Real chemistry at the periodic table party is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Spring and Autumn are the half-way points when the Earth’s tilt is neither angled towards or away from the sun. These seasons usually have milder temperatures than the extremes of winter and summer. The difference between spring and autumn is essentially one of biology as the organisms experience warming day after day in Spring and respond accordingly and cooling day after day in Autumn.

So, all that in hand, it must have been quite confusing for viewers of the BBC’s latest scientific blockbuster “The Wonders of the Solar System” to watch the earth wobbling like a spinning top as it orbited the sun and learning that this change is the cause of the seasons. Actually, the way they showed it, the Earth was static and the sun was orbiting it…double confusion.

Now, the producers either simply got carried away with their wonderful 3D graphics and were trying to show the relative position of the tilt of the Earth’s axis to the “fixed” sun, or else they were confusing this tilt with astronomical precession (which does not cause the seasons). Precession is the regular oscillation of the axis of any spinning object whether gyroscope or planet, that occurs as the object rotates.

Precession will be familiar to anyone who has played with a child’s spinning top or a gyroscope (a spinning top for grown ups). The main axial oscillation is slower than the spinning but is quite visible. For the much bigger Earth, spinning on its axis once a day, the oscillation of that axis is much slower. The main large precession of the Earth’s axis takes tens of thousand years to complete a single loop.

Despite precession being a long timescale feature of the Earth, it has a number of observable effects, if you’re willing to wait. First, the positions of the south and north celestial poles appear to move in circles against the space-fixed backdrop of stars, completing one circuit in 25,771.5 years (measured at the year 2000 rate). So, the north star, Polaris, today lies approximately at the north celestial pole, this will change over time, and other stars will become the “north star”, today’s north star was not the north star seen by the earliest human navigators thousands of years ago. It also provides a point of confusion for historians looking at ancient star charts and scientists must take it into account in climate studies, for instance.

Certainly, the axial wobble shown in The Wonders of the Solar System was either just very badly drawn or particle physicists have not yet grasped the causes of the seasons. So, Professor Brian Cox, who played keyboards for one hit wonders D:ream, astronomically speaking, things can only get better, right?

I do get what they were trying to show, but they did it so badly, that anyone who vaguely understands axial precession would have been seriously confused and flatearthers even more so…

What causes the seasons? is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

• Feverish New World X-ray – X-ray crystallography has allowed US researchers to discover exactly how one type of New World hemorrhagic fever virus latches on to and infects human cells. The work offers a much-needed lead for new treatments.
• Marking up childhood obesity – Metabolic fingerprinting has been shown to be a powerful tool for exploring Biomarkers in a range of disorders and the pathophysiological mechanisms of disease. A new study has now applied the technique to childhood obesity to intriguing effect.
• Myrtle medicine – German researchers have successfully devised and implemented a total synthesis of myrtucommulone A, tracking progress and structures using NMR spectroscopy. The compound is physiologically active in anticancer and antibacterial screens, and the synthesis opens up the potential for making simpler, but active analogues.
• Antimony analysed in food packaging – A simple, yet sensitive, method for detecting inorganic antimony in food packaging has been developed using cloud point extraction combined with electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS).
• Unlocking the opium poppy’s biggest secret – Researchers at the University of Calgary have discovered the unique genes that allow the opium poppy to make codeine and morphine
• What is the difference between a heart attack and cardiac arrest? –
• Antibiotics against stomach cancer – Helicobacter pylori often causes stomach ulcers and, in extreme cases, gastric cancer. f1000 Medicine Reports, Seiji Shiota and Yoshio Yamaoka discuss the possible eradication of H. pylori infections using antibiotics.
• How cars are killing us – Cars are lethal, but nowhere more so than in the developing world.

Antimony, x-rays, childhood obesity is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

In a related carbon field, Chinese chemists have broken the rules to crack bucky eggs and US scientists have looked to molecular midwifery to help explain the origins of life.

In environmental news, the tragic story of BPA is told from the chemical perspective and an award to a Swedish team could help studies of oxygen depletion in the Baltic Sea that might one day lead to a route to remediation.

More details and all the links can be found on ChemWeb. You could also get the latest chemistry news and more by subscribing to the email newsletter.

Total alchemist is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Manufacturers propagated the upward spiral for both camps marketing ever more elaborate systems and even selling green pens to colour the edge of a CD to prevent laser leakage. Personally, I grew up with a “stereogram” and a personal radio-cassette and was quite happy with it, whiling away countless hours listening to prog rock, Jean Michel Jarre, Talking Heads, and the occasional Perry Como album.

But, was it all for nothing? Within another generation the notion of digital audio had been compressed using the audio equivalent of the lossy image format jpeg and music fans were listening on pocket devices or watching Youtube clips with embedded music on poor-quality computer speakers and really not caring either way, whether the sound was great or not.

Jerald Hughes of University of Texas Pan American in Edinburg writing in the International Journal Services and Standards has a nice table showing the technical specification of the human ear and comparing it to the various analogue formats:

So, the only system that ever came close to the full range of human hearing was reel-to-reel and I don’t recall seeing many of those around even among the most extravagant separates hi-fi aficionados of my parents’ acquaintance.

