The BBC has just published the results of research by human geographer Danny Dorling and others at the University of Sheffield on the state of community life in Britain. The report is available here, and much of its contents is condensed into the following maps, which contrast the popular anomie – or lack of sense of belonging – back in 1971 with the situation a generation later in 2001.

Does the geographical distribution of “loneliness” surprise you, and, if so, why?

People are increasingly coming to realise that the idea of greater social cohesion in small rural communities over towns and cities is a myth. It should therefore come as no surprise to see the relatively pale colours above in some of the more picturesque countryside areas, full as they are now with holiday homes in villages and hamlets that are for most of the year dead.

Rural areas with a greater sense of community spirit tend to have a higher distribution of working class residents of the kind who enjoy a good chinwag on doorsteps and over kitchen tables. But the correlation between social class and community cohesion is weakening, and not just in regions damaged by the decline in manufacturing industry. Look, for example, at the Welsh heartlands, and the north of England away from Merseyside in the west and Tyneside in the east.

The BBC News report highlights the lessened sense of belonging in areas with large student populations. Such demographic transience is bound to have an effect, but I think we can extend this to academia as a whole. Most academic research workers and many junior teaching staff are now employed on fixed-term contracts, and the expectation is for academics to be mobile during their professional lives. That can make it difficult to lay down roots and build families, and dissuades some from getting involved at all in their local communities for fear of the emotional trauma that could result on being wrenched away at the end of a contract.

If you have a head for figures and the manipulation of spreadsheets, you can download the study data (including local detail) and play around with them yourself.

Arguments for the BBC licence fee (part 99).

That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. But it seems appropriate to introduce a report of research carried out by aquatic scientists in Switzerland into the possibility of extracting useful nutrients from pee.

The basic idea, according to Tove Larsen and her colleagues at EAWAG in Dübendorf, is simple: urine accounts for only 1% of the total volume of wastewater, but it contains up to 80% of all the nutrients. If the urine were processed separately, water treatment plants could be reduced in size and the nutrients recycled.

Here’s a nice little factoid to illustrate what the researchers mean. Every year the average family of four pisses away some six kilogrammes of concentrated phosphorus. This is one of the things that cause discomfort when peeing. The late great composer Frank Zappa got it from the toilet seat when it jumped up and grabbed his meat. But with nice clean middle class families the cause is phosphates in urine concentrated as a result of not drinking enough fluids.

Adopting urine source separation technology (“NoMix”) on a large scale would be particularly useful in countries where wastewater treatment cannot keep up with the rapid pace of urbanisation and industrialisation. But the researchers warn that there are a number of technical, infrastructural, economic and environmental obstacles to overcome before the technology can be implemented.

The big news in Britain today is that Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green was arrested yesterday and questioned for nine hours by police counter-terrorism officers. Green was detained on suspicion of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office” and “aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office”. Heavy stuff, and not a single lady of the night or brown envelope in sight.

It was down to the Honourable Member for Ashford that the public first heard about a series of leaks from the Home Office which were highly embarrassing to Gordon Brown’s government. The alleged home office leaker has now been fingered and charged under the Official Secrets Act. As for the illegal immigrants with jobs shock, it suited the Tories to exploit this as David Cameron needs to play to the party’s “Bloody darkies – can’t be doing with them!” constituency.

I cannot fault Damian Green for doing his job as an opposition MP in holding the government to account. His motives may have been less than pure, but that does not negate the principle that it can be in the public interest to divulge politically sensitive information.

Much as I enjoy New Labour-bashing, what if Green’s arrest is Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair’s swansong? Maybe the outgoing top cop is putting the boot into his political nemeses before he clears his desk later today. It’s certainly plausible, and entirely in character given what we know of the man. In one sense I wouldn’t blame Blair, even if in this case the actions of his officers were a little over the top.

With politicians and business leaders informing me through my aged television and steam-powered wireless that it is my patriotic duty to visit the shops and buy stuff, you can guarantee that my reaction is a single-digit salute.

Today is Buy Nothing Day in North America. For those of us who dwell in rest of the world, tomorrow is the day on which we are encouraged to forego the pleasures of conspicuous consumption.

Buy Nothing Day is an informal protest established in 1992 by the kind of social activists infamous for rallying against globalisation and terrorising financial centres on Mayday. While I may not agree with some of the politics involved (globalisation has some definite pluses, and truly free markets would be a jolly good thing), there is nothing wrong with a good riot, and for some of us economic subversion is a moral imperative.

