Category Archives: science

environment, history, links, medical, science

Monthly Links

And so we come inexorably to the end of another month, and our round-up of links to items you missed before and really don’t want to miss again. There’s lots in this month’s pack, so here goes …

Science, Technology, Natural World

DON’T PANIC! The massive star Betelgeuse could be 175m light years closer to us than was previously thought.

How does 2 meters of DNA fold up by a factor of 250,000 to fit in the cell nucleus (which has a diameter of around 10 millionths of a meter)? [LONG READ]

Who knew that the Victorians were into collecting and pressing seaweeds? Turns out to be a useful resource for studying the oceans.

Small bird flies 12,000km in 11 days, non-stop.

Why do some birds have a small downturned overhang on their bill?

Here’s a rather stunning chimera grosbeak – a half male, half female gynandromorph.

Health, Medicine

In a quick segue into the medical, a look at why scientists say bats are not to blame for Covid-19. [LONG READ]

Are we too anxious about the risks of nuclear power? [LONG READ]

Sexuality

Female journalist visits a sex doll factory and learns about male sexual desire. [LONG READ]

Environment

Why many dual-flush toilets waste more water than they save.

There’s often more tree cover in towns and cities than in the countryside.

Social Sciences, Business, Law

The airline industry has been hit hard by Covid-19. Samanth Subramanian in the Guardian takes a look. [LONG READ]

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

The giant geoglyphs of Peru’s Nazca Lines remain an enigma especially when researchers uncover a lounging cat! (Are we really sure it’s not April Fool’s Day?)

Sculpted head, possibly of Edward II, unearthed at Shaftesbury Abbey.

A look at the history of Waltham Abbey, from Saxon times to its destruction by Henry VIII. This is especially interesting for me as it is just across the marshes from where I grew up.

The myth of medieval Europe’s isolation from the Islamic world. [LONG READ]

The importance of Michaelmas in the medieval world. [LONG READ]

St Procopius of Sázava, a saint for Halloween.

On masculinity and the medieval theories of disease [LONG READ]

The British Library has released 18,000 maps from the Topographical Collection of King George III, free to download and with no copyright restrictions.

London

A London Inheritance takes a look at London’s long-lost Broad Street Station.

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Now here’s an interesting idea: when things look bleak, thinking in terms of “hope horizons” can help. [£££££]

And finally … If our scientific theories are correct you don’t have free will, and you can’t change it, so don’t worry about it. But believe in free will if you wish, because in the words of Edward N Lorenz:

We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.

amusements, science

Science Limerick

I’ve just come across this tetra-Limerick which I’d not seen before. It amused me today, in a science-y way …

It filled Galileo with mirth
To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.
He gladly proclaimed,
“Their rates are the same,
And quite independent of girth!”
 
Then Newton announced in due course
His own law of gravity’s force:
“It goes, I declare,
As the inverted square
Of the distance from object to source.”
 
But remarkably, Einstein’s equation
Succeeds to describe gravitation
As spacetime that’s curved,
And it’s this that will serve
As the planets’ unique motivation.
 
Yet the end of the story’s not written;
By a new way of thinking we’re smitten.
We twist and we turn,
Attempting to learn
The Superstring Theory of Witten!

Found at Brownielocks.

amusements, environment, history, links, medical, science

Monthly Links

Once more unto the breach, dear comrades, to bring you this month’s selection of links to items you may have missed the first time round. And an e-glass of e-ale to anyone who can knit the links into a coat of mail!

Science, Technology, Natural World

Let’s begin with another look at why wasps are so annoying, but yet so useful.

Oh and for anyone wanting to scare their visitors, you can buy a roughly five times life-size model of an Asian Giant Hornet (aka. “murder hornet”).

If you never understood why mathematics is so fascinating, take a look at odd perfect numbers. [LONG READ]

And changing topic again, scientists think they’ve found phosphine gas in Venus’ upper atmosphere, and say this could be a sign of life (albeit microbial life). Meanwhile Derek Lowe explains about phosphine but remains somewhat sceptical of the latest results.