So, how does the CD fit into this picture?

Not bad? It really was a golden era, then, apart from that lack of “warmth” and “colour” that the analogue stalwarts claimed. And, with DVD audio quality (and SACD, superaudio CD) far outstripping even CD. These latter formats are well-known to devoted adherents of jazz and classical where dynamic range and complex frequency content tends to be more common than in rock and pop, although there are serious mastering problems with many modern recordings in all genres.

Today, there are almost as many audio “formats” as there are audio files. One can choose a download or rip at almost any rate, a lossy or lossless compression algorithm, and countless other options and codecs to playback a music file on myriad devices. But, consumers in general, have gravitated towards a quality that is much lower than the human ear is capable of discerning and much lower than top-end equipment is capable of reproducing. It’s as if the hi-fi nuts never existed…

Perhaps that’s the point though, my generation was perfectly content to listen to vinyl albums duplicated on cassette tapes (remember: home taping is skill in music killing music, it never did) and today, the kids are quite happy to listen to downloaded 128kbps mp3 files through the cheap earbuds that come with portable music players.

Human senses and sensibilities have limits. It’s not that the human ear cannot receive the finest of musical details, it most certainly can, it’s just that most people perceive satisfaction in listening to a good-quality mp3 and are not worried about the top notes or the quiet moments that might be lost in the compression process that squeezes their collection of thousands of songs on to a sliver of silicon embedded in a case no bigger than a thumbnail.

Audio cassettes were popular because they were convenient – mix tapes, copying albumbs, recording off the radio all infinitely simpler with cassettes than with a reel-to-reel machine. In the post-digital era of music on chips rather than disks consumers are trading-off audio quality for convenience just the same as they ever did. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

Jerald Hughes (2009). Emergent quality standards for digital entertainment experience goods: the case of consumer audio Int. J. Services and Standards, 5 (4), 333-353

I spoke to Hughes who confessed that he too is a prog-rock fan, and admitted that the first album he ever bought with his own money was the YesSongs triple live album. He also told me he is still listening to his Technics direct-drive turntable with hyperelliptical stylus through Bose 501 speakers and said, “it really IS ‘warmer’…”

Whatever happened to the audiophile? is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Non-destructive spit test – Raman spectroscopy can identify samples of an unknown substance at a crime scene as human saliva during forensic analysis, according to a US study, the technique would preserve DNA evidence. I asked research team leader, Igor Lednev to tell me about his aspirations for the technique.

“The major motivation of this research project, funded by the National Institute of Justice, is to bring our novel method to the forensic lab and a crime scene as soon as possible,” he told me. “The method is at the developmental stage at the moment and several further developments need to be done before moving to the “real” world crime scene.” These include (i) automation of the technique and making it a user-friendly “black-box type” apparatus, (ii) expansion to potential mixtures of body fluids, (iii) protection from possible interference from substrate materials and possible contaminants, and (iv) expansion to possible evidence degradation under various environmental conditions.

To achieve those goals the team is collaborating with “real world” practitioners, CSIs including Barry Duceman, Director of Biological Science, at the NY State Police Forensic Investigation Center and John Hicks, Director of the Northeast Research Forensic Institute. Lednev revealed to me that a first prototype of the device should be in forensic laboratories within two to three years.

Also, in my SpectroscopyNOW column this week:

MRI on the ball – MRI proves to be a good diagnostic tool for testicular cancer and could spare some men unnecessary surgery.

Focus on energy molecule – Organisms use ATP as a universal energy storage molecule, now carbon nanotubes, modified with luciferase, have been used as near-infrared detectors for cellular ATP. The work has potential for studies of ischaemia, Parkinson’s disease, hypoglycaemia and more.

Copper, on the beat with NMR – The first NMR spectroscopy study of the copper site in an important blue metalloprotein, azurin, has been undertaken. Copper mediates many biochemical redox reactions and azurin plays an important role in catalysing electron transfer in cellular reactions.

Sunscreen spies – Sunscreen and boron can work together to make a compound that changes colour when touched under ultraviolet light. The compound changes from blue-green to yellow with the gentlest of rubs and then reverts quickly to blue-green when gently warmed, although the process is reversible at room temperature.

Bucky eggs cracked – Unusual egg-shaped fullerene molecules are rulebreakers because they do what no other fullerenes seem to do – fuse three pentagons of carbon atoms, according to chemists in China. The discovery of these molecules could lead to new insights into fullerene chemistry as well as offering new opportunities for synthesising novel materials.

Forensic saliva test montage by Albany’s Aliaksandra Sikirzhytskaya.

Virkler, K., & Lednev, I. (2010). Forensic body fluid identification: The Raman spectroscopic signature of saliva The Analyst, 135 (3) DOI: 10.1039/b919393f

Forensic saliva test within spitting distance is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Location-based services also represent a security threat, especially if you hook whereabouts up to the likes of FourSquare and other social networking sites that can be set to reveal publicly your status in a timely way and reveal your precise position to all and sundry. Now, a new security awareness site, going by the ironically informative name of PleaseRobMe.com, demonstrates the hazards inherent in location-based services. The site’s strapline proclaims that they are: “Listing all those empty homes out there” and in interviews this week the owners have been telling the media that they’re not helping burglars but warning users about revealing too much about themselves on the networks.

