Day: 21 October 2011

An inquest into the puzzling death of a pensioner in Galway, Ireland last December has concluded with a verdict of spontaneous combustion, the first recorded case in Irish history.

Forensic experts were bemused when they were called to the home of Michael Faherty to investigate his sudden death. They found severe fire damage to his body and the ceiling and floor directly above and below the deceased, despite no traces of an accelerant or an ignition source. Although Mr Faherty was found near to an open fireplace in his home, the assistant fire chief officer told the court he was convinced that the fireplace was not involved in Mr Faherty’s death. Since there was no other adequate explanation for cause of death, Kieran McLoughlin, the West Galway coroner, therefore returned a verdict of spontaneous combustion: the first of its kind in the country.

The phenomenon of human spontaneous combustion has long been a source of fascination amongst scientists and the wider public. A wide variety of explanations have been suggested, including the “wick effect” whereby the subcutaneous fat is exposed to a small external ignition and catches alight, consuming the body and the immediate environment. Many believe dropped cigarettes are the cause of such events, although critics point out that cigarettes do not burn at a temperature high enough to cause such aggressive flames.

One such critic of the spontaneous combustion phenomena is Mike Green, a retired professor of pathology. Speaking about the Michael Faherty case, Professor Green claimed that the term spontaneous combustion is redundant, as some form of ignition is always necessary. He discredited those who believe such events are divine intervention, instead choosing the “practical, mundane explanation.”

Exciting new clinical trials are to take place at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, with British surgeons leading the way into a possible new therapy for degenerative blindness using human embryonic stem cells.

The process will involve injecting 50,000 to 200,000 stem cells behind the retina of patients suffering from Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy disease using a fine needle. This permanent eye disease is an inherited condition that causes progressive sight loss, usually from an early age. Vision for these sufferers is mostly impaired in the centre of the visual field, leaving some limited vision around the periphery.

Twelve patients will undergo the preliminary procedure, which at this stage is a trial to evaluate its safety. If it proves to be safe then the numbers of stem cells will increase to assess effectiveness. It has not yet been predicted if the effect of these stem cells will stop the deterioration of the disease or if they have the capability to reverse the sight loss completely.

A successful treatment would promote the growth of the stem cells to replace the degenerated retinal cells, re-establishing a healthy and functional retina. It is hoped that this will restore sight.

The therapy however, is viewed as somewhat controversial amongst the public. It involves the use of cells from embryos that have been grown within a laboratory, that have the potential to differentiate into any one of hundreds of different cells types.

Objections to embryonic stem cells may be due to religion or ethics. With the subject of human rights being frequently questioned, and the greater good ‘means to an end’ attitude not always easily accepted.

Although it is currently very early days in terms of the potential of this treatment, it allows excited anticipation of progressing within this medical field.

At the beginning of the academic year, thousands of university students take the plunge into the arcane laptop market. Moore’s law states that computer performance will double every 18 months so perusing the many options requires an understanding of what capabilities one wants and the compromises one is willing to make, between processor speed and price for example. So here is a sample of some of the most attractive laptops on the market.

For the cash-strapped student, the Lenovo G530 laptop may be the most attractive option, priced at £199 from ASDA. With 1GB of RAM, and a basic graphics card, this is not a suitable laptop from gaming or for those who desire a high-end model. However this no frills machine is suitable for internet browsing, DVDs and music, boasting a good battery life. The low capacity 160GB hard drive could easily be boosted by an external hard drive, an inexpensive solution. The Lenovo has a 15.4 inch screen, 2.0GHz Intel Celeron processor and Windows 7 operating system- a list of features which make this laptop a very economic choice, so long as you don’t mind the somewhat limited capabilities.

The Toshiba NB550D netbook is an easily portable machine with an astounding 10hrs battery life for all day use. First of all, as with most netbooks, the standard 10.1 inch screen makes this too small to use as main machine. Netbooks are also commonly woefully underpowered, but this impressive model boasts AMD’s Fusion technology allowing for good graphics. Watching HD videos, editing photos on the move and a strong inbuilt speaker system will all keep you entertained in lectures. Internet browsing and office tasks run smoothly enough. There is a good 250GB hard drive and an SD card reader, but no optical driver for CD and DVD use.

