Alcohol: friend or foe?

It is no secret that Australians like to keep in high spirits. Of course, beer and wine are popular too.

Recently released statistics on drug use found the average Australian to have consumed 92 litres of beer, 20 litres of wine, and 1 litre of pure alcohol from spirits in 2004 alone. About 35 percent of drinkers were found to consume ‘risky’ levels of alcohol, the abuse of which has been blamed for more than a quarter of all deaths of 15 to 29 year-olds in developed countries.

According to biotechnologists from the University of Granada in Spain, however, melatonin found in red wine could delay the oxidative damage and inflammatory processes typical of old age. Though laboratory tests with mice, scientists speculate that daily melatonin intake in humans from the age of 30 or 40 could delay illnesses related to aging, thus promoting longevity.

While exploring ways to keep berries fresh during storage, researchers at the Kasetsart University in Thailand have discovered health benefits in treating the fruit with alcohol. Besides helping berries resist decay, alcohol was found to increase antioxidant capacity within strawberries, and could also increasing their ability to prevent diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegenerative disorders.

Strawberry daiquiri, anyone?

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Power advancements in tiny electronics

Consumer electronics seem to be getting smaller by the day, with size becoming an increasingly poor indication of gadgets' power requirements and capabilities.

Computer scientists and engineers at the Virginia Commonwealth University are taking a new spin on data storage with the development of spin-based electronics, dubbed ‘spintronics’ for short. The technology is said to be able to supersede the limitations of Moore’s Law due to the lower energy requirements of storing information in the spin of an electron, instead of in its charge.

Electrochemists at the St Louis University are taking another approach to the issue of power. A research team is currently developing fuel cell technology that uses enzymes to extract energy from virtually any sugar source. This essentially means that any sugar solution, from soft drinks to plant sap, may soon be used to power portable electronics like cellular phones, laptops, and sensors.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Delft University of Technology are looking to make batteries smaller in order to improve their operation. A team of applied scientists are developing nanoscale batteries that are expected to deliver more usage between charges, and shorter charge/discharge times, to mobile consumers and users of electric vehicles within the next five years.

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Climate change: a political hot potato

Climate change certainly is the hot topic of recent times, with enviro-friendly doomsayers, businesses and politicians making headlines across the globe.

Australian politicians this month took up a challenge set by studies in the UK and Australia, aiming to reduce greenhouse emissions by 60 percent before the year 2050. With the 2007 federal elections on the horizon, plans for meeting the greenhouse target seem to be on every party’s agenda, with solutions ranging from more effective coal-fired electricity to carbon pricing, nuclear power, better public transport, and investment in more research and development.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Bush administration has been charged with interfering with climate science to downplay the significance of global warming. Political appointees are being accused of editing scientific reports to emphasise scientific uncertainty and even trying to silence scientists in some cases.

Elsewhere, a debate rages on about whether global warming even exists. A recent paper by physicist Bjarne Andresen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark asserts that the concept of a ‘global temperature’ is a statistical impossibility, thereby claiming that the entire debate surrounding global warming is more a political than scientific gesture.

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