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This is a continuation of efforts to deliver drugs more specifically to the target using polymers, micelles, etc.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8034/8034drugde livery.html

Bill Clinton ?
Hillary Clinton ?
Al Gore ?

Whoever it was, they were right, though perhaps they thought a larger quantity of the weapons would be found.

Tin isn't very toxic, either (they do line food cans with it, you know).

Hydrogen is produced when the bacteria exchanges a proton for an electron at the anode. The proton becomes the hydrogen.

thus it is one for one. For every hydrogen produced you have one electron dropping through a 0.25v external potential.

If other processes are also transferring protons then that's still hydrogen. So one electron passed means some proton contianing species ended up on the electrode. as long as you can make sure that those are mainly hydrogen and not some weird thing (say a metal or sodium or soduim), then you dont care.

So basically its a 0.25 volt cost atom produced.

Now to the numbers: One mole of electrons is the same as 96,500 Coulombs. So producing 96,500 would require about 25 kilo joules of energy. A mole of hydrogen, if I recall correctly, contains 280KJ of energy of which 230KJ is extracable as work (rest has to to to heat to pay the boltzman tax).

Of course the bacteria can also produce hydrogen on it's own. THe problem is the build up of reaction products that shut down the process. the current is used to help the bacteria get rid of these so the reaction can go to completetion producing hydrogen. Thus if I read this right in steady state we are indeed exchaning electrons for each hydrogen. The problem would then be if the bacteria is instead exchanging electrons for methane or something we dont want.

I cant quite figure out the abstract of the science paper but it sounds like they get about 80% of what they want.

This bio-electrochemically assisted microbial system, if combined with hydrogen fermentation that produces 2-3 mol H2/mol glucose, has the potential to produce ca. 8-9 mol H2/mol glucose at an energy cost equivalent to 1.2 mol H2/mol glucose.

The actual paper referenced is Electrochemically Assisted Microbial Production of Hydrogen from Acetate by Drs Hong Liu, Stephen Grott, and Bruece E. Logan from Penn State, in the publication "Environmental Science and Technology."

Enjoy...

Actually many researchers are in fact seriously pursuing using diamond as a future replacement for silicon. Both diamond and silicon are *very bad* conductors in their pure state. Both have to be doped (with phosphorous, boron, etc.) to become p-type or n-type semiconductors, which makes them useful as a substrate for microprocessors (note that when doped they are semiconductors, not conductors... your microchip would just short-out if the entire wafer was made of a metal/conductor).

Diamond's superior thermal, optical, and chemical-resistance properties make it attractive for future microprocessors... but unfortunately it is more difficult to make it work as a semiconductor, which is why silicon has always been the substrate of choice.

It's very interesting research, and we'll see where it goes. For more info, this C&E News article is good, or check here, or here and there's a bit here.

This previously undescribed process is shown to occur at all DNA sequence polymorphisms examined and therefore seems to be a general mechanism for extragenomic inheritance of DNA sequence information.

Though I have never heard of a gene specific protein-mediated repair mechanism, it may exisist.

As others have said in this thread, this is an old problem. Interestingly, other professional societies have generally dealt with this reasonably well. Both the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society assess page charges from the authors to help cover costs, as well as modest subscription costs from libraries.

Even though there are free archives of preprints, where content is available publicly, people are still willing to pay a little for the stamp of peer-review. Certainly one could imagine an automated system that would distribute manuscripts to appropriate referees at comparatively little cost, but you have to remember that not all "peers" view refereeing as good citizenship. Many view it as a burden, not unlike jury duty.

Finally, let's keep our eyes on the big picture: it's typically for-profit publishing houses , not professional societies, that squeeze libraries for every penny, have outrageously inflated page charges, and generally lower quality and standards.

Here are links to the actual research abstract and paper.

Abstract text:

Inhibitory Effects of Feeding with Carrots or (-)-Falcarinol on Development of Azoxymethane-Induced Preneoplastic Lesions in the Rat Colon

Morten Kobæk-Larsen, Lars P. Christensen, Werner Vach, Jelmera Ritskes-Hoitinga, and Kirsten Brandt

The effects of intake of dietary amounts of carrot or corresponding amounts of (-)-(3R)-falcarinol from carrots on development of azoxymethane (AOM)-induced colon preneoplastic lesions were examined in male BDIX rats. Three groups of eight AOM-treated rats were fed the standard rat feed Altromin supplemented with either 10% (w/w) freeze-dried carrots with a natural content of 35 g falcarinol/g, 10% maize starch to which was added 35 g falcarinol/g purified from carrots, or 10% maize starch (control). After 18 weeks, the animals were euthanized and the colon was examined for tumors and aberrant crypt foci (ACF), which were classified into four size classes. Although the number of small ACF was unaffected by the feeding treatments, the numbers of lesions as a function of increasing size class decreased significantly in the rats that received one of the two experimental treatments, as compared with the control treatment. This indicates that the dietary treatments with carrot and falcarinol delayed or retarded the development of large ACF and tumors. The present study provides a new perspective on the known epidemiological associations between high intake of carrots and reduced incidence of cancers.

