February 2006 – Page 4 – David Bradley

Coffee Experiment

I really am always too busy to drink my coffee as soon as it’s poured, and as a chemist I should know whether to add the cold milk or cream right away or when I come back to it, to make sure I have the hottest cup of coffee.

Anyway, I now know the answer. My wife somehow knew intuitively. But, if you want to confirm the idea that you should add milk or cream as soon as the coffee’s made, check out our science experiments section where we have just added details of a cool coffee experiment.

Simple instructions for finding out whether you should add cold milk or cream to your coffee right away if you’re not going to drink it immediately to make sure it’s as hot as it could be when you actually drink it.

Fill two plastic cups (styrofoam beakers), with the same quantity (150g) of water at the same temperature (use a lab thermometer* to check).

Next add 20g of cold water to one beaker.

Wait seven or eight minutes or so and add the remaining cold water to the other cup.

After ten minutes, you will not a 2-3 degrees Celsius difference between the two cups. The colder cup will be the one to which cold water was added last. If you want to know why, check out our topics in thermodynamics page for links to thermodynamics tutorials.

*Two Vernier sensors one in each cup would be ideal as it can record temperatures at regular intervals and display the charts on your PC.

For more science experiments, check out our science fair projects partner.

Open Access Referees

The new journal (Biology Direct), hopes to revolutionise the peer review process by placing the burden of selecting “referees” for a paer on the shoulders of the authors themselves and removing the protection of referee anonymity that has been the mainstay of the scientific publication system for decades, if not centuries.

The journal suggests that such an approach to peer review will increase “both the responsibility and the reward of the referees…eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing process” and presumably reducing the risk of fraudulent results entering the scientific literature.

It remains to be seen whether referees will voluntarily expose themselves to the criticism of their peers for those papers they review, whether that’s authors wishing they’d picked someone else when a paper is slated, or rivals suggesting that a referee is at fault when a paper receives a positive review.

Taking the Bite Out of the Flu

According to a report on Alternet, homeopathy was more effective than a vaccine during the 1918 flu epidemic: (Flu). The one issue that isn’t addressed in the claim that, “Homeopathy may be more effective than flu shots” is that during the deadly flu outbreak of 1918, those patients who could have afforded to be treated with homeopathy would have been the idle rich who would like have retired to their country homes because of the Great War anyway and would not only have had a better diet, but a reduced risk of exposure.

Check out their coverage there are dozens of comments from posters pointing out dozens of other flaws in their argument.

For a relatively rational perspective on homeopathy, read my article – Homeopathy – all in the mind?

Constraint Satisfaction Problem

Wikipedia is fab, isn’t it? But, every now and then it throws up information that really doesn’t help. I’m currently writing a feature for the journal Complexus, for which I’m an editorial board member, and the phrase Constraint satisfaction problem is key to understanding the research paper I’m writing about. So, thinking good-old Wiki could help out with a neat and crisp definition for our readers, I plugged in the phrase, like you do. Bingo! There she blows!

Trouble is the definition apears to be entirely circular – a CSP being simply a problem the solution to which must satisfy certain constraints. That’s the equivalent of defining a long curvy yellow fruit as a “fruit that is yellow, curved, and long” isn’t it?

So, if anyone has a neat and crisp definition of CPS they’d like to share please let me know…

Now….where’s that banana?

Science News Podcast

Sciencebase has finally joined the podcast generation, but only by proxy. We’re now hosting the feed for Science News from Cambridge’s Naked Scientists. You can stream each “program” in RAM (RealAudio) format, download the mp3 to your mp3 player*, or simply read a transcript of the show.

You can also now add the Sciencebase Odiogo Science News Podcast to iTunes or your favourite podcast listener.

Combat Breakthrough in Cancer Fight

The first entirely new approach to DNA recognition since the year of my birth has been developed by Mike Hannon and colleagues at the University of Birmingham and Miquel Coll at the Spanish Research Council in Barcelona. The team has discovered a new route through which drug molecules can attach themselves to DNA. The researchers say this is a crucial step forward in drug discovery, the first in four decades.

