Category: Science

Global dimming

You’ve heard about global warming, but did you know about the (possibly more serious) issue of global dimming?

The sun keeps us (i.e. the earth) warm. And gives us all energy and life. And over the last 50 years, the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface has reduced by about 1 to 3% per decade.

And the culprit is air pollution. Some of the pollutants absorb the sunlight before it reaches us, while others reflect it back into space.


Golden Gate Bridge with California‘s characteristic brown cloud in the background — the most likely cause of global dimming. Photo CC 2004 by Aaron Logan

There are a number of interesting issues related to this:

  • Global dimming might be masking the effects of global warming.
  • For the few days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, temperatures were 1 to 2 degrees higher than average in the US. Due to fewer jet flights, resulting in fewer aircraft contrails (aka vapor trails).
  • There exists something called the Asian Brown Cloud which sits over India and much of South and South-East Asia which is being blamed for a lot of things.

I found out about this from this Straight Dope article.

The antibiotic before penicillin

Most of us think that penicillin was the first antibiotic, but Ashutosh gives us the story of sulfa which ushered in the “first herioc age age of antibiotics”. The post is actually a review of “The Demon Under the Microscope” a book by Thomas Hager which hopes to popularize this forgotten but extremely important story.

But at the time, there were almost no laws that required manufacturers to list such petty things as solvents on their bottles. The FDA was a skimpy and ineffectual agency at the time, with a few dozen agents scuttling around to mainly keep a check on excessive profit making. After the sulfa-ethylene glycol concoction was sold, a wave of death began that did not stop until several hundred people died, and public outrage changed the face of the FDA- and the way in which drugs are developed, manufactured and sold in the US- forever. After the tragedy, the FDA acquired new powers that it could have only dreamt of before. Of course, it took the thalidomide tragedy to have the kind of strict FDA regime that we have today, but the sulfa tragedy started it all, and made drugs substantially safer for the public.

Its an interesting article full of little interesting factoids. Long but worth reading.
Link.

India’s biotech industry emerging as world innovator, collaborator, competitor

A Canadian research paper submitted a few days back is reporting that India’s biotech industry is all set to emerge as a major global player buiding on cost efficiencies, innovation, and collaboration according to this interesting article.
The research points out standard stuff you would expect: for example, how Shantha Biotechnics of Hyderabad uses innovative and efficient manufacturing processes to produce a Hep-B vaccine at $0.50. This used to cost $15 earlier.

But it also points out other aspects that are more interesting. For example, the existence Indian “contract research organizations” which do specific research for and under the guidance of major western companies. Or that the Serum Institute of India in Pune supplies products to 138 different countries and claims to immunize half of the world’s children against several diseases.

But the paper also points out the danger that the Indian companies will focus too much on the lucrative western markets and neglect local illnesses and issues for which there is a pressing need to develop effective drugs locally. Historically, Indian companies have been the principal providers of vaccines and medicines for the major local killers like malaria and tuberculosis. And if these companies start producing Viagra, who will cater to the TB patients?

Read full article.