David Bradley – Page 310

Sniffing out our sense of smell

How we smell Our sense of smell is much better than we give it credit for. A report in Nature Neuroscience puts paid to the notion that the human reputation for having a poor sense of smell compared to other animals.

Noam Sobel and colleagues laid down scent trails in a grassy field, and asked human subjects to find the trail and track it to the end. Subjects were blindfolded and wore thick gloves and earplugs to force them to rely exclusively on smell. Contrary to expectations, the volunteers exhibited some of the same tracking strategies used by dogs and were certainly capable of following the trail.

In follow-up experiments, the authors also demonstrated that this ability partially depends on comparisons of odour information in each nostril, it’s almost like smelling in stereo.

When subjects had one nostril plugged their tracking performance was much worse.

Admittedly, the volunteers were much slower than dogs at following the scent trail, but with practice they got quicker.

the findings raise the intriguing possibility that our sense of smell is far better than we think and that using it more effectively is simply a skill we don’t teach our children so it gives us the impression that we don’t have it.

For more on a provocative theory of how we smell check out this page from the Sciencebase archives.

Influenza’s long tail

A long protein tail found in all influenza A virus raises the possibility of novel drugs that can grab on to it and stop the virus in its tracks. The protein tail is present in common human influenza A which kills thousands of people every year as well as rare forms such as bird flu.

US scientists used crystallography to study the long flexible tail of the influenza virus’ nucleoprotein. They found that even seemingly insignificant changes to the structure of this protein tail prevent it from fulfilling a key role in viral replication. That is, they prevent them from linking together to form structural columns used by the virus to transmit copies of itself.

More…

WEEE regulations

The environmental costs of dealing with waste products from old electrical goods will have to be met by the device manufacturers in Europe from July 2007.

Laying the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations before Parliament, UK Science Minister Malcolm Wicks said:

“Electrical waste such as toasters, fridges and washing machines are a growing environmental problem here in the UK with over two million tonnes being dumped in landfill last year alone. There is currently no incentive for those that produce them to care about the life cycle of their products. These regulations will mean they can no longer shirk this responsibility.”

The new regulations were announced in the summer of 2006 to give businesses a decent run up to the deadline. Some producers are already factoring in recycling of their products into the design process, Wicks adds.

According to the DTI (Department of Trade & Industry), the regulations will:

Enable consumers to dispose of their electrical waste free of charge at accessible and appropriate places. Consumers will start to see changes from July 2007, with new signage at their local council refuse centres, in shops, and on new electrical products.
Give distributors the choice of how to meet their obligations under the Directive by either joining the Distributor Take-back Scheme (DTS) or by offering customers in-store take-back.
Allow existing relationships currently managing electrical waste to continue. This is consistent with the Government’s overall approach to regulation, which is to be as ‘light-touch’ as possible.
Enable any operator of a designated collection facility (DCF) to arrange with a producer compliance scheme (PCS) to have the electrical waste deposited at their site taken away for treatment and recycling by that PCS, free of charge.
Allow for and encourage the re-use of equipment after it has been discarded where possible.
Allows for the continued collection of old equipment at the same time of delivering new goods by retailers, and some producers.

Flu mechanics

With the holiday season almost upon us, that means only one thing, flu is also on its way and if the scaremongers are to be believed the long-forewarned bird flu epidemic might follow in its wake any time soon.

Now, US researchers have put to work the 15-ton 900 MHz NMR machine at Florida State U to help them figure out the mechanics of infection by influenza A virus. The common human form of the disease already kills several hundred thousand people every year, and forecasters predict the emergence of a human transmissible form of avian influenza could kill millions more.

“Using NMR helps us build a blueprint for a virus’s mechanics of survival,” explains FSU’s Tim Cross, “The more detailed the blueprint, the better our chances of developing drugs capable of destroying it.” The researchers have found that the virus’ protein coat contains channels that control various biochemical reactions crucial to viral infection and replication.

Read on…

Deafening toys

Thousands of children will receive toys this Christmas that could leave them deaf. That’s the message from UK national charity Deafness Research UK.

According to Brad Backus of University College London’s Ear Institute in a report commissioned by the charity, almost every noisy toy they tested produced noise levels above the recommended safety limit of 85dB(A) when held close to the ear. Prolonged exposure to noise levels above 85dB(A) can cause hearing loss. Half of the toys tested had levels above or very near recommended safety limits when measured at 25 cm – about an arm’s length away.

Not surprisingly, the most hazardous toys were toy guns. A mechanical toy machine gun, a plastic tommy gun, and a cap gun were tested and all were found to have noise levels that exceed recommended limits. It sounds like scaremongering and yet another nanny-ist intervention, but at these noise levels such toy guns could cause serious damage and even instant hearing loss.

Among the toys tested were Pixar Cars “Lightening McQueen”, Fireman Sam’s Action Jupiter and Tomy’s “Spin n’Sound” remote-controlled car. Only one toy, the VTECH mobile phone for babies, was found to have a noise level below the safety threshold although the Pixar toy too had a level just below the threshold at 82.5dB(A).

“Children’s toys clearly have the potential to do harm to their hearing so it’s important that people are aware of the dangers and what to do about them,” says Backus, “With most of the toys we tested, apart from the guns, there is a potential for harm but they’re safe if used sensibly. With most toys, your child will only damage their hearing if they use them too often and for too long a duration, or if they stick them in their ear.”

