272 posts · 286,885 views
I am a freelance science writer based in Cambridge, England, I trained as a chemist and am a chartered member of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Currently, I write for several magazines and websites on science, technology and medicine, covering everything from astronomy to zoology, with a special focus on all things chemical, which includes materials, pharma, nano, analytical sciences.
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SpectroscopyNOW ezine
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- November 28, 2008
- 04:15 AM
- 1,422 views
Religious Faith in Technology
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
The Elucian Islands in the virtual online world known as Second Life are to host a climate change conference. Speakers will present live from Imperial College London and Stanford University in California, and researchers and university students will attend from the UK and the United States.
However, another climate change conference with a difference also begins [...]... Read more »
Stuart J. Barnes. (2009) Strength of religious faith, trusting beliefs and their role in technology acceptance . International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 6(1), 110-126.
- November 18, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,747 views
Avatars, Identity, and Walkies
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
In the early days of the web, the phrase “No one knows you are a dog on the Internet” became popular, as members of virtual worlds hid behind virtual masks. Today, the advent of web 2.0 and the emergence of…... Read more »
Angela Adrian. (2008) Avatars: a right to privacy or a right to publicity?. Int. J. Intellectual Property Management, 2(3), 253-260. DOI: http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action
- November 17, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,493 views
Virtual Rehabilitation
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
I recently wrote about how social media might help scientists do their work, so a paper in IJWBS on how those on the receiving end of medical science - patients and healthcare practitioners - might benefit from web 2.0 caught my eye.
IT specialist and disability consultant Maire Heikkinen of University of Tampere, Finland, has focused [...]... Read more »
Maire Heikkinen. (2009) Power and support from the net: usability and sociability on an internet-based rehabilitation course for people with multiple sclerosis. IInt. J. Web Based Communities, 5(1), 83-104.
- November 17, 2008
- 03:30 AM
- 1,804 views
Digital Piracy Management
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
A new approach to preventing digital piracy of music and video content that sidesteps the need for the privacy compromise associated with DRM (digital rights management) is reported in the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management.
Thierry Rayna of the Internet…... Read more »
Thierry Rayna, & Ludmila Striukova. (2008) Privacy or piracy, why choose? Two solutions to the issues of digital rights management and the protection of personal information. Int. J. Intellectual Property Management, 2(3), 240-252. DOI: http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action
- November 14, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,141 views
Vitamin D Dilemma - To D or Not To D
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
Radiological health expert Daniel Hayes who works at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recent published on the subject of low dose radiation and the possibility that a form of vitamin D could be the key to protecting us from background radiation and perhaps save lives following a nuclear incident or [...]... Read more »
Daniel P. Hayes. (2008) The protection afforded by vitamin D against low radiation damage. International Journal of Low Radiation, 5(4), 368. DOI: 10.1504/IJLR.2008.020980
- November 6, 2008
- 09:00 PM
- 1,382 views
Scuppering the Program Pirates
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
Professors the world over are worried about plagiarism: students simply lifting huge chunks from web pages and passing the thoughts and arguments off as their own. Then there are the Professors who steal from each other and publish their work in supposedly novel research papers and books and present it at conferences as original. This [...]... Read more »
Ameera Jadalla, & Ashraf Elnagar. (2008) PDE4Java: Plagiarism Detection Engine for Java source code: a clustering approach. International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining, 3(2), 121. DOI: 10.1504/IJBIDM.2008.020514
- November 3, 2008
- 07:00 AM
- 1,623 views
Science of Spam
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
Who hasn’t received a spam email with some kind of clause laying claim to compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003? They usually say something about the message being anything but spam. But, it quickly becomes obvious, if you actually waste the time to read the content, that it is a generic marketing message for [...]... Read more »
Petur O. Jonsson. (2009) The economics of spam and the context and aftermath of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry, 2(1), 40-52.
- November 3, 2008
- 04:16 AM
- 1,276 views
Keyword Concerns
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
Adding the human touch to search engines could allow users to retrieve the information they want much more quickly, according to a report to be published in a forthcoming issue of IJIPT.
Every day, millions of us use search engines to…... Read more »
Darius Pfitzner, Kenneth Treharne, & David Powers. (2008) User keyword preference: the Nwords and Rwords experiments. International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, 3(3), 149. DOI: 10.1504/IJIPT.2008.020947
- November 1, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 926 views
Voting and image
by David Bradley in SpectroscopyNOW ezine
Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies reveal that voters are persuaded more by the negative aspects of a politician's looks than by the positive features. The findings apply specifically if the voter was previously unaware of the politician. Ahead of the US elections, voters there should read on but let their political conscience guide their voting decision.... Read more »
M. L. Spezio, A. Rangel, R. M. Alvarez, J. P. O'Doherty, K. Mattes, A. Todorov, H. Kim, & R. Adolphs. (2008) A neural basis for the effect of candidate appearance on election outcomes. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsn040
- November 1, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,000 views
Athletic support
by David Bradley in SpectroscopyNOW ezine
Researchers have used NMR to show that endurance-trained athletes have a higher resting muscle metabolism than couch potatoes. The work suggests that the dissociation of oxidation and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production could be another route by which exercise improves insulin sensitivity and burns excess energy and may have implications for understanding the development of type 2 diabetes.... Read more »
D. E. Befroy, K. F. Petersen, S. Dufour, G. F. Mason, D. L. Rothman, & G. I. Shulman. (2008) Increased substrate oxidation and mitochondrial uncoupling in skeletal muscle of endurance-trained individuals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(43), 16701-16706. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0808889105
- November 1, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,199 views
A gold star for SERS
by David Bradley in SpectroscopyNOW ezine
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, are using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to test the properties of star-shaped gold nanoparticles. They have found that these particles have optical qualities that outshine the competition and could make them useful in chemical and biological sensing and imaging.... Read more »
E. Nalbant Esenturk, & A. R. Hight Walker. (2008) Surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy via gold nanostars. Journal of Raman Spectroscopy. DOI: 10.1002/jrs.2084
- November 1, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,116 views
Yes, we have blue bananas!