Here are links to the actual research abstract and paper.

Abstract text:

Inhibitory Effects of Feeding with Carrots or (-)-Falcarinol on Development of Azoxymethane-Induced Preneoplastic Lesions in the Rat Colon

Morten Kobæk-Larsen, Lars P. Christensen, Werner Vach, Jelmera Ritskes-Hoitinga, and Kirsten Brandt

The effects of intake of dietary amounts of carrot or corresponding amounts of (-)-(3R)-falcarinol from carrots on development of azoxymethane (AOM)-induced colon preneoplastic lesions were examined in male BDIX rats. Three groups of eight AOM-treated rats were fed the standard rat feed Altromin supplemented with either 10% (w/w) freeze-dried carrots with a natural content of 35 g falcarinol/g, 10% maize starch to which was added 35 g falcarinol/g purified from carrots, or 10% maize starch (control). After 18 weeks, the animals were euthanized and the colon was examined for tumors and aberrant crypt foci (ACF), which were classified into four size classes. Although the number of small ACF was unaffected by the feeding treatments, the numbers of lesions as a function of increasing size class decreased significantly in the rats that received one of the two experimental treatments, as compared with the control treatment. This indicates that the dietary treatments with carrot and falcarinol delayed or retarded the development of large ACF and tumors. The present study provides a new perspective on the known epidemiological associations between high intake of carrots and reduced incidence of cancers.

Well, first things first. I never said the semiconductor industry would find it too expensive, or even impractical. In fact, once enough research has been done to take care of the hard parts of using a new semiconductor substrate, I think it's inevitable. Diamond is a better material in many ways than silicon.

Now, back to the differences. Here is a description of how silicon is made. It is essentially a 90-year old process for growing single crystals of metal, using a crystal the metal naturally grows into (given fairly normal temperatures and pressures). The big feat here is using an environment to promote purity, and the scale at which it is done. Here is an article that mentions how diamond crystals are grown. Note that this technology, while successfully making a diamond about 35 years ago, is still in its infancy for mono-crystalline diamonds (which is all that matters in this discussion), and that diamond is not the default state for carbon in a relatively normal environment. Note that CVD is nothing new for semiconductor fabrication, so the mere mention of it isn't a stumbling block for the industry. Also, the crystal diameter for diamond is around 160mm (in 2002) vs. 400mm (in 2004) for silicon, and thickness measured in centimeters for diamond vs. meters for silicon.

Which brings me back to my original point. Silicon is relatively easy to work with, and all the hard parts about silicon (maintaining purity, crystal growth process, doping, polishing) are going to be just as hard when working with diamond, if not harder. Then there's the new challenges that diamond adds to the mix, some of which are still being researched.

Re: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/8250/8250acs.html

The American Chemical Society (ACS) should (and will) be ashamed of
itself, forgetting it is a Scholarly Society and acting for all the
world like just another corporate bottom-feeder, trying to squeeze the
most revenue out of the leastmost commodity ("branding"). They might as
well be peddling hog-bellies, or H2O rights in Bolivia.

Fear not. The bottom line is not the scruple-free conduct of its handsomely
paid executives and legal staff
http://www.idontcare.com/acs
but the ACS membership (and history itself), which will hold ACS
accountable if it continues down this solipsistic, sociopathic path
instead of doing what scholarly societies are meant to do.

Meanwhile, it would be fun if the various other "X Scholar" entities took
out a class action suit against ACS's "SciFinder Scholar"...

Eligible candidates include:
American Scholar http://www.pbk.org/pubs/amscholar.htm
Black Scholar http://www.theblackscholar.org/
Zetetic Scholar http://tricksterbook.com/truzzi/ZeteticScholars.ht ml

Stevan Harnad

They do charge for access, since the journal itself is available by subscription only. However, the subscriptions are generally done by academic site license, so more than likely, if you're on a college campus, you have access to this.

pubs.acs.org

Nanosolar SolarPly is one of these products. The manufacturer claims a cost as little as $30 per square meter (cheaper than some fancy non-solar roofing materials) and less than $2 per peak watt by 2006.