Health, Medicine

The logistics around distribution of any vaccine (well any drug really) are complex, especially when one gets into the realm of Cold Chain Distribution.

But then we need to keep our feet in the real world as no vaccine will work by magic and return us to normality.

Girls: have you ever needed to pee standing up and envied us men our flexible hose? If so, the Shewee may be your friend.

Environment

Rewilding as an environment improvement method is taking time to get going, but not if one maverick Devon farmer has anything to do with it.

Social Sciences, Business, Law

So who thinks Scottish bank notes are legal tender in England? Spoiler: they aren’t! And what is legal tender anyway?

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

There’s some new archaeology at Pompeii which is uncovering more of its past.

Medieval sermons were one of the most effective and wide-reaching forms of propaganda, but that only works if they are in the vernacular. [LONG READ]

The people of medieval Europe were devoted to their dogs. [LONG READ]

Transport until the early part of the 20th century was largely dependent on the horse: either being ridden or pulling a wagon of some description. Here’s a look at horse transport in Victorian times.

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Oliver Burkeman, writing his last regular column for the Guardian, talks about his eight secrets for a fulfilled life.

If you’re dreading a long, dark winter lockdown, then maybe the Norwegians have something for you.

So what does your cat mean by “miaow”? A Japanese vet is apparently earning a fortune telling people what their cats are saying. Personally I thought we had a fairly good idea!

Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!

Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, has been awarded a gold medal for his work detecting landmines in Cambodia. I must say he’s a rather handsome animal, and well deserving of his apparently upcoming retirement.

And finally, what is the connexion between frozen shit and narcissists’ eyebrows? Yes, of course, it’s this year’s Ig Nobel prizes.

environment, science

Nuclear Power

Although I’ve not written about nuclear power for a long while, long-standing readers will know my conviction that we have to invest in nuclear technology. I see no other way in which we can generate sufficient electricity, even for reduced demand, from renewable resources – important though these are.

Now I would never pretend that nuclear power doesn’t have it’s challenges. Regardless of what type of reactor is chosen, the technology is hard, decommissioning is hugely expensive, and there is the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste. However these are largely soluble problems: see for instance my posts Nuclear Power Redux and Better Nuclear Power.

One thing nuclear doesn’t have, though, is an excess of deaths compared with any other power source. In fact nuclear power is the gold standard to be beaten.

Estimates from Europe Union, which account for immediate deaths
from accidents and projected deaths from exposure to pollutants.
(And this does not include fatality rates in countries like China where
cheap coal and poor regulation cause considerably more fatalities.)

A large part of the reluctance to embrace nuclear power is down to the fact that people are generally scared of it. Why? Because they can’t see it and they don’t understand it – so it is very scary! Back in the day people were frightened of electricity because they couldn’t see it and it appeared to be magic – see, for example, this from America in 1900.

It’s a bit like being in a strange, unlit, house overnight and hearing a very odd, creaky, noise. We’d all find that a bit scary. But if we can see the bedroom door swinging on its hinges in the draught it isn’t anywhere nearly as frightening.

So a couple of days ago I was interested to see a BBC News piece by their Chief Environment Correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, under the headline Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?. [See also this article from Harvard University (from which the above graphic is taken).]

In the article Rowlatt makes the case that nuclear energy is nothing like as dangerous as we think it is, even when we account for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima. He ends by saying:

But here’s the thing: if we were a bit less concerned about the risks of low levels of radiation then maybe we could make a more balanced assessment of nuclear power.

Especially given that coal-fired power stations routinely release more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power stations, thanks to the traces of uranium and thorium found in coal.

And, since we are talking about worrying about the right things, let’s not forget the environment.

Taking a more balanced view on the risks of radiation might help all those anxious climate scientists I mentioned at the start of this piece sleep a bit easier in their beds at night.