by David Bradley in SpectroscopyNOW ezine
Forget the so-called morning banana diet, blue is the new yellow and researchers in Europe and the US have no intention of slipping up when it comes to explaining why ripened bananas glow blue under ultraviolet light.... Read more »
Bernhard Kräutler. (2008) Chlorophyll breakdown and chlorophyll catabolites in leaves and fruit. Photochemical , 7(10), 1114. DOI: 10.1039/b802356p
- November 1, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,042 views
DIY instrumentation
by David Bradley in Sciencebase Science Blog
Rather than designing and building new instrumentation from bespoke components, researchers in Canada have turned to the laser-based optical read-write technology of DVD and CD players to create a biomedical diagnostics system that requires no hardware modifications.... Read more »
Yunchao Li, Lily M. L. Ou, & Hua-Zhong Yu. (2008) Digitized Molecular Diagnostics: Reading Disk-Based Bioassays with Standard Computer Drives. Analytical Chemistry, 80(21), 8216-8223. DOI: 10.1021/ac8012434
- October 29, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,650 views
Revolutionary Solids
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
History teachers can always turn to the significant figures and battles to enliven their lessons, biology education has the enormously diverse range of species to point to, and even physics can pull in metaphors and anecdotes for the more esoteric aspects, try teaching gravity without mentioning Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But, teachers [...]... Read more »
Annunziata Cascone, Gerardo Durazzo, & Valentina Stile. (2008) Solids by revolution: materialising an idea. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 4(2/3), 140. DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2008.020651
- October 29, 2008
- 07:59 AM
- 1,096 views
A Cure for the Common Cold
by David Bradley in SciScoop Science Forum
Scientists have taken the first-ever look at how the entire human body reacts on the genomic level to the most common disease in the world - the common cold.... Read more »
D. Proud, R. B. Turner, B. Winther, S. Wiehler, J. P. Tiesman, T. D. Reichling, K. D. Juhlin, A. W. Fulmer, B. Y. Ho, A. A. Walanski.... (2008) Gene Expression Profiles during In Vivo Human Rhinovirus Infection: Insights into the Host Response. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 178(9), 962-968. DOI: 10.1164/rccm.200805-670OC
- October 27, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,294 views
Ayurvedic Heavy Metal
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
Ayurvedic medicines can contain dangerous quantities of heavy metals, including lead, mercury, thallium and arsenic, clinical toxicologists in London have warned. Writing in the International Journal of Environment and Health, they suggest that recent European legislation aimed at improving safety of shop-bought products will have little impact on medicines prescribed by traditional practitioners, imported personally [...]... Read more »
Paul I. Dargan, Indika B. Gawarammana, John R.H. Archer, Ivan M. House, Debbie Shaw, & David M. Wood. (2008) Heavy metal poisoning from Ayurvedic traditional medicines: an emerging problem?. International Journal of Environment and Health, 2(3/4), 463-474.
- October 24, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,409 views
Open Access in Africa
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
There is much talk about Open Access. There are those in academia who argue the pros extensively in all fields, biology, chemistry, computing. Protagonists are making massive efforts to convert users to this essentially non-commercial form of information and knowledge.
Conversely, there are those in the commercial world who ask, who will pay for OA endeavours [...]... Read more »
Williams E. Nwagwu, & Allam Ahmed. (2009) Building open access in Africa. International Journal of Technology Management, 45(1/2), 82-101.
- October 20, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,089 views
Alzheimer and Arachidonic Acid
by David Bradley in Sciencebase Science Blog
Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at the University of California San Francisco have found that removing a brain enzyme that regulates the concentration of arachidonic acid, a fatty acid, reduces cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The discovery, reported in Nature Neuroscience, may one day lead to a novel therapeutic strategy for the disease.... Read more »
Rene O Sanchez-Mejia, John W Newman, Sandy Toh, Gui-Qiu Yu, Yungui Zhou, Brian Halabisky, Moustapha Cissé, Kimberly Scearce-Levie, Irene H Cheng, Li Gan.... (2008) Phospholipase A2 reduction ameliorates cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. Nature Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2213
- October 20, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,103 views
Tough Ontologies
by David Bradley in Sciencebase Science Blog
Defining chemical definitions - Chemists Catherine Castillo-Colaux and Alain Krief of the University Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium, describe the different stages involved in the collaborative construction of an organic chemical ontology - a glossary of definitions and relationships - by chemists. Writing in the International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, they reveal their experiences, as chemists as opposed to computer scientists, in learning how to build a collaborative ontology and how to use the ontology software to do so. In so doing they show how chemists can work together on essentially computer science projects that benefit the chemistry community.... Read more »
Catherine Castillo Colaux, & Alain Krief. (2008) Protocols for building an organic chemical ontology. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 4(2/3), 152. DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2008.020652
- October 17, 2008
- 05:25 AM
- 1,631 views
Word Domination
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
If you are reading the original English version, albeit with a quasi-transatlantic twang, then you probably think of English as being the lingua franca of global communications. After all, in almost every sphere of human endeavor, the world over, it seems…... Read more »
Carol S. Saunders, & Madelyn Flammia. (2008) A subtle war of words on the internet. International Journal of Electronic Business, 6(4), 342. DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2008.020673
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