The efficiency isn't great (they aren't going to make self-powered electric cars), but this doesn't matter. When we've already covered an area equivalent to Ohio with impervious surfaces, we've got plenty of area we could re-cover with PV. If 1/4 of the 112,610 square km of impervious area was covered with 8% efficient PV, it would have a peak power potential of approximately 2.25 terawatts (more than double current US nameplate generating capacity). I think that would hold us for a while.

Luca Turin is the current proponent of the theory that olfaction is at least influenced not only by molecular shape, but also by the vibrational modes and spectra of the molecule. Recent double-blind experiments in March '04 put doubt on this theory, but had no absolute proof of the "shape" theory either. Clouding the whole scientific controversy is the cult-following Turing has acquired following the publication of Chandler Burr's book about Turin, "The Emperor of Scent".

You can find discussions of this and other theories of smell here.

Are you nuts? Using the terms "SCO" "libel" and "personal gain" in the same sentence makes no sense. SCO is a company, not a person.

How can this be marked "Interesting" when people make such basic factual errors?

According to this link, my post was quite factual.

That being said, it's something called a "question", genius. It means that I don't know the answer, therefore I am soliciting the help of others with more knowledge of the subject. Look it up in a dictionary sometime. You'd be amazed at all the cool and interesting words you'll find.

At first I was trying to figure out what Trademark law had to do with this. After a search or two, I found this info. Just an FYI for anyone who wants to know what the parent is talking about.

To the parent: thanks for the info! This may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. If the judge awards IBM damages for violation of the Lanham Act, IBM might just end up owning the Unix licensing business! (Through liquidation of assets during bankruptcy procedures, in case anyone's interested.)

Just because he got his degree and moved on does not mean he can keep it after committing fraud. If what you say is true, and you have evidence, you have a case.

Check out: DISGRACED PHYSICIST STRIPPED OF PH.D. DEGREE

Victor Ninov at Lawerence Berkley National Laboratory.

Let's hope Fermilab is more certain about this discovery.

Just because this article by two less-knowledgable nanotechnology advocates doesn't cover all the bases doesn't mean there aren't some really intelligent people out there working to solve these problems even now.

Original, many of those in high places believed "hey.. cool.. with global warming we will have more than the current 6 weeks of sun a year in London. How great for our economy."

By now it seems that what is more likely to happen is a shutting down of the gulf stream" giving London the weather currently experienced in SIBERIA.

Like everything else (including the current US and Australian -- yes... I am Australian -- administrations' denials that that global warming is real), it only becomes an issue when it affects You personally.

Note. I believe that global warming is a real effect. I don't believe that some of the more "Everybody is going to die" scenarios are real, but I am more than willing to say "hey look, we just don't know... so lets just back off a little on our current pumping of crap into the environment so if the doomsdayists turn out to be right, we don't have so much damage to undo, and in the meantime we get cleaner air to breathe".

I think this person has an impossible job.

Years later, astronaut Buzz Aldrin said in a television interview that the mobile quarantine trailer in which the Apollo 11 crew was isolated had one serious flaw: Ants appeared to be going into and out of the trailer (37). If there were any Moon bugs, they would have gotten out with the ants. -- from The dilemma of Mars sample return

Add to that all the meteorites that fail to stop at the agricultural station on their way in, and I'd think the Earth is already pretty contaminated.

I'm not saying that he should not try to reduce cross-contamination, only that its not an easy job.

Obviously the air being loaded with buckyballs made dinosaurs too stupid to live. Well, we don't know the effects of buckyballs in the air. I propose they be tested on dinosaurs immediately!

This has been an ongoing trend in the US for a long time now. For about 30 years, US citizens have been more and more reluctant to give the "hard" sciences a try.

Take a look at
this to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

A special quote from table 2 is: "Except for biological and social sciences, the number of science and engineering Ph.D. graduates was lower in 2002 than it was in 1992". Obviously we're doing something right as scientests in general if everyone else seems to think we don't need any help!

I say, this trend of decreasing enrollment signifies the re-acceptance of computer science as an actual science by the general public. I think most of the problems with not-so-motivated peers which have been voiced here come from the perception of computer science during the 90s as something other than "real" science.

It is possible that the high levels of mercury in tuna are natural. Of course doesn't make it any better for you.

(That study is from a journal published by the American Chemical Society, which is as legit as other scientific organization. Though that research was apparently partly funded by something called the "U.S. Tuna Foundation", which presumably is funded by the tuna industry.)

Holy Crap!

Here's the link to that article you just spoke of:

Phase Behavior and Rheology of SWNTs in Superacids

For those of you suspcious of "blind" links:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/mamobx/2004 /37/i01/html/ma0352328.html

See, e.g., also
this

Ugh. Especially in the case of Iran, FOSS is the thing we should support not because of being technically better, but because of being free. Philosophical subversion.

To an analytical chemist, a pH of 0 is nonsense--it's too imprecise to be of much use. However, a pH of 0.0 is indeed possible.
I'm not sure whether abandoned mine waters count as natural, but solutions with a pH of -3.6 are known to exist outside the laboratory.

The concentrated acid rain is eroding your wall, there is little protection to your wall by puting [sic] a ring of limestone around the base of the building. When the rain got absorbed into concrete through tiny cracks, it is eroding the structural steel bar/beam. But you might consider sprinkling the building exterior with lime water and make the window cleaning guys rich becuase [sic] when lime water dries up, a smear remain [sic] on the glass, someone has to clean it.

And guess what... it also uses TiO2 & sunlight!

Yes, I too pine for the days of leaded gasoline, lead pipes, CCA-treated lumber and asbestos!

And really, boiling down the two shuttle failures to material replacements? Perhaps a more important factor is its design.

There's also an interactive one, color-coded for lifetimes, here. The half-life of these elements decreases from millenia to microseconds.

Cool link! As usual, since I'm not a physicist, the chart brings up more fun questions than it answers. Here's a question that I hope doesn't get me in trouble with Mr. Ashcroft & co!

According to the page I linked above, Uranium and Plutonium, the most well-known nu-cu-lar bomb materials, have isotopes with half-lives > 100,000 years. That explains how they can be stable enough to be worked into a sub-critical mass that can be compressed explosively into a critical mass.

But look up a couple of steps. Curium, element 96, has a couple of of isotopes with similar longevity. We know that after WWII, scientists studied the heck out of the trans-uranium elements... I wonder if anyone ever attempted to use Curium as a fissile material? Someone had to have the crazy idea to try Plutonium, so you have to figure someone tried it.

I did a quick Google, and didn't find much. But this article is pretty cool -- it turns out that Curium is patented! Glenn Seaborg (immortialized with his own element, #106 Seaborgium) patented it along with Americium -- the radioactive element in your home smoke detector. Does that mean that nobody can use Curium in their bombs without paying royalties to his estate?

One of the critical issues is the chemical diversity space of the zillions of screened compounds. The more diverse the chemical space, the more likely you'll fine some promising leads. Broadly, there are two ways that high diversity are generated: 1) by organic synthesis, combining lots of organic chemical groups, in lots of ways (combinatorial chemistry), or, 2) by harvesting natural compounds, which are just plants and animals liquified by a Waring Blender. It turns out that natural compounds tend to represent a larger chemical diversity space, and, therefore, may be more likely to contain novel pharmaceuticals. (The details and reasons are way beyond the scope this post. Take an organic chem course, followed by a biochem course, and you'll understand.)

Here's a pretty readable article that explains more.

Even more interesting, to me, is that when the National Research Council, at the request of president Bush, included major global warming skeptics on the council, upon reviewing the body of evidence, they changed their minds about it (see the last two paragraphs of the link).

These are the top guys in their fields, and they make good statements based on real evidence, as opposed to the average /. posting :-)

Link

Funnily enough, Drexler mentions that same quotation in one of the letters:


'A scientist whose research I respect has observed that "when a scientist says something is possible, they're probably underestimating how long it will take. But if they say it's impossible, they're probably wrong." The scientist quoted is, of course, Richard Smalley.'

I don't see why this is news worthy. Just about *every* single drug today has its origins in some marine life (or bacteria/mold). For instance, many research groups get millions of grant dollars flying to remote areas, cutting up the local inhabitants, and then running cell assays on them. If they make it through a certain number of assays (generally for cytoxicity, but others exist) then they publish the info. Just check out the Journal of Natural Products. Issues upon issues of this stuff. The interesting stuff comes later, when the synthetic organic chemists try to create these things artificially, generally in really low yields. In fact, a project I was working on was the synthesis of a marine ladder toxin that is one of the active compounds in red tide catastrophes (see this book). It too blocks sodium ion channels. Probably the most famous cancer fighting compound, taxol, is isolated from the bark of the pacific yew tree.

As another poster has pointed out, you are arguing on out-dated information. Let's look at each point in turn.

Even if they could make carbon nanotube strands longer than 10 microns

Individual CNTs have been manufactured up to lengths of several centimeters at least. This article is from May of last year, and progress has been made since then. This is not thousands of kilometers, of course, but it does not need to be, since we're going to be using CNT composite materials rather than pure CNTs.

and even if they could braid them in a fashion where they wouldn't slip

We have been able to manufacture CNT composite materials on the order of meters in length with strengths on the order of several GPa's now for a couple of years. Currently, steady progress is being made to increase the strength of the composites to the required ~100 GPa.

they'd still have to launch a few thousand tons worth of stuff into geosynch orbit

Try about 100 metric tons placed in LEO. (Here's a reference for an older deployment strategy that comes in at 122,000kg.) Hubble weighs 11. Mir was more...

And then they'd have to figure out how to avoid getting the tether cut by space debris

This is the hardest problem, but not insurmountable even within a couple of decades. The ribbon will be made very resilient to micrometeorite damage. (Not saying it won't take damage... just that it will continue to work fine in spite of some damage.) For larger debris, it becomes considerably less likely to collide with the ribbon, but active avoidance will be used to move the ribbon out of the path of larger pieces of junk. Also note that once one ribbon is up, the cost of raising a second one lowers dramatically. The first order of business for SE1 will be to raise the components for SE2...

There is some serious research going on here, and it's looking very encouraging. See LiftWatch.org for regular news, links to research and companies, discussion forums, images, etc.

Try bothering at least to Google for this guy. J. Am. Chem. Soc 125, 43, 13279 - 13283

I mean seriously, how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments? For how long?

First answer - 0. Second answer - VERY little time. Maybe a hundred milliseconds or so.

But, half-lives are trending upward as we approach the predicted island of stability.

See this very informative link from Chemical and Engineering News's 50th aniversary edition. (It of course annouced the naming of 110 a few weeks ago - it isn't breaking news.) In it they have a table which shows some of the heavier isotopes of the heavy elements with half-lives in the seconds. This is big deal! It is predicted that if they can make even heavier isotopes of these elements they will be more stable - the contour plot on the same site suggests stabilities of hundreds of years, perhaps. That is an element you can bottle up and sell, and I don't know of any moderately-stable elements that have no use at all.

The trick is getting the extra neutrons into these atoms. The building blocks we normally use (other atoms) don't have that much in the way of excess neutrons.

BTW - the reference to C&EN is to one of the most-heavily-read trade magazines there is - it is the official "newsletter" of the American Chemical Society which is the largest professional organization in the world the last time I checked... Not all articles are free - but this is part of a big issue on the elements, and you will find links to full-page writeups on every element in existance (well, some elements are combined onto a single page - like the noble gases, Lanthinides, etc.)

And NASA was given exempt from the freon-ban by the EPA. The reason given by the Lockheed for changing the foam was the scarcity of the freon due the international treaty signed in Montreal banning the use of freon. So the stated reason for the change was economics, not environmentalism. If the freon was critical, of cource they would have continued to use it.

Nice spin thou, "it was not NASA's fault, it was those damn environmentalists." See my previous post(and reply) on for bit more info

I heard on NPR that coffee contains a substantial dose of antioxidants and other goodness. Of course, that might just be the voices in my head telling me what I want to hear, but there is an article in a real journal to back me up. And some propaganda by the "British Coffee Association."

And what it's worth, Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert seems to believe that the foam in question was based on freon. See the last letter from 3/3/03 C&E News Letters. It seems that they use several different foam formulas, and the problem is not with the use/non-use of freon.

Sounds to me that some people at NASA are trying to do damage control, for the problems caused by the falling foam insulation have been known at least since 1988. And the freon controversy is six years old, that is a long time to sit on a problem.

Nice spin thou, "it was not NASA's fault, it was those damn environmentalists." And the media is biting.

I think the /. article is a little misleading. After scanning the JPhysChem B article here (You may need to have a license). The articles suggest that removing dissolved gasses allows you to mix oil and water indefinately. I'm pretty sure that this is not true.

They are adding 2 ml of oil and 33 mils of water and after mixing they still have some oil phase (from the picture in the paper). They are reporting an increase in the solubility, not that oil and water in these conditions are completely miscible as implied by the /. article.

As for my questions, I'm not sure I understand their results with respect to the observation that re-exposure to air doesn't immediately reverse the effect. This sort of raises a red flag to me, because (assuming there isn't any covalent chemistry going on) it means that achieving equilibrium is rather slow, and it may be that they are not at equilibrium when the measurements are made. Either way it is an interesting paper. (This would be better phrased as a question than a statement, I might have just missed the answer in the paper....)

-Sean

biological system's don't have free gasses floating around

Exactly. Biological systems have a lot of dissolved gases floating around, thus (if we take the result on face value) we would not expect our bodies to emusify into pinkish goo.

Anyone feel like buying the PhysChemB article for $25 and telling us some of the more useful details (like what the oil was) New Scientist has decided to leave out?

Here's the link to the actual journal his article was published in, for the curious.

From the article, it would be a stretch to say that Pashley has found a way to overcome "long-range" hydrophobic effects. Those effects are still present. However, he has found a way to get the hydrophobic liquid to break away in small droplets. Once broken away from the bulk, standard DLVO theory takes over to keep the particles apart. DLVO is not a cancelation of hydrophobic effects, it is just an overpowering of hydrophobic effects by electrostatic effects.

Unfortunately, it seems as though Pashley has no good explanation for why the degassing method works, it just does. This could be interesting, as more researchers study the role of gasses in keeping hydrophobic and hydrophilic liquids apart.

Overall, quite interesting, though New Scientist does tend to exagerate scientific findings.
Tony

The article provides some details -- the most vital of which were echoed by the submitter -- but doesn't give us any clear idea of how good or bad this fact is. How does the environmental impact of microchip production compare to other goods?

Fortunately, the study itself -- linked to by another poster first -- provides some more useful details.

The lower bound of fossil fuel and chemical inputs to produce and use one 2-gram microchip are estimated at 1600 g and 72 g, respectively. Secondary materials used in production total 630 times the mass of the final product, indicating that the environmental weight of semiconductors far exceeds their small size. This intensity of use is orders of magnitude larger than that for "traditional" goods. Taking an automobile as an example, estimates of life cycle production energy for one passenger car range from 63 to 119 GJ (42). This corresponds to 1500-3000 kg of fossil fuel used, thus the ratio of embodied fossil fuels in production to the weight of the final product is around two.

Furthermore, both microchips and cars have a greater environmental impact than merely that caused during their production. In both cases, you should also consider what sort of impact their use will entail. Microchips require electricity to function; that electricity has to be generated somehow, and the methods of its production have an environmental impact. Microchips also need to be disposed of once they are no longer useful, as happens all to frequently. I personally have found a good computer recycler, but lots of other pieces of equipment are thrown into landfills, where they remain indefinitely. They may also leak toxic substances as they begin to fall apart (Lead from CRTs, for instance.) Likewise cars have a HUGE environmental impact during their use -- just think how much gasoline a car can burn in a year of normal use.

But I digress. The study did not consider the entire lifetime of the chip, merely the circumstances of its production. In which case, I find it less than satisfactory. It's a good starting place, but doesn't follow through.

The production of microchips is not environmentally friendly. This is true. What we need to know now is how dirty the process is, and how great of a problem it is compared to other areas of production. Comparison with a car alone isn't too useful, especially as it doesn't figure in the environmental costs of the car's components. What would be useful would be a comparison with lots of other objects, ranging in complexity from a table knife to a bicycle to, say, the space shuttle, with the environmental costs of the components of the more complex items figured in. Then we could use that study to see what areas are worst, and where we most need to improve.

Lastly, lest I sound too harsh, the article does mention that this is only the first installment of research that has taken several years to complete. It is entirely possible that the team will put out exactly the sort of report I envision here sometime in the future. So overall, I'd have to say this is a good start, but needs a lot more analysis to be especially useful.

The publication itself:
Here.

The links given don't actually supply the reference to the paper. Its in Biochemistry

Biochemical Basis for the Biological Clock Morre, D. J.; Chueh, P.-J.; Pletcher, J.; Tang, X.; Wu, L.-Y.; Morre, D. M.; Biochemistry ; (Accelerated Article); 2002; 41(40); 11941-11945.

A Los Alamos-led research team today presented the topic at the 223rd annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Orlando, Fla.

I think the author has been inhaling some subject matter...seeing how they have only been in existence for 124 years.