TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Tizer]

A good article on alloys from the BBC...LINK

[Stanley]

A brilliant piece of interpretation of very complex chemistry that is easily understood by even a layman with no prior knowledge. The story of alloying metals from the discovery of bronze as a tough alloy of copper is the story of civilisation. Alloy steels are essential to modern engineering. Whoever wrote this article should be writing text books for children.....

[Stanley]

See THIS for worrying news that scientists have found a way of genetically altering yeast to enable it to turn sugar into morphine. If this particular genie gets out of the bottle it could have quite enormous effects not only on home-brewed drugs but those areas of the world where Opium poppy cultivation is a major source of income....

[Tizer]

The good thing is that law-abiding scientists have got there first, raised concerns, and asked for regulation to be set in motion. You can be sure that there are criminals out there already trying to do the same thing, they have vast funds at their disposal and their own very able technical people. Now we know how it's done we know what to look out for and can develop ways of detecting criminals trying to do the same thing. And of course the `official' research will eventually provide us with new and better pharmaceuticals.

[Stanley]

I sometimes wonder whether we are getting too clever for our own good.....

[Tizer]

I was puzzling over something during the night and had to look up information on the atmospheres of the planets. I found a couple of good web pages that might be appreciated by anyone with an interest in the solar system.
Atmosphere of the Planets: LINK
NASA's Planetary Fact Sheet: LINK
Planet Tables: LINK

People often talk about the importance for human life of an atmosphere with oxygen in it. Well, that's true for oxygen-breathing life. But what if we didn't breathe oxygen, could we get away with no atmosphere? We would still have gravity to keep our feet on the ground. But it's the gases in the atmosphere that give us atmospheric pressure. If we lose those gases there would be no atmospheric pressure and our blood and tissue fluids would boil! So it's more than just oxygen that's important about having an atmosphere. Venus has 91 times greater atmospheric pressure than Earth; the Moon, Mercury, Mars and Pluto have virtually no atmosphere and therefore no atmospheric pressure; the gas giants Jupiter Saturn, Uranus and Neptune...we don't yet know.

[Stanley]

The more I think about questions like this the more I am convinced that the fact that we evolved over aeons of time from a tiny piece of living protein to where we are now is possibly the great Cosmic Joke. If the atmosphere had been methane based we would have managed..... I once read a short story about a group of scientists who were running an experiment in a vacuum tube where they had introduced certain particles and found that they arranged themselves in regular patterns. All very interesting but they could see no practical application so they switched the experiment off and went home. Go figure..... What if we are that experiment?

[plaques]

At the risk of upsetting those people with religious and supernatural beliefs the book by Richard Dawkins ' The God Delusion' is worth a read. His previous book 'The Ancestor's Tale'.is also worth having on your shelf. Both these books spell out the mysteries of evolution and put everything in a logical sequence including why people believe in the most illogical beliefs.

[Tizer]

I don't like Dawkins's approach, he's too belligerent and simply offends and winds up the religious folk rather than engaging in useful discourse. For explaining evolution and how Earth formed I prefer the four volumes of `The Science of Discworld' by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Humorous as well as very informative!
LINK

[plaques]

I would leave it to the individual reader to make their own mind up on Dawkins. He presents the facts as he sees them. I'm not to sure about mixing fact with fiction. If it sets people thinking then Ok. But if it merely confuses the overall message then those with ingrained fixed beliefs will carry as usual. Douglas Adams ' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' can make you think, that is if you are prepared to think.

[Stanley]

Communication of ideas and theories is a complicated subject. Particularly when those ideas run contrary to strongly held belief. I too, dislike Dawkins' approach, he always sounds to me like a man stood on a soap box telling everybody who holds a contrary view that they are wrong. Not the best way to persuade anyone. In religious beliefs, I prefer the approach of people like the ex nun Karen Armstrong (A History of God) and Diarmaid McCullough (A History of Christianity). Neither of them shouts at you but entertains with evidence based stories that intrigue you and make you think. I've never read Pratchett....
Science matters are much the same of course but with slightly harder evidence. However, If someone has an entrenched view (and we can all name some!) all the evidence in the world will not convince them. That's why I like my Blake quotation: "The man who never changes his opinion is like stagnant water and reptiles breed in his mind". A gross slur on reptiles of course but you get his drift! There are many reptiles abroad in the world....

[Stanley]

I remember a Sunday School teacher telling me that God had a purpose in everything he created.... (It was a very old fashioned Sunday School!) I always had a bit of a problem with this because I could think of things we could manage very well without! I was reminded of this today when I saw this REPORT. Anyone who has experienced the dreaded cold sore will have little affection for them but it would appear that even the Herpes Virus can be useful. A modified form of the virus is producing encouraging results in the treatment of some cancers. Who'd have thought it!

[Tizer]

This advance in memory shape alloys will be what the trendies like to call `a game changer'!
`Memory alloy bounces back into shape 10 million times'
"Engineers have produced an alloy that springs back into shape even after it is bent more than 10 million times. "Memory shape alloys" like this have many potential uses, but present incarnations are prone to wearing out. The new material - made from nickel, titanium and copper - shatters previous records and is so resilient it could be useful in artificial heart valves, aircraft components or a new generation of solid-state refrigerators." LINK

[chinatyke]

This weekend you have the chance to see the International Space Station 9 times from Barnoldswick if the weather is clear.

