Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on record

WASHINGTON – More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming “tipping point” in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years. Read more

How does bluetongue virus survive through the winter?

In 2006, Bluetongue virus – which infects livestock – reached Northern Europe for the first time. Some people thought that the outbreak would be limited to that particular year, as winter was expected to kill off the midges that host and spread the disease, bringing the threat of infection to an end. In actuality, the disease escalated in the following year, spreading to the UK. So, how did the virus survive the winter?

Malaria researchers identify new mosquito virus

Anopheles gambiae mosquito infected with GFP-expressing AgDNV. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Malaria Research Institute have identified a previously unknown virus that is infectious to Anopheles gambiae—the mosquito primarily responsible for transmitting malaria. According to the researchers, the discovered virus could one day be used to pass on new genetic information to An. gambiae mosquitoes as part of a strategy to control malaria, which kills over one million people worldwide each year. The study was published August 22 online in the peer-reviewed open access journal PLoS Pathogens.

Biologists find diatom to reduce red tide’s toxicity

Skeletonema costatum (the chain-like organism) has been found to reduce the toxicity of the red tide organism (the round cells) to both animals and other algae. It’s estimated that the red tide algae, Karenia brevis, costs approximately $20 million per bloom in economic damage off the coast of Florida alone.
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Intelligent Molecular Design

First up in The Alchemist this week is a tale of reactions where size really does matter! News of why “non-smokers cough” emerges from the American Chemical Society meeting this month and a new physical process has been revealed by NMR spectroscopy of frozen xenon atoms that could provide a chaotic link in quantum mechanics back to Newton’s era. Biotech news hints at a novel way to flavour your food and Japanese chemists have made a gel that undulates like intestinal muscle. Finally, this week’s award goes to my good friend AP de Silva of Queen’s University Belfast for his highly intelligent work in the development of market-leading sensor technology and intelligent molecules.

You can grab the complete headlines and abstracts in the latest issue of The Alchemist on ChemWeb.

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Intelligent Molecular Design

Boris Johnson, Fop or Geneticist?

For Scousers, Londoners, fans of BBC’s Have I Got News for You satirical news quiz, and especially to everyone who watched this Beijing to London Olympic handover this week the name Boris Johnson likely drums up an image of some blonde, floppy haired, bedraggled and totally confused Tory toff, who just happens to be Mayor of London.

Well, it turns out that he has quite an interesting ancestry of which he was almost totally unaware until another BBC TV show (Who Do You Think You Are?, which is all about family history and genealogy of the rich and famous) helped him dig deep into the roots of his family tree. First off, not only was his great grandfather, Ali Kemal an outspoken journalist turned politician (like Johnson) who was apparently lynched by the state in the founding years of modern Turkey but his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was King George II of England (illegitimately due to a “wrong-side-of-the-sheets liaison between Johnson’s great grandmother and a descendant of George II. Such ancestry means Johnson is related to all the royal families of Europe.

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Developing World Nuclear Revolution

Not being one to shy away from controversy (viz. my MMR and vaccination item, the intelligent Dawkins debate post and the recent flurry of global warming items, including one entitled Climate change debunked), I thought I’d dive headlong into the muddy ethical, economic, and engineering puddle that is nuclear power.

However, I am wearing a buoyancy aid, a nose-clip, ear-plugs, and protective goggles in the form of a peer-reviewed review from the International Journal of Global Energy Issues (2008, 30, 393-412), rather than skinny dipping.

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Scientific Stereotype

The wacky characters that introduce kids to science may be doing more harm than good. Reinforcing the white-man-in-a-lab-coat or mad-scientist stereotype could diminish not only children’s interest in science, but also the diversity of future scientific workplaces.

The Web is littered with “Ask a Scientist” sites aimed at getting children “into” science. Some of these sites do provide useful resources for youngsters curious about things such as “Why is the sky blue?”, “Why do
men
have nipples?Why do men have nipples?“, and “How can I best extrapolate a Hurter-Driffield curve in my experiments on photographic material transmission densities?”

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How to Discover Our Universe

Apparently, scientific thought needs rekindling, seemingly it has run out of kindle and needs a new flame if it is to burn brighter. In steps Terence Witt with the concept of null physics. Witt has now self-published a hefty tome by the name of Our Undiscovered Universe.

According to the press blurb that came with my review copy of the book, he’s a visiting scientist at Florida Institute of Technology. Now, I can find FIT on the web, but I cannot find Witt at FIT. Anyway, he puts forward an intriguing, if not entirely original, idea that modern physics requires a paradigm shift back to common sense thinking and a logical reconnection between observation and theory.

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Cells change identity in promising breakthrough

NEW YORK (AP) — Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

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