The scientists have developed a synthetic agent that targets and binds to the centre of a three-way junction in DNA. Such junctions are formed where three double-helical regions join together and are particularly exciting as they have been found to be present in diseases, such as some Huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy, in viruses and are present during cancerous cell replication.

The Birmingham team created a nanosize synthetic drug shaped like a twisted cylinder. Together with colleagues in the UK, Spain and Norway they previously demonstrated its unprecedented effect on DNA. Now, structures revealed by the Barcelona team show that it binds to DNA in an entirely novel way – fixing itself to the centre of a 3-way junction. The resulting complex is held electrostatically. The researchers explain that the drug fits like a round peg in a round hole.

According to Hannon, “This is a significant step in drug design for DNA recognition and it is an absolutely crucial step forward for medical science researchers worldwide who are working on new drug targets for cancer and other diseases. This discovery will revolutionise the way that we think about how to design molecules to interact with DNA. It will send chemical drug research off on a new tangent. By targeting specific structures in the DNA scientists may finally start to achieve control over the way our genetic information is processed and apply that to fight disease.”

Let’s just hope that quote from Birmingham University’s press release on this research bears fruit, I’d hate to think that a discovery that’s waited my whole life to be made will be anything less than a breakthrough of unprecedented scale.

The work appears in the February 8 issue of Angewandte Chemie.

Worms Survived Shuttle Disaster

Nathaniel Szewczyk and colleagues are experts in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, this popular little organism has been the subject of countless biological studies including Nobel-prize winning efforts. As such, it is being developed as a model system for space biology.

According to Szewczyk, the chemically defined liquid medium, C. elegans Maintenance Medium (CeMM), allows it to be cultivated automatically and experiments to be carried out on it during spaceflight research. His team grew CeMM for experiments to be carried out on board STS-107, space shuttle Columbia.

When tragedy struck Columbia, a massive recovery effort was started and hardware containing the CeMM experiment was actually retrieved from the debris.

Szewczyk explains that live animals were observed in four of the five recovered canisters, which had survived on both types of media. “These data demonstrate that CeMM is capable of supporting C. elegans during spaceflight. They also demonstrate that animals can survive a relatively unprotected reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, which has implications with regard to the packaging of living material during space flight, planetary protection, and the interplanetary transfer of life,” Szewczyk explains.

You can read more about this rather unusual rescue mission in the journal Astrobiology 5, 690—705
Astrobiology.

Lawrence McGinty and Global Warming

The UK’s ITN science news reporter Lawrence McGinty asked fellow science writers via the ABSW discussion group who it was that coined the phrase “global warming”. Jon Turney suggested that the first strong claim was made by a Brit called Callendar in the 1930s, but more intriguing is Martin Ince’s note that in 1886, Arrhenius wrote that all the coal that folk were burning might cause the Earth to get hotter. So, the concept of anthropogenic climate change certainly isn’t new.

Fierce Biotech

I’ve mentioned the Fierce Biotech freebie email biotech industry newsletter before, but it’s well worth reminding Sciencebase readers of what a great resource it is. It’s now available for free in the USA, Canada, Mexico, and the UK. All you have to do to qualify for a free year’s subscription is fill in your details on the form and provide a little feedback on your job function (so they can decide whether you qualify). Once you’ve done that, you’ll starting receiving the free email newsletter within a day or two. The Fierce Biotech ezine covers the latest industry news on a daily basis and your acceptance for a free subscription helps support Sciencebase.

Newsletter description – “FierceBiotech is an easy to read daily email service that brings must read biotechnology news to senior executives in the biotech industry…one quick email per day keeps you up to speed on biotech companies and the biotech industry.” This newsletter will save you time and effort in keeping ahead of the competition.

Tenth Planet

Rather a coincidence that Hubble images of the so-called tenth planet “2003 UB313” claiming that it’s probably not Pluto’s big brother at all but more like a slightly bigger twin, should be released the day before new results from German astronomers appear that show UB313 to be some 700 km wider!

Of course, the reporter covering the HST results will have known in advance (embargoed press release and all that) about the German results, but obviously wanted to scoop the story with another related item.

My sources tell me, however, that there are no authorized results from the HST measurement, as these will take another month to complete.

Watch out for my full report on the published, peer-reviewed work on UB313 in PSIgate Spotlight coming soon…