Author: David Bradley

Joel Shurkin’s Blog

My mentioning Joel Shurkin’s blog brought forth some sarcastic comments because of my quoting his remark on cancer cause and cure. One blog made the quite obvious comment in joannejacobs.com that “make a mouse drink enough water, it’ll develop cancer from it”. I wasn’t sure if that entry was being sarcastic or not, but I think Joel himself was being ironic…science writers see dozens of research papers that swing both ways on such matters as cancer cause and cure. Equally we see headlines proclaiming “[insert favourite chemical here] Causes Cancer” and just as many saying, “Scientific Breakthrough in Cancer Fight”.

Any compound can be demonstrated to be cytotoxic under the right conditions and so kill cancer cells or cause cancer in healthy cells. It’s the “right conditions” that matter though. Nevertheless we should heed the warnings about some chemicals: DHMO.org

One Week They’re Telling Us One Thing

One week they’re telling us that fidgety people stay slimmer because they burn 350 (k)cals a day more than the non-fidgets, then there are warnings that exercise might not work for some people, might cause some people more harm than good, and gym goers might even pick up MRSA from infected equipment. Then we hear, cutting calories is the way to live longer, but at the same time laziness might reduce stress on the heart, presumably only if you are not of a gloomy disposition and laugh a lot. It’s a confusing world, the world of medical advice. Check out the sciencebase medical newsfeed for the latest word on discoveries in medicine.

How to Maintain a Healthy Windows System

How to maintain a healthy Windows System. This page does what it says on the tin, providing a run down of what you need to do to maintain your Windows set up and cut down on the old Bluescreen of Death. One thing though lots of the text on this page is very pale and impossible to read if there’s a lot of glare on your screen…so here’s a quick tip to make any “too pale” text easily readable: “Control A” (Selects all). All text on the page then becomes white on a nice dark blue background. Much easier on the eyes if browsing in bright conditions…

Significant Figures

Check out the Significant Figures blog also run by David Bradley Science Writer. In it, he and colleagues name and shame the perpetrators of the misuses of significant figures, the metric system, and other old sawhorses of scientific pedantry. Today, something positive with a cynical twist regarding the Large Hardon Collider

UPDATE: The Sig Figs site has rebranded as a blogging, browsing, computing tips, tricks and hacks site, although you will still find the criticism of media innumeracy on sciencetext.com

Couple of Weeks Ago

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the news (in The Alchemist on ChemWeb.com) that NASA scientists had announced evidence of life on Mars. Thence followed withdrawals, denials, and retribution. Apparently, the announcement was pre-emptive of a paper in Nature and the scientists and NASA having realised their faux pas, allegedly then claimed not to have staked a claim for life on Mars after all. space.com who made the original announcement then published a follow-up that effectively retracted the claim. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency has been making its own proclamations: ESA – Science – Chances of life are linked to water and the media is full of it. Could it be that the publishers of Nature were simply trying to keep editorial control of such earth (or should that be mars) shattering results. It’s pretty unlikely, but the truth will likely emerge in the next week or so, as the pressure builds…

Dr Myriam Sarachik

Dr Myriam Sarachik (of City College in New York City) escaped the Holocaust from Belgium to become a prominent physicist and educator.

She will be honoured on 28th February in Paris as the recipient of the L’Oreal-UNESCO’s Women in Science Prize as a laureate.

The selection of five laureates representing five regions of the world, by a jury of world class scientists that includes some Nobel Prize winners, and the award of 15 Fellowships to aspiring young women scientists, has attracted the attention of the scientific community. The prize which has now recognized 91 women from 45 different countries has enabled young women to continue their education and scientific research as they enter the field and has promoted the groundbreaking research of senior women scientists.

Sarachik’s career in experimental condensed matter physics has included work on superconductivity, disordered metallic alloys, metal-insulator transitions, hopping transport in solids, and the behavior of molecular magnets. In particular, she has made seminal contributions to Kondo physics, metal-insulator transitions, and quantum spin dynamics. In her low temperature laboratory, she and her team are pursuing the study of condensed matter properties at low temperatures, with particular focus on two areas: molecular nano-magnets and the novel behavior of two-dimensional electron systems.

US Consumers and Vitamins

Friends and I were discussing the claim that US consumers are about to lose the right to purchase vitamins, minerals, and dietary supplements, and one member of the clan pointed out a Snopes page that debunks the news as a hoax:

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Vitamin See). However, there is a claim from cynical skeptics that Snopes is not so righteous as it claims…

Anyway, while this CODEX issue might very well be an urban legend, I’m afraid the truth is that here in the EU, they really are intending to stifle vitamins and supplements. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing I don’t know. Personally, I try to avoid supplements, but I realise millions of people have a use for them.

There are, however, lots of problems with certain supplements (natural cadmium levels associated with zinc, mean that zinc tablets are high enough to cause problems with long-term use, mega-doses of any vitamin cause toxicity, calcium bodies (kidney
stones) for instance with vitamin C, many herbal remedies need not necessarily be contaminated to be harmful, although contamination of Chinese herbal medicines with mercury and arsenic have been reported on many separate occasions here and
in the US), and wasn’t there a fairly recent problem with a contaminant in taurine?

Long-term use of echinacea can cause health problems, while the use of St John’s Wort is contraindicated for several prescription medicines. Even drinking too much grapefruit juice can interfere deliteriously with liver enzymes and cause heart
problems for users of certain antibiotics and antihistamines.

Dose is always the issue in toxicity, whether that’s dose of the active or a contaminant.

There may be a place for vitamins and supplements, but perhaps it is about time these were brought under more strict regulations so that benefit-risk management (BRM) can be considered in a more logical manner than it currently is. BRM is after all at the top of all pharmaceutical company agendas and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) feature prominently in the minutes.

http://tinyurl.com/6da7l – PDF from EU on the directive set to be enforced 1 August 2005

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3831931.stm – WHO warnings on supplements and vitamins

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3443651.stm – EU rule change attacked.

Ranitidine and other molecules

Occasionally, I get queries from students asking me where they can find the structure of this or that compound, usually it’s something like sildenafil (Viagra), ranitidine (Zantac), or rofecoxib (Vioxx) and is pertinent to their current chemistry homework assignment.

There are lots of databases on the web that contain great swathes of molecular structures including some that I wrote about for Nature recently, such as PubChem. But, another place to start your search might be Molecular Heaven or ChemSpider.com

But, what I don’t understand is why students cannot use the search engines, surely the easiest option would be to type in “molecular model” or structure and the name of the compound. When I tried molecular model ranitidine, the first hit had a molecular structure and loads of other information on the anti-ulcer drug. Of course, with ChemSpider you will likely get more curated data together with more detailed information, so perhaps I’ve answered my own question in that regard.

POST UPDATED: ChemSpider information added September 16, 2008

Oak Aged Mythology

Oak aged mythology – According to recent research at the Public University of Navarre, wine makers get no benefit to their product from leaving wines to mature in oak casks for more than a year. In fact, chemical analysis showed that levels of aromatics in the wine from the oak casks begin to decrease if the wine is left to mature for too long. Legislation insists that Gran Reserva wines be kept for 18 months, but science shows that this isn’t based on sound chemical principles.

Michael Dino

Michael Dino got in touch to tell me about his gallery of space shuttle main engine photos at Dino’s Gallery (You’ll need to login to Photobucket to view the gallery). Apparently, the Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters (SRBs) burn two million pounds of fuel in about 2 minutes, which is about as long as it takes to heat your food in a microwave oven…think about how many pizzas that much fuel could defrost (in an instant)!