New non-destructive C-14 dating method

Martin Rowe explained to the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society the new technique which does not require the destruction of anything. Instead the object to be analyzed is placed in a plasma chamber that "slowly and gently" oxidizes the carbon, producing carbon dioxide that can then be analyzed normally.

Source: Science Daily.

Invest in manganese

I guess I don't have many investors among my readers but... who knows? It seems that this material is going to become a central component of new technologies and therefore it will probably see its value increasing.

Two days ago I posted on how this metal was central to plant photosynthesis as well to a newly discovered similar but artificial way of generating energy from the Sun, now I read that manganese is also key to a new type of electronic alloy that displays intermediate characteristics between magnet and semiconductor. This silicon, iron and manganese alloy appears to be very promising for soon-to-come new types of electronic circuits.

Manganese

Manganese also has an array of other "traditional" applications. It's mined primarily in Australia, Burkina Faso, R.D. Congo, Brazil and Gabon.

Just an idea anyhow. Something alternative to the crisis bubble dynamics of "invest in gold".

Polution as harmful as chain smoking

Persistent free radicals have been detected in the air in ammounts that are very dangerous. So far it was believed that free radicals in the air were soon transformed in other more stable and less harmful materials but a new study reveals that many of them actually persist for long, reaching our body systematically. The result is that everybody seems to be "smoking" all the time as we breath:

In the five minutes it takes a typical smoker to finish a cigarette, he or she will breathe in an equal number of PFRs from the air and the smoke itself.

Thermodynamics challenged

Well, only the Third Law, not the whole theory - not yet.

The third law states that, as materials approach to absolute zero temperature, their enthropy also approaches zero.

But which is the maybe most fascinating, yet common, material of all: water, has been shown to break this rule. It is not the only one: other non-crystaline materials also breach the same "law". And now artificially generated meta-materials that mimic the behaviour of water ice have been shown to do exactly the same. The third law of thermodynamics seems therefore to be more like a guideline, not any absolute law.