Author: David Bradley

Genuine Free iPods

Those free iPods ads are everywhere on the net and in your email inbox, but are they for real? They sure don’t look it at first glance. Almost everything about them screams “scam!!!” But only almost. What at first appears to be a “something for nothing” pyramid marketing scheme is nothing of the sort as Wired magazine, CNN, Good Housekeeping, MSNBC, New York Times, and others have reported over the last few months.

In fact, what it boils down to is simply signing up, partaking of a special offer such as freebie DVD rentals or making your first bid on ebay (you don’t even have to win the auction!), or, perish the thought, signing up for an AOL trial, and then persuading a few friends to do the same. You can always cancel the agreement after any minimum period.

Of course, if you’ve got a website, any visitor can become an instant friend if you can both get a free iPod out of that visit. The organizing company Gratis Internet has sent out tens of thousands of ipods and other pricey gadgets already. In return they get a bung from the likes of ebay and AOL who might gain a new customer out of the deal. They don’t sell your name on to mailing list companies so it really is a win-win situation.

What Do Boron and Carbon Smell Like

Quite a lot of visitors to Sciencebase hit the site asking questions of the search engines, but a recent spate of similar questions would suggest lots of students doing a science assignment: What does boron smell like? What does carbon smell like? What is molecules plasma? (sic) Picture of zinc element etc etc.

As the question about boron seems to come up the most frequently and has garnered the most comments on this post, I thought I would get a definitive answer from boron expert John Kennedy Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds, UK. This is what he has to say and it pretty much confirms my own suspicions about boron, although I am still curious as to why this question comes up so often and wonder whether there are volatile compounds formed when boron comes into contact with your skin in the same way that metallic BO arises.

“Elemental boron is a ceramic, and completely involatile,” Kennedy told me, “So it should have no smell associated with it, just like porcelain.” He points out that very fine boron dust might stimulate the nostrils in the same way that any dust would and could feasibly have a particular nuance of flavour. “As I recall when I did handle some course boron powder,” adds Kennedy, “there was no smell, just like sand.”

So there you have it, volatility is the key. If something is involatile, then it cannot reach the smell (olfactory) receptors in your nose to stimulate them. If it is finely powdered, particles could conceivably reach your nose, but would stimulate it in a similar way to any other fine dust. Some time ago, we discussed on Sciencebase.com an odd theory that the nose acts as a sophisticated natural spectrometer rather than a straightforward detector. This theory suggests that different compounds smell differently because they vibrate with different frequencies, a property observed by vibrational spectroscopy.

Science Fair Projects – Egg in a Bottle

The University of Illinois provides visitors to its website with various science fair projects, including the perennial favourite – “Can air pressure alone cause an egg to be pushed into a bottle?”. Of course, it can. To make it work you’ll need an egg, a bottle, and a couple of matches. It’s all to do with air pressure differences.

But, the procedure Illinois suggests students to follow begins with “Step 1 – Peel the shells off the eggs”.

Not until further down the page (below the fold in fact) does it mention a crucial preparatory step. Can you guess what it is? Or, would you end up with egg on your face, and all over your hands?

You can watch a video of this kind of egg in a bottle experiment here.

Hello Vera

According to the latest news release from the Am Chem Soc, aloe vera gel, which is best known for its therapeutic effect on burned or irritated skin, could soon form part of a healthy balanced diet. Spanish researchers claim to have developed a new product from the tropical plant to use as an edible coating for improving the shelf-life of fresh produce. They report their results in the current issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

One thing that I’m curious to know, given aloe vera’s purported character as an all-round panacea, will those pyramid marketing schemes that sell the AV concept adopt this new property as their own and so add yet another “use” for the material to their enormous lists of supposed benefits? I think so.

Space Objects

Isn’t it about time astronomers abandoned the word “planet”? It’s become almost meaningless in the light of recent discoveries.

Pluto has been relegated to “small planet-like thing” while objects beyond the classical solar system turn out to be more planety than some of the actual planets, and most recently a moon, is now being touted as a planet. Add those really big asteroids and planetisimals to the equation and it makes you wonder whether our lexicographical feet will ever feel terra firma again.

Science and Art

An interesting preprint popped up on my physics eprints page this morning: “Fractal Dimensions in Perceptual Color Space: A Comparison Study Using Jackson Pollock’s Art.” by J. R. Mureika. Apparently, the standard RGB colour system used across the imaging industry from graphic design and photography to computer monitors and TV screens is not up to the job of representing fractal images and does not reveal the nuances of colour in perceptually different colours. Best avoid Pollock desktop wallpaper then!

Retronyms

Blair Bolles discussed the Sunday Times Acrostic puzzle recently on one of the NASW discussion groups. Apparently, he was rather intrigued by a “new” word – retronym. As examples, he cites “silent movies” and “acoustic guitar” all retronymic phrases – i.e. the qualifier was added after the original word lost its original meaning.

Another example he gives is “special relativity”. Einstein talked of his “theory of relativity” but then he came up with another “theory of relativity” so the first one was retronymically referred to as “special”.

Puzzlingly, Blair says Google only lists one page carrying the word retronym – a google whack blatt, in other words. But, I see more than 20,000 hits when I search…

This article ties in quite neatly with a more recent item I wrote on redundancy in phrases such as male semen, as if there could be any other kind.

Leukencephalopathy

An unusual keyword to say the least, but someone surfing the net found sciencebase with it. So, here’s a quick definition:

Progressive multifocal leukencephalopathy (PML) is rare but debilitating. It is an inflammatory response to viral infection observed in immunocompromised patients, such as AIDS sufferers. The inflammation leads to loss of the myelin that insulates nerves within the white matter of the brain. Visual defects, headaches, and speech/language problems result.

There is no dedicated treatment but AIDS patients undergoing therapy with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) often improve significantly.

Science Fair Project Ideas

My science fair project ideas page, featuring inexpensive, downloadable 24h science projecs started getting more traffic than usual recently. It was only when I spotted a typo – sceince, instead of science in the title that I realised why. Lots of students searching MSN.com with the “word” sceince, were finding this page on the first of that particular search engine’s results pages! Wouldn’t make sense to fix it would it? But, apologies to my regular readers who can spell.

Squirt George Bank Nuisance

Researchers have completed a survey of the invasive sea squirt colony on the Georges Bank. A wider area was searched for the sea squirt in 2005, and it was mapped over about twice the area observed in 2004. Results show that the species is present in two adjacent areas totaling 88 square miles in US waters near the US-Canada boundary. The very large mat-like colonies observed in 2004 have been replaced by fewer smaller ones. The Georges Bank occurrence is the largest known infestation of colonial sea squirts in a major offshore fishing ground.

And, doesn’t it lend itself to an oddly apt sounding GWB headline?