Buy Nothing Day is of course a symbolic protest that merely defers purchases that will necessarily be made. But what matters is that the idea of material consumption is regularly raised in the public consciousness, and we are encouraged to think about the real value of the stuff we buy. If consumption for the sake of it is necessary to keep the economy afloat, then there is something seriously wrong with the economy, and maybe it’s about time something was done to remedy that.

Economic growth is good, but let it be growth that adds real value to the economy and increases quality of life for all. So for one day at least this year, keep your money in your pocket.

See also Adbusters and Buy Nothing Day UK.

“Yes we can!” has within days turned to “Best you do it for me, there’s a dear.”

I refer to reports that Michell Obama, First Lady-elect of the United States of America, has instructed White House staff not to make the beds of and tidy up after soon-to-be First Children Sasha and Malia. The girls must develop a sense of personal responsibility, you see, and thus should not be waited on by servants.

But what of Mrs Obama herself? That’s a different story. Staff are to attend to the First Bed and puff up the pillows of a First Couple otherwise busy focusing on their children’s well-being.

The dream is shattered.

“What do we want? Less democracy!”, screams the People’s Alliance for Democracy in Thailand, whose activists have in recent days shut down Bangkok.

I can accept, albeit reluctantly, that the mass of humanity is dumb. But do the middle-class Thai representatives of this troublesome species really want to disenfranchise themselves, and have parliament stuffed with deputies appointed by a king whose saxophone playing never surpassed Grade 5 level, despite decades of effort and countless fawning tributes from western jazzers?

Passions are high, and, going by the following caller to a radio talk show, the revolting of Bangkok will have a fight on their hands:

“Listen to me, soldiers. If you dare try another coup, forget about getting roses, because I will dress myself entirely in red – red hair, red panties, red bra, red fingernails – and jump in front of your tanks. You will have to run over me, a grass-roots woman, and crush me to death.”

Fearsome though you would undoubtedly look, it’s best not to tempt fate, my dear.

Is this what 21st century class struggle has come to? One could of course draw similarities with the wretched situation in Venezuela. But the yellow revolution in Thailand is not dissimilar to having the mortgaged-to-the-hilt urbanites of Britain descend on Westminster and demand the head of Gordon Brown for upsetting their cosy, credit-fuelled lifestyles. Incompetent and/or corrupt governments, and clueless oppositions – it’s the same the world over.

Climate change is most often expressed in numbers as the change in global mean surface temperature. Taking the average temperature of the entire planet is a something of a challenge, relying as it does on consistent measurements combined with statistical analysis of the data. It can be done, however, and the final figures are credible. What they mean is another question.

Is surface temperature the best way of assessing human-induced climate change? Not according to Roger Pielke Sr, who in an article in this month’s Physics Today argues instead for the use of heat accumulation and loss as measured in fundamental energy units (joules). Pielke is a climatologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Pielke’s son Roger Pielke Jr is a political scientist and science policy wonk who for some years has been a thorn in the side of the climate science community, what with his robust criticisms of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way in which the debate is conducted in the public and political spheres, and his sometime association with prominent climate change sceptics and other conservative political forces. Father and son should not be confused.

In his Physics Today article, Pielke the elder questions the value of global average surface temperature on the grounds that it fails to account for the effect of heat sinks such as the world’s oceans. With temperature there is a time lag in its response to radiative forcing in the atmosphere, or the change in the balance between incoming and outgoing energy. But with heat changes there is no time lag involved as the amount of heat present at any time is accounted for.

Does this matter when it comes to the popular presentation of climate change? Maybe, maybe not, but such considerations should not influence the way in which climate scientists go about their work. The issue here is how scientists assimilate and analyse their data in global initiatives such as the IPCC that have a direct impact on policy decisions.

Pielke is calling into question some of the figures put forward by climatologists such as NASA’s James Hansen. If Pielke is right, Hansen’s numbers for upper ocean heat change are too high, and there is either an error in the IPCC values for net radiative forcing, the radiative feedbacks are negative, or both. Feedback mechanisms in the climate system are critical, as for one thing they imply the existence of tipping points beyond which changes are irreversible. It is therefore vital that we get the calculations right.

Another problem, says Pielke, is that global average radiative forcing is a poor measure of climate change brought about by a whole range of mechanisms. In particular it neglects the global effect of regional changes due to natural features such as the El Ñino southern, North Pacific decadal and North Atlantic oscillations, and human-induced changes in atmospheric chemistry.

