TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Which brings us neatly to a later interview this morning on Today with a man who is running a very large voluntary survey of people's faecal matter. He waxed lyrically about the importance of a varied population of microbes in the gut and the interviewer asked him how well vegetarians scored. He said that the key was as many variations in the diet as possible and by definition that meant that on average vegetarians were low average scores because they prohibit many things. He said that given the same diet, the addition of a cheese butty would be an improvement. Right on!
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A couple of years ago I mentioned how atmospheric CFCs and the ozone hole were not disappearing as fast as expected and that the cause was thought to be increasing use of the chemicals in Asia. This is now confirmed. CFCs phased out in the West and supposedly banned from use in fridges, aerosols etc are being used again in Asia. A further problem is the disposal of old fridges (and their CFC content) as they are replaced with new. The CFCs can hang around for 50 years in the atmosphere and they also boost global warming....LINK
`Mysterious rise in emissions of ozone-damaging chemical'
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Something I don't understand about reducing carbon and pollution is the fact that even though all the evidence is that in terms of overall carbon cost burning Biomass in power stations like Drax is possibly as bad or even worse than coal burning in its overall effect. But 'burning wood' a renewable fuel seems so plausible. There are even mutterings about domestic wood burning now......
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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See THIS for what could be good news for many victims of breast cancer. It's a better way of assessing whether intrusive chemotherapy is needed or not.
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Stanley wrote: 18 May 2018, 03:42 Something I don't understand about reducing carbon and pollution is the fact that even though all the evidence is that in terms of overall carbon cost burning Biomass in power stations like Drax is possibly as bad or even worse than coal burning in its overall effect. But 'burning wood' a renewable fuel seems so plausible. There are even mutterings about domestic wood burning now......
This is a along article but it's authoritative. LINK There's background at the beginning that you can skip. There are different opinions on wood versus coal and you can get different answers depending on many variable factors. Wood is renewable but it takes a long time to renew and burning it could cause a short-term spike in CO2. It might also prompt catastrophic destruction of forests around the world by loggers. As for domestic wood burning, the concerns there are to do with emission of carbon particulates and their effects on health.
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What we really need is the chemical equivalent of perpetual motion, capture the carbon and bury it in the ground. Come to think nature solved that one and called it coal......
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Stanley wrote: 09 Jun 2018, 02:45 What we really need is the chemical equivalent of perpetual motion, capture the carbon and bury it in the ground. Come to think nature solved that one and called it coal......
Shellfish and corals captured billions of tonnes of CO2 as CaCO3 and now we're releasing this CO2 when we produce cement in our unending quest to concrete the World's surface.
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At that mention of cement, I must tell you this...
Mrs Tiz related to me today what she was told by a neighbour. A lady who lives nearby had bought a bag of ready-mix mortar. She told the neighbour that she'd added the water and mixed it all together with a stick but `it wouldn't set' (I think she meant that it wouldn't become a pastey consistency). The neighbour had a look then told the lady to put her glasses on and read the instructions again. She should have added 0.4 litres of water but she had read it as 4 litres! :surprised:
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The dreaded sloppy mix......
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Algorithms have now been developed that allow computers to debate at human level. Link. This could be setting a precedent that all communication issued by 'authorities' is first run through the computer to give the best possible presentation. Any humanitarian factors or new developments in thinking could be left out of the equation or discarded as irrelevant. It would also provide world leaders of limited intellect to act as though they were world authorities on a subject. I can think of two at the moment who would be quite happy to employ these apps.
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I heard the reports of the IBM trial of the 'Debater' computer.... Makes me very unsure of the future. First use will be as an aid to political speech writing.......
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This web article shows how we can now measure specific chemicals in the atmosphere using the latest satellite data: LINK
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That's quite amazing Tiz.
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See THIS BBC report on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, now estimated to be three times the size of France.....
I can't help wondering it it's too late to do anything about this in terms of getting rid of it. Perhaps we need a swarm of plastic processing microbes to rescue us.
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Just one more thing to add to the list towards the doomsday armageddom. Strontium 90, (atomic bomb testing), Lead in petrol, cigarette smoking. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), birth control hormones and just plane old carbon dioxide. Add your own to the list.
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Image

Sron an T’Sithein, Point of the Fairy Knoll. Strontian is situated on the A861, at the head of glorious Loch Sunart on the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Most of the history of the area dates from the beginning of lead mining in the 1720s but its greatest historical claim to fame is that the element Strontium was discovered here and named after the village. The mines are no longer active but the area attracts a great many geologists every year.
The whole place has a higher than normal natural background radiation level.
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Stanley wrote: 27 Jun 2018, 03:49 The whole place has a higher than normal natural background radiation level.
That's probably due to the naturally high radon levels in the granite highlands rather than strontium. The minerals strontianite (strontium sulphate) and celestite (strontium carbonate) are not radioactive. It's the strontium-90 isotope produced by nuclear fission that's radioactive and is extra dangerous because it can replace calcium atoms in our bones. The real danger of mine wastes at Strontian would be the witherite (barium carbonate) which is abundant there with the strontianite. Witherite is the horribly toxic mineral that kills cattle on the moors in places like Alston.
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Thanks for that Tiz, it was new to me. What a good name. 'Witherite' even sounds dangerous!
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It would seem like an appropriate name for the mineral except that its effects are more drastic than withering. Until the 1700s it was used as a rat poison in the north of England but then it was shown to be responsible for deaths in a farming family. The mineral's name is from William Withering who discovered it in 1784.

I found this interesting article that was in the journal Nature in 1940!
`Properties and Applications of Witherite' LINK

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's something unrelated...
`Complex Organic Molecules Discovered on Enceladus For The First Time' LINK
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:good:
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Two exciting developments...
`Sentinel satellite exposes sulphur dioxide pollution' LINK

`Revolution in quake detection technology' LINK
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I saw the report on the SO2 pollution. Some of the levels are quite amazing!
The quake report is news to me, thanks.
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`Ozone hole mystery: China insulating chemical said to be source of rise' LINK
Cut-price Chinese home insulation is being blamed for a massive rise in emissions of a gas, highly damaging to the Earth's protective ozone layer. The Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) found widespread use of CFC-11 in China, even though the chemical was fully banned back in 2010. Scientists have been extremely puzzled by the mysterious rise in emissions. But this report suggests the key source is China's home construction industry....
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I heard that report Tiz. Bit of a problem isn't it.
By the way, I see in PE that the source of the blaze that destroyed the art school in Glasgow was an installation by a final year student in the basement made of expanded plastic foam and containing a heat source..... The mind boggles!!
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THIS Court case in the US opens the way to many claims against Monsanto that their best selling 'Round Up' (Glyphosate) weed killer is a carcinogen. I am always very careful using it. This could have enormous implications for agriculture, it is a very useful tool. The EU recently declared that it was probably low risk and allowed its continuing use.
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