You can get more advice and help if you suspect your child has a hearing problem by contacting Deafness Research UK on 0808 808 2222.

Carl Sagan Blog

Carl Sagan Blog Carl Sagan was one of my childhood heroes, watching the Cosmos unfold on his seminal TV show was almost a weekly religious experience.

On 20th December, Sagan fans and bloggers will launch a worldwide blog-a-thon to commemorate the life and legacy of Carl Sagan on the tenth anniversary of his death.

The event has been organized by New York City Sagan fan Joel Schlosberg, and encourages bloggers of all stripes to discuss the influence of outspoken astronomer, science communicator and creator of Contact. Schlosberg plans to compile a blog of blogs.

Make contact on December 20.

All the Little Birdies Go Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

Reuters this week reported that poultry farmers should make sure to prevent sparrows, starlings, and pigeons from entering chicken houses because they could potentially infect poultry with the H5N1 bird flu virus.

I suppose that does make sense, but sounds rather impractical. Small birds have an amazing ability to worm (is that a suitable word?) their way into even the smallest of openings. Chimneys and vents are absolutely no problem for sparrows. It’s only a couple of months ago that I had to dismantle our heating system to release a trapped bird from the flu and there’s a tiny gap (half an inch?) between two roof tiles on our neighbour’s property into which starlings wantonly fly in and out on a daily basis.

Now, picture a chicken farm – I assume they’re referring to battery chickens rather than free range. Every chicken farm I’ve ever seen, and there are quite a few in this locale, has dodgy roof tiles, vents, ducts, openings, doors, even. And, dozens upon dozens of chickens feeding on all kinds of tasty grains and pellets. The temptation for any small bird is just too much and they flock in and out as often as they can get away with.

Admittedly, the article is referring mainly to small chicken coops, that are perhaps a little more manageable. But, that said, a poverty stricken keeper of a few domestic chickens may not have the means to repair one of those dodgy roofs even if it is small.

Regardless of what we do to protect poultry from H5N1 it is not likely that this viral strain specifically will be the culprit when a global pandemic gets underway. There are other strains, there are other viruses, the strain that will be P2P transmissable may already have jumped to another host, such as a pig on a Vietnamese smallholding or a cat in a Hong Kong market cage. It may even have made the leap to humans, in which case it is only a matter of time before it emerges into the wild.

No amount of fixing up chicken coops and keeping the starlings at bay is going to prevent that from happening.

YAFSE – train your beady eye on EB-eye

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) this week launched its new website. Apparently, the web interface has been streamlined on the basis of user feedback. Nothing too exciting in that, except they have also upgraded their search engine and describe it as being at the centre of the site and exhaustive in its breadth.

Underpinning the new site is “EB-eye”, a trendy-sounding and powerful search engine allowing instant searches of all the EBI’s databases from a single query. “If you can use Google you can use this,” explains associate directory Graham Cameron, latching on to the “proper-verb” of the day.

Seriously though, the new site architecture should allow much swifter navigation between databases, so that you can get from genomes to genes, proteins to structures and biological functions from a single, simple interface.

Intriguingly for an organisation that goes by the monicker of EMBL-EBI acronyms (and jargo, allegedly) have been banished from the site wherever possible. You’re unlikely to hear scientists say, “I’ve just EB-eye’d it,” just yet. But, it might make more sense for specialists to do just that rather than “Googling” for their information needs.

Squaring the fish eye

Square fish eye The classic fish-eye lens gives photographers the visual equivalent of surround sound, capturing an all-encompassing view. But, while the results are dramatic the subject is considerably distorted to fit within the bounds of the circular image formed. This renders such lens ineffective as an all-seeing-eye in a security setting or for providing robots with better navigation.

South Korean researchers have now designed and built an inexpensive optical lens that collects light from a large area and produces an almost distortion-free wide-angle image with the more familiar rectangular shape.

The complete story is available in the latest edition of the Intute Spotlight column.

Buying Nano This Holiday

According to the Nanotech Project, more than twenty years of research, has begun to yield the first commercial applications for nanotechnology in consumer products. They explain that nanoscale materials can now be found in electronics, cosmetics, automotive parts, and medical products. Apparently, there are about 350 such products.

But, while the British media is running scared at the idea of nanotechnology turning the world to grey goo (and we’re not talking Second Life here), The Register reports on a Nature Nanotechnology paper that claims almost three quarters of Americans have heard little or nothing about nanotechnology. Nano, of course, refers only to the scale of any particular particle or component of any technology.

Nano, meaning nothing more than a billionth, so a nanometre is a billionth of a metre. Funnily enough, most of the so-called nanoscale products actually have dimensions of several hundred nanometres, so in truth such objects could be called microscale (or in more familiar parlance microscopic). Micro meaning a millionth. A micrometre is therefore a millionth of a metre. Something that’s 500 nanometres might just as readily be described as half a micrometre.

The author of the Nature Nanotechnology paper warns that public ignorance in the US of nanotechnology means that legislation may be passed without informed debate. Fair point, but it can be pushed to the opposite extreme with precautionary attitudes predominating and stifling research and development that might benefit us all, as has happened in the UK with respect to genetically modified organisms (GMOs and GM food).

Do you agree?