Chris dela Torre had an opinion piece on CBC Radio One this morning about Phil Plait's article on the Canadian Government stifling Scientists. Basically said that Plait was way off and disagreed with his conclusions.
Chris dela Torre had an opinion piece on CBC Radio One this morning about Phil Plait's article on the Canadian Government stifling Scientists. Basically said that Plait was way off and disagreed with his conclusions.
From my first-hand and second-hand knowledge I think Plait is right.
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Global warming caused by CFCs, not carbon dioxide, study says
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week.
Whoa. I'd be interested to see additional study in this, or at least some opinions of other serious climate scientists.
So if this is true, is it as big a game changer to how we look at and deal with climate change as it seems to me? Or would I just be reading too much into it?
Wasn't this one of the bases for Our Common Future in the 80s? Rio Summit or something?
CFCs can split O3 (ozone) molecules over and over and over. something like 100 000:1 ratio of destruction to CFC released.
Basically, yes. CFCs are a catalyst for ozone splitting.
It'll be interesting if they pin current warming, and not just the ozone concerns, on CFCs. Personally, I think the result would be pretty game changing if true.
Make sure to smile tomorrow. Cassini is going to take our picture at MDT: 3:27pm-3:42 pm
Quote:
Something great, something big, something very special that's never happened before is about to happen!
On July 19, 2013, the Cassini spacecraft, currently in orbit around Saturn, will be turned to image that planet and its entire ring system during an eclipse of the sun, as it has done twice before during its previous 9 years in orbit.
But this time will be very different. This time, the images collected will capture, in natural color, a glimpse of our own planet alongside Saturn and its rings on a day that will be the first time the Earth's inhabitants know in advance their picture is being taken from a billion miles away.
All the world's gold came from collisions of dead neutron stars.
Quote:
"We can account for all the gold in the universe from these collisions," said Edo Berger, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithson Center for Astrophysics.
Neutron stars are the dead cores of stars; in the past, they had exploded as supernovae.The neutron stars responsible for the event that Berger and colleagues studied are each thought to be about the size of Boston, but with about 1.5 times the mass of the sun.
Smash two of them together at close to the speed of light and you can expect fireworks,"
Platinum and uranium also come from this collision process, Woosley said. All of these elements swirl around between stars, as gases, and eventually become part of subsequent generations of stars, like our sun.
More than 200 million years after the planet was formed, a shower of meteorites hit and brought with them gold, which stayed in the planet's mantle.
Think about that the next time you wear a gold wedding band or other piece of jewelry. Now there's a fascinating thing about your bling.
Not surprised in this finding but I'm still amazed at the weight of a neutron stars material, crazy.
Basically, yes. CFCs are a catalyst for ozone splitting.
It'll be interesting if they pin current warming, and not just the ozone concerns, on CFCs. Personally, I think the result would be pretty game changing if true.
Certainly it would be game changing, but this is likely simply poor science.
I was not sure where to put this so I will leave it here.
This is from a published article in the July 2013 issue of ACS Organometalics.
There is nothing really exciting about the article. However, the following caption in the supporting information is certainly raising concern.
"Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis..."
This is presumably from the PI. (1) Is this just a misunderstanding of the language used i.e. was the student asked to make up a sample for testing or (2) is the trainee being asked to falsify data.
Regardless of the type of data, that they would ask this and that it would get past the peer-review process is terribly wrong on many levels.
The link to the paper (the supporting information is freely available) and a blog talking about the article are below.
Professor Edward Cocking, Director of The University of Nottingham’s Centre for Crop Nitrogen Fixation, has developed a unique method of putting nitrogen-fixing bacteria into the cells of plant roots. His major breakthrough came when he found a specific strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in sugar-cane which he discovered could intracellularly colonise all major crop plants. This ground-breaking development potentially provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. The implications for agriculture are enormous as this new technology can provide much of the plant’s nitrogen needs.
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I was not sure where to put this so I will leave it here.
This is from a published article in the July 2013 issue of ACS Organometalics.
There is nothing really exciting about the article. However, the following caption in the supporting information is certainly raising concern.
"Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis..."
This is presumably from the PI. (1) Is this just a misunderstanding of the language used i.e. was the student asked to make up a sample for testing or (2) is the trainee being asked to falsify data.
Regardless of the type of data, that they would ask this and that it would get past the peer-review process is terribly wrong on many levels.
The link to the paper (the supporting information is freely available) and a blog talking about the article are below.
I look forward to seeing the response from the PI and Journal.
Honestly, for many organometallic compounds it is almost impossible to get a good elemental analysis. Even with combustion aids they will often come out too low on C and H. Typically, one would note this by mentioning, for example, we used the same crystals from which the structure was determined and several combustion aids but couldn't get a number to match theoretical. Also, in many cases if you were to do an error analysis on the technique for a specific compound you will come up with error bars that are larger than the degree of error the publication accepts. I'm positive I've published compounds where we quite simply couldn't get the elemental to work out despite knowing it is clean material without impurity.
With the abundance of other data collection techniques (multi-nuclear NMR, IR, Raman, Mass Spec, x-ray structure etc) the elemental analysis isn't of great importance provided the evidence from the other techniques is clear. Elemental analysis in this day and age is quite simply unnecessary in the large majority of cases.
That said, falsifying such data is obviously a big no no if this was indeed done. On the other hand the mode of operation for many grad students, post-docs and professors is to submit samples for elemental until you get one whose numbers are "correct". In the real world of quality control you can't really do that and it honestly amounts to the same thing as making the numbers up.
In my graduate lab we didn't resubmit unless we did the test different (i.e. combustion aid) or re-worked the compound in some manner. Can't say all my colleagues in the lab followed this protocol.
In general data traceability in academic environment is woeful.
Honestly, for many organometallic compounds it is almost impossible to get a good elemental analysis. Even with combustion aids they will often come out too low on C and H. Typically, one would note this by mentioning, for example, we used the same crystals from which the structure was determined and several combustion aids but couldn't get a number to match theoretical. Also, in many cases if you were to do an error analysis on the technique for a specific compound you will come up with error bars that are larger than the degree of error the publication accepts. I'm positive I've published compounds where we quite simply couldn't get the elemental to work out despite knowing it is clean material without impurity.
With the abundance of other data collection techniques (multi-nuclear NMR, IR, Raman, Mass Spec, x-ray structure etc) the elemental analysis isn't of great importance provided the evidence from the other techniques is clear. Elemental analysis in this day and age is quite simply unnecessary in the large majority of cases.
That said, falsifying such data is obviously a big no no if this was indeed done. On the other hand the mode of operation for many grad students, post-docs and professors is to submit samples for elemental until you get one whose numbers are "correct". In the real world of quality control you can't really do that and it honestly amounts to the same thing as making the numbers up.
In my graduate lab we didn't resubmit unless we did the test different (i.e. combustion aid) or re-worked the compound in some manner. Can't say all my colleagues in the lab followed this protocol.
In general data traceability in academic environment is woeful.
Completely agree about EA mostly being a dubious diagnostic tool, but I think it still has an important role in many cases.
That being said, when I read that paper I laughed until I cried. I have a couple little errors in some of my ACS supp infos, but nothing like that.
