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Oak barrels leave chemical signature in wine
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GUILHEM ALANDRY/DOCUMENTOGRAPHY
TECHNOLOGY
I’m getting forests, soil, ions… CONNOISSEURS can now amaze their fellow wine lovers by deducing the very forest that nurtured the wood that built the barrel in which a particular vintage was aged. All they need is a mass spectrometer. Each forest has its own climate, its own soil characteristics and its own telltale mixture of tree parasites and lichens. So chemicals that seep into wine from wooden barrels should vary depending on where the timber grew. That’s just what a team of wine chemists found when they used mass spectrometry to analyse French wines. Led by Régis Gougeon of the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, France, they chose nine forests where oak trees were felled to make wine barrels, and identified wines that had been aged in wood from one of these forests. Then they used a mass spectrometer to identify the
chemicals in an ionised sample of each wine. They found that each forest’s chemical peculiarities left their own signature in the wine (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.0901100106). The researchers say the forest
“They found that each forest’s chemical peculiarities left their own signature in the wine” signatures can be detected for at least 10 years after a barrel is filled, regardless of the wine’s colour, which variety of grape was used or which of the two major species of oak was used in the barrels. The technique could be useful for authenticating wine of questionable origin, says Gougeon.
–Not just any old oak–
You can email while you walk
UV light brings back salad days
WITH a smartphone in your pocket, you can email on the move. But even the best multitasker will find it tricky to keep an eye on the phone’s screen as well as the path ahead. That could change with a new Apple iPhone application called Email ’n’ Walk from Phase 2 Media. This package takes a live feed from the phone’s camera, which is mounted on the rear of the device, to show the user what’s in front of them as they type. The text of your email appears as white lettering superimposed on top of the video feed – and is more than clear enough to read without blocking the view of the path or road ahead. While reviewers say the software works as advertised, they hope the creators don’t get carried away. “I hope they don’t come up with Email ’n’ Drive,” says one.
UNHEALTHILY pale lettuce can make even the best salads look wan and unsavoury. But a couple of days under weak ultraviolet light before you pick it can make the lettuce more palatable. Tests at a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) lab in Maryland show that an LED radiating just a few milliwatts in the UV-B band stimulates redleaf lettuce to make the antioxidants that give it its characteristic colouring. Growing crops in greenhouses, done to supply fresh greens all year round, blocks the UV in
8 per cent of employees in the UK spend more time working on their mobile devices in the evenings than talking to their partners Source: Credant Technologies
sunlight that normally prompts lettuce and other crops to make antioxidants outdoors. Fluorescent lamps could be used to provide the missing UV, but that would require vast arrays of lamps containing mercury, which could contaminate food, says Steve Britz of USDA. Curious to see if cheap, mercury-free UV LEDs could do the job instead, he suspended one a few centimetres above a red-leaf lettuce plant. After 48 hours, the leaves were a deep red, but others away from the UV LED remained green, Britz will tell a laser conference in Baltimore in June. His team is now trying to work out which wavelength in the UV-B band does the job best.
“The speed of light sucks. It is really slow” IBM chief technologist Bernie Meyerson tells a photonics conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the laws of physics are stopping computer chips from working any faster – by limiting the distance signals can travel in the ever-shorter times required (20 May)
30 May 2009 | NewScientist | 15
GUILHEM ALANDRY/DOCUMENTOGRAPHY
TECHNOLOGY
I’m getting forests, soil, ions… CONNOISSEURS can now amaze their fellow wine lovers by deducing the very forest that nurtured the wood that built the barrel in which a particular vintage was aged. All they need is a mass spectrometer. Each forest has its own climate, its own soil characteristics and its own telltale mixture of tree parasites and lichens. So chemicals that seep into wine from wooden barrels should vary depending on where the timber grew. That’s just what a team of wine chemists found when they used mass spectrometry to analyse French wines. Led by Régis Gougeon of the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, France, they chose nine forests where oak trees were felled to make wine barrels, and identified wines that had been aged in wood from one of these forests. Then they used a mass spectrometer to identify the
chemicals in an ionised sample of each wine. They found that each forest’s chemical peculiarities left their own signature in the wine (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.0901100106). The researchers say the forest
“They found that each forest’s chemical peculiarities left their own signature in the wine” signatures can be detected for at least 10 years after a barrel is filled, regardless of the wine’s colour, which variety of grape was used or which of the two major species of oak was used in the barrels. The technique could be useful for authenticating wine of questionable origin, says Gougeon.
–Not just any old oak–
You can email while you walk
UV light brings back salad days
WITH a smartphone in your pocket, you can email on the move. But even the best multitasker will find it tricky to keep an eye on the phone’s screen as well as the path ahead. That could change with a new Apple iPhone application called Email ’n’ Walk from Phase 2 Media. This package takes a live feed from the phone’s camera, which is mounted on the rear of the device, to show the user what’s in front of them as they type. The text of your email appears as white lettering superimposed on top of the video feed – and is more than clear enough to read without blocking the view of the path or road ahead. While reviewers say the software works as advertised, they hope the creators don’t get carried away. “I hope they don’t come up with Email ’n’ Drive,” says one.
UNHEALTHILY pale lettuce can make even the best salads look wan and unsavoury. But a couple of days under weak ultraviolet light before you pick it can make the lettuce more palatable. Tests at a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) lab in Maryland show that an LED radiating just a few milliwatts in the UV-B band stimulates redleaf lettuce to make the antioxidants that give it its characteristic colouring. Growing crops in greenhouses, done to supply fresh greens all year round, blocks the UV in
8 per cent of employees in the UK spend more time working on their mobile devices in the evenings than talking to their partners Source: Credant Technologies
sunlight that normally prompts lettuce and other crops to make antioxidants outdoors. Fluorescent lamps could be used to provide the missing UV, but that would require vast arrays of lamps containing mercury, which could contaminate food, says Steve Britz of USDA. Curious to see if cheap, mercury-free UV LEDs could do the job instead, he suspended one a few centimetres above a red-leaf lettuce plant. After 48 hours, the leaves were a deep red, but others away from the UV LED remained green, Britz will tell a laser conference in Baltimore in June. His team is now trying to work out which wavelength in the UV-B band does the job best.
“The speed of light sucks. It is really slow” IBM chief technologist Bernie Meyerson tells a photonics conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the laws of physics are stopping computer chips from working any faster – by limiting the distance signals can travel in the ever-shorter times required (20 May)
30 May 2009 | NewScientist | 15