Adam Rogers
Science

What to Read 1

So, how is it possible to keep up with everything interesting going on in science? I have no idea. But I read a lot. And because my job is ostensibly to tell readers something they don’t know, I try to read things that Wired readers (and Wired editors) aren’t all reading, too. But maybe you’d […]

So, how is it possible to keep up with everything interesting going on in science? I have no idea. But I read a lot. And because my job is ostensibly to tell readers something they don't know, I try to read things that Wired readers (and Wired editors) aren't all reading, too.

But maybe you'd like to skip the middleman (middle-me). If you like science, allow me to point you to some other magazines and blogs you might like. Starting with:

Chemical & Engineering News

C&EN, as the publishers would apparently like me to call it, is the weekly trade mag for the American Chemical Society. So they cover what you'd expect: industrial chemicals, breaking chemistry news, and chemistry angles on mainstream news stories. So, like, this week there's a story on the site about how polonium-210 kills people, riffing on the death of the ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London.

What do I like about C&EN? Fantastic idea content, great explanations, competent writing, and lousy display copy (display copy is headlines and sub-headlines [heds and deks], stuff like that). Like, the cover of the September 18 issue read "FDA's Centennial: Despite its achievements, agency faces many challenges." Riveting, right? Leaps right off the newsstand.

But then, check out how deep staffer Ivan Amato goes on the polonium thing:

210Po, once used in triggers for fission bombs, is an ?-particle emitter with a half-life of 138 days. It decays into stable 206Pb by spitting out an ?-particle—a helium nucleus—with 5.3 MeV of energy.
That's a million times the energy of a typical chemical bond. Even so,
?-particles are readily stopped by a single sheet of paper, so 210Po generally becomes dangerous only if it gets inside the body.

If Litvinenko ingested even 1 µg of 210Po, perhaps as a citrate or chloride salt, roughly 3 quadrillion atoms of the isotope would have entered his system, enough potentially for tens or even hundreds of 210Po atoms to reach every cell of his body.
Even as he began excreting the poison, most of the polonium atoms would have insinuated themselves into cells by associating with proteins.
From those perches, the radioactive nuclei would have shot out
?-particles that wreak biochemical carnage.

I loves me some Ivan Amato. I surely do. Because that, my friends, is some deep information.