I’ll leave it up to you to read the rest of the article.

arts, history, links, medical, science

Monthly Links

It’s been quiet round here recently. Nevertheless we’ve been collecting our usual list of links to items you missed the first time. And this month we have an edition packed with some good (long) reads …

Science, Technology, Natural World

Astronomer Martin Rees looks at how we’ve discovered that the universe is much bigger and weirder than anyone thought … [£££] [LONG READ]

… or as our favourite theoretical physicist, Katie Mack, points out: space is big and our planet a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.

Whoops! We didn’t see it coming and it nearly got us. [£££]

Flat Earthers’ “science” may be wrong, but they aren’t entirely stupid.

Now to more mundane matters … here are two articles, one from the Conversation the other from the Guardian, on how vets identified Coronavirus in a cat.

A few weeks back, when the weather was nicely tropical, Diamond Geezer took a look at the technical definition of a heatwave – and it isn’t as simple as you might think.

Really tiny, but really cute: Leaf Sheep,
apparently the only animal that can photosynthesise.

The Somali Sengi (a species of elephant shrew) is a really cool critter: it mates for life, can race around at 30km/h and sucks up ants with its trunk-like nose – and having been thought extinct ecologists have recently rediscovered it in Djibouti.

Health, Medicine

A view from inside the NHS on what it was like trying to cope with a sudden deluge of Covid-19 patients. [LONG READ]

Covid-19 is here for the long haul: here’s how scientists predict the pandemic might play out over the next months and years.

Ed Yong looks at the totally non-intuitive complexity of the immune system, and why trying to understand it is so important. [LONG READ]

Here’s one doctor who avoids soap (except for hand-washing) and says we’re showering all wrong.

[TRIGGER WARNING] Unlike in animals, we know that around 25% of all pregnancies end in an early miscarriage, but do we really understand why? [£££] [LONG READ]

Then again, we’ve only just discovered that human sperm swim differently than we thought they did.

Social Sciences, Business, Law

For two decades scientists and officials played pandemic war games, but they didn’t factor in the effects of a Donald Trump. [LONG READ]

Be concerned; be very concerned. A lawyer looks at the government’s current review of Judicial Review.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Pace Richard Dawkins, it is suggested that humans aren’t inherently selfish, but hardwired to work together. (Until the ship gets overcrowded that is.)

The origins of modern humans get more complex with every new twist of DNA analysed. I have to ask whether we’re actually sure that Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, H. erectus (and maybe others) aren’t actually just one species with some very well-defined sub-species. [LONG READ]

Archaeologists believe they’ve found the source of Stonehenge’s giant sarsen stones.

It turns out that our medieval friends had a thing about sex with demons. [LONG READ]

And now to almost modern demons of a different kind. Here’s an old article about a potentially huge explosion lurking in a wreck off the Kent coast. [LONG READ]

London

Archaeologists have uncovered the lost medieval Great Sacristy of Westminster Abbey.

The history and workings of the Port of London in Tudor times. [LONG READ]

On the dissolution of London’s monasteries.

And another piece from The History of London on the building of Regents Canal.

A short history of the London Hackney Coach and the Horse Cab.

Food, Drink

At long last someone is waking up to the ideas that dieting per se doesn’t work and that we all have different food and metabolic requirements.

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

There’s a Zoroastrian centre not far from here, so I’ve always wondered what they’re about. Here’s a look into the very closed world of a strange religion. [LONG READ]

Here are nine common myths about naturism which are totally wrong.

Postcrossing has been around for a while. It’s an interesting idea involving swapping postcards with unknown people around the world as a way of building global friendship.

Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!

And finally … Only the Japanese could invent a public toilet with transparent walls. They’re quite pretty really.

arts, history, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Interesting Links

Once again we come to our monthly collection of links to items you missed the first time round and which you’ll find interesting. This month we have a well packed collection (lots of science and lots of history), so it’s straight in the deep end.

Science, Technology, Natural World

Astronomers still think there’s a large planet out beyond Pluto, so of course they’re still hunting for it (artist’s impression above).

