’t Franklin’s work be given more credit than it has ever received. The debate goes on. To my mind, Wilkins let the crystallograph into W-C’s hands because they all suspected Pauling was on to the structure of DNA and Franklin was being too slow and cautious in making her pronouncements on it. As it turned out Pauling hadn’t come up with the correct structure anyway.

Shrinking synchrotrons, stink bugs, odour vie

Shrinking synchrotrons – Details of a tabletop synchrotron device has been revealed by an international team of scientists in the journal Nature Physics. The new device could revolutionise X-ray work and preclude the need for large-scale synchrotrons in many structural studies without compromising resolution or atomic detail.
Kicking up a stink bug – Japanese researchers have used UV-Vis and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to help them develop a potential repellent for the invidious stink bug, an invasive pest species that has been spreading rapidly through the USA, invading homes and damaging crops.
Odour vie – Electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy has allowed researchers to study how nanoparticles can eliminate offensive household odours by removing the odour molecules at source rather than simply masking the bad smells.

Latest science snippets

Shampoo in your eyes – Botanical extracts added to shampoos almost never do anything at all and are usually there purely and simply to make the product look more natural. They are used at very low levels indeed. Expensive shampoo is a waste of money as is the cheap stuff you buy by the gallon. Supermarket own brands are fine, apparently.
Free scientific calculator – Red Crab is a free and portable calculator for Windows that is perfectly suitable for complex algebraic equations like fractions, square roots, exponents and a lot more. The best option to take a look at the calculator’s capabilities is to load a few of the demo projects that ship with the download.
First all-digital science textbook will be free – Within two and a half years, the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation hopes to complete a 59-chapter digital textbook about biology called Life on Earth. As each chapter is finished, the foundation plans to put it into the hands of anyone who wants it, for free.

Olive oil, breast cancer, gigapixel scans

Olive oil biophenols – Raman reveals all – The first report of Raman spectroscopy being used to look at chemical structures in olive oil has been published. The study establishes Raman as a rapid, non-destructive and reliable analytical technique for identifying bioactive components, such as biophenols in dietary extracts and surpasses other analytical methods.
One nanoparticle for targeting, tracking and treating breast cancer – Nanoparticles coupled to a fluorescent dye can be used to target tumour-specific molecules in breast cancer providing a way to track the particles by NIR spectroscopy, to enhance magnetic resonance imaging and to deliver an anticancer payload only to diseased cells.
Zoom and enhance for medical imaging – Computer scientists at the University of Utah have developed software that can generate rapid previews of super-high resolution images for medical, astronomical, and other applications. Images containing billions to hundreds of billions of pixels drain computer resources rapidly but a new technique for analysing the data could allow gigapixel MRI scans and other images to be previewed and manipulated much more easily and quickly than is currently possible.

Science news with a spectral twist

My latest science updates on SpectroscopyNOW.com:

Soft solar cell – US researchers have demonstrated that water-gel-based solar devices can act like "artificial leaves" heralding the possibility of soft matter solar energy conversion devices.
X-Ray resistance – An X-ray structure determined by US researchers reveals details of the only remaining class of multidrug resistance transporters that remained to be described. The work has implications for antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, as well as for developing hardy strains of agricultural crops.
Ionic liquids are a gas – A gas-phase Raman spectroscopic study of the "green" solvents known as room temperature ionic liquids has been used to offer a clearer understanding of the nature of their underlying chemistry. The study reveals that in the gas phase each ion of the pair exists as a distinct molecule.
NMR goes up to 11 (and beyond) – A technique to amplify nuclear magnetic resonance signals 50-fold or more can be applied to the surfaces of solid-state samples, according to research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Stable dyes – New dyes that have sharp absorptions and fluorescence emission bands in the red or near infrared as well high molar absorption coefficients and high fluorescence quantum yields could be used widely optical engineering, analytical chemistry, biological imaging and sensors, as well as in materials science.
Noble medical thermometer – "Thermometry based on hyperpolarized xenon sensors improves the accuracy of currently available MRI thermometry methods," the researchers conclude, "potentially it could give rise to biomedical applications of biosensors functionalized for binding to specific target molecules."
It’s like, okay to say like – Teenage vernacular has always confused adults, particularly when the terminology seems to fly in the face of conventional grammar. Of course, any cunning linguist will tell you that language evolves and that yesterday's perfect grammar rule is often tomorrow's quaintly archaic phrasing. Moreover, the errant use of the word "like", which often like litters youthful conversation is merely the current filler word, the um and ah if you will of street and schoolyard vernacular. It's merely a part of yoof culture, innit? Get over it, Emma, why don't ya?
Is chemistry worth it? – One in every five pounds in the UK economy is dependent on developments in chemistry research (£250billion, in other words), according to a new report published today. Science is Vital. It really is. Cut the cuts.
Enjoy yourself…it’s later than you think! – There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe.