I should also point out that since coming back from WCSJ09 I’ve had a rather nasty cough, a bit of a sore throat and have felt quite lethargic…but that’s more likely to do with all the mixing in smoky Westminster pub outdoor areas and the talking loudly to be heard over speakers at social events (apologies Natasha, Ed).

Anyway, back to the swine flu. The number of people contacting their doctor because they think they have swine flu has jumped almost 50% to 40,000 a week, according to a BBC report. The actual number of diagnosed cases has risen sixfold in the last week in some parts of the UK, The Guardian said. The Royal College of General Practitioners has criticised the government’s overall handling of H1N1.

The case of the GP who died this week is intriguing from the semantic point of view. According to various outlets, no inquest will be held into the death of 64-year-old Dr Day, who died on Saturday in the Luton and Dunstable Hospital of “natural causes”.

That last phrase covers an awful lot of issues with a nice shiny gloss, it’s the official stance on a whole range of causes of death used on death certificates. But, it doesn’t actually tell is what Dr Day died of and police have criticised the media for reporting his death as a swine flu death. But, of course, it was swine flu that killed him, even if it induced cardiac arrest or some kind of toxic overload. In the absence of the infection would he have otherwise died of “natural causes”? The phrase “natural causes”, is apparently legalese and we should be avoiding it like…well, the plague…for the sake of epidemiology and long-term public records in the face of an emergent virus.

As to the cause of death of an apparently healthy six-year old girl, the post mortem is underway…

Meanwhile, despite declarations to the contrary, it seems that a swine flu vaccine is still months away, according to The Guardian, and is likely to not be ready for the so-called second wave predicted for the autumn.

Several weeks ago, a GP friend told me that word on the street was that one in three people would be infected in that second wave, that ratio was confirmed by BBC news coverage today; some sources say ultimately half of us will eventually be infected. Although the Telegraph reports that according to chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, just one in eight workers will be forced to stay home because of H1N1.

The BBC’s report was made almost in the same breath as they reported the Imperial College research that says it’s almost impossible to tell who has and who hasn’t been infected and so impossible to determine a true mortality rate value for H1N1 (something I discussed here and elsewhere when information about the disease first emerged).

Now, if one in three are likely to be infected and the mortality rate is a conservative 2%…then that will be approximately half a million UK deaths. The mortality rate may be lower, but the second wave could be more virulent and some researchers, as I’ve reported previously, suggest that 6% might die, that’s three times as many deaths.

One other point of semantics that is rather irritating and could have been avoided with a simple word switch is regarding the usage of “pandemic”. The word has a strict definition in medical circles, referring simply to how far a disease has spread into the world population.

However, many media talk about “pandemic” as if it were synonymous with lethality or virulence and use it to differentiate between the H1N1 flu virus and so-called “seasonal” influenza, which incidentally kills half a million people each year. If only the WHO had chosen the term “emergent” influenza, then I think many of the misconceptions regarding their announcements on pandemic flu would have been avoided…too late now, of course.

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

A medical tale in the sting – The venom of the eusocial bee contains three novel antimicrobial compounds known as lasioglossins, which have been structurally characterised by NMR spectroscopy. The compounds offer a new avenue for developing new antibiotics that might defeat drug-resistant bacteria.

Marine surfactant soaks up heavy metal – Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and other techniques have been used to demonstrate the effectiveness of a natural surfactant molecule in removing heavy metals from solutions for potential bioremediation applications.

Topical resistance – Crystallography by UK scientists may have uncovered the mechanism by which quinolone drugs interact with DNA and bacterial topoisomerase and so point to a better understanding of how resistance to this class of drugs emerges in meningitis and pneumonia.

Exhausted grapes fit only for compost – Multivariate analysis of the physicochemical, chemical and biological parameters of winery and distillery composts could point the way to improving the use of these generally intractable waste materials.

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

In contrast direct heating of water sidesteps the intermediary of converting sunlight into electricity and then using that to power a heating element in a water tank. All you need is some kind of pipework on a southerly facing roof in a hot climate. The pipework, painted matt black, carries a cold water supply and being held beneath glass heats up very quickly during the day, transferring the sun’s energy into the flowing cold water and producing piping hot water on the outflow.

Similarly, as any sadistic school child with a magnifying glass and a trapped ant will tell you, focused sunlight can produce a lot of heat in a small volume very quickly. Perfect for cooking.

There is no need for this inefficient conversion. Instead a reflective sunlight collector with a parabolic profile can be used to focus sunlight up and on to a hotplate. Such solar cookers are already well known and many a green barbecue enthusiast will have one in their garden for cooking burgers, veggie and beef, and anything else they care to eat. The potential for summer savings in the developed world are immense if one removes the requirements for bottled gas and charcoal from the BBQ equation.

In the developing world, however, solar cookers might be seen as an essential domestic tool.

• In Ghana, for instance, Zouzugu villagers are using solar cookers to pasteurize water and so kill off waterborne disease, without the need to light a fire.
• In Lesotho, small groups of women now have access to communal solar ovens they use for baking bread.
• In the silk-producing village of Bysanivaripalle, India, an entire village uses solar cooking.
• In Gaza, solar cookers are becoming increasingly common as fuel is in short supply.

The list goes on.

There are dozens of designs for solar cookers and solar kettles, some commercial, some created by aid agencies, others improvised based on published schematics. Fundamentally, they all work by concentrating sunlight. A curved sheet of polished metal or a mirror concentrates sunlight into a small cooking area. Black-bottomed pots and pans are the best receptacles for absorbing heat effectively. Some kind of casing can augment the effect by trapping the heat within the cooking area. This makes it possible to reach similar temperatures on cold and windy days as on hot days.

There is always room for improvement, and if solar cooking is to be adopted more widely and not simply seen as a novelty barbecue tool in the developed world or a rare convenience in the developing world, then inexpensive design improvements are needed.

With this in mind, Nitesh Rathore and Shailendra Shukla of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, at Banaras Hindu University, in Varanasi, India, have investigated the efficiencies of different approaches to solar cookers. Specifically, they have looked at two major designs: the flat plate box type solar cooker made of steel and the solar parabolic cooker which uses an acrylic mirror.

Shukla points out that there are two classifications of solar cooker: domestic and communal. Domestic type cookers may be either box-type or parabolic, but community solar cookers are usually of the parabolic concentrator type. There are also cookers that track the sun. “A tracking type parabolic concentrator is most suitable for community cooking including restaurants and hotels,” Shukla explains. “One can cook not only food, but also roast nuts, dry vegetables and fruits, pasteurize water and even bake bread, idly on a clear day at noon.”

The solar cooker is a very versatile machine. The domestic type kept in the sun is like having an oven kept to temperature provided you have clear skies. “You can place anything in it at any time and take it out when it’s done,” Shukla told Sciencebase, “What is important for solar cooking is not how hot the sun is but how clear the sunlit sky is. In most places in India one can cook for 70-80% of the days in a year. One can thus solar-cook in all seasons, with unmatched cost-efficiency.”

The teams tests confirm that solar cookers are just as “inefficient” in absolute terms as photovoltaic electrical generation systems. In other words, very little of the energy from the incident sunlight is converted into usable energy. However, with a solar cooker as opposed to a PV system, this matters little as long as the water gets boiled and the food cooked relatively quickly. Different cooker geometries and setup can affect cooking times significantly and they suggest various design modifications that could make solar cooking a viable alternative to a wood-burning fire for millions of people.

The team points out that the main problem with solar cookers in India is not efficiency or design but simply awareness. “There is less knowledge of solar energy utilisation equipment among the people of the country,” Shukla explains, “The use of SC could help in the conservation of conventional fuels, such as firewood and agricultural waste in rural areas of India.” Promoting a
shift
to solar
cooking would preserve ecosystemsPromoting a shift to solar cooking would preserve ecosystems, and reduce soil erosion and desertification, and unused animal waste could be employed as agricultural fertiliser rather than as fuel.

India has the right climate for solar cooking – with around 3000 sunshine hours a year – has thousands of villages and a population of well over 1 billion many of whom have very little money and limited access to fuels and who could well benefit from solar cooking.

Of course, if you can concentrate sunlight well, then you can sidestep the problem of low efficiency photovoltaics by simply using the heat produced at the focal point to run a generator produce steam for producing electricity.

Stirling Energy Systems and Tessera Solar are developing solar power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories called SunCatchers, the dishes are designed to pipe energy from the sun uses precision mirrors attached to a parabolic dish to a Stirling engine.

The Sterling engine (invented in the early nineteenth century) is a sealed system filled with hydrogen and as the gas heats up and cools down, its pressure rises and falls, this changing pressure drives the engine’s pistons. These pistons can then do mechanical work or drive an electric generator. So direct solar heating might not only be useful for cooking and boiling water, but could also be used to provide electric light and power for mobile phones, laptop computers, and other equipment, all without resorting to fossil fuels, or burning valuable wood and animal waste resources.

Nitesh Rathore, & S.K. Shukla (2009). Experimental investigations and comparison of energy and exergy efficiencies of the box type and Solar Parabolic Cooker Int. J. Energy Technology and Policy, 7 (2), 201-212

More solar power

• Solar for Dark Climates
• Hybrid Solar Cells Shine
• 75-megawatt solar project slated for Cle Elum

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

In this 40th anniversary year of the first manned moon landing, Jim Bell brings the lunar surface into stunning three-dimensional relief in Moon 3-D. I am sure children will enjoy this book for the 3D pictures alone. There are plenty of words too, but you’re going to look very silly on the beach this summer with your Moon 3D specs on squint at moon buggies, astronauts, and craters.

Mark Changizi, in The Vision Revolution, is not trying to understand how the brain works the way it does, instead he wants to find out why it works that way. Changizi is a theoretical neurobiologist and his insights could overturn everything we thought we knew about human vision.

What the drug companies won’t tell you and your doctor doesn’t know is not the snappiest of titles and the presence of Andrew Weil’s name on the cover was not a deciding factor in my listing this book. Author Michael Murray is described as a leading authority on natural medicine, whatever that is and his book seems to suggest that so-called modern medicine has created the so-called health crisis we currently face. It always irritates me to read phrases like “natural medicine” as if popping any drug, whether made in a pharma factory or dug up and brewed into a tea is any differently natural. Judge for yourself, but it looks like a conspiracy theory to me.

Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman in Seasons of Life discuss the biological rhythms that living things need to thrive and survive. The season of our birth, apparently, can affect our physiology in many ways, including asthma, possibly autism, eating disorders, and even Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia in later life. It seems somehow vaguely plausible. It will be interesting to see whether the theories of Foster and Kreitzman bear up to close scrutiny.

In The Selfish Genius (geddit?), Fern Elsdon-Baker discusses how Richard Dawkins rewrote Darwin’s legacy. On 1st July 1858, Charles Darwin unveiled his (in)famous theory of natural selection, who was to know that it would still be causing such an intellectual crisis more than a century and a half later. While Dawkins has certainly helped give prominence to evolution, Elsdon-Baker takes issue with his neo-Darwinist spin on the theory. As a pro-science atheist and specialists in the history and communication of evolutionary theory she alludes to the idea that Dawkins’ prescriptive and restrictive approach to the evolution of life on earth may have Darwin spinning in his grave.

Finally, Fixing Climate definitely has the snappiest title of this latest round up of summer science reads. But, a snappy title is what you would expect from the scientist who coined the phrase “global warming” back in 1975. Wallace Broecker, and co-author Robert Kunzig describe Earth’s volatile history and the origins of anthropogenic climate change. Their solution to the imminent global catastrophe is to remove carbon waste from the atmosphere and in support of the concept, Broecker is backing the development of artificial trees that can sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There are many such schemes around, whether we can offset the energy and resources to implement them on a global scale remains to be seen.

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

1. Availability
2. Access
3. Action

Availability is achieved when sufficient quantities of food are consistently available for the whole community, whether on a local, regional, or national level. Access to food involves individuals, families and communities have adequate resources to grow their own food, money to buy food, or fitness to work for food. Action, or utilisation, of food refers to the idea that given adequate supplies of food are those supplies are being used properly – to feed people.

Nutritionist Mieke Faber of the Nutritional Intervention Research Unit, at the Medical Research Council, in Cape Town, and colleagues GIS Director Craig Schwabe of the Human Sciences Research Council, in Pretoria, South Africa, and research fellow Scott Drimie of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in Washington DC, USA, have looked at these factors as they pertain to food security among the poorest households in the country.