So when you have this new vaccine how are you going to package it? Pharmaceutical Chemist Derek Lowe takes a look.

Many plants have stingers (think, stinging nettles), and it seems they have achieved optimal pointiness. [£££]

Oh dear! It seems likely the world’s smallest dinosaur is a lizard. [£££]

Ornithologists are revealing the long-distance travels and longevity of British birds.

Scientists still don’t know how birds navigate, though it is likely magnetic and they’re narrowing down the options.

30 years ago Red Kites were reintroduced to the Chilterns to the west of London, and this has proven to be a huge conservation success. (I’m 30 miles east of the release area, and in suburban London, and I now regularly see Red Kites over this area.)

Where have all our swifts gone? Are they on the Grand Tour?

There’s a growing realisation that old paintings can provide valuable information about agriculture both livestock and arable. [£££]

Here’s a brief look at the chemistry of cat allergies, catnip and cat pee.

Health, Medicine

How on Earth do you do surgery in the weightlessness of space without having bits of body floating around?

I find this hard to believe, but seemingly damaged human lungs can be revived for transplant by connecting them to a pig. [£££]

Researchers are worried that a new swine flu identified in China has pandemic potential.

Researchers are also looking at the potential for using magic mushrooms to help ex-soldiers overcome trauma.

Art, Literature, Language

Where are the bones of Hans Holbein? Jonathan Jones went looking, but we still don’t know. [LONG READ]

An astronomer has finally(?) pinpointed the exact date and time of Vermeer’s “View of Delft” (above).

The British Library has acquired an important archive of Mervyn Peake‘s original illustrations, preliminary drawings and unpublished early works (example below).

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Archaeologists have uncovered stone tools which they believe show that humans occupied the Americas around 33,000 years ago – that’s over 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Work on the UK’s HS2 rail link has unearthed the skeleton of a possible iron age murder victim.

Drinking games have a long history. Michael Fontaine, in History Today, takes a look.

So how old is the Cerne Abbas Giant (right)? New archaeological thinking by the National Trust suggests it is not prehistoric.

Our favourite medieval historian, Dr Eleanor Janega, takes a look at colonialism, imperialism, and the perils of ignoring medieval history. [LONG READ]

Going Medieval also take a brief look at the medieval obsession with the Moon.

A look at the symbolism of the medieval haircut. Scissors or sword, Sir?

Coming closer to our time, apparently Georgian London was a haven for sexual diseases.

Even closer to home, a look at what happened on the morning of the first nuclear test in 1945. [LONG READ]

And almost up to date, the purrrplexing story of the British Museum cats.

ARCHI is a UK archaeological site containing old maps (largely Victorian, it seems) which you can overlay on the current map to see what was there before we were.

London

Here are two pieces from the History of London on the area to the east of the Tower of London. First, the St Katherine’s area, and second the development of the area around Stepney.

Going Medieval (again) introduces us to the magnificent Agas Map of London (it’s detailed and zoomable!) as well as the lfe of medieval and early modern cities. [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

And finally for this month … Dungeness is one of my favourite places and the late Derek Jarman’s cottage and garden (thankfully saved for the nation) is an absolute delight (below). Now there’s an exhibition about Jarman’s garden at the Garden Museum in London.

environment, history, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Links

Here are our links to items you may have missed in the last month. There’s a lot this month, so let’s dive in.

Incidentally [£££] indicates the article may be behind a paywall, although most of these sites do offer a limited number of free articles so don’t ignore them.

Science, Technology, Natural World

First off, here’s an old article from New Scientist in which Roger Penrose asks What is Reality? [£££]

However there’s a warning that we should beware of Theories of Everything. [£££]

Meanwhile scientists have calculated the most likely number of alien civilisations we could contact. [Spoiler: it isn’t 42.]

Maybe the search for extraterrestrial life is why the Americans are embarking on another round of major upgrades to their U-2 spy plane. [£££]

But back to Earth … Researchers have used camera traps to complete a thorough survey of the inhabitants of African rainforest.