Follow the link:

ISS Spot the Station

Date Sat May 30, 00:12 AM
Visible 3 min
Max Height 27°
Appears 27 above SSE
Disappears 10 above E


Just an explanation. The ISS isn't like a star or planet that appears and disappears at the horizon. You are viewing a reflection of sunlight from your viewpoint and the ISS may be in shadow as it climbs from the horizon and hence not visible to you until it comes into the sunlight. So the explanation of the above example is that ISS appears 27° above the SSE horizon and then descends to 10° above the E horizon and disappears from view.

[Stanley]

See THIS for the latest news on the LHD which has restarted at almost twice the energy levels it achieved in 2013 when it bagged the Higgs Boson. The story of this achievement is a refreshing change form all the dirre news and uncertainties we face.... Good luck to them, money well spent say I!

[Tizer]

New tool could predict large solar storms more than 24 hours in advance
Press release, 08 June 2015, Imperial College London

Large magnetic storms from the Sun, which affect technologies such as GPS and utility grids, could soon be predicted more than 24 hours in advance.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are eruptions of gas and magnetised material from the Sun that have the potential to wreak havoc on satellites and Earth-bound technologies, disrupting radio transmissions and causing transformer blowouts and blackouts.

These mass ejections can cause problems with GPS technology - used by all kinds of vehicles, from cars to oil tankers to tractors. For example, they can affect the ability of aircraft systems to judge precisely a plane’s distance from the ground for landing, leading to planes being unable to land for up to an hour.

However, not every mass ejection from the Sun that travels past the Earth causes this much disturbance; the power depends on the orientation of magnetic fields within the mass ejection. Currently, satellites can only tell the orientation of a mass ejection’s magnetic field with any certainty when it is relatively close to the Earth, giving just 30-60 minutes’ notice. This is not enough time to mitigate the impacts on utility grids and systems operating on GPS.

Now, a new measurement and modelling tool could give more than 24 hours’ notice of mass ejections that could be harmful to systems on Earth. Details of the technique, developed by a team led by Dr Neel Savani, an alumnus and Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London and a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, were published today in a paper in Space Weather.

“As we become more entwined with technology, disruption from large space weather events affects our daily lives more and more,” said Dr Savani. “Breaking through that 24 hour barrier to prediction is crucial for dealing efficiently with any potential problems before they arise.”

The orientations of magnetic fields within coronal mass ejections depend on two things: their initial form as they are erupted from the Sun, and their evolution as they travel towards Earth. Mass ejections originate from two points on the Sun’s surface, forming a croissant-shaped cloud in between that discharges into space.

This cloud is full of twisted magnetic fields that shift as they travel. If one of these magnetic fields meets the Earth’s magnetic field at a certain orientation, the two will connect, ‘opening a door’ that allows material to enter and cause a geomagnetic storm.

Previously, predictions had relied on measuring the initial CME eruption, but were not efficient modelling what happened between this and the cloud’s arrival at Earth. The new technique takes a closer look at where mass ejections originate from on the Sun and makes use of a range of observatories to track and model the evolution of the cloud.

Dr Savani and colleagues have tested the model on eight previous mass ejections, with the results showing great promise at improving the current forecasting system for large Earth-directed Solar storms. If further testing at NASA supports these initial results, the system could soon be used by NOAA in the US and the Met Office in the UK for geomagnetic storm predictions.
Coronal mass ejection (image from Nasa)...

[PanBiker]

That will be very useful for potential Auroral propagation prediction within the Amateur Radio fraternity. It would be excellent if CME's were announced along with the normal National tropo weather forecasts.

[Stanley]

And one of the apocalyptic events used to scare us could retreat a little.....

[Stanley]

See ;What attracted' for a report of the re-awakening of the comet lands Philae.

[Stanley]

Philae is proving a bit elusive and the media are milking the down side of the story for all it's worth. This despite the perfectly rational explanations from the European Space Agency that the signals they have received indicate that the lander's systems are healthy and that it is waiting for enough sunlight to re-charge its batteries and the prospect of this gets better the nearer the comet gets to the sun. But of course the media wants an instant story! They may have to wait a couple of weeks for any more news and my money is on the experts at the space agency.....

[Tizer]

From an IOP press release (Full press release here LINK)
The Institute of Physics has awarded the 2015 Isaac Newton Medal to Eli Yablonovitch of the University of California, Berkeley, for “his visionary and foundational contributions to photonic nanostructures”, which have spawned an entirely new research field now known as photonic crystals, his citation says.

Photonic crystals are periodic optical nanostructures and function as semiconductors for light. They are called “crystals” because of their periodicity and “photonic” because they act on light. They have a band gap that allows only some wavelengths of light to pass, allowing unprecedented control over light’s behaviour, which can be used to make it travel in a designated route. They can be found in nature and contribute to the iridescence of certain butterfly wings and the camouflage skills of chameleons.

As the citation reads: “Photonic crystals have caused a true paradigm shift in photonics, based on their ability to control the flow of light to an extent that was hitherto unthinkable. As a result, photonic crystals are now being used in research areas as diverse as quantum computation, nanoscale imaging and sensing, photovoltaics, optical interconnects, and high performance light-emitting diodes.”

[Stanley]

We live in a wonderful world and slowly get to understand more and more of it. Wonderful stuff!

[Stanley]

Nice piece on World Service about giant rats being used to sniff out tuberculosis in sputum samples. One rat can test 70 samples in 15 minutes as against the recommended 25 per day for one operator using a microscope. They have an impressive record for accuracy and often identify cases that have passed the microscope test.

[Tizer]

I wonder if there is any employment law to protect rats from exploitation and to make sure they receive a living wage?

[Stanley]

As there is no such protection for humans, I doubt it. Perhaps they should form a union......
See THIS for a report, they sniff out landmines as well.....