Pielke acknowledges that there is debate within the climate science community on whether the magnitude of human-induced regional forcing is significant on a global scale. But he points out that global models which incorporate such influences show effects large enough to result in global-scale changes to atmospheric circulation.

One example highlighted by Pielke is aerosols that alter cloud formation and rain patterns, and impact on weather patterns far from where the aerosols entered the atmosphere. Another is nitrogen deposition in soil which alters the growth of vegetation on a regional level.

Humans are altering the climate, says Pielke, but they do so in a variety of ways beyond the radiative effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide. All climate scientists would agree with that statement, so is Pielke justified in his criticism of the IPCC methodology? There is vigourous debate among scientists on these very issues, and progress is being made on the research front. As for average temperature and heat accumulation, Pielke may well have a point.

SAFENANO editor Bryony Ross points to an article in Saturday’s Scotsman newspaper on the potential health risks associated with silver nanoparticles contained in over-the-counter health products. The article is in my view a fair representation of expert opinion on the subject.

Silver is a powerful antibacterial agent that has been used for many centuries. In nanoparticle form silver shows promise as a post-operative wound healing treatment, and as an antibacterial agent in paints for hospitals and other sensitive environments. At the same time, however, we are seeing unsubstantiated claims for nanosilver being made by the same commercial interests that have for years been selling colloidal silver in the form of tablets, drinks and eyedrops marketed as alternatives to antibiotics.

One of my reports for Nanomaterials News has been ripped off by Californian snake-oil merchant Lloyd Wright and used to help market his colloidal silver preparation. I have still to decide whether to sue for copyright theft.

The market for consumer products containing antibacterial silver is largely unregulated, and this is of concern to scientists and health professionals. Silver is toxic to biological cells, and dose is critical if the metal or its compounds are to be used as medicine. Yet many of the currently available commercial products contain potentially toxic levels of silver, and the way in which people use the formulations as a tonic is bound to cause problems.

Edinburgh University toxicologist Ken Donaldson spells it out:

“There are entire textbooks written on the toxicity of metals and you don’t want to disturb the balance in your body. There are studies where animals have been fed nanosilver and you can detect the harmful effects on their weight and general health.

“I would like to see how these products are testing themselves and claiming to be safe for children. The same dose of silver would be diluted less in a child because they have less body water.”

And how do the purveyors of over-the-counter silver-based medicines respond to such criticism? Here is a spokesman for the dietary supplements retailer “Higher Nature”:

“We use ionic silver, which has a relationship to the water molecule. That keeps the silver safe.”

A “relationship to the water molecule”? Oh sweet Lord preserve us!

Scientists actively involved in promoting nanotechnology are calling for more research into the health and safety aspects of this new science, and for the market in consumer products that contain engineered nanomaterials to be regulated. Progress is being made on this front, but not fast enough given the increasing numbers of nanotech products on the market.

See also:

Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (US-based)
SAFENANO (UK-based)

Via Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship I learn from Latvian telecoms journalist Juris Kaža that his country’s security police recently detained accountancy lecturer Dmitrijs Smirnovs for making negative comments about the Latvian economy. In a panel discussion Smirnovs said that excessive credit had created an economic crisis, and that Latvia’s central bank was failing to adequately regulate the country’s financial system.

For making comments not dissimilar in tone to those of British Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, who famously “talked down the Pound” and for his sins received a mild slap on the wrist from his party, Smirnovs spent a few days in a police cell, following which he was forbidden from leaving the country. The police are now said to be preparing criminal proceedings against Smirnovs for spreading false information that could destabilise the Latvian financial system.

The Baltic Times reports Smirnovs as saying:

“The only thing I can advise: first, not to keep money in banks, second, not to accumulate savings in lats as it is very dangerous now. Convert them to the US dollars. The euro is an artificial currency, and what is achieved by the euro in a year, can be lost in a month. These are real threats to the value of the euro. Maybe some people do not understand it, but the main oppositionist and competitor to the US is the European Union (EU). The main goal of the US is to destroy the EU as it does not benefit from a strong and united Europe, strong currency – the euro.”

I cannot comment on the state of the Latvian economy, but as geopolitical analysis and a statement on the nature of the Euro in relation to the US Dollar this falls woefully short. That said, it is now a free speech and human rights issue, and I would hope that the EU intervenes to support of one of its citizens under threat from a clearly paranoid national administration.

See also: “Free Speech Emergency in Latvia”.