The team surveyed almost 500 homes picked at random across five municipalities of Greater Sekhukhune, Limpopo Province, South Africa. These municipalities are among the poorest in the country. Here, seventy-five percent
of
households are
in the low
living standard
measure categoryseventy-five percent of households are in the low living standard measure category, this means poverty is rife and deprivation common.

They investigated living standards, months of food shortages, household food insecurity and access and found that a potentially key indicator of potential food security issues is dietary diversity.

The team learned that foods were mostly purchased, either from supermarkets in town or small trading stores. This result corresponded with a national survey that showed that most South African households bought the five most widely consumed food items (maize, sugar, tea, whole milk and brown bread) rather than subsisting on agriculture.

The researchers also confirmed an obvious point:

Household income is particularly important for food security as it directly affects household access to food, as was shown by the similar seasonal patterns that were observed for months of inadequate food provision and shortage of money.

However, this statement belies the complexity of the underlying issues. Indeed, the team’s main finding is that the three A’s of food security are underpinned by the finding that households consuming a diet with low diversity experienced more food shortage than households consuming a diet of higher diversity.

This is not to say that by purchasing a more diverse range of foods will improve food security directly, but diversity acts as a risk factor, a proxy measure, to assist in finding the most vulnerable households. Households with a low dietary diversity had fewer assets, such as a refrigerator, than households with a higher dietary diversity, a finding that aligns with earlier research. Not having access to cold storage had already been shown to be a risk factor for stunted growth or being underweight in South African children.

Of course, a survey is just a survey, and the three A’s of food security are entirely meaningless words unless action is taken to address the underlying problems facing poor people in the developing world.

Mieke Faber, Craig Schwabe, & Scott Drimie (2009). Dietary diversity in relation to other household food security indicators Int. J. Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health, 2 (1), 1-15

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Regardless, there is growing support for Singh’s defence against the British Chiropractic Association who somehow managed to sue him for libel against their organisation. I always thought it was only individuals that could be libelled not organisations. In an article in The Guardian, Singh apparently referred to certain practices as bogus, on the basis that they allegedly have no clinical trials or scientific explanation to support the claims. Sense about Science has more on the case here as well as a petition aimed at keeping libel laws out of scientific debate.

I wonder though whether Singh was in on the script for this Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch about a homeopathic ER (probably not). A road accident victim is brought to the casualty department and various treatments called for, including wolfsbane, flower remedies, and a near infinitely diluted infusion of the Ford vehicle that collided with the man. None of them work, but then the surgeon has a brain wave…

It’s very near the knuckle (ish), but I suspect the Association of Homeopathic Remedyists won’t be taking Mitchell and Webb to court any time soon because they never once use the word bogus. And, even if they had, that word has so many meanings as to render any libel case null and void, assuming a sensible judge with a more than vague understanding of medicine, at least. Just for the record, I’ve personally had successful chiropractic treatment, but this whole case is ludicrous.

Unfortunately, the pub scene punchline totally ruins the comedic atmosphere. You see the pair order a pint of lager to drown their sorrows after the victim dies. But, a drop of lager in a pint glass of water would have absolutely no effect on them homeopathically speaking. Far too concentrated, you see?

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Regardless, it was an excellent conference, a great opportunity to meet a hugely diverse range of people. Some of them old friends known from previous career incarnations, including the delightful and enthusiastic Sunny Bains and ESF’s Sofia Valleley, newscientist’s Graham Lawton, C&EN’s Celia Arnaud, Nature’s Mark Peplow, Wilson da Silva of Cosmos, the Nobel Simon Frantz, Diabetes UK Jo Brodie, immuno expert and communicator Caroline Cross, fellow freelance Cormac Sheridan, The Guardian’s Tim Radford and Alok Jha, and many others.

Then there were the previously only virtual friends made flesh – Claire Ainsworth, Mun-Keat Looi aka @Ayasawada, the winning Ed Yong, Paul Sutherland, Richard Scrase, Martin Ince, Sonya Buyting, Jennifer Beal, John and Kate Travis, James Cornell president of the International Science Writers Association, Oranjeboom fiend Arran Frood, Juliette Mutheu.

