TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[plaques]

In Gulliver's Travels the Houyhnhnms (pronounced Whinnyms) (very intelligent horses) couldn't understand why the Yahoos (base humans) put so much store in things that sparkle. Here we are arguing that man made are somehow inferior to 'natural' mined diamonds. The sparkle being the same? Some while ago a friend told me that they could get lasers to repair flawed diamonds bringing them up to gem quality. Time to throw these baubles into touch and look at the real value of things.

[Stanley]

I agree P. They don't have any importance for me. De Beers' biggest con trick!

[Stanley]

I was a bit pressed when I wrote that.
I have a friend who is a diamond buyer and she has told me some amazing stories about the trade. She says De Beer buy up diamonds and store them only releasing them in small amounts onto the cutting market so as to maintain the price. From what she told me I deduce that in a strange way De Beer support the synthetic stone business because if they liquidated their stocks the price would fall below what it costs to make artificial ones. Must be the classic case of market manipulation and a lovely example of what can happen if one company corners the market. And this has been the case for years, it isn't in any country's interest to stop it.

[Tizer]

All quite true.

[Stanley]

"Diamonds are de Beers' best friend...."

[plaques]

"Diamonds are de Beers' best friend...."

Didn't De Beers start life as a manufacture of water pumps and gradually took over the mines when they went bust? Which brings me back to " I have a water pump that will suck up a dead act..... " found the paperwork to prove it.

[Stanley]

That sounds interesting and plausible, I shall have to look into it.....

[Tizer]

Another thing that's changing dramatically - we'll probably end up having to eat it to solve the shortage of food!
`Sargassum: The biggest seaweed bloom in the world' LINK

[Stanley]

I heard the report of it 'invading' the beaches and causing a bad smell. It struck me that it is perhaps a very good fertilizer and they should be harvesting it.
The 'dead cat' pump.... I remembered the day at Settle Creamery when one of the lads from the Institution at Giggleswick who worked there climbed on the boiler house roof at dinner time with a rod and started fishing. We were laughing at him when he pulled the first trout out and followed it with about half a dozen more.
He had noted something we had missed, the dairy was short of water and were illegally pumping water out of the Ribble into the tank to feed the boiler. They were using a contractors diaphragm pump designed to handle solids and trout were being sucked in and carried up into the tank.
We stopped laughing....

[Tizer]

Our species was around much earlier than we thought...
`Earliest modern human found outside Africa' LINK

[Stanley]

I heard that report. Putting us back an extra 150,000 years is quite a push!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on the fact that the president of the Royal Society has warned the Tory leadership candidates that UK research could be damaged by a bad deal or no-deal Brexit. The clearest indication yet of the damage that will be inevitably done by a no deal Brexit.

[Tizer]

Most scientists know that's the case so it's good the RS is making the government and the public aware of the danger.

The decline of insect populations, especially bees isn't just in the UK. Here it's described in Russia and that covers a lot more bees than in the UK!
`Russia alarmed by large fall in bee populations' LINK

[Stanley]

Every now and then, looking at these matters I have to ground myself in reality. Yesterday it was this...



I look at my hand and reflect on where it has been and what it has done. That's as good a measure of reality that I know.

[Stanley]

See THIS for a BBC report about drug resistant malaria. Not the end of the world evidently because alternative drugs are available but yet another example of how bacteria and viruses can fight back against threats to their survival largely because of the rapid rate they reproduce and evolve. It makes you wonder if this can ever be completely halted.
This is not good news for millions of people exposed to the disease.

[Tizer]

I wonder if this is better than what the military already have?
`Iceye satellites return super-sharp radar images' LINK

[Stanley]

Good stuff. Did you look at the view of Anak Krakatau? Pin sharp. Very impressive.

[Tizer]

`Why smartphones are no longer driving the search for 'blue gold'' LINK

[Stanley]

What an interesting link! It highlights the importance of natural resources and how fragile the industries are. I'll bet that article could have been written on the subject of many other commodities, rare earths spring to mind.
Good job I don't know about everything that's going on, I suspect I might get worried.

[Tizer]

`Environmentalists warn Trump 'weakening' endangered species protections' LINK

It's important to keep things in perspective and to not always assume by default that projects must be abandoned in favour of wildlfe...but in this case I'm not convinced the proposed change is a good thing. Just think about Trump's Scottish gold course where the rare sand dune systems have been trashed even though they promised to protect them. I think trump wants the change so he and his cronies can build whatever they want wherever they want.

[Stanley]

I think he's just an ignorant sod Tiz who has never extended his imagination beyond self-interest. I heard those reports as well, I don't think they will make him lose any sleep....

[Tizer]

This is just one example of the many ways in which our modern way of life with its excessive demand for `rare' metals is causing grief for folk elsewhere. Lithium, like many other elements, is seeing increasing demand. There is vast amounts of it in the Earth's crust but it's all in combined form as minerals and is generally present at low concetrations. That means, like with gold, an enormous amount of material has to be processed to get a small amount of the desired element.
`The farmers who worry about our phone batteries' LINK

[Stanley]

A fascinating industry and I have always said, one of the biggest con tricks of all time. Rationing is the only way prices are kept up apart from exceptional specimens. I have a friend, a woman who is a big wheel in diamond buying and her stories are wonderful.

[Bodger]

Tizer, should we be worried :-
http://dhmo.org/facts.html

[Tizer]

No, it's water! LINK

But it's a great example of how a false story can gain traction. Unfortunately even more effort is put into conning us into believing false stories about politics, vaccines, magic crystals, creationism etc.