The "Chemistry in the News" Journal

To see the issue of the "Chemistry in the News" Journal that you wish to view, choose its date from the list given below. The most recent entries will be near the top.

1997

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September 4, 1997

I have recently learned an easire way to update these journal entries and I will update more frequently as soon as my classes settle down into a patterned schedule.


 

August 8, 1997

The Richmond Times Dispatch offered several science articles today, after a few days at Virginia Beach and only getting to see the Norfolk Virginia Pilot on Tuesday at the beach. First, in the RTD on page A2 there is an article from the NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE  entitled "U.S. Team sends in the clones" which reports that a small company in Wisconsin has developed a new cloning procedure to make more than 10 adult cows. This method uses cells from the early embryo stage (only 30 days old) of another cow (Holstein) rather than using cells (udder) from an adult sheep as was done in the cloning of "Dolly", the sheep cloned in Scotland earlier this year. In the sheep cloning only one lamb resulted from 277 tries, but the U.S. procedure has produced more than 50 as-yet unborn calves using the new procedure with a much higher success rate. One of the creators of Dolly, Dr. Keith Cambell in Roslin, Scotland said "Until something is born and gets up and walks around, you haven't cloned an adult." Dr. Michael Bishop at ABS Global Inc. in De Forest, Wis. said the new method has been used to produce more than 50 (cow) pregnancies.

Students should note the intense competition in science research and the usual tendency that the group from Scotland should be given great credit for the "first animal clone", other groups usually use the initial discovery rapidly to improve the process. A similar situation ocurred when Glen Curtis rapidly improved the early aircraft of the Wright brothers. This is a general pattern in science where the first discoverers prove "it's possible", but others rapidly improve the discovery. This phenomenon following a discovery is known to scientists and further stimulates intense competition and adds to the excitement of scientific discovery. The new process probably means that prize bulls and/or cows with high milk productivity can now be cloned to optimize milk and beef production. Ethically, this will probably be accepted rapidly in the same way the research in hybrid corn has been hailed as beneficial in agriculture. The bigger issue is that human cloning will also be easier and "humans can talk", making the process much more personal. However, we have pointed out in the recent text "Chemistry in the News" that human environmental factors in the first few years of life are critical to personality development, whereas personality development of cows and bulls is less critical. In both cases there must still be a surrogate mother and in the case of human cloning this could become a very importan issue and new laws may have to be written to specify the legal obligations of the surrogate mothers of human clones. This will surely become an issue of great human sensitivity.

In other news, in the RTD on page A10, there is a report of a genetic error which can produce extra protein in the nucleus of (human and mouse) brain cells. The extra protein builds up and eventually kills the cells. This is related to a general need for the general population to have an awarness of the basic principles of DNA chemistry and it also offers an approach to search for treatment of the tragic development of Huntington's disease. Dr. Nancy Wexler, President of the Heritary Disease Foundation, said this discovery provides a foundation for understanding and possible treatment of all neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimers.

Finally, there is other news from space research. The new crew for the Mir spacestation docked successfully with Mir and is now ready to make repairs (RTD, A13). Also the space shuttle Discovery was launched successfully and deployed an experiment to study ozone levels in the Earth's atmosphere so the mechanism of ozone depletion can be better understood.


 

July 23, 1997
 
    The Richmond  Times-Dispatch (pA14) printed an Associated Press article entitled "Global warming threatens ice shelves" as reported from Sydney, Australia.  The data was mainly from Prof. Bill Budd, a meteorologist at the Antarctic Cooperative Research Center who carried out a computer simulation of the gradual melting of the ice shelf around Antarctica.  This shelf is said to cover some 580,000 sqare miles, bordering Antarctica like a skirt.  Based on a global temperature increase of 2-6 degrees Fahrenheit, the model predicts a total loss of the ice shelves within 500 years.  The key point of this article is a sentence: "Because the ice shelves already displace their own weight in water, their eventual melting would not cause the level of the world's oceans to rise."   Ice floats in water because it is slightly less dense (0.917 g/mL) than water, particularly sea water which is slightly more dense than liquid water (1.000 g/mL), so about 90% of an iceberg is underwater in the sea which is slightly more dense than pure water due to dissolved salts.  Thus although ice displaces an equal WEIGHT of water, it only displaces about 90 of the VOLUME of an equal weight of water.  It is well known that water EXPANDS when it freezes, so the VOLUME of the solid water will DECREASE when it melts!   However this leads to complicated reasoning due to the fact that icebergs are about 10% out (above) of  the water and melting would roughly cancel out any volume change.  In addition, ocean ice will be close to fresh water while the liquid sea water will be higher in salt concentration and thus more dense than fresh water.  The good news is that global warming that melts ice in sea water will NOT change the sea level much at all.  However, this statement should not hide the fact that if polar-cap ice or glacier ice ABOVE SEA LEVEL melts, that water will contribute to an increase in sea level.

    This suggests a simple experiment.  Freeze 100 mL of water in a graduated cylinder or one or two inch diameter tubing in a houshold freezer.  Slide this into a glass tube or 250 mL graduated cylinder containing enough water to float the smaller ice cylinder vertically in the larger tube with the expected 10% of ice above the water level.  Record the water level in the outer graduated cylinder and let the ice melt.  Is the water level in the outer cylinder higher, lower or the same after the ice melts?  Explain!
Repeat the experiment using frozen fresh water, but after adding one cup of table salt to the liquid water to simulate sea water.

    The bottom line is that if 500 years are required to melt the Antacrtic ice shelf for up to a 6 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase, the human race does have time to work out details of global warming policy, and in fact we may run out of fossile fuels before all the ice melts!  The the only issue is how much glacier ice above sea level will melt.  Probably the effect of global warming will be greater in terms of changes in weather patterns more than a change in sea level.

 

July 16, 1997:

    Today is the last day of the pilot presentation of "Chemistry in the News".  The final exam is 180 minutes with forty multiple choice questions and four essay questions.  Now that the course is over, the text will be modified slightly. to correct typographical errors in preparation for the next printing.  The course will be offered next in January of 1998.  Diary entries will be added during the fall of 1997.
 
 

 

July 15, 1997:

     This is the beginning of our "Science Diary".  In teaching the first pilot presentation of "CHEMISTRY IN THE NEWS" as a special topics course we have learned about major news items related to the Mars Pathfinder, CO2 production and acid rain.  We also had two days in June where there was an ozone alert in Richmond at 101 ppb.  At the end of the conference of eight leaders on global issues President Chirac of France charged that Americans pollute the atmosphere three times more than French citizens on a per capita basis.  President Clinton (and also surprisingly Senator A. D'Amato, R. - N.Y.) supported the EPA initiative to further tighten air pollution standards in the U.S.  This was pleasing to environmentalists.  Two days later, President Clinton gave a speech before the U.N. in which the U.S. would not scale back CO2 emissions to 1990 levels; thereby pleasing U.S. industries.  This shows that global environmental issues are now topics of international politics.  It also shows how difficult the choice is between jobs in a vital economy and global environmental issues.  As we continue to develop the new text, "CHEMISTRY IN THE NEWS", we will use this webpage to interpret such topics which link politics and science in a rational way based on our training and experience in chemical research.  We plan to update this webpage as an irregularly-dated diary/commentary on science issues with political significance.