login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
CO2 in the Air can be Measured in Wine's Bouquet
According to a report in Discovery News, researchers propose using the technique to track attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in a given region, to see which carbon-management schemes work best, or to refine regional models of climate change.
The approach measures the amount of the radioactive isotope of carbon, carbon-14, which is created by cosmic rays high in the atmosphere.
This isotope represents a small proportion of the carbon atoms in the CO2 in the atmosphere, and is taken up by plants as they grow.
Over time, carbon-14 decays into the isotope nitrogen-14. Fossil fuels, made from plant material that lived hundreds of millions of years in the past, have no remaining carbon-14.
When fossil fuels are burned, the resulting CO2 is nearly carbon-14-free. So, air with less carbon-14 in its CO2 carries higher amounts of fossil-fuel-derived carbon.
This signature is carried through the plants as they use the CO2 to grow throughout the season and into the wine made from that year's grapes.
Sanne Palstra of the Center of Isotope Research at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and colleagues, analyzed wine from different regions of Europe, distilling off the ethanol and measuring the amount of carbon-14.
|
|
|
 Comment & Contribute
|
Medwonders Health Network
- Health News Index
|
|
- News Quick Links
| News Categories: |
| » | Scientists Develop Compound That Triggers Cancer Cell Death |
| » | Iraqi National Hopes to Find Affordable Treatment for His Cancer in India |
| » | New Technique can Help Doctors Detect Pancreatic Cancer |
| » | Colorectal Cancer Risk Factors Probed |
| » | Breast MRI 'Better Than Clinical Approach for Predicting Chemotherapy's Efficiency' |
| More Cancer News | |
|