Surprisingly in this day and age we still don’t fully understand where eels come from. [£££]

Ecologists have tracked the astonishing migration of one particular European Cuckoo.

Equally astonishing, scientists have managed to record and translate the sounds made by honeybee queens.

After which we shouldn’t really be surprised that crows are aware of different human languages.

Health, Medicine

So out of the crow’s nest and into the fire … What you always thought you knew about why males are the taller sex is probably wrong.

It seems there is growing evidence that we should be taking seriously the potential of psychedelic drugs to treat depression. Well I’d certainly be up for trying it.

Tick-borne Lyme Disease can develop into a debilitating chronic condition. [£££] [LONG READ]

Have you ever wondered how medical students are trained to do those intimate examinations?

Environment

There’s a movement to establish fast-growing mini-forests to help fight the climate crisis.

Barn Owls are one of our most iconic species, and the good news is that they’re growing in numbers thnks to human help.

Here’s just one example of the huge amount of rarer elements in old computers which we need to recycle.

We’re used to places like Iceland using geothermal energy, but now there’s a plan to heat some UK homes using warm water from flooded mines.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Archaeologists have found clues to the earliest known bow-and-arrow hunting outside Africa.

DNA from the 5,200-year-old Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland hints at ancient royal incest.

And DNA is also being used to provide clues about the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

On health and safety in the ancient world – or maybe the lack of it!

Religious iconography always was about marketing and PR.

The Medievals had notions about the ideal shape of women which curiously don’t coincide with our modern ideals. [LONG READ]

But then the Medievals lived in a world without police, and it wasn’t quite a brutal as one might think.

Archaeologists think they’ve found London’s earliest theatre, the Red Lion.

If we thought Medievals had odd ideas, then Enlightened Man (in 17th and 18th centuries) was in many ways stranger; shaving and periwigs were the least of it. [LONG READ]

London

On the first few hundred years of Westminster Abbey. [LONG READ]

From Tudor times Protestants have been intermittently persecuted in mainland Europe, and escaped to Britain. Here’s a piece on the history of the Huguenots in London. [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Is it OK for your kids to see you naked? Here’s an uptight American article which nonetheless concludes it is OK, as we all know.

science, thoughts

Nature Hurts My Brain

I read quite a bit of scientific material. Not the deep research papers; those days are long gone and my knowledge is too out of date to follow along with immensely detailed analyses of ever more intricate experiments. What I do read is the commentary for the intelligent layman: the specialist science journalism in, for example, New Scientist, Science, Scientific American, Quanta, and various other places elsewhere online.

I don’t read everything – there isn’t time, and anyway there are subjects like climate change, extra-terrestrial life and artificial intelligence which bore me rigid.
[No I didn’t say they aren’t important, or don’t exist; I just said they’re not things I can enthuse over.]

The more I read, the more incredulous I become that anything in the living world works at all – let alone that it could have evolved from nothing, however long the timescales involved.

Apart from the way in which the SARS-CoV-2 virus seems to work, what brought this home to me most recently was and article in The Scientist about left-handed DNA. You see the normal DNA which makes up all our genes has a helical structure which twists in a right-handed direction. And the way that works is gobsmacking enough.

But DNA can twist the other way (left-handed) to form Z-DNA. This has been known for some time, but it is now thought it may have a role in cancer and autoimmune diseases. Even more bizarre is that short sections of normal DNA can flip to Z-DNA and this obviously has a major control on how the whole of the transcription process (which turns DNA code into proteins) works (or doesn’t work) – and that may be important for the prevention of autoimmune diseases or the growth of cancer.

It is fiendishly complex, and yet only one tiny piece in the corner of the jigsaw puzzle which is eukaryote metabolism. I remember when I was a postgrad student (45 years ago) having a huge A1 (maybe bigger) poster full of the (then known) metabolic pathways in tiny print. It was gobsmacking, and totally unmemorable, then and has since been shown to be many times more complex.

