Most people will have seen the ludicrous healthscare stories that emerged when scientists discovered the almost ubiquitous bacteride, triclosan, releases small amounts of chloroform (a suspect carcinogen infamous for its anaesthetic effects in TV thrillers). I say ludicrous, because the amounts that are released are so small and presumably nothing compared to the much greater amounts of “chemical nasties” released by household air fresheners, shoe polish, bleach, etc etc. However, when you see a statement from The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA), you have to wonder if they protest too much. Antibacterial Research Should Be Focused on Facts, Not Fear. Then again, I don’t think so, the mainstream media loves a scare story and this is a gift on a plate, virtually unfounded hyperbole pandering to the chemophobic multitude.
Category: Science
Good and bad news for chemistry texts
It was rather heartening to learn that a study by researchers at two Pittsburgh universities has demonstrated that newspaper and magazine articles do a better job of teaching students how chemists work than most high-school textbooks. But, at the same time its’s rather disheartening that if students are not reading outside the curriculum box then they are going to leave education with a very distorted view of what chemists do. Source: Chemists say high school texts fall short
Chemistry of Popping Popcorn
If you’re like me, you loathe having to pick out the unpopped kernels from a big stack of popcorn. Now, one of the most powerful techniques in chemical science, X-ray diffraction, could lead to a much more satisfying experience next time you settle down with a bucket of popcorn. The technique has provided new insights into why some popcorn kernels pop and why others are dysfunctional.
According to Bruce Hamaker, crystallographer Rangaswamy Chandrasekaran and colleagues at the Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research and Department of Food Science, Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, moisture loss from popcorn kernels is the underlying cause of much disappointment and broken teeth for fans of the puffed corn product. There can be no worse sensation than when reaching the bottom of a bucket of popcorn you pluck out a few unpopped kernels rather than the expanded seeds. Indeed, unpopped kernels could be said to be one of life’s great tragedies. More…
Meanwhile, the chemistry of popping popcorn aside, here’s a video showing you how to make popcorn with your iPhone:
UPDATE: Lifehacker has a nice simple method on how to filter out the unpopped kernels from microwaveable popcorn.
Nuclear distance
Should we be picking on the BBC? I think so. Not content with persisting with Fahrenheit AND Celsius in their weather forecasts, they are still mixing and matching between metric and imperial distances.
This article on nuclear waste disposal discusses options for getting rid of nuclear waste under the ground at a depth of between 300m and 2km. It then goes on to tell us “on average people in Britain live about 26 miles away from one of more than 30 radioactive waste sites”, the implication being that we might be able to picture how far 2km underground is but would be less comfortable knowing that we’re just 26 miles from a waste site as opposed to the much more distant 41.8429 kilometres. Whoops…fell into the conversion trap didn’t I? Anyway, what do they mean by average? Mean? Median? Mode? We ought to be told.
For more instances of mix and match units and over indulgence in significant figures, check out the archives on our sibling tech blog.
Subterranean homesick Martians
It’s a mere slip of the keys, but Mark Henderson has inadvertently relocated the surface of the earth to Mars in his recent write-up of the “aqueous sea” observed on the red planet by the European Mars Express spacecraft. Check out par 2 in his article Frozen sea…, where you will read of a “subterranean aquatic layer”. Pardon me, but isn’t “Terra” the name of our planet and thus subterranean refers to below the earth’s surface. Anyway, what’s wrong with “underground water”, rather than all this aquatic layer malarcky?
Ohpurleese.com – latest issue
Forget this week’s announcement from Scientific American that is to abandon a Darwinocentric approach to evolution just for today. Ohpurleese has announced the discovery of the Higg’s Boson: Ohpurleese.com. The work was apparently carried out in a cold fusion kind of experiment by Professor Hayes at Kangmere College, whereever that is (it’s an anagram of Greek Man if that’s any help)…methinks this elusive particle will exist for a mere 12 hours! (Check out the apparatus and mutant hand, but don’t bother with the full paper PDF at the Kang-Mere (with a hyphen) site, as you’ll get this message: “WITHDRAWN. Due to ongoing patent registration and some overseas litigation the .pdf files have temporarily been removed.” Apparently, they couldn’t leverage quite enough levers.
Midges and cholera
Just when we think we’ve got a disease covered, a serendipitous discovery reveals that humans may not be the reservoir for Vibrio cholerae at all, and that it may exist between pandemics in the non-biting midge. A recent paper on the subject explains in detail how important this discovery could be for controlling this devastating disease: Adult non-biting midges: possible windborne carriers of Vibrio cholerae
Writing about cuneiform
It never ceases to amaze me what visitors to my science news site will ask about. Latest question just in: “Did you ever learn about cuneiform if so can you tell email me some facts?! Please I need some facts!”
Now, is it just me, or would searching for the word “cuneiform” not be the best way to start? It took 2 seconds to find: Cuneiform on Wikipedia, with all the info you could possibly need!
The Taxonomy of Daftodils
No sooner had I blogged my daftodils photo than answers to my species query started to arrive. Science librarian Rebecca Hedreen, of the Buley Library (presumably digging deep for useful horticultural information for her readers), was first in, suggesting that the plant in question is actually Narcisssus photoshopia. Apparently, this species comes in a variety known as Narcisssus photoshopia elementis, which is available to the virtual gardener on a budget!
A Berry good explanation
I once met the inimitable Adrian Berry (he took me and my wife to a fantastic seafood restaurant in Boston when we were guests of the Telegraph at a AAAS meeting). Anyway, his blog is fascinating and his views and understanding of science are tipified by one of his articles that explains why fixing the Hubble Space Telescope with robots is “preposterous”: Baffled Computers.
At that meeting, I was trying to enthuse about chemical chirality and a feature article I’d written for the paper’s science editor Roger Highfield on enantiomerically selective chemical syntheses. Unfortunately (for me), Adrian didn’t mince words and put me on the spot to explain chirality and quickly knocked the wind out of my intricate and long-winded molecular explanation with one word – handedness. Which is chirality in a nutshell. For more on chirality check out my cyclo-octatetraene molecule of the month