Apple offers the MacBook air, a typically aesthetically attractive notepad from the titans of popular design. The sleek aluminium body houses a 1.8GHZ dual core Intel i5 or i7 processor and 4GB RAM, all facilitating fast internet browsing and office tasks. The powerful HD graphics card, 256 GB hard drive and 13.6 (or 11.6) inch screen ensures multimedia activities are not diminished either. However all these capabilities come at a cost, to the student’s wallet, this is one of the more expensive laptops on the market.

To save money, refurbished laptops may well be a smart choice. Refurbished laptops are pre owned laptops that have undergone some reconditioning process, often sourced from corporate environments or customer returns under 3 months old. There is a stigma attached to buying pre owned laptops which does not exist with pre owned cars, even though the financial risk is vastly smaller with second hand laptops. Refurbished models don’t alter your consumer rights greatly and technicians undertake a thorough process including full testing, upgrading, cleaning and software reinstallation. Thus refurbished laptops can be an excellent market to browse providing one is not searching for the latest models.

Research laboratories in the UK and US have joined forces to bring us closer to nuclear fusion energy. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) intends to work with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in America and the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) on a project using lasers to fuse particles together to release energy.

Traditionally, scientists have focused on using magnets in the process of nuclear fusion. This new method, however, fires a laser beam containing one million billion neutrons at fuel pellets composed of forms of hydrogen. For a fraction of a second, this laser produces more power than the entire world uses in the same period. The laser compresses the hydrogen until it is 100 times smaller after which it fuses to form helium and free neutrons. It is these neutrons which supply the power. They are captured and used to turn a steam turbine. Energy is then generated in the same way as traditional fuel power stations.

Researchers are aiming to achieve an “ignition”. This is when the fusion of particles is started then the reaction sustains itself in a similar way to the current nuclear fission reactions. Current estimates require the reactor to use 10 fuel pellets per second. So far, scientists at the National Ignition Facility- one of the laboratories at LLNL- have used a total of 305 fuel pellets. However, this is still a far cry from the one million pellets that would be used per day if 10 were fused per second.

Past experiments have only fused particles when more energy is put in than is released, making it impossible to currently be used as a source of power. Scientists eventually aim to have a fusion reaction which produces more energy than is put in. This is known as “breaking even”. The collaboration between these three organisations makes this goal more realistic than ever before.

Intelligence doesn’t just originate from hard study and late nights at the library, but in fact ‘a substantial proportion of individual difference in human intelligence is due to genetic variation’, researchers have found. The University of Manchester, in partnership with an international collaboration of research universities, has published findings regarding the origins of intelligence differences between adults.

Social studies have already shown the effect of environmental factors on intelligence, regarding upbringing and education; now this recently published report claims that the foundations of intelligence differences can be discovered in brain structure and function.

Intellectual resemblance between relatives has always suggested high heritability, though earlier studies have proved somewhat inconclusive. Previous research, which studied twins and adopted children, had concluded that apparent high ‘heritability’ for intelligence is actually the confounding between genetic and environmental factors. They claimed that it is difficult to discern whether a child has biologically inherited their intellect from parents, or whether the child has experienced benefit from parental support promoting education. Thus it was claimed that breaking up this pattern would result in data showing that intelligence is much less likely to be inherited.

This recent study chose to use distant relatives, not pedigree but those who live in discrete environments and homes, to break up the aforementioned correlation and therefore conclude whether there was high inheritability concerning intellect as suspected. Through cognitive and psychometric tests, analysing past records and participant’s genes, data was gathered and examined for an elusive link between specific genes and intelligence scores. This study concluded that no specific gene variants were found associated with intelligence. Instead, human intellect was found to be highly polygenic (due to a combination of genes) and that purely genetic information could be used to predict intelligence in the future.

Researchers have successfully grown the biological minerals found in seashells, bones and teeth in an artificial environment. Biological minerals, or biominerals, have the property of being very hard which makes them useful.

Ceramics- similar man-made materials- struggle to achieve the properties found in biominerals without using high temperatures and pressures. In nature, however, biominerals are formed in the conditions we live in every day. The ability to create these materials in these conditions is therefore potentially much better for the environment.

Biominerals in nature are normally composites of calcium carbonate- the main ingredient in chalk and limestone- and small amounts of a protein. The team of scientists, including University of Manchester researchers from the School of Materials, grew biominerals in the lab using calcium carbonate crystals. They replaced the proteins found in nature with nanoparticles to achieve the same effect.

Testing of these lab-grown biominerals proved that they were harder than pure calcium carbonate, as is the case in natural biominerals. Scientists plan on continuing this research by replacing calcium carbonate with other minerals to see if it produces the same result.