The way the living world works – from grass, to rabbit, to fox, and to you yourself – is absolutely incomprehensible and incredible. I can quite see why some people cannot believe in evolution and insist that the whole must be divine design. I don’t agree with that, but that makes it no less brain-addling.

history, links, medical, science

Monthly Links

And so at the end of another month we come to our regular collection of links to items you may have missed …

Science, Technology, Natural World

Extraterrestrials. What is believable, and how would we know? [£££££]

Meanwhile on this earth we have Vespa mandarinia, the Asian Giant Hornet, aka. the “Murder Hornet”. But just how dangerous is it? TL;DR: Very if you’re a honeybee.

I never cease to like the (small) variety of wasps in this country and what they get up to.

Still with the hymenoptera, the humble bumblebee has a clever trick to get plants to flower.

Health, Medicine

When is a llama not a llama? When it’s a unicorn!

So why is it that clinical trials of (new) drugs are so complicated and expensive? [LONG READ]

For a long, long time sunshine has been seen as having healing powers.

Researchers, almost accidentally, have found a microbe which completely stops the malaria parasite.

[TRIGGER WARNING] Having had four miscarriages, journalist Jennie Agg wanted to understand why it happened and why it is never talked about. [LONG READ]

Sexuality

Dr Eleanor Janega has some sexual fun over on Going Medieval. Here she is on:
•  No Nut November [LONG READ]
•  Dildos and Penance
•  “Alpha Men” and poorly disguised misogyny

Social Sciences, Business, Law

Have you ever wondered how the heights on Low Bridge signs are calculated? Diamond Geezer investigates.

Art, Literature, Language

Dutch researchers have been trying to extract the secrets from Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Mexico has too many mammoths – or at least bits of mammoths.

OK, so here’s another series from Going Medieval:
•  On chronicles versus journalism, and ruling versus governing.
•  On the King’s two bodies and modern myth making.
•  On the Lusty Month of May.

London

Diamond Geezer (again) discovers the interesting history of his local Tesco supermarket. What’s the history of your local supermarket’s site? Three near me: the iconic Hoover building, an old cinema and the site of a former gasworks!

And one more from Diamond Geezer … this time he’s been finding out the correct names for the different parts of a London bus stop.

Food, Drink

Apparently coconut oil isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Colour me surprised! [£££££]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

And finally … Pity the poor curators who are having to spend lockdown in places like Hampton Court Palace!

food+drink, history, links, science

Monthly Links

Yet once more a month has passed and we come to my collection of links to items you may have missed and didn’t want to.

Science, Technology, Natural World

If we found extraterrestrials, why should we expect them to look like anything we know?

Rather surprisingly many genes are not necessary for survival, and some species have lost quite a few.

Plants have unexpected ways to communicate, problem solve and socialise – indeed a whole secret life!

Blue Tits in Germany are dying and no-one knows quite why.

What’s in an Antarctic lake? Travel down a borehole Lake Whillans.

We live on a planet. But just what is a planet?

With clearer skies and time on our hands, here are a few tips about stargazing from your backyard.

Environment

A speculative drill in Cornwall for a souyrce of lithium has uncovered a potentially important copper deposit.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

The earliest known skull of Homo erectus has been found in South Africa.

Melting ice on a Viking-era mountain pass in Norway is revealing some spectacular artefacts.

In another story of ice, this time in the Alps, it seems that the record of lead pollution may reflect the murder of Thomas Beckett.

The mystery of the medieval sweating sickness.

Renaissance Europe was beset with paranoia about the pox leading to the rapid spread of guilt, scapegoats and wonder-cures.

And a bit more up to date, there has long been a puzzle over the early April sunrise shining through Brunel’s Box Tunnel near Bath.

Food, Drink

When do we need to adhere to expiry dates and when can they be flexed?

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Hints and tips on how to clean 10 annoying things around your home.

And finally, in our only concession to Coronavirus, here’s our favourite Zen master on dealing with what might happen – or it might not happen.

Be good, and stay safe!