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Come Mr Branson Mon, Tally me Biofuel

Come Mr Branson Mon, Tally me Biofuel

A Virgin Atlantic flight between Heathrow airport London and Schiphol airport in the Netherlands made history yesterday, becoming the first commercial flight to be partly powered by biofuel. While three of the 747s tanks contained conventional fuel the fourth contained 20% biofuel. The biofuel was a mix of babassu oil and coconut oil. The Guardian reports that the mixture contained oil from 150,000 coconuts. Sir Richard Branson, head of Virgin Atlantic, described the flight as a ‘historic occasion’ and ‘… a biofuel breakthrough for the whole airline industry’. However environmentalists do not seem to share Branson’s enthusiasm for coconut and babassu oil based flight. According to the BBC News the flight has been branded a publicity stunt, a gimmick, and ‘high-altitude greenwash’. Critics include Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Development Movement.

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Neuro-babble

A study
published in this week’s issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience finds
that including irrelevant neuroscientific information in an explanation can
make people more likely to believe that explanation.

Three
groups of subjects – neuroscience ‘novices’, neuroscience students, and neuroscience
experts – were given descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of
the following types of explanation:

I. A
good explanation excluding irrelevant neuroscientific information

II. A
good explanation including irrelevant information

III. A
bad explanation excluding irrelevant neuroscientific information

IV. A
bad explanation including irrelevant information.

Novices
rated bad explanations to be more satisfying when they contained neuroscientific
information (i.e. IV > III) while students rated both good and bad
explanations more satisfying when the contained irrelevant neuroscientific
information (i.e. IV > III and II > I). No similar effect was found for
experts, who in fact rated good explanations to be less satisfying when they
included irrelevant neuroscientific information (i.e. I > II).

That neuroscientific
novices may be persuaded by neuro-babble is, of course, troubling.

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The perils of cheap alcohol

Alcohol abuse in the UK has been escalating for decades, contributing to crime, unemployment, illness and death. Last month, the government reported that alcohol-related deaths in the UK have doubled over the last 15 years to almost 9,000. One prominent factor in these increases is the price of alcohol, which has remained relatively stable despite increases in income over the years, and has thus become much cheaper in real terms. The cheaper it is, the more of it people consume, and the more ill effects are felt. The British Medical Association has thus called on the government to prohibit the cheap sale of alcohol, and in a surprising turn of events, the dominant supermarket chain, Tesco, has echoed this call.

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Post-mortem punishment and public dissection.

A television report aired in the US last week claimed that bodies used
in public anatomical exhibitions might have included executed Chinese
prisoners. There have been subsequent denials from exhibitors that any
of the bodies currently being shown in Pittsburgh came from prisoners.
Apparently one exhibition includes bodies of individuals who died from
natural causes but were ‘unclaimed’, while another exhibition includes
only individuals who have consented to their bodies being used for
education or research. But it is interesting to try to ‘dissect’ the
outcry.

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Obesity and genes

An interesting new study on the heritability of childhood obesity has been widely publicised. The paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found only a modest effect of shared environment on body mass index. The study used the common technique of comparing monozygotic and dizygotic twins; that is, twins who share all or… Read More »Obesity and genes

The Rogue Senator and the Protection of Genetic Information

The editors of Nature have today called for the US Senate to bypass Senator Tom Coburn’s (Republican, Oklahoma ) ‘hold’ the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Bill. The Bill, if enacted “would protect people from being discriminated against by health insurers or employers on the basis of their genetic information” but Senator Coburn has used a procedural manoeuvre called a “hold” to prevent it from coming to a vote in the Senate. In their editorial the editors suggest that by putting a hold on this Bill, the senator from Oklahoma is preventing the enormous research and clinical progress from continuing and further developing the era of personalised medicine.

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Dangerous ‘drugs’: the war on fake malaria pills

An international collaboration between public health researchers, forensic scientists and police has led to the identification and arrest of individuals responsible for distributing fake anti-malaria pills (artesunate). Analysis of the air around fake tablets in blister packs, trace amounts of pollen found inside the blisters, and the composition of the tablets themselves provided evidence that the drugs were being made in southern China. This information was provided by Interpol to the Chinese government, which subsequently made the arrests, though the producer is yet to be tracked down.

There is a huge international trade in fake pharmaceuticals, many of which, like fake DVDs, watches or clothing are made in south-east Asia. People sometimes express ambivalence about pirate software or DVDs. However pirate pharmaceuticals have significant implications for public health.

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Earache for teenagers

The BBC today
reported calls to scrap an acoustic device designed to disperse crowds of
troublesome teenagers. There are 3,500
such ‘Mosquito’ devices in use in England, which work by emitting a
sound normally audible only to those under the age of 25. The sound is turned on for 20 seconds at a
time, and becomes irritating after around 15 seconds, causing those who can
hear it to move away. Typically, the
devices are installed in areas where groups of teenagers gather, such as
shopping precincts.

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A Knee-Jerk Reaction?

An article was published in Science on Friday (8 February 2008) reporting the results of a study on the generation of energy via an ‘energy harvester’ mounted on the human knee. The authors of the article begin by noting that humans are a rich source of energy. Indeed it seems that the average person stores the same amount of energy in fat as a 1000kg battery. There have been previous attempt to harvest this energy, including a device that generates energy from the compression of the sole of the shoe and a device that generates energy by harnessing the vertical oscillations of a spring-loaded back pack. However, it seems that none of these are as effective as the new knee-mounted device, which generates an average 5 watts of electricity per knee-mounted device. This is ten times more effective than the shoe-worn alternative and more effective than the spring-loaded backpack, which weighs 38kg. Each knee-mounted device weighs 1.6kg. However, the devices studied are prototypes and researchers working on the project are hopeful of making energy harvesters which are smaller and lighter.

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Preventing birth to teenage parents is discriminatory

The UK government announced this week a multi-million pound program to make contraception more easily available to young people and to reduce teenage pregnancies. Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

If they are effective, these measures will prevent the birth of a large number of children whose lives would have been worth living. Is it discriminatory to try to prevent the birth of children to teenage mothers? What message does this send to those children in the community who have been born to teenagers about how we value their lives?

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