This latest debacle, if you can call it that, highlights once again the fact that individuals are not necessarily aware of the privacy and security issues associated with revealing personal information and their identity online. Some observers have suggested that digital identity online will be “the next big thing”. One can imagine that it certainly will be, especially as governments, businesses, healthcare organizations, and others will increasingly require us to prove our identity digitally when we access their services online. But, wherever there is a lock guarding something precious, there is someone who will go set out to pick that lock.

If you’re not worried about privacy just check out these sites to see what systems can find out about you without your even logging in – EFF Panopticlick experiment and web tracking, what the internet knows about you.

As such, identity management, known in the “industry” as IdM is a more and more important aspect of one’s online persona for joining, interacting, and leaving countless systems. There are numerous protocols available, such as OpenID and the OAuth systems that allow you to login to one service by verifying you with a prior login process on a third-party trusted site.

Researchers in the UK explain that IdM could be reaching crisis point. “There is overwhelming evidence that current IdM is failing us, says Mark Pawlewski of Loughborough University and colleagues. Pawlewski is a Principal Researcher working for BT Innovate and Design.

Countless websites require registration and logins and users are now faced with the task of remembering dozens of usernames and passwords or else suffering “password fatigue” whereby they employ insecure practices, such as using the same username and password combination on multiple sites. The researchers have an explanation for the IdM problem:

At the root of the problem is the fundamental flaw that the internet was not designed, but evolved without a uniform system of digital identity in place. There have been numerous attempts to solve this problem, such as Microsoft Passport, but many of these have failed leaving a scattering of inconsistent, ad hoc, partial solutions.

One of the challenges is to give users immediate access to a particular site where they have not already registered, but do meet the requirements for access, e.g., being over 18 years of age and possessing a valid credit card. The OpenID system (and others such as Card Space and Liberty Alliance) goes part way to addressing this issue, as do the linkage systems employed by Facebook apps and similar systems that allow one to comment on some blogs using Facebook or other credentials. However, it would be foolhardy to trust a Facebook app with the login for one’s bank account. An Identity Provider (IdP) that mediates between users and websites is clearly needed.

But, there are only a very limited number of IdPs around and they provide only very limited functionality, certainly none is at the trust level yet for the average user to connect with the e-commerce sites they use, such as amazon.com, their online banking, or even all of their social media and networking accounts from Facebook to Twitter via LinkedIn.

Unfortunately, preserving the status quo is the approach adopted by sites and internet service providers. After all, the creation of an IdM system and trusted IdPs will not be cheap and will also face the resistance of the millions of internet users happy to create yet another username-password. On the bottom line, it is a matter of preventing fraudsters from getting a key to unlock one’s virtual valuables.

If service providers maintain fraud at an “acceptable”, level then the status quo will persist. However, if there is a surge in identity fraud the costs of which outweigh the necessary investment in IdM, then we might just see the emergence of a system that is simple, secure, and safe. In the meantime, just keep up the good work with those complex passwords and don’t tell everyone on the internet when you’re heading out the door, you might as well not lock up if you do.

So, how do you hack your online identity? Well, there’s lots of advice out there, this post from Liverpool University says it well.

T. Martin, C. Durbin, M. Pawlewski, & D. Parish (2010). Future vision of identity Int. J. Liability and Scientific Enquiry, 3 (1/2), 86-98

Why online identity is important

• We’re Still Not Facebook: Lessons from Late Adopters (readwriteweb.com)
• Your Life Online Could Affect Your Job Search (regulargeek.com)
• Test the water before you throw the client in (flackrabbit.com)
• PleaseRobMe: Like Foursquare, but for crooks (inquisitr.com)

Hacking your online identity is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Ionic liquids hold much promise in gas chromatography of biofuels, we learn, and a lethal combination of anticancer drug and protein inhibitors offers a new, effective approach to ovarian and breast cancers.

Chemists in China have boiled a bucky egg and broken the rules, and finally, a fourth NSF award for chemists at Kansas State University.

Write-ups and links to full articles now on ChemWeb.com

Time-keeping alchemy is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Simply click one of the four icons above to get to the Sciencebase Facebook, Delicious, RSS, and Twitter pages for far too much science and tech than even I know what to do with…

Four ways to connect with Sciencebase is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

• Robert Boyle – Chemistry
• Sir Isaac Newton – Optics
• Benjamin Franklin – Electricity
• Edward Jenner – Vaccination
• Charles Babbage – Computing
• Alfred Russel Wallace – Evolution
• Sir Joseph Lister – Antiseptic Surgery
• Ernest Rutherford – Atomic Structure
• Dorothy Hodgkin – Crystallography
• Sir Nicholas Shackleton – Earth Science

The stamps marry portraits of Fellows with imagery representing their science. Apparently, the list was selected by leading figures in the Society.

Royal stamps for Royal Society is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog