Cereplast, Inc., designer and manufacturer of proprietary bio-based, sustainable plastic resins, and Oculus3D, a company focused on film-based 3D projection technology, announced that Oculus3D will introduce the world's first biodegradable/compostable 3D glasses as part of the OculR 3D viewing system to movie theaters. Oculus3D's eco-friendly 3D glasses are manufactured using Cereplast's bioplastic resins and are expected to be available for Summer 2010 distribution to movie theaters. The news was announced from ShoWest, the motion picture distribution and exhibition industry's largest annual expo.

With major 3D movie releases such as "Avatar" and "Alice In Wonderland" requiring more than 10 millions pairs of glasses to be shipped to movie theaters across the globe for each movie, the demand for 3D presentations is growing rapidly. While many theaters collect 3D glasses at the conclusion of each show, damaged glasses, or pairs not returned end up in trashcans and ultimately in landfill sites. The joint goal of Cereplast and Oculus3D is to supply biodegradable/compostable 3D glasses, thereby reducing the amount of harmful petroleum-based contaminants placed in landfills.

The current 3D glasses offered by movie theaters are made of traditional fossil fuel plastic and are not biodegradable. The CO2 emissions for the more than 10 million plastic glasses is equivalent to the harmful emissions generated by burning 50,000 gallons of gasoline or 917 barrels of oil. The Oculus3D eyewear will feature Cereplast's CompostablesÂ@ resin made with IngeoÂ@ Poly-lactic acid (PLA). These resins allow for the manufacturing of glasses made of renewable material and create a truly compostable product. If discarded at a compost site, the 3D glasses will return to nature in less than 180 days with no chemical residues or toxicity left in the soil.

"We are very glad to be associated with Oculus3D, a company that understands and is concerned about the environmental impact associated with traditional petroleum-based plastic. Through the collaboration of our joint effort, we can offer the Hollywood community meaningful 'green' benefits requiring little effort and providing large impact," said Frederic Scheer, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Cereplast, Inc.

"By using Cereplast's resins in our 3D biodegradable and compostable glasses we can now help the entertainment industry reduce its carbon footprint and provide movie theaters with smarter choices for both affordable 3D systems and compatible 3D eyewear," said Marty Shindler, Co-founder and CEO of Oculus3D.

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 18 PMID: 20298554Authors: Olsen, B. - Murakami, C. J. - Kaeberlein, M.Journal: BMC BioinformaticsABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most widely studied model organisms in aging-related science. Although several genetic modifiers of yeast longevity have been identified, the utility of this system for longevity studies has been limited by a lack of high-throughput assays for quantitatively measuring survival of individual yeast cells during aging. RESULTS: Here we describe the Yeast Outgrowth Data Analyzer (YODA), an automated system for analyzing population survival of yeast cells based on the kinetics of outgrowth measured by optical density over time. YODA has been designed specifically for quantification of yeast chronological life span, but can also be used to quantify growth rate and survival of yeast cells in response to a variety of different conditions, including temperature, nutritional composition of the growth media, and chemical treatments. YODA is optimized for use with a Bioscreen C MBR shaker/incubator/plate reader, but is also amenable to use with any standard plate reader or spectrophotometer. CONCLUSIONS: We estimate that use of YODA as described here reduces the effort and resources required to measure chronological life span and analyze the resulting data by at least 15-fold.post to: CiteULike

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 19 PMID: 20299593Authors: Dong, W. - Xiao, C. - Wang, T. - Dai, D. - Yang, X. - Zhang, D. H.Journal: SciencePartial wave resonances, quasi-bound resonance states with well-defined rotation in the transition state region of a chemical reaction, play a governing role in reaction dynamics but have eluded direct experimental characterization. Here, we report the observation of individual partial wave resolved resonances in the F + HD --> HF + D reaction by measuring the collision energy-dependent, angle- and state-resolved differential cross section with extremely high resolution, providing a spectroscopic probe to the transition state of F + HD --> HF + D. The agreement of the data with the high-level theoretical calculations confirms the sensitivity of this probe to the subtle quantum mechanical factors guiding this benchmark reaction.post to: CiteULike

Lunch-hour cosmetic surgery – 45-minute boob jabs, nonsurgical rhinoplasty – is booming in the UK. But nightmare stories are also on the rise. So are the treatments safe? We speak to doctors to find out, and take a front-row seat at a no-frills nose job

Cosmetic surgery is changing. One advancement is the use of twilight surgery, where they send you only half to sleep. Clinics are alive with dazed facelift patients, who keep their eyes open, frowning and smiling on demand, who come to after the sedation's worn off, their skin tight but bruised, able to remember nothing of the knife at all. There are other patients who trip in off the street for a half-hour boob job under local anaesthetic, and still more who book a session of Botox in their lunch-breaks. The current excitement, in plastics, is not in the perfection of a newly sculpted nose but in the speed at which patients can recover, and the market for these fast, temporary procedures is growing wildly.

The Knightsbridge Laser Clinic is one of many that has recently started promising lunch-hour transformations, offering laser lipolysis to eliminate fat, the G-spot injection to enhance sexual stimulation, Macrolane breast injections, nonsurgical rhinoplasty and Botox fillers to remove wrinkles. A block away from Harrods, I climb their carpeted stairs to the waiting room as the lunch-time rush subsides. Outside a light rain is falling, and the smell of a wet fur coat, woody and dead, hangs in the air of the clinic's small landing. Its owner brushes past me, straight into one of three white and well-lit offices. In a corner room, beside a sheeted bed, I soon take my seat, an audience of one at a 15-minute nose job.

The patient, a young, elegant woman with jewelled shoes, had rhinoplasty in Harley Street as a teenager but now wants it still straighter. Her first operation, which cost £8,000 and required a week in hospital, had left her with a smaller nose, she says, but slightly wonky nostrils. "You might not notice it," she says apologetically, "but I do."

The doctor, Salinda Johnson, a slight and surgically tweaked woman who studied cosmetic dermatology in Thailand, warns of the possible side-effects of today's procedure as she applies a numbing cream to the patient's face. "Soreness, redness, bruising," she chants, "which will settle down within two weeks and break down completely within a year." Johnson rereads the patient's notes and holds up a pink-nailed hand. "There is a problem – we can't do the procedure on a pregnant woman." Her nose glossy with anaesthetising cream, the patient exchanges hurried words with the doctor, and I look pointedly out of the window. An unwanted pregnancy. A sense that the risk is welcome. Minutes later, she is gone.

"Don't worry!" the doctor chirps. "We'll show you the procedure on our receptionist!" Diane has worked at the clinic for four months and, at 23, has already had Botox to fill in a frown line between her brows. Her nose is small and straight, but she has self-diagnosed – she feels there's a dent. She asks the doctor if she thinks rhinoplasty's necessary. "Nothing is necessary," Johnson says, applying the numbing cream. "So can you do my lips, too?" Diane asks, pouting. Johnson shows me the syringe, prefilled with a mixture of anaesthetic and Restylane filler, a hyaluronic acid. The needle is long, and she pushes it firmly into Diane's nose before using both hands to massage the filler into place. The air-conditioning system screams on, and dies just as quickly – the only sounds are Johnson's gloves, baggy on her tiny hands, squeaking.

I gather myself. Does it hurt, I ask Diane, who's breathing calmly, her fingers gently worrying the sleeve of her sweater. "No, I can't feel anything. I can just smell the rubber gloves." Were you interested in getting cosmetic surgery before coming to work here? "No!" she says, through the doctor's fingers, her nose changing shape, delicately, before my squinting eyes. "But I see so many people coming in at lunch time and leaving looking... fresher, and you can't even tell what they've had done. So I had laser hair removal, which feels like being slapped, and Botox, which was really nothing, and then I saw that you could make your lips look more defined with filler, so I've been pestering Salinda to do me."

Dr Johnson wipes around Diane's mouth with a small antiseptic cloth, and warns her that, on a pain scale, this will hurt a seven. She injects Restylane into the lips, and Diane's eyes flicker backwards. With her fingers, Johnson pushes the filler into a cupid's bow – the effect is that of a mother wiping chocolate smears off a child's mouth.

The Harley Medical Group, the UK's largest cosmetic surgery provider, published figures in January revealing the nonsurgical cosmetic surgery market (which includes the Macrolane boob jab, an injection that increases your bust size, and Restylane rhinoplasty, the injection that straightens your nose) saw continued growth in 2009, with dermal fillers and chemical peels driving the increase by 26% and 306% respectively. Last year also saw a continued rise in the number of male patients (up 5%), with "Boytox" (male Botox) and "Sweatox" (anti-sweat Botox) both contributing to the leap.

"Minimally invasive procedures rule today – and this is what consumers, and especially men, want most," says Wendy Lewis, independent cosmetic surgery consultant and author of Plastic Makes Perfect. "The benefits for consumers are: subtle improvements over time; nothing radical; less risky; definitely cheaper than big surgeries; no need for anaesthetic or going to hospital and catching MRSA; and no scars."

"There are many reasons why day surgery is becoming more and more popular," Dr Johnson tells me after Diane has floated back to her desk, swollen but smiling. "People who thought they didn't want to get surgery because they were not brave enough, or not rich enough, are interested in these temporary and non-expensive procedures – our nonsurgical rhinoplasty starts at £350. And it's so quick! The talking takes longer than the treatment. We have a lot of clients who work at Harrods and really do just pop in on their lunch breaks."

The market continues to swell, imperceptibly smoothing the faces of colleagues, relatives, local hairdressers. A study carried out for the Girl Guides last November found almost half of secondary school girls said they planned to have plastic surgery. "Girls and young women are telling us that they are finding it quite hard to accept their appearance, and it is starting at a much earlier age than we had previously thought," says Nicola Grinstead, a trustee of Girlguiding UK. "The survey shows girls as young as 11 are dissatisfied with how they look and are prepared to use surgery to make a change."

All the women I talk to in the clinic's waiting room flicking through OK! magazines agree that today Botox, and increasingly cosmetic surgery, really is "no big deal". They nod, eyes wide, and reel off names like a BBC3 news bulletin. Last year Kylie Minogue, Geri Halliwell, Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox all gave interviews about their Botox use, while a film critic compared Nicole Kidman's facial skin to melamine. This month Cheryl Cole was photographed walking through a London airport with lips like salted slugs, and reality star Heidi Montag, 23, underwent 10 procedures in one day and ended up looking just like lingerie model Caprice, who is 38.

In a culture that celebrates youth, the appeal of an injection that appears to shave a little time off your age is clear, especially for the famous and often-photographed. As the demand for surgery has grown, academics have increasingly discussed the democratisation of beauty. If everybody could, in the space of a lunch hour, become symmetrical and clear-skinned, would the power of prettiness be weakened? If we accept that we will be judged on our appearance, is the fact that we can control it almost liberating?

Two years ago, Observer beauty journalist Alice Hart-Davis was one of the first women in the country to try the Macrolane breast enhancement jab. "I had never seriously considered having a proper breast enhancement. I don't feel surgery is something to be undertaken lightly," she tells me. "But I've always wished there was something I could do to boost my bust just a bit that didn't involve surgery."

Macrolane, which arrived in the UK in 2008, is a gel filler which is injected into the breast with a long blunt needle. It increases the bust by one cup size, lasts a year and costs around £2,000. "The procedure was amazing," says Hart-Davis, "an instant result. I was beyond thrilled with it." Though clinics advertise boob jabs in their list of lunch-time treatments, and the injections are over in 10 minutes, she warns: "It's by no means a 'lunch-hour lift' type procedure; it doesn't take long, but I reacted strongly to the local anaesthetic: it didn't hurt, but I could hardly speak straight for the rest of the day. And your body and brain go into a kind of post-traumatic shock after any procedure like this. You need to take it quietly afterwards."

Three months after her injections, one breast deflated – she settled for stuffing her bra with a sock – and the other went rock hard. Her surgeon broke up the gel under anaesthetic, then injected more to balance her bra. A few weeks later, she felt a lump in her right breast. She panicked and returned to the doctor, who reassured her that it was nothing to worry about – just a lump of hardened gel. "That experience," she concludes, "alongside discovering that the research conducted on the product was not half as extensive as I'd been led to believe, and talking to several surgeons who strongly disapprove of the procedure, has put me off trying it again."

One such surgeon is Mr Charles Nduka, who runs the not-for-profit patient information website safercosmeticsurgery.co.uk. "There's so much misleading information being published about 'lunch-time' procedures," he says, "leading, at best, to unrealistic expectations and disappointment and, at worst, complications. Facial procedures such as Botox may leave localised swelling, redness and in some cases bruising, even in the best hands. This means that if you wanted to keep your treatment secret, lunch time may not be the best time.

"A major issue in the UK," he continues, "is that because fillers are classified as medical devices – the same as implants – rather than drugs, the regulations about who can administer them are among the most lax in the developed world. The recently introduced guidance from the Ihas [Independent Healthcare Advisory Services] is a mockery. It's a system of self-regulation which means that the very practitioners who should be regulated will not sign up. There have been more than 100 fillers introduced in the UK and in many cases they were withdrawn due to side-effects. Essentially the UK becomes a testing ground for new products."

So would he recommend traditional plastic surgery over the lunch-hour treatments? "Few people have social lives so hectic that they cannot give themselves the luxury of having a treatment in an unrushed fashion," Mr Nduka says, "without the anxiety that swelling might show."

Dr Mike Cummins, a GP and cosmetic surgeon who, after requests from patients, agreed to carry out group treatments at Botox parties, agrees that the "lunch-time" label can be misleading, but says that as doctors' experience of anaesthetics increases, "there continue to be more and more advantages to daycare procedures, both for the patient and the client. Laser-assisted liposuction is getting to the point where it's more than reasonable to do it under twilight sedation and cosmetic surgeons are all working to get the least trauma to tissue under local anaesthetic as possible."

In Jeanette Winterson's novel The Stone Gods, published in 2008 but set in a futuristic dystopia, people alter their genes to preserve their youth and get plastic surgery to amplify what's left. Only the protagonist, Billie, chooses to age naturally, wrinkling slowly among the smooth foreheads and perky breasts. Winterson worries about the normalisation of cosmetic surgery. "What really bothers me," she says, "is that women used to be made to believe that their minds were inadequate, but we were allowed our bodies. Now that we can't be told our minds aren't up to it, our bodies are paraded as defective. It is the same old control. It is not just an assault on women – it is a war on feminism."

She emails me later that day. "I find 'lunch-hour surgery' savage and cynical. An insecure woman is a woman who will pay to feel better about herself. Disguising insecurity and feelings of inadequacy as empowerment is part of the usual twisted message of consumer advertising, but where women are concerned the strategy asks us to fund our own oppression. We pay to feel better instead of asking why we are made to feel defective in the first place... We need to understand that what is happening to women now is part of a disturbing bigger picture and not just a question of: 'Does madam fancy a nose job?'"

How does Winterson see society progressing in this era of perfectibility? Does she predict new lows, new depths? "We'll all get fixed eventually. Parents will do it to their kids. It will become routine. The Stepford Wives world of the 1950s was made impossible by feminism. We are heading back that way by another route. Women made in the image of men."

After Diane's 15-minute nose job, I take a walk through Harrods' beauty hall. I feel a little drunk. I had gone into the clinic expecting gore, or at least tears, but I left shocked only at the dry eyes, lack of fuss, the ease, the speed and gentle effectiveness. The women in Harrods testing the perfumes are largely blondes, largely wrinkleless, and largely slim. I see three people who look like Caprice, but as reflected in varying fairground mirrors. I watch a mother pick out scented candles for her granddaughter's wedding reception, and admire her shiny still forehead as she quietly exclaims over jasmine perfumes. I'm suddenly aware, looking discreetly from face to face, of all the "work" done and all the work yet to be done. It is an awakening of sorts. A half-awakening, maybe, to an odd new twilight world.

QUICK FIXES The most popular nonsurgical procedures

MACROLANE: BOOB JAB Created by Q-Med, the Swedish company behind the wrinkle-filler Restylane, Macrolane was launched in Europe as a correctional filler for body indentations. It wasn't until it was used in Japan in 2004 that it took off as an alternative for breast implants – by January 2008, when it launched in the UK, about 30,000 Japanese women had had the boob jab. The procedure, which takes 45 minutes, involves a gel filler made of hyaluronic acid being pumped into the breast through a flexible knitting needle-sized canula. PRICES from £1,800

RESTYLANE: NOSE JOB Restylane, a water-based filler, is a synthetic reproduction of hyaluronic acid, a substance found in living organisms. Until recently its main use has been to plump lips and fill crow's feet, but the new procedure involves injecting the bridge of the nose to fill in dents, and the tip, so it appears perkier. Effects wear off within 18 months. PRICES from £350

BOTOX An injection of Botulinum toxin A (a diluted and purified form of the bacteria which causes botulism) softens and prevents frown lines. The jab, 22 years old this spring, changed the face of cosmetic surgery, with celebrities including Simon Cowell admitting to relying on it to look younger. Each year it is estimated to make its manufacturers around £800m from more than 60,000 injections. PRICES £230 to £390

JUVEDERM: LIP ENHANCEMENT A series of injections of Juvederm filler around the mouth can make the lips fuller and reshape ageing pouts. Juvederm contains hyaluronic acid which, by attracting water, plumps up the skin. Results last for up to a year. PRICES from £250 

• Women
• Plastic surgery
• Social trends
• Health

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The favourite new drug of clubbers and schoolchildren hit the headlines last week when two young men died after taking it. Sold under a range of street names – meph, miaow miaow, MC, drone and bubbles – and easily available on the web, mephedrone is not illegal. But should it be? Here, four people from different sides of the debate – a user, a mother, a dealer and a doctor – have their say on 'the poor man's cocaine'

The user: Jack Starks

The first time I encountered mephedrone, meow meow, plant food or whatever you want to call it, was about a year ago at a friend's house in south London. We were back from a night out at the student union and all wanting to continue the party when my friend's flatmate, Brandon, got back from work and, with a sly smile, disappeared into his bedroom, to return with a huge box. He dumped the biggest pile of powder I had ever seen on the table. "This, my friends, is mephedrone," he said with relish. "And this is the future."

Like many students, I've never been one to say no to a new experience. We all end up running into drugs at some point, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I've always enjoyed a spliff and, on occasion, a little more, so I assumed this was just another casual substance I would be bumping into.

Nicknamed by users as "poor man's cocaine", mephedrone has swept through our nation's youth like a strong dose of salts, permeating every aspect of the party and night club scene. In less than six months, it has come from obscurity; everyone knows someone who's on it. Paradoxically, it was given a chance to become popular because of an EU restriction that prevented the importation of two substances necessary to the production of MDMA (ecstasy to the layman) that made it impossible to make or purchase any MDMA in Britain from late 2008. Mephedrone filled the gap in the market, and at half the cost of MDMA; it was everywhere.

You can snort it, drop it in "bombs" (rolling papers filled with it), and I've even come across people who eat it. The effect is euphoric, in some ways similar to ecstasy but much shorter-lived; you need to take a lot more of it a lot more often. The first time I took it, I could feel my heart pounding; everything seemed as if it was about to explode into life and I was up till the early hours in a wild rampage of excitement. But there any comparison ends. With mephedrone, the romance period is very short: after taking it just a couple of times, your tolerance increases dramatically, to the point that you're doing three or four times more than you were in the beginning to get high. Your appetite for the stuff also increases.

Brandon was well ahead of the curve. He was importing it from China at about a £1 a gram and selling it to students at £15. By mid-October, when our student loans had still failed to appear and finance was getting tight, we hit on the idea of doing the same. We could simply make a trip down to a seedy office in Victoria where we could buy it in bulk at wholesale price and then sell it on to our friends at a profit. Doing this you could turn £100 into £400 in a weekend and have a bit left on the side for yourself.

It became a crash course in drug dealing for beginners, and we weren't the only ones at it. Hundreds of students had spotted the gap in the market. You couldn't set foot in a club or house-party without someone walking past offering you "drone".

Whether or not this was legal is a good question, because although mephedrone isn't covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act, it is illegal to sell it for human consumption. Companies get round this by putting stickers on their product saying just that. When selling it, we would always tell people that it was not to be used to get high – it was almost a running joke. A very dangerous joke indeed.

When on it, you get very edgy (hence the comparison to cocaine) and you constantly crave more. It is possibly the most addictive substance I have ever come across. What makes it far more dangerous is that it is the first of a new breed of designer drugs, made purely to evade the laws surrounding controlled substances.

No one has considered what this will do to people in the short or the long term, and no one cares. Mephedrone might be called "plant food", but it is a plant decomposer, so what it does to your insides I dread to think. I once accidentally left a spoon in a bag of the stuff and came back three days later to find it had stripped off the outer coating and my mephedrone scattered with tiny silver bits of spoon. We still snorted it.

My stance was changed dramatically by my experience of prolonged use. After three or so months of using it at least a couple of times a week, I found myself in the darkest depression. I stopped taking it and suddenly found myself looking round at my friends with their eyes rolling in their heads and realised how much rubbish we had all been talking to each other. Good, straight-edge kids who barely used to drink have become crazed drug fiends, sitting in their house snorting plant food five days a week.

One friend of mine took it once and now has to use an inhaler, because he has permanently damaged his lungs. Another has almost ceased to be a friend, and is now a socially apathetic zombie, chasing mephedrone around London with his girlfriend, no longer able to interact without it, constantly asking if he can borrow 20 quid.

We've always been happy to get wasted on a night out, but I've never seen anything creep into so many everyday lives like this. I am horrified by the effect this drug has had on the people around me, and would urge anyone thinking about taking some tonight to change their plans.

Jack Starks is a student in his early 20s who lives in south London

The mother: Sophie Radice

For all those parents who have read with sadness about the deaths of an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old in Scunthorpe, but allowed themselves to be even slightly reassured that their own teenagers can't have come across mephedrone because they are so much younger, not yet clubbing and living very different lives, think again.

I first heard about mephedrone six months ago, at first from another north London mother whose son had ordered this "plant food" off the internet and who had roused her suspicions when he couldn't explain why he had suddenly developed an interest in gardening.

Then from my own daughter, aged 14 at the time, whose friends had discovered this legal high. She described them as "talking rubbish as if it is the most interesting thing in the world, and that they dribble and lick their lips and gurn and grind their teeth".

She said that people shook, bit holes in their lips and cheeks, were unable to feel their legs, were frightened because their heart was beating too fast and that their skin looked grey.

This might seem like any teenage group that has discovered harder drugs. It is rather like a description of my own group of friends at that age. What is different is that, in those six months, those friends who thought they were just experimenting seemed to need to take greater amounts of mephedrone on more and more occasions. Mephedrone is often sold in five gram bags and, as it is so "more-ish", it seems to be easy – even common – for a user to go through a whole bag.

Surely that kind of ever-decreasing, short-lived high is what makes dealers extremely rich and leads to the kind of desperate endless addiction of the crack-user?

Should all of this mean that we should immediately ban it? Well, I have always had a liberal view about drugs, believing that the criminalisation of drugs just creates an underground. I look at how making ketamine (a horse tranquilliser) a class C drug didn't stop its use among the young.

On an intellectual level, I agree with Professor David Nutt's measured suggestion of creating a "holding" class of D drug category. Within this category, sales would be limited to over-18s; the product would be quality-controlled, at doses limited as far as possible to safe levels; and it would come with health education messages. I also agree with Nutt that what we should look into is why teenagers are so drawn to taking drugs and why binge-drinking is so prevalent in this age group.

On a much more visceral, instinctive level, this "let's wait and see how harmful this drug is" D category doesn't comfort me at all. For this younger age group, the legality of mephedrone is a real attraction. While they can get hold of "weed" to smoke (mostly through older siblings, and even parents), because they are not yet going to clubs but to each other's houses or private parties they are rarely able to get their hands on harder drugs.

They can buy mephedrone off the internet or from headshops (shops selling drug paraphernalia) or stalls. Teenagers of this age seem to think that its legality means that it is safer than other drugs, which might also contribute to the wild abandon with which it is taken.

Health warnings wouldn't do a thing (my daughter says that, perversely, the deaths in Scunthorpe have made her friends even more determined to take the drug) and surely an over-18s rule on the net would be just like those porn sites that ask you to click a button to say that you are over 18 and that's all the proof you need. Prosecution of those selling to under-18s would be almost impossible in cases of website dealing.

For this age group, making mephedrone a class B drug would at least put up some sort of substantial hurdle and make it much harder for them to get hold of.

Just making it so much more difficult to track down may cause enough of a pause for some sort of easing-off from the enthusiastic consumption of what seems to be a particularly addictive drug.

Oh, and while we are waiting for a decision on this, look out for a fishy smell in your teenager's sweat, nose bleeds, restlessness, headaches, insomnia and a traces of yellowy powder on the surfaces in their room.

Sophie Radice is a journalist and mother of two who first came across the drug last year

The dealer: Mark

I have no background in narcotics. My worst offence is a puff on a joint in college, which I found unpleasant. I am at heart "anti" substance abuse, though I am in favour of free choice.

I own and run three normal, legitimate businesses, all of which, thanks to the recession, have had their troubles. Have you ever laid off a loyal member of staff? It's the worst feeling in the world. I was looking for a lifeline.

I first heard of mephedrone in September. A friend heard about a new chemical that was originally a kind of plant food. It was legal and its effects mimicked cocaine and MDMA. I started searching for information on Google and within an hour I knew this would be a winning business.

From the start, I wanted to run this completely legitimately. No shady cash deals, pay tax, give excellent service with a quality product at the right price. Was I comfortable with the concept? No. Did I want to lose my home to the bank? No. Decision made.

In the first weeks, I bought my stock inside the UK, but very quickly I began buying direct from a manufacturer in China. I registered a company and contacted a web designer.

This is where the problems started. Even before the press discovered mephedrone, it was not possible to find good professional help. Undaunted, I built my own website. No banks would touch the credit card side of the business. I fudged round this and I was up and running. I launched the website and within an hour had five sales. My first week I turned over £8,000; the second, £10,000.

Then, last November, mephedrone hit the headlines. Its use was blamed for the death of a 14-year-old girl, although this turned out not to be the case. I thought it was the end. How wrong I was. That week, sales doubled. When mephedrone is in the news, demand rockets. Last week came the death of two boys. (I cannot comment on this tragedy, except to say I do not believe mephedrone was the cause.) One of my websites, which usually gets around 1,200 hits a day, received more than 20,000. The media have made mephedrone what it is.

Before you leap to judgment, do you drink alcohol? It is deadly, with 8,000 deaths directly attributed to it in the UK in 2008. There is a huge trade in illegal drugs in the UK. But people do not have to be criminals. They don't have to buy bags of drain cleaner from dodgy blokes in pub car parks.

The process of importing has become difficult lately, as UK Customs has begun withholding shipments. I have had 40kg seized. No explanation has been given and Customs has made no contact. This is surely illegal.

Mephedrone looks likely to be banned. This is the most dangerous thing that can happen. It is essentially a very safe substance. There is no addiction and to date I know of no deaths directly attributed to it. There are suppliers online such as me who treat this as a genuine business and supply a quality product pure to the customer.

The day mephedrone is banned, I will shut up shop. The taxman will lose hundreds of thousands of pounds and the criminals will step in. Prohibition has always failed. And the genie is really out of the bottle this time. Millions have used mephedrone in the UK. If they are stopped from getting it legally, they will either buy illegally or, even worse, try something new.

No British government would have the courage to exercise the level of common sense needed to keep it legal, what with an election looming and swarms of horrified Daily Mail readers to impress. This government has already sacked the moderate, sensible and knowledgeable Dr David Nutt. Mephedrone will be banned – and be dammed.

Mark is a businessman and owner of several websites that sell mephedrone

The doctor: James Bell

I first heard about mephedrone last July. The young man sitting opposite me told me that it had just arrived on the nightclub scene. He had tried it at once. He was well-educated and from a prosperous and stable family (who knew nothing about his drug use). He was in my clinic to withdraw from another "legal high", GBL. After using GBL for a few months, he had been dismayed to discover that he had become dependent. His lament "I didn't know it was addictive" could have been uttered by most doctors and policy-makers.

We are all playing catch-up as new compounds are recognised, banned – and new drugs appear, the risks of which slowly become apparent. Legal highs are mostly compounds closely related to known (and banned) psychoactive drugs. Mephedrone is chemically very similar to ecstasy. The slight variation in structure makes it legal, but also means that mephedrone has different pharmacological effects and toxicity.

This makes difficulty for the advisory council on the misuse of drugs, which advises the government on whether a drug should be banned, as it has little information to go on. It takes experience to find out about the harms of particular drugs. It was only in the late 1990s, after years in which cannabis was regarded as a fairly harmless drug, that studies demonstrated it caused the development of psychosis in some vulnerable adolescents. News that two people died after using mephedrone suggests it may be dangerous, but we don't know enough. Mephedrone can cause cardiovascular problems, but I suspect that the post-mortem findings will identify other contributing drugs.

GBL, which was classified in December 2009, is a case study in legal highs. Many users overdose inadvertently and a small proportion progress to dependence. On trying to stop, users can experience severe withdrawal symptoms. Throughout 2009, most GPs and drug services knew nothing of GBL, and were unable to offer treatment. It was to catch up with this need that a "party drugs" clinic was established in south London . Attendees have reported that, since being banned, GBL is still readily available for same-day delivery, from internet sites outside the UK.

Mephedrone and GBL both enhance confidence and sociability and reduce sexual inhibitions. However, it is easy to lose the plot. The first dose of mephedrone produces intense euphoria, but repeated dosing produces decreasing pleasure and increasing paranoia and irritability – yet some people keep chasing the initial high until exhausted. This binge pattern of use maximises risks and minimises benefits of drug use.

A pre-election environment is a bad time to initiate a discussion about drugs policy, as there is a risk that any debate will degenerate into which party is going to ban more drugs, more rapidly. "Legal highs" are an easy target for moral outrage, precisely because they are legal and something can be done about that. More difficult is trying to address Britain's prodigious demand for drugs, legal and illegal. A non-partisan debate about reducing the harm would be valuable.

Dr James Bell is an addictions consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust

• Drugs
• Drugs policy

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The French four-piece talk to Hermione Hoby about ants, surrealism and creeping success

In a bar in the Opéra district of Paris, brothers and guitarists Laurent Brancowitz and Christian Mazzalai – also known as one half of French band Phoenix – are reflecting on a cover version of the band's single, "Lisztomania".

"It would... bring a tear to the eye of an SS officer," says Brancowitz, shaking his head with wonderment. Later, speaking from New York, singer Thomas Mars agrees: "We all had tears in our eyes when we watched it." Google "PS22 Chorus Lisztomania" and you'll find a video of an American kids choir whose members look and sound like they've never loved a song so much in their lives.

It makes perfect sense that a bunch of elementary schoolchildren should have made such a brilliant cover. As Brancowitz himself explains, the band's fourth studio album was written without ties to a record label or manager because "we wanted to do something like kids again. That's always what we're looking for."

The album's reception last year suggests they found it. As you might guess from the title (in their words, "an equally glorious and stupid" one), Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a record blessed with a breezy playfulness, though its songs are meticulously crafted. Ten years on from their debut, the album has earned Phoenix two rather different badges of distinction: a Grammy for best alternative album, and the perhaps even greater accolade of being the most blogged-about band of 2009 (according to website the Hype Machine).

The band also has a fearsome reputation as a live act, something you can judge for yourself on the Observer's live album giveaway (see panel, left), an exclusive recording of the band performing in Sydney a few weeks ago.

They could be forgiven a spot of bumptiousness, then. Instead, they seem genuinely surprised that their London Roundhouse dates later this month sold out so fast. Brancowitz jokes that "there's been a lot of resistance from your little island; we feel like Napoleon trying to invade". Mars agrees: "It's a mystery in the UK. I feel like it's a love and hate relationship. Most of the things we were listening to come from the UK. But maybe before we weren't in sync with the era we were living in..."

Brancowitz has another theory as to why this album has been such a success: "It was the album we made with the most humility. The good things we do are the product of luck and not from our personal songwriting genius." So modest! "No, but it's true," he protests gently. "It takes a lot of courage to admit it. It's a long, chemical process. We just sit and a few thousand tries later..."

That slow-burn approach to songwriting (they took two years to make the album so "a few thousand tries" perhaps isn't too outrageous an estimate) is mirrored in the steadiness of their rise. Gradual success has been, as Mazzalai puts it, "a pure pleasure at every step".

When I ask whether their inclusion of musical "naffness" (Alphabetical, their second album, betrayed a penchant for 70s soft rock, for example) has been a conscious thing, Brancowitz replies with a typically rococo turn of phrase. He concedes it's semi-conscious, but is, he says, always based on "an instinctive ravishment".

Such un-English wording possibly accounts for the charm of their (English) lyrics. As Mars explains: "We like doing lyrics that are cryptic and abstract, we leave out all the in-betweens, everything that makes sense. That's impossible to do in French, because every word betrays what's going on. In English you can put all these pieces together and create this weird, poetic thing." He pauses. "It's very like French surrealism in a way."

As that mental leap from truncated English to French surrealism indicates, the band remain utterly Gallic, despite their formative diet of My Bloody Valentine, the Smiths and any other British band that, as Mars puts it, have "something about them that makes me lose my balance".

The two brothers, plus Mars and bassist Deck D'Arcy (all four are in their early 30s), grew up in the conservative Parisian suburb of Versailles, a place where, Brancowitz says, "it's really easy to be a rebel without a cause – you don't have to have a very crazy haircut. It's very Catholic, so there are a lot of families of old nobility..."

"They're scary," adds Mazzalai.

Scary though it may have been, there's no question that being four kindred spirits in what they paint as a cultural wasteland has gone a long way in binding them together. "Alone we are poor, but together..." Mazzalai trails off.

Brancowitz, a man of many metaphors, continues: "You know ants? They have very minimal tasks but in the end they build these very complex structures. That's the same for us. Really, I don't remember taking creative decisions, they just happen."

They also insist they're "really bad musicians in terms of technique". "I don't even know how to do a scale," claims Brancowitz, prompting Mazzalai to add: "We don't know how to play with other musicians. I tried with friends to do sessions a few times and it's always a disaster."

Touchingly, Mars echoes many of these sentiments when we speak later. While the other three live in Paris, he's now based in New York with his film director girlfriend Sofia Coppola, who is expecting their second child in May. His relocation hasn't put any distance, musically, between him and his bandmates though.

"On our own we are not really great," he tells me. "It's not that I don't believe in my friends but the four of us have this thing, this balance of us all together."

Accounting for that balance, Brancowitz says: "Thomas has a very abstract vision of everything, and Deck is more of a mathematician – when there's a decision about harmonic complexities, he's there. He knows every equation."

There's a certain indulgent affection to the way they talk about their bassist, I suggest. "Ah, but we're all weirdos," smiles Brancowitz. Mazzalai takes up the theme: "We're all fascinated by mathematics, we love it. But you know," he adds with a shrug, "even beats are mathematical – it's mathematics that makes people dance."

This is as perfectly Phoenix-like a sentiment as there can be. Cerebral precision and mindless abandon are an irresistible combination – and those jiving elementary school kids aren't the only ones to know it.

• Phoenix
• Pop and rock

Hermione Hobyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 89, No. 3. (01 April 2003), pp. 269-284.

This work reports on the performance of a volatile organic compounds (VOCs) identification system based on a surface acoustic wave (SAW) multi- sensor array with four acoustic sensing elements, developed in dual configuration as multiplexed two-port resonator 433.92 MHz oscillators and a reference SAW element, in order to recognize the different individual components in a binary mixture of VOCs such as methanol (CH 3 OH) and 2-propanol (C 3 H 7 OH), in the range 20–140 and 5–70 ppm, respectively. The SAW sensors, operating at room temperature, have been specifically coated by sensing thin films belonging to various chemical classes such as arachidic acid (fatty acids), carbowax (stationary phases), triethanolamine (amines), acrylated polysiloxane (polysiloxanes) to ensure cross-sensitivity towards VOCs under test. By using the relative frequency change as the output signal of the SAW multi- sensor array with an artificial neural network (ANN), a recognition system has been realized for the identification of tested VOCs. The features extraction from output signals of the SAW multi- sensor array, exposed to the binary component mixture of methanol and 2-propanol, has been also performed by pattern recognition techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA). The feedforward multi-layer neural network with a hidden layer and trained by a back-propagation learning algorithm has been implemented in order to classify and identify the tested VOCs patterns. Both the normalized responses of four SAW sensors array and the selected principal components (PCs) scores have been used as inputs to the multi-layer perceptron ANN by resulting in a 100% success recognition rate with the four SAW sensors normalized responses and with the first two principal components scores of the original data of the primary matrix. The different strategies used to recognize the VOCs patterns by the ANNs such as the ‘Leave-one-out’ method and ‘Training-and-Test’ method are discussed. Our experimental results have evidenced that the proposed binary vapor mixture classifier based on the electronic nose system, developed by inexpensive and poorly selective chemical SAW sensors, is highly effective in the identification of tested VOCs of methanol and 2-propanol. Moreover, the combination of PCA, as data pre-processing technique, and ANN, as patterns classification technique, provides a rapid and accurate recognition method of the individual components in the tested binary mixture of methanol and 2-propanol.
M Penza

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 96, No. 1-2. (15 November 2003), pp. 354-363.

This paper mainly deals with the sensor drift in the application of gas concentration measurement, but little has been done in previous works. The algorithm of detecting the drift of sensors presented in this paper is based on the combination of the principal component analysis (PCA) with the wavelet analysis. By this algorithm the sensor drift can be detected online sensitively. For compensating the drift of sensors, an adaptive dynamic drift compensation algorithm (ADDC) based on a drift model is also provided in this paper. From the drift model, the drift compensation factors used to compensate the drifting sensor’s data are calculated. When the drift feature changed, the drift model will be updated online adaptively. In this way, a lifelong efficient drift compensation is made possible for every sensor. The superior performance of this drift counteraction strategy is illustrated with the examples using real semiconductor sensor array data.

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical (03 December 2009)

A new drift compensation method based on common principal component analysis (CPCA) is proposed. The drift variance in data is found as the principal components computed by CPCA. This method finds components that are common for all gasses in feature space. The method is compared in classification task with respect to the other approaches published where the drift direction is estimated through a principal component analysis (PCA) of a reference gas. The proposed new method – employing no specific reference gas, but information from all gases – has shown the same performance as the traditional approach with the best-fitted reference gas. Results are shown with data lasting 7 months including three gases at different concentrations for an array of 17 polymeric sensors.
A Ziyatdinov, S Marco, A Chaudry, K Persaud, P Caminal, A Perera

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 143, No. 2. (07 January 2010), pp. 740-749.

An electronic nose (EN) based on an array of chemiresistors, combined with a preconcentrator unit, for the detection of some volatile organic vapors was developed. In order to choose the proper polymers, seven potential polymers were chosen from numerous available polymers according to the principle of the linear solvation energy relationship (LSER). Different possible sensors arrays (128 arrays) composed of these seven polymers were designed by full factorial design (FFD). Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that four of seven polymers had enough ability to recognize different gas classes. By using Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), the tested polymers were categorized into four main groups with respect to their recognition ability. Combination of the FFD with PCA and HCA, brought to the identification of 8 proper arrays containing four polymers in each array. Precisely evaluation of predicted arrays with respect to their calculated resolution factors showed that the electronic nose containing the polymers of 75% pheny125% methylpolysiloxane (OV25), hexafluoro-2-propanolsubstituted polysiloxane (SXFA), poly bis(cyanopropyl)-siloxane (SXCN) and poly(ethylene maleate) (PEM) was the most proper design for recognition of analytes of interest. The fabricated EN was used successively for target gas recognition at three different concentrations.
Taher Alizadeh

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 140, No. 1. (18 June 2009), pp. 319-336.

Hierarchical and hollow oxide nanostructures are very promising gas sensor materials due to their high surface area and well-aligned nanoporous structures with a less agglomerated configurations. Various synthetic strategies to prepare such hierarchical and hollow structures for gas sensor applications are reviewed and the principle parameters and mechanisms to enhance the gas sensing characteristics are investigated. The literature data clearly show that hierarchical and hollow nanostructures increase both the gas response and response speed simultaneously and substantially. This can be explained by the rapid and effective gas diffusion toward the entire sensing surfaces via the porous structures. Finally, the impact of highly sensitive and fast responding gas sensors using hierarchical and hollow nanostructures on future research directions is discussed.
Jong-Heun Lee

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 145, No. 2. (19 March 2010), pp. 620-627.

The aim of this paper is to find useful relationships in differential form that describe the isothermal steady state interactions between a sensor array based on metal oxide sensors and a mixture of vapours. These equations of state relate the variation of partial molar intensive quantities (as the change of the sensor molar partial sensitivity or molar adsorptions enthalpy), to gas mixture components concentrations and sensor array parameters. This kind of equalities is known in the thermodynamic of miscellaneous as Gibbs–Duhem equations.
Abdelaziz Abbas, Ahcène Bouabdellah

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 123, No. 1. (10 April 2007), pp. 437-443.

We perform feature selection (FS) on an electronic nose (EN) dataset composed of 30 features, obtained by extracting 5 diverse features from the response curves of six metal oxide sensors. The 5 features are: the classical relative change in resistance R / R 0 ; the curve integral both over the gas adsorption and desorbtion process and the phase space integral, again over adsorption and desorbtion. The phase space integral is a novel feature introduced in [1] . We show that performance (in terms of the cross validated test error of a three nearest neighbour classifier) is always significantly better for the best selected features than for all 30 features. Moreover – for some of the 5 features types – performance with all 30 features is worse than performance with just the 6 features of a single type. Results are not univocal regarding the best feature type. Yet, on average over the four datasets in which the complete dataset can be decomposed, the phase integral calculated over the desorption wins. Also, the features (phase and integral) calculated on the desorbtion seem to consistently give higher performance than the corresponding features calculated during adsorption. The standard R / R 0 stands in the lower part of the ranking.
M Pardo, G Sberveglieri

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 52, No. 1-2. (15 September 1998), pp. 125-142.

Perfect ‘chemical imaging’ aims at the time- and spatially-resolved recording of many chemical species. Comparison of results from ‘chemical imaging’ with calibration data may also be trained towards an identification of odor impressions, environmental or medical conditions (such as toxicity), process control parameters etc. This ‘chemical imaging’ can be approached by either using the well-established techniques of analytical chemistry or by using a large number of calibrated sensors and sensor systems. The latter are sometimes denoted ‘electronic noses’, provide an electronic approach to artificial olfaction and are considered in this paper. They offer a variety of principal advantages including the fact that calibration efforts and sizes can be minimized systematically for specific applications by fine-tuning individual components of the sensor system. The paper describes a systematic to design such sensor systems. In the traditional application of chemical sensors the output of an individual chemical sensor is recorded as one ‘feature’. The first aim towards perfect ‘chemical imaging’ is to determine a large number of independent features, which span a large ‘hyperspace of chemical features’. The second aim is then to extract information from this hyperspace by optimizing a feature extraction procedure towards four application-specific goals. (a) The first goal concerns to record certain chemical species quantitatively and hence aims at perfect ‘chemical imaging’ as defined above. (b) Alternative goals concern to record odor impressions, (c) environmental or medical conditions, (d) and process control parameters. Different kinds of calibration are wanted to extract the wanted information from the data represented in the hyperspace of chemical sensor features. Hence, four different strategies are required to compare the features monitored by the chemical sensor systems with independent calibration standards from (a) instruments in analytical chemistry, (b) human odor panels, (c) (micro-)biological or medical tests, (d) and process parameter measurements. This adjustment of measured sensor features to calibration standards determines a specific type of feature extraction and pattern recognition for a specific application. This pattern recognition of experimentally recorded features is of key importance not only for these ‘electronic’ noses but occurs in the same way in all real ‘biological’ noses. Hence, formal analogies between the technical and biological world of noses are obvious. It is therefore expected, that our current studies on chemical sensor systems will also lead to a deeper understanding of signal processing in biological sensor systems and vice versa. Expected synergies of comparative studies concern in particular the molecular scale understanding of (a) the elementary processes of chemical sensing, (b) human odor perception, and (c) interactions between the environment and biological organisms. In this context, biolectronics becomes an increasingly important discipline. By taking advantage of characteristic similarities and differences of components in technical and biological systems, high-performance hybrid systems will be developped in the future.
W Göpel

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 18, No. 1-3. (March 1994), pp. 259-263.

The paper describes the identification of gases with statistical methods and neural networks. It is shown that there is an optimal standardization of measurement data with regard to prediction accuracy. An example with two sensors and two gases is discussed and the differences of the methods worked out. It is shown in which case neural networks have an advantage over statistical methods. Finally, results of data evaluations with discriminant analyses and neural networks are presented.
G Niebling

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 114, No. 1. (30 March 2006), pp. 85-93.

A sensor array composed of selective and partially selective electrodes is applied to milk recognition. The task of the system is to distinguish among five brands of milk. For this purpose, five pattern recognition (PARC) procedures are employed: three linear ( K -nearest neighbours, partial least squares, soft independent modelling of class analogy) and two nonlinear (back propagation neural networks and learning vector quantization). Classification accuracy is compared and some analogies with general rules referring to electronic nose were found. LVQ networks are proved to exhibit the best performance. Their further advantages, such as fast training and robustness, make them the suggested pattern classifiers for sensor array data.
Patrycja Ciosek, Wojciech Wróblewski

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 4, No. 1-2. (May 1991), pp. 109-115.

Mathematical expressions describing the response of individual sensors and arrays of tin oxide gas sensors are derived from a barrier-limited electron mobility model. From these expressions, the fractional change in conductance is identified as the optimal response parameter with which to characterize sensor array performance instead of the more usual relative conductance. In an experimental study, twelve tin oxide gas sensors are exposed to five alcohols and six beverages, and the responses are studied using pattern-recognition methods. Results of regression and supervised learning analysis show a high degree of colinearity in the data with a subset of only five sensors needed for classification. Principal component analysis and clustering methods are applied to the response of the tin oxide sensors to all the vapours. The results show that the theoretically derived normalization of the data set substantially improves the classification of vapours and beverages. The individual alcohols are separated out into five distinct clusters, whereas the beverages cluster into only three distinct classes, namely, beers, lagers and spirits. It is suggested that the separation may be improved further by employing other sensor types or processing techniques.
Julian Gardner

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 9, No. 1. (July 1992), pp. 9-15.

Considerable interest has recently arisen in the use of arrays of gas sensors together with an associated pattern-recognition technique to identfy vapours and odours. The performance of the pattern-recognition technique depends upon the choice of parametric expression used to define the array output. At present, there is no generally agreed choice of this parameter for either individual sensors or arrays of sensors. In this paper, we have initially performed a parametric study on experimental data gathered from the response of an array of twelve tin oxide gas sensors to five alcohols and three beers. Five parametric expressions of sensor response are used to characterize the array output, namely, fractional conductance change, relative conductance, log of conductance change and normalized versions of the last two expressions. Secondly, we have applied the technique of artificial neural networks (ANNs) to our preprocessed data. The Rumelhart back-propagation technique is used to train all networks. We find that nearly all of our ANNs can correctly identify all the alcohols using our array of twelve tin oxide sensors and so we use the total sum of squared network errors to determine their relative performance. It is found that the lowest network error occurs for the response parameter defined as the fractional change in conductance, with a value of 1.3 × 10 −4 , which is almost half that for the relative conductance. The normalized procedure is also found to improve network performance and so is worthwhile. The optimal network for our data-set is found to contain a single hidden layer of seven elements with a learning rate of 1.0 and momentum term of 0.7, rather than the values of 0.9 and 0.6 recommended by Rumelhart and McClelland, respectively. For this network, the largest output error is less than 0.1. We find that this network outperforms principal-component and cluster analyses (discussed in Part 1) by identifying similar beer odours and offers considerable benefit in its ability to cope with non-linear and highly correlated data.
JW Gardner, EL Hines, HC Tang

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20236947Authors: Ballester, P. J. - Mitchell, J. B.Journal: BioinformaticsMOTIVATION: Accurately predicting the binding affinities of large sets of diverse protein-ligand complexes is an extremely challenging task. The scoring functions that attempt such computational prediction are essential for analysing the outputs of Molecular Docking, which is in turn an important technique for drug discovery, chemical biology and structural biology. Each scoring function assumes a predetermined theory-inspired functional form for the relationship between the variables that characterise the complex, which also include parameters fitted to experimental or simulation data, and its predicted binding affinity. The inherent problem of this rigid approach is that it leads to poor predictivity for those complexes that do not conform to the modelling assumptions. Moreover, resampling strategies, such as cross-validation or bootstrapping, are still not systematically used to guard against the overfitting of calibration data in parameter estimation for scoring functions. RESULTS: We propose a novel scoring function (RF-Score) that circumvents the need for problematic modelling assumptions via non-parametric machine learning. In particular, Random Forest was used to implicitly capture binding effects that are hard to model explicitly. RF-Score is compared with the state of the art on the demanding PDBbind benchmark. Results show that RF-Score is a very competitive scoring function. Importantly, RF-Score's performance was shown to improve dramatically with training set size and hence the future availability of more high quality structural and interaction data is expected to lead to improved versions of RF-Score. CONTACT: pedro.ballester@ebi.ac.uk; jbom@st-andrews.ac.uk SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Additional experiments, codes implementing RF-Score and usage instructions enabling the reproducibility of all results are available at Bioinformatics online.post to: CiteULike

Researching topics such as health, diet, and (especially) the effectiveness of dietary supplements can be hard and time-consuming. Obscured by thousands of marketing tricks, finding the truth takes days, if not weeks of research.

So, when someone puts in the time to do the research and create an infographic that makes certain aspects of these topics easy to understand, it can be a huge time saver. Read on for some of the best health-related infographics we’ve found online.

As always, consider the figures in these infographics with a grain of salt. No one guarantees that the numbers are correct, and some of them are definitely open to interpretation.

1. Dietary Supplements

This is, without exaggeration, the most amazing and useful infographic I’ve ever encountered. It looks fairly simple, but it took many hours of research to create it, and it is, to my knowledge, the best resource about the actual efficiency of various dietary supplements out there. From the author:

“This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble.”

The graphic shows the effectiveness of health supplements on the Y-axis (higher is better), and uses the size of the bubbles to illustrate the popularity of that particular supplement among US adults. Anything below the “worth it line,” doesn’t have enough evidence of medicinal benefit and is probably not worth your time, according to the graphic’s creators, who looked at data from over 1500 studies on both PubMed (US National Library Of Medicine) and Cochrane.org. The infographic effectively combines data on both popularity and medical benefits to create a resource that points out the best health supplements, as well as which ones American consumers believe in the most.

Check out the interactive version, which lets you filter the supplements by function, here.

2. Should You Drink Tap Water?

This is a look at five most and least polluted water systems in America (in larger cities), showing that not all tap water has been created equal.

If you’ve been struggling with the issue of drinking tap or bottled water, this info might help you make a decision. Of course, the data in this infographic, created by GOOD, covers only 10 cities, but it highlights an important point – not all chemicals that can appear in tap water are regulated. The graphic illustrates how many pollutants are found in each water system, how often they’re found, and what type of bacteria exists.

See a much larger version of the image here.

3. Obesity in the USA

Obesity is a known problem in the USA, but which states are affected the most? This is the most recent infographic on the subject we could find, listing obesity rates in all US states, as well as obese and overweight children rates in the USA.

Besides these numbers, this attractive infographic highlights several important points; such as overall high rates of obesity among high school students, as well as the direct and indirect costs of obesity to the US budget.

The full version can be found here.

4. The Cost of Health Care

Right now, one of the most debated topics in the USA is health care reform, and how much the proposed health bill will cost individuals and business. But how much are people paying for health care in other countries around the world?

This infographic, created in a collaboration between GOOD and Way Shape Form, shows the average life expectancy in various countries (indicated by the fullness of the IV bags), as well as several other health-related stats, such as infant mortality rates, and the cost of health care.

See the zoomable version here, or a very big image here.

5. Fatality Rates for Different Diseases

This visualization was created by David McCandless, the creator of the Snake Oil infographic mentioned above. It’s a slightly morbid chart, showing the average fatality rates for known diseases — the size of the bubble indicates how likely you are to die from a given disease (larger is more fatal).

It comes, however, with an optimistic second chart. The X-axis shows the fatality rate, but the Y-axis shows how long the cause of the illness can survive outside of the body in ideal conditions. Lesson: wash your hands!

Know of any other great health-related visualizations or infographics? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: health, infographic, visualization

Officials in Argentina's Mendoza province have authorized chemical castration for rapists after a significant increase in sexual assaults last year.

Officials in Argentina's Mendoza province have authorized chemical castration for rapists after a significant increase in sexual assaults last year.

We saw a cartoon recently that shows the attendees of a "Climate Summit", with a single naysayer yelling out from the back of the crowd "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

Well, in the spirit of creating a better world for nothing, we bring to you three iPhone apps that we hope can help do just that.

Sponsor

In her panel on "Handheld Awesome Detectors: World Changing Mobile Apps" last week at the South By South West festival in Austin, Rachel Weidinger got to talking about a number of iPhone apps that could help us all do just that - change the world. While some, like Ushahidi are certainly world changing, they're not much use for day to day life, so we decided to let you know about three apps she clued us in on that can help you make world-changing decisions in your simple, everyday life.

Seafood Watch Seafood Watch, the free iPhone app put out by the Monterey Bay Aquarium helps you make sustainable choices when buying fish. But how does it do this?

The app offers a seafood guide, which customizes content according to geographical region, lets you search according to what type of fish you're considering buying or eating at a restaurant. The guide rates your choices according to a number of criteria, from whether or not it is overfished to how much the methods employed are affecting the environment. The ratings also take your health into account, warning you to avoid certain types of fish because they may contain chemicals.

So, while everyone always says to eat fish because it's good for you, download this app and it could be good for the environment too.

Locavore Another bandwagon you have may have seen careening past in recent times, and may have even hopped on yourself (good for you!) is sustainability through eating locally grown and harvested foods. This can be a difficult endeavor at times, though, and Locavore is here to help you. The app sells for $2.99, which is chump change in comparison to those organic, locally-grown, vine-ripe tomatoes, but it's all for a good cause, right?

Locavore shows where and when certain types of foods are in season, nearby farmers' markets and links to Wikipedia and Epicurious to help with context on 234 different fruits and vegetables.

GoodGuide

GoodGuide is the more all-encompassing package, looking at more than 60,000 products and rating them according to "health, environmental and social performance". The guide gives you information about the product your buying, from whether or not it contains carcinogens to how the company handles water management. Here's a quick explanation from the website on how GoodGuide arrives at its ratings:

GoodGuide aggregates and analyzes data on both product and company performance. The team employs a range of scientific methods--health hazard assessment, environmental impact assessment, and social impact assessment--to identify major impacts to human health, the environment, and society. Each of these categories is then further analyzed within specific issue areas, such as climate change policies, labor concerns, and product toxicity. Currently, GoodGuide's database includes over 1,100 base criteria through which we evaluate products and companies.

The guide is still in the beta stages - and this is quite an ambitious project - but if you can have and pay attention to this sort of information, then you can get past flashy advertising and get to the bottom of where you're spending your hard earned money.

Discuss

Biodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Stratospheric ozone. Ocean acidification. Climate change. Chemical Pollution. Aerosol loading in the atmosphere.

A team of 30 scientists across the globe have determined that the nine environmental processes named above must remain within specific limits, otherwise the "safe operating space" within which humankind can exist on Earth will be threatened. Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.

[More]

Repurposing a leftover CO2 cylinder and regulator, maker Joel Miller assembled this DIY home carbonation unit after a quick parts run.

The carbonating process is simple. Fill an empty bottle with the liquid of your choice and refrigerate it. Replace the cap with the special one you made and attach the quick-disconnect hose to it. Make sure the shutoff valve on the regulator is closed, then slowly open the main valve on the tank until the regulator shows pressure. Adjust the output pressure to about 45psi and open the shutoff valve, pressurizing the bottle. Now loosen the cap on the bottle just slightly while squeezing any air space out of the neck of the bottle, then tighten the cap. This will purge any air from the bottle and replace it with CO2. Now shake the bottle vigorously for about 20-30 seconds; this will help dissolve the CO2 into the liquid faster. Shut off the CO2 at the regulator and disconnect the hose from the quick-disconnect fitting. You can now remove the special cap (slowly, the contents are now carbonated!) and replace it with a regular cap.

So on the first day I made seltzer water. On the second day I carbonated apple juice, grape juice, and Gatorade, and ended the evening with a carbonated vodka martini (nice!). What else can I carbonate?

Just to be on the safe side, Joel also mentions:

VERY IMPORTANT: Apparently there is a chemical reaction between the CO2 dissolved in water and copper (or copper alloys like brass) that creates a toxic substance that will make you sick. Never use brass or other copper-based fittings with seltzer! All of these fittings (or at least the ones that will be in contact with the seltzer for any length of time) are either zinc-plated steel or stainless. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Chemistry | Digg this!