Not forgetting, looking very smart and professional in orange Emma, Jessica, Jacob, and many, many others manning the stands and allowing the hacks to lead them astray at the Westminster Arms. And, of course, the inimitable Sallie Robins. I’m going to stop before this begins to sound like an Oscars speech, so apologies to my other new best friends if I didn’t mention you here.

The coffee break, lunchtime and social discussions were often even more diverse than the scheduled plenaries, lectures and workshops. Chat among journalists usually degrades to rates, kill fees and booze. However, this meeting was different topics featured in both lectures and chats headed off to the rise and fall and the rise of science journalism, the heat, philanthropy, Bach, Saharan solar power, the heat, inexpensive bus rides, Scottish lasers and Mount Rushmore, the miniature hamburgers, the heat, nano-curlers, orange ties, blogging, the LHC, man bags, chiropractic, AIDS, and MrsSlocombesPussy, of course, and so much more…including rates, kill fees and booze.

A wonderful week everyone. Thank you.

Meanwhile, for Twitter fiends: We may not have trended our hashtag “#WCSJ” but we tweeted 2,494 tweets, there were 236 contributors (out of 800 or so delegates), We averaged 356 tweets per day with almost half of those coming from the most prolific 10 twitters. an eighth were retweets, a fifth were mentions, and just over 5% had multiple hashtags and so spilled into other areas.

Discussion on twitter using the #WCSJ hashtag really started to heat up on Thursday last week – you can read a transcript here and you can tweak the dates to home in on particular days for the actual conference.

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Synchrotron X-ray holotomography has revealed why size really does matter to the sex lives of some creatures. The researchers provide evidence of ancient giant fossil sperm and hint at a link to organisms alive today. Long version…

Cut-free brain surgery – A new approach to brain surgery avoids the use of the surgeon’s scalpel and instead exploits advances in magnetic resonance imaging to guide an ultrasound intervention. Dig into the full story here…

Luxurious edible oils – Researchers have developed a novel approach to the rapid assignment of NMR spectra to the major components of vegetable oils such as avocado, mango kernel and macadamia nut oils. The slick new approach could help improve quality control and detect fraud in the food industry. More…

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Iron proteins cast in surprising role – Iron is the most abundant transition metal in the human body. Its intriguing reduction-oxidation properties endow it with the active role as an essential cofactor in countless proteins. Some of these are involved in oxygen transport (haemoglobin in the blood), electron exchange for powering biochemical reactions and energy release (cytochromes), and the control of potentially harmful free radicals.

However, little is known about how the haem group that carries oxygen in blood and is the active centre of several enzymes is transported from where it is made in the cell to its host protein assembly. Now, UV-Vis spectroscopy has helped identify an enzyme that also functions as a haem transporter as well as protecting the fragile iron(II). More…

Aerosols all – Dust, sea salt, soot, bacteria, and pollutant particles all add to the mix of atmospheric aerosols that can seed cloud formation as water and ice condense on these tiny particles and ultimately lead to precipitation. Understanding future climate change might hinge on the analysis of all such contributing atmospheric aerosols. Now, infrared spectroscopy and mass spectrometry have revealed important clues as to the role of aerosols in affecting climate patterns. Full story…

Biggy smalls – Scientists in Israel and the US have demonstrated systematic differences in the Raman spectra of single molecules adsorbed on to small, as opposed to relatively large, nanoparticles. The discovery could open up a new approach to single molecule studies. Read on…

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

A small follow-up trial for prostate drug abiraterone demonstrates quality of life improvements in patients with the aggressive form of the disease, the same drug might also be used in treating breast cancer.

German researchers “working at close to absolute zero” have formulated the smallest drop of hydrochloric acid, showing that four water molecules and one HCl are all that is needed.

In physical science the giant intrinsic electroresistance has been demonstrated in a conventional ferroelectric film for the first time and could herald the development of a new high-density type of computer memory. It’s the electrical equivalent of giant magnetoresistance exploited in modern high-density hard drives.

Finally, technical achievement in founding modern near infrared chemical imaging systems leads to an award for Malvern Instruments’ Technical Director E Neil Lewis.

The link is now here.

Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog