"Weirdbeautiful"

The Arizona Desert, Bhutan's Wildlife; Pests of the Coffee Farm and Problems in science publishing

2012-02-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
There are 4 links today-

The beauty of the Arizona Desert-
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/secret-sandstone-terrain-in-desert-captured-685193

The wildlife of Bhutan-
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wwf-footage-of-snow-leopard-reveals-684497

and the pests and wild animals found on Costa Rica's coffee farms-
http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/the-problem-with-coffee-pests/?ref=science

Finally, over 5000 researchers have joined a boycott of Elsevier's journals in protest at the publisher's behaviour- specifically the way Elsevier profits by selling the rights to see scientific papers. Since the company receives the copyrights and much of the copy editing for nothing- courtessy of the scientists involved and the reviewers, the fact that they (and other academic journal publishers) charge such high prices to view those papers has long been a bone of contention. Not least since the research published was often government- or charity- funded. A fuller account is given in the IHT here-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevier-journal-publisher.html?ref=science

Links of the day- Koalas, travel photographs and the harm of spanking children

2012-02-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) To Weirdbeautiful!
Today's beautiful creature is this baby koala photographed by Erik Veland at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. You can find more pictures by Erik Veland on his portfolio [here]. The picture above was taken from Wikipedia, where it is listed as having a creative commons 3.0 attribution license. For details of the license, click [here]

Today's weblinks are to an article reporting research that shows that spanking children is harmful for their long-term development and mental health-

http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/spanking-kids-can-cause-long-term-harm-canada-study

And to the impressive results of National Georgraphic Traveller's annual photography competition-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/exclusives/exclusive-national-geographics-photography-competition#image=1

Link of the day: Solar Storm, Frozen sea and lion cubs

2012-02-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful
Today I have 4 links for you: the first three being meterological.

First is this picture of frozen waves in Romania-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/european-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow/#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Feuropean-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow%252F9-photo-1328271227.html
- one of the more picturesque consequences of the current pan-European freezing temperatures.

the second also shows frozen waves of the black sea-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/european-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow/#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Feuropean-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow%252F5-photo-1328271189.html

The link today is to more distant bad weather in the form of a solar storm that is predicted to affect The Earth's climate-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/biggest-solar-storm-since-2005-pummels-earth-185646088.html

Finally, cute picture of the week is this lion cub from a review on the french msn homepage. The review (and the picture) relates to Disney's programme "Felins"("Cats")
http://divertissements.fr.msn.com/cinema/lhebdo-cin%c3%a9-de-la-semaine-du-01-f%c3%a9vrier#image=5

2012-01-23T18:58:00.000-08:00

Oppinion Piece- Giraffe Hunting and Darwin's Fossils

2012-01-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful...

I have just two links-of-the-day for you today; the first being this account of hundreds of lost fossils collected by Charles Darwin and fellow workers having been found in a neglected wooden cabinet of the British Geological Survey-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/darwins-lost-fossils-found-desk-drawer-152821335.html

The second, is this thoroughly depressing and shameful story about giraffe hunting for entertainment-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4065464/Giraffes-gunned-down-for-family-holiday-fun.html

Even scientists, I am told, are human beings and, therefore, subject to irrational follies and whims the same as the rest of mankind. Even the (ficticious) arch-scientist Sheldon Cooper admits to having a soft spot for koalas. Personally, I have a weakness for giraffes. There is something wonderfully appealing about their gentle and peaceble lives; their biology is pretty quirky, too, as the Animal Autopsy programme revealed a little while back - you can see details of the programme [here- WARNING!! Link contains Gory Pictures]. It seems such a shame to slaughter them for entertainment: just mindless violence that should be as far beneath our dignity as it is beneath theirs.

The World's Smallest Vertebrate, Cranes over Venice and Beyonce the Horse-fly

2012-01-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful!

First link-of-the-day today is to this news article on the World's smallest vertebrate-->
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/diminutive-frog-wins-tiniest-title-044522082.html

Second link-of-the-day today is to this short video of Cranes Flying over Venice on dogwork.com -->
http://www.dogwork.com/crafly9/
(thanks to Patricia V.P. for the Crane link)

Final link of the day is to an article about a new horse-fly species named after Beyonce (of all people)-->
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/beyonce-gets-fly-golden-booty-named-her-090557475.html

2012-01-09T18:57:00.000-08:00

Science Updates- Bear pictures, Skin cancer treatment cream & mental deterioration in mid-life

2012-01-05T17:20:00.001-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Two of the top science stories this week are the use of a new radioactive cream used to treat skin cancer non-invasively-->
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2082826/Radioactive-paint-cream-clear-skin-cancer-surgery.html

and reports of a study indicating that mental decline in aging people is a longer, slower and earlier-onset process than once thought (with cognitive decline already detectable by middle age (45-49 years))-->
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/mental-decline-seen-middle-age-233534243.html

Meanwhile, the science section of the IHT website has the cyber-equivalent of a photo-essay on Borneo's famous Orang Utans here-->
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/01/04/science/Borneo.html

The essay and pictures were taken in Borneo's Tanjung Puting Nature Park: a place also known for its Sun-Bears, Ursus malayanus. Although Sun-Bears are the smallest of the 8 extant Bear species*, they have a reputation for ferocity. You can find more details about the Sun Bear on the BBC's website [here].

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(* the other 7 species are the Giant Panda, The Spectacled Bear, The Sloth Bear, The Asian Black Bear, The American Black Bear, The Brown Bear and the Polar Bear. Various hybrid bears and subspecies exist.).

There is a link to pictures of two adorable polar-bear cubs in the blog post immediately before/below this one.

Cherring up birds- blackbirds and apples

2012-01-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Today's cheering up bird is a common (Eurasian) blackbird a creature with the unfortunate biological name Turdus merula. (Turdus relates to a genus of "thrush"es).

Every winter, I visit Northallerton station at least once and every year I see the same apple tree still covered in the summer's apples (and often coated in snow as well), it always seems to be a fairly unusual scene- cultivated apple trees usually have their appples picked and untended ones tend to have either very small apples or to have them blown away by the wind- or both. In any case, this year I got a picture of it-this was just one of a whole group of blackbirds (not quite a flock, but several) feeding on it.It is not as flamboyant as the usual "cheering up birds", but it's nice to see wildlife in unpromising places.

Link of the day today is to this article (complete with pictures and video about twin polar bears bred in LHT Polar Aquarium in China-->
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082143/Twice-cute-Newly-born-polar-bears-snuggle-paw-paw.html

Narcissus tazetta

2012-01-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

Narcissus tazetta,

Cultured specimen, Huji, Jerusalem, Dec 2011

Science News update- New Method of Sterlizing Hospital Wards & Virulent Bird Flu

2011-12-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful!

There are two major science stories online this week . The first, is a proposal to sterlize hospital rooms and even matresses with a mixture of Ozone and Hydrogen peroxide- chemicals the body itself uses to destroy (lyse) harmful organisms. You can read the full story here-->

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/sterilising-gas-could-clean-wards-050014785.html;_ylt=AimCR.Z2w5Y0eQC4eoRQO_LbfMl_;_ylu=X3oDMTFxa3RwMG0xBG1pdANJbmZpbml0ZSBCcm93c2UgVGV4dARwb3MDNgRzZWMDTWVkaWFJbmZpbml0ZUJyb3dzZUxpc3Q-;_ylg=X3oDMTJyaHA0M2JjBGludGwDZ2IEbGFuZwNlbi1nYgRwc3RhaWQDZDg5ZTMzNDctMDY3OC0zNzc2LTkwYjUtY2RiYWEwYWEzNWRiBHBzdGNhdAN1awRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2UEdGVzdAM-;_ylv=3

The second major story is news that the American government has pressured leading scientists not to publish full details of recent research on bird flu. The research, which was commissioned by the American government itself, investigated how (natural or -even- artificial) changes in the flu virus genome could lead to the evolution of a more infectious or virulent strain of bird flu. This knowledge could clearly be abused, so some of the more detailed information has been surpressed. The full story is on line here-->

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/details-lab-made-bird-flu-132155927.html

It surprises me a little that this story has made the headlines, because I would expect ( and, in some cases, hope) that the results of quite a few studies are not made fully public. Not that scientists have any kind of moral superiority over the rest of mankind in this matter (Fritz Haber's work on chemical weapons springs to mind), but in some cases, the intellectual problem of scientific censorship is clearly preferrable to the real problem of manmade highly virulent "superbugs".

December in the Mediterranean

2011-12-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

I have been a fan of the Jerusalem Botanic Gardens for several years, now, but not visited in the Winter, before. Today I did just that- here are some of the highlights from the Mediterranean and Atlas Mountains sections of the gardens:-

Lupinus pilosus- an annual Mediterranean species

Conifers

Juniper (Juniperus oxycedrus)

Juniperus oxycedrus detail.

Iris unguicularis

Sheltered bench and vista of conifers

Dry stream-bed with female carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua).

You are free to reproduce these pictures for non-commercial purposes, including school or college work, as long as you retain the Victoria Neblik logo in the reproduced version and acknowledge me-Victoria Neblik- as the photographer. For commercial use, please contact me through the victorianeblik.com site. Thank you.

The website of Jerusalem Botanic Gardens (Givat Ram campus) can be found [HERE] (in Hebrew); more details can be found in English on wikipedia [HERE]

Links of the day- Giraffe rescued from swimming pool and an albino lobster called "santa claws" ...

2011-12-06T16:00:00.001-08:00

Welcome back to Weirdbeautiful.
The tabloids have recently gone soft over a pair of Giant Pandas imported from China to Edinburgh Zoo, of which more later.
Today I have 4 links for you- 2 about animals one about the latest update on the search for the Higgs particle at CERN and one on tonight's meteor shower

Link one is about a giraffe being rescued from a swimming pool-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3982094/Three-hour-rescue-mission-for-giraffe-on-the-set-of-Wild-At-Heart.html

Link 2 is about an albino lobster caught off the British coast-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3993328/Albino-lobsters-a-white-rare-find.html

Link 3 is about the Higgs boson search-->
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16158374

Finally, tonight and tomorrow night are expected to mark the peak of the annual Geminids meteor shower. There are some tips on the best places to watch from the UK online here-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/best-places-to-watch-the-geminids-meteor-shower.html

You can find out more about the (slow moving) Geminid meteor shower on wikipedia here--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminids and about the Higgs boson here--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_particle

Link of the day: Mia the deer fawn

2011-11-24T10:35:00.001-08:00

Link of the day :
German couple raise baby deer after its mother is killed by a car-->
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065652/The-real-life-Bambi-Rescued-fawn-adopted-German-family-mother-killed-just-week-birth.html

Small Furry Tiger Cubs

2011-11-22T12:15:00.001-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Link-of-the-day today is this story in The Sun about the first outing of one of the new tiger cubs at Chester Zoo- You can read the full article here--> http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3952370/Tiger-cub-earns-stripes.html

The other news this week is that Small Furry Pets magazine has now been launched. There are more details online here--> http://www.smallfurrypets.co.uk/

and you can buy a copy here--> http://www.smallfurrypets.co.uk/buy-now.html

I have an interview published in the launch issue, where I talk to Dr Charlotte Burn of the Royal Veterinary College about rat care and her work on animal welfare more generally.

STOP PRESS!!- Neutrinos exceed the speed of light in second set of experiments

2011-11-18T10:38:00.001-08:00

According to the Daily Mail, Neutrinos have been found to exceed the speed of light in second set of experiments-->
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2063163/Einstein-speed-light-2nd-set-scientists-particles-CAN-travel-faster-light.html

Fossils and Hover Flies

2011-10-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Hover-fly on black-coloured variety of cornflower, Aug 2011, England

White fossil

What matters?

2011-10-17T00:05:00.000-07:00

I suspect there comes a point in everyone’slife when they start to wonder if they are spending their days welland if whatever they are toiling away at is really worth the effort. For the most part, it probably gets marked down as “middle age angst”, apathy, or something similar and peoplemake a few changes and then plough on, much as before. In science, though, the answers matter because what "we" as a society chose to fund and what "we" as individual scientists chose to prioritise can really affect the future of mankind. The potential is always there for any individual scientist to change the world for the better.

Even though my scientific career has not been all that long, I have been a lot of scientific conferences and I have come away from some of them feeling that the most important things for mankind are not always those receiving highest priority.

Today’s post, then, is just a question- “what do you think matters tomankind?” “Which questions and problems should scientists/mankind betrying to answer most urgently?”

For what it is worth, the picture below is doodle from my notebook-my own crude, first-draft attempt to answer these questions (in no particular order- click to enlarge).
What would you prioritise?

click to enlarge

I am asking these questions for several reasons, one reason is in response to an article on line called "What are the most important questions to answer in physics?" You can find the the article on this site, by Dr M. Rulison-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9xhDZz/www.oglethorpe.edu/faculty/~m_rulison/top10.htm

I don’t claim to be qualifiedenough to attempt to answer that question, or comment upon Dr Rulison’s ideas,but they do make interesting reading.

On a lighter note, pictures havenow emerged of a baby pygmy hippo born in early September in Zurich zoo. The printversion of The Telegraph newspaper had a wonderful photograph of it, but I can’tfind this online. You can see a video of the baby hippo here- (WARNING: thisvideo has music)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gobL0AXRolU&noredirect=1

Autumn & Link of the day-Bacteria and the power of teamwork

2011-10-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Greetings from a decidedly autumnal Northern England (pictures above and below).

First link-of-the-day today is the science article "Bacteria and the Power of Teamwork" published in The Guardian newspaper and available online here-->
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/13/bacteria-power-teamwork

(Thanks to "Gene's Sci-Tech Daily" by Gene Wilburn for this link.)

Second link-of-the-day is to this science article raising hopes of a vaccine against HIV-

http://uk.health.lifestyle.yahoo.net/Vaccine-could-reduce-HIV-to-a-minor-chronic-infection.htm

Cute animals, Disease Virulence and Black Death

2011-10-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Just three links today-

The first is this cute picture of ababy panda-

http://news.uk.msn.com/week-in-pictures-14-october-2011#image=15

The second, is to a gallery of adorable wildlifephotographs including a baby tiger and monkey-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3870638/Animals-strike-the-pose-for-conservation.html

The third is somewhat less cute; anarticle about the DNA of Black Death, which has now been isolated from bodiesin plague pits and analyzed scientifically-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/black-death-bug-dna-reconstructed-172834369.html

Some years ago (circa 1999/2000),when I was still a microbiologist and busily looking for a PhD studentship, I wasinterviewed for a project looking at virulence in foot-and-mouth disease. Overthe course of the interview, it became apparent that the project would,essentially, involve devoting three years of my life to examining a smallsection of RNA at one end of the Virus’s genome and culminate- in allprobability- in a single scientific paper on the subject. The aim was toinvestigate which mutations caused the virus to become more deadly/virulent andwhich, less so. If I remember correctly, the section of RNA to be examined was onlyaround 100-bases long and it seemed such a tiny specialization that, at that point- mid interview- my interest in the project nose-dived. Perhaps that was shallow or superficial, but it is probably not a unique experience.

As students, we are taught in summary and we view the bigger picture. But, as a researcher, one toils every day on a tiny piece often of a tiny puzzle; each day of research is just a drop in the ocean of a research career and that is a drop in the wider ocean of science itself. It is easy to sit, absolutely rapt, inlectures about virology, to marvel at the ingenuity of past microbiologistsand to be excited by the prospect of workingon similar puzzles. The problem, is that reality- in the form ofvarious doctoral projects- often does not seem to match up. For this reason, the most enthusiasticstudents do not always make the most eager researchers.

On the other hand, being funded to spend three years working on a project that does capture your imagination, is a really wonderful experience. For my part, I switchedto zoology, studied jellyfish and spent three and a half awesome, globe-trotting years working on about a dozen different species.

Incidentally, a couple ofyears after that foot-and-mouth PhD interview, the UK suffered a very costly, widespreadand fairly unexpected foot-and-mouth outbreak. So, whoever did get that studentshipmust have taken some pleasure in the fact that their project, although narrowin focus, has undoubtedly proven useful- arguably, far more useful for mankind than my own doctoral research, but that is another issue altogether...

You can find more on foot-and-mouthdisease [here] and on black death [here]. The full-text of the scientific studyon black death mentioned above is currently available free online [here].

News story of the week- Hummingbird Smuggling

2011-09-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Strangest story of the week is this piece about a Dutchman arrested in French Guiana whilst attempting to smuggle live hummingbirds out of South America in his underpants-->
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042474/Traveller-arrested-trying-smuggle-live-HUMMINGBIRDS-special-pouches-sewn-pants.html

You can read the full story in (the British tabloid newspaper) the "Daily Mail" [here].

Many animal species have been made extinct or nearly extinct by export for the pet trade- most famously, Spix's Macaw (below), although, in the case of the macaw, several other factors also contributed to the creature's decline. The hummingbird story above, does at least have a happy ending, since the hummingbirds were captured alive.

Spix's Macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii) .
Picture by Joseph Smit, 1878, copyright lapsed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Thanks to the Daily Mail for the hummingbird pictures above, which also feature in their article and are reproduced here in accordance with the fair use exemption to copyright law.

Links of the Week- Siberian Tigers, Talking Gorillas and Exceeding the Speed of Light

2011-09-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

The big Science news story of the week is that scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland believe that they may have broken the speed of light.If they have, indeed, succeeded in accelerating neutrinos faster than the speed of light, this essentially disproves Einstein's theory of relativity. The researchers have requested that other laboratories check and attempt to duplicate their findings-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/scientists-proved-einstein-theory-wrong-230650760.html

Weird story this week is the case of an Irish coroner ruling that a 76-year old Galway man died of spontaneous human combustion-you can find the full story here-->
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/coroner-rules-irish-man-died-of-spontaneous-combustion.html

One of the most beautiful or heartwarming stories in recent weeks has been this piece-->
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8765172/An-audience-with-Koko-the-talking-gorilla.html
originally published in The Sunday Telegraph about a journalist's visit to Koko the Gorilla at her home in California. Koko, who was rescued by Dr Penny Paterson of The Gorilla Foundation from a zoo, has learned to communicate with her keepers using a form of sign language and has a vocabulary of around 1000 words, but can understand around twice that number. For the full story, click [here].

Finally, picture of the week is of a dog wet-nursing Siberian Tiger cubs at a zoo in China after their mother is unable to care for them-
http://news.uk.msn.com/week-in-pictures-23-september-2011#image=13

Quote of the week- the importance of finishing things- Charles Babbage/ Lord Moulton

2011-09-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome(back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Quote-of-the-week this week is somewhat longer thanusual:-

“ One of the sad memories of my life is a visit tothe celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage....He took me through hiswork rooms.

In the first room, I saw parts of the originalcalculating machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many yearsbefore...I asked him about its present form. “I have not finished it because,in working at it, I came on the idea of my Analytical Machine, which would doall that it was capable of doing and much more.”

We went into the next work-room, where he showed andexplained to me the oworking of the elements of the Analytical machine...” Ihave never completed it”, he said, “because I hit upon an idea of doing thesame thing by a different and far more effective method...”

Then we went into a thirds room...I saw no trace ofany working machine. “It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it and itwill take less time to construct it altogether than it would have taken tocomplete the analytical machine.”

I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart; whenhe died a few years later, not only had he constructed no machines,but....everything was too incomplete to be capable of being put to any usefulpurpose”.

-- - Lord Moulton (John Fletcher Mouton)

- British Mathematician,

- (1844-1921)

Source: Inaugral Address to theNapier Tercentenary Congress, Edinburgh, 1914, printed in Napier TercentenaryMemorial Volume 1915.

This quotation comes from the “Eccentricity”exhibition which is currently on in the Museum of The History of Science inOxford. "Eccentricity" is an appropriately eccentric exhibition, with a collection of typewriters and moveable type jostling for space with tables for microscope slides and cabinets of hand-painted projector slides.

For details of this and otherexhibitions in Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science, take a look at theirwebsite [here]. Materials from their previous exhibitions are online [here]. TheMuseum, which is one of the hidden gems of Oxford, also contains a blackboard usedby Albert Einstein and still covered in equations written in his own hand. Admission to the museum is free.

More information on Lord Moulton isavailable online [here] and on Charles Babbage [here].

Autumn in Oxford

2011-09-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

Mid September, Oxford, England: most of the tourists have departed and the students have not yet arrived. The leaves are just starting to exchange their summer greens for warmer autumn colours and the air is just starting to feel that little bit cooler. On the river, this year's ducklings have long since grown and the cygnets are almost fully grown swans. In short, the city is pretty close to idyllic- certainly as good as it ever gets- and, above all, it is quintessentially English.
It is odd then, that some of Oxford's greatest sites at the moment are entirely foreign flowers growing in the city's ancient botanic gardens. Today's post is a photogallery of some of the weirder and/or more beautiful ones:-

Cygnets on the Thames (aka "Isis"), Oxford.

Spider web on one of the entrance gates to Oxford Botanic Gardens

Hypoestes sp. currently in flower in one of the botanic gardens' glasshouses

Flowers of Phytolacca americana , the "Pokeberry"- a weird and dramatic plant (the leaves are bright pink and green) with a weirder role in history: the American declaration of independence was signed in pokeberry juice.

Thunbergia mysorensis- a southern Indian plant with weird and beautiful hanging blooms that is currently flowering in the Botanic Gardens.

Haemanthus albiflos - a South African flowering plant blooms at the foot of a large Euphorbia Abyssinia.

Specimen of the Brazilian plant Schaureia flavicona flowering in the Botanic gardens.

Cute Baby animals and "Swifts, Swallows and Butterflies" on Quazen now

2011-09-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

How would you describe an English summer?
Is there a characteristic set of wild animals and plants that epitomise Britain in August?
My attempt to answer that exact question turned into a series of articles, which I am slowly publishing online. The first of these- "Swifts Swallows and Butterflies"- (written back in August 2009) was published today by the website Quazen. You can find it here-
http://victoria-neblik.quazen.com/recreation/outdoors/swifts-swallows-and-butterflies-august-in-north-yorkshire/

This summer, I have been back in North Yorkshire and the wildlife here has been quite different. The cabbage white butterflies of the quazen article have been replaced with a plethora of bumblebees across much of the (Hambleton) region this year, last winter's bitter cold has killed many common garden plants; the mild weather and light winds in April gave masses of pear blossom and now a huge crop of fruit. It is not exactly surprising but still interesting to observe just how much the flora and fauna of an area can vary from one year to the next.

Link-of-the-day today is this selection of 70 wonderful animal pictures that goes by the very appropriate title "70 Cutie Baby Animals Bring you a good mood".
Thanks to stumbleupon.com for the cute animal links.

Science News- Mount Etna Errupting

2011-08-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

Mount Etna from the air- picture by Josep Renalias. This image has a creative commons license, for details, click [here]

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
This week's main science story is that Mount Etna has started erupting again. I was in Sicily during some of the 417 days of its last eruption, which lasted from May 2008-July 2009. This one looks more dramatic than then when I was there. You can see footage of the current eruption online here-
http://news.uk.msn.com/world/new-footage-of-mount-etna-erupting
and more details on mount Etna [here]

Birds of the Gambia

2011-08-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Today's link of the day is to a gallery of wildlife images including many birds from The Gambia- it shows some lovely wildlife photography from a region not often featured on weirdbeautiful-
http://gambiabirdguide.com/imggal/main.php

Thanks to Phil for the link.

Quote of the Week- George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood

2011-08-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

"If you want the flowers in your garden to be glorious and to smell good, you must risk an occasional stink"
- Lord George Henry Hubert Lascelles,
Earl of Harewood,
(7th Feb 1923- 11th July 2011).

Man with Uterus, Bionic Spinal Discs and Where Best to watch tonight's Perseid meteor shower

2011-08-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Perseids Meteor Shower - image by Mila Zinkova. (This image has a Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0, for details, click [here])

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Today's first link is to a yahoo news feature on the best place to watch the Perseids Meteor Shower tonight (from the UK)-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/best-places-to-watch-the-perseids-meteor-shower-.html

This year, the Perseids are active/ visible between July 17th and August 24th, but peak on 13th August.

You can find more details on the shower, which is primarily visible from the Earth's Northern Hemisphere, on Gary Kronk's Meteor Shower page, [here].

Meanwhile, Weird science story of the week this week is a tale of man finding out that he has a uterus-
http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/indian-man-has-hysterectomy-after-doctors-find-uterus.html

Artificial Spinal Disc- image by Rama (this image has a creative commons 2.0 license- for details, click [here])

Today's final link is to an article about the development of artificial/bionic replacement spinal discs to cure back pain. As the article explains, back pain due to spinal disc damage is very common from mid-life onwards, so any progress in this field is very welcome.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2021329/Man-spinal-discs-cure-pain-decade.html

Since almost all Western nations now have ageing populations, we can surely expect a strong push to develop better treatments for a panoply of diseases-of-old-age over the next few decades. Joint pain/arthritis/arthrosis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's are obvious candidates; it is certainly an interesting time to be a biologist.

Link of the day- food dyed ants

2011-08-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

What happens if you feed certain Indian ants dyed sugar-water?
Well, according to this article- here)-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3737028/Docs-food-dye-experiment-with-insects.html
Something like this-

Image source:Solent by The Sun

Quote-of-the-Week - Mary Kingsley on Crocodiles

2011-08-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

"Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on a steamer and you can write home about it and frighten your relations on your behalf; but when you are away among the swamps in a small dug-out canoe and that crocodile and his relations are awake....- he is highly interesting and you may not be able to write home about him- and you get frightened on your own behalf"
-Mary Kingsley, 1894, published in "Travels in West Africa", 1897- republished in "The Congo and the Cameroons", Penguin Books, 2007.

Pick of the Week- Decontamination of Soil from Lead and Uranium and science update from CERN

2011-08-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

First of this week's "Pick of this week" science articles is this piece by Felicity Barringer in The New York Times -
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/science/earth/21fishbones.html?ref=science

The article talks about new plans to use fish bone meal to decontaminate lead-poisoned soil; it also contains this disturbing quote-
“It’s fair to say, looking forward, that just about every urban residential area probably has a lead problem and we just can’t afford economically and socially to move that amount of dirt any more,” ..“Topsoil is a precious resource, and we don’t have enough topsoil to replace it.” by Steve Calanog of the Environmental Protection Agency- the quote's context and more details about the clean up programme are given in the article.

It seems to me that clean-up projects are going to become increasingly important worldwide over the next few decades, not least because of overcrowding and the cumulative effects of our past environmental disasters. As a human being, I find this situation depressing, but as a scientist, I find it fascinating.

Environmental decontamination is not a new field, of course- it was suggested over five years ago, for example, that bacteria could be used to clean up Uranium contamination- you can find an article on the subject by Hannah Hickey on Stanford University's website [here].
More recently, British scientists have investigated using fungi to clean up depleted uranium contamination. The magazine "Cosmos" has a popular science account of this research [here] (The full-text of the original research paper: "Role of fungi in the biogeochemical fate of depleted uranium" by Marina Fomina, John M. Charnock, Stephen Hillier, Rebeca Alvarez, Francis Livens and Geoffrey M. Gadd can currently be freely downloaded from the website of the journal "Current Biology"- the article was originally published in 2008 in Volume 18(number/issue 9) pp. R375 - R377 of Current Biology).

Finally, Britain's Guardian Newspaper reported on Friday that Scientists at CERN have, at last, found evidence of the infamously elusive Higg's Boson, of course, the story behind the headlines is much more softly stated and much less conclusive, but that is so often the case with science stories in the media-
the guardian article is here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/22/cern-higgs-boson-god-particle

Links of the week-Migrating Salmon, Poison Algae and Alaska's Flowers

2011-07-31T01:03:00.000-07:00

Pacific Salmon Species (copyright free image- for details, click [here]. Original source, click [here])

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

First link of the day today is this somewhat more sinister tale of wild boars in Brittany being killed by toxic fumes from rotting seaweed. The toxic fumes are - allegedly- the result of effluent from local intensive pig farms reacting with natural algae in the Morieux river estuary in the Cote d’Armor region of Brittany to produce hydrogen sulphide- a gas as deadly as hydrogen cyanide, but with a significantly more powerful (and obnoxious)smell.The full story is online here-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019422/British-holidaymakers-warned-killer-seaweed-strikes-Brittany-beaches.html

Secondly, according to that most reliable of news sources the British tabloid media (or should that be, "The Onion"?), Alaska is currently enjoying something of a heatwave with temperatures of around 16 degrees C; consequently the regions flowers are in full and abundant bloom, as these pictures show-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3722921/Freak-heatwave-transforms-Alaska.html
Beautiful though the landscapes shown are, as the article explains, all is not well in Alaska's meadows, since higher temperatures are believed to be causing the retreat of the state's glaciers. Glaciers in Montana, too are retreating, according to this article- http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/travel/glacier-national-park-montana-fading-glaciers.html?ref=global-home
by Stephen Nash in the travel section of The New York Times this week

Olympic National Park, Washington, (copyright free image- for details, click [here])

Finally, the last link-of-the-day today is to this article-
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/us/30dam.html?ref=science
also in the New York Times, about the removal of two dams in the Elwha River in Olympic National Park, Washington State. Hailed as "one of the most promising and pure acts of environmental restoration the region and the nation have ever seen", the project is "the largest dam removal project in American history". As the article explains, the removal of the dams will allow the river's salmon to migrate upstream to spawn- something which they have been prevented from doing for almost 100 years by the dams- and is expected to allow the migrating salmon population to increase from its current size- of around 3,000 individuals to its original size of around 392,000 fish. For the full article, click [here].

Quote of the Week- Thomas Huxley on Peace and Happiness

2011-07-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

"The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect."
-Thomas Huxley,
English Biologist,
(4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895)

Sweet Peas, Endangered Butterflies and The Emperor Water Penguin,

2011-07-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

Having posted earlier this week about Gregor Mendel and his peas, today I have a picture of another of the historic "work horses" for curious geneticists: the Sweet Pea, Lathyrus odoratus, which I am posting purely for aesthetic reasons.

The Sweet Pea, Lathyrus odoratus.

First of this week's "Pick-of-the week" science stories is "Bright and Beautiful"- an article by Jonny Beardsall in last Sunday's Telegraph on the decline of Britain's Butterflies. For some reason, the online version of this article goes by a different title from the print version, which is sitting on my desk in front of me now.
In any case, you can find "Bright and Beautiful" (aka "The CLA Game Fair: Butterflies Need your help") online here- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/8640902/The-CLA-Game-Fair-Butterflies-need-your-help.html

Elsewhere in the same issue of the Telegraph is/was an article on the perils of reintroducing locally extinct species, such as beavers, wolves and bears, to their former habitats. The paper version of this article has the title "Back from the brink and causing mayhem", you can find the online version (retitled "The extinct species back from the brink and causing mayhem") here- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8642359/The-extinct-species-back-from-the-dead-and-causing-mayhem.html

Finally, one animal that is in no danger of being introduced anywhere anytime soon is the "Emperor Water penguin" Inkayacu paracasensis: an enormous red-feathered creature that lived in Southern coastal Peru around 36million years ago. Fossils of the Eocene-period penguin species were discovered a little while back in Peru's "Reserva Nacional de Paracus" and more details- notably evidence of the shape and colour of the creature's feathers- were published in the journal "Science" last September. You can read the abstract of the original "Science" article, by Julia A. Clarke and colleagues, online [here]: an illustrated popular science account of the finding are available on The New York Times website here- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/science/01penguin.html

------------------------------------------------
Thanks to Barbara W. for the Sunday Telegraph articles.

Link of the day- Adorable Baby Slender Loris

2011-07-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

There are some adorable pictures of a baby slender loris in The Sun newspaper today- they're in an article about an eight-month old baby - a new addition to London Zoo- being taken to the vet for a check up. You can find the full article online here-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3710045/Slender-loris-takes-vet-trip-in-stride.html

Gregor Mendel, The End of the Space Shuttle and The "Google Doodles"

2011-07-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
Image-of-the-day today is the "Google Doodle" above, posted on the google homepage yesterday, in honour of the birth of Gregor Mendel, the "Father" of Genetics, who was born 189 years ago, on 20th July 1822. Posthumously famed for his ground-breaking experiments on the common pea, Pisum sativum, Mendel also conducted later experiments on bees.You can read an English translation of his famous pea paper "Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden" ("Experiments on Plant Hybridization") here - http://www.mendelweb.org/Mendel.html
the original German version is online here- http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/library/data/lit29259?

According to the archives of the "Google style logo museum", Gregor Mendel is just one of a string of scientists and scientific events to be commemorated with a "google doodle", something which, I think needs a commemoration, or at least, recognition, of its own. Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton and Nikola Tesla have all been the subject of “google doodles” but so have many more obscure scientists- the Serbian geophysicist Milutin Milankovich, for example, the Chinese Rocket scientist Qian Xuesen and the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, as well as the botanists Josif Pančić and Tomitaro Makino and the Spanish naturalist and broadcaster Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. The beautiful doodle in honour of Josif Pančić (below) references his discovery of the Serbian Spruce, Picea omorika.

Several scientific events have also been celebrated- the discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, (google doodle above) for example, Pi day and various astronomical events, such as the Perseid Meteor Shower, the anniversary of the first Moon Landing and the Hubble Telescope (below).

One subject not to have been commemorated in doodle-form is the final voyage of the Space Shuttle, which landed today for the "final" time, although it's hard to see how any diagram could surpass the picture below, taken by Bill Inglis for NASA (for image source, click [here])

There is a brief article about the end of the Space Shuttle's final voyage on the NASA website here-
the article title is "Crew Returns Home After Final Shuttle Mission".

Finally, cute story-of-the-week, meanwhile, is this article about a 12-year old African tortoise who was fitted with a wheel at Washington State University, after one of his legs had to be amputated for medical reasons. Click [here] for the full story.

--------------------------------------------------------------
You can find more details about Google doodles [here]and [here] and about Dennis Hwang (the designer of many of them) [here]

Quote of the Week- Desmond Morris on Apes & Mankind

2011-07-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

Quote of the week-

"There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. He is proud that he has the biggest brain of all the primates, but attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis, preferring to accord this honour falsely to the mighty gorilla. He is an intensely vocal, acutely exploratory, over-crowded ape and it is high time we examined his basic behaviour"

- Desmond Morris, Zoologist,
- from the Introduction to "The Naked Ape" (1967)

Links of the day- Hermit Crabs & Rainbow Toads

2011-07-10T18:30:00.001-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful
Today, I have 2 links-of-the-day for you- both from the tabloids- the first is about a hermit crab that has set-up-home in a bent piece of piping-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3687389/Home-on-the-tube-for-hermit-crab.html

and the second is about The Sambas stream toad, or Bornean rainbow toad, which has now been photographed for the first time, after not having been spotted at all since 1924-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2014829/Elusive-rainbow-toad-photographed-colour-time-century-hiding.html

Link of the day- Britain in Photographs

2011-07-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

Part urban, part rural, today's link-of-the-day is to the winning photographs from the British "Landscape Photographer of the Year" competition-

from the cliffs of Beachy Head - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/breathtaking-british-landscapes-in-photos-1308756643-slideshow/r-davies-photo.html
to Snowflowers in scotland- http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/breathtaking-british-landscapes-in-photos-1308756643-slideshow/b-clark-photo.html
, it's a timely reminder of some of the amazing sites we, in Britain have on our doorstep.

The lesser Water boatman and his amazing musical genitals...

2011-06-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Although this may sound like one of the less popular Andrew Lloyd Webber Musicals, today's link is actually about the exceptionally loud mating "call" of a pond insect. The insect- The Lesser boatman,Micronecta scholtzi, attracts females using a sound it generates by rubbing ("stridulating") its penis against its abdomen, or, as the tabloid newspaper, The Sun, puts it "Bug's musical willy breaks noise record"-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3669816/Bugs-musical-willy-breaks-noise-record.html

The original scientific article is by Paris-based researcher Jérôme Sueur and David Mackie and James F. C. Windmill of the University of Strathclyde and goes by the more sober title of
"So Small, So Loud: Extremely High Sound Pressure Level from a Pygmy Aquatic Insect (Corixidae, Micronectinae)"- you can find it in full online here-
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021089

Stridulation- "the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts" is best known in grasshopppers and crickets. However, it has been found in a variety of insect species, including weevils and scarab and tiger beetles, as well as in certain tarantulas and even snakes, for example, saw scale vipers (Echis species)

Porcupines, Fennec Foxes, Prairie Dogs and Red Squirrels

2011-06-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful: just 4 cute-animal pictures, today; this blog has been low on cuteness lately, so I want to redress the balance.

First of the four is a Mexican Hairy Dwarf Porcupine, Sphiggurus mexicanus, which is found in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and, possibly, also Belize and Nicaragua-

picture by Patrick Gijsbers (for image source and (creative commons) license details, click [here]).

You can find more details on porcupines here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcupine

Second image-of-the day is a Fennec Fox, which you can find online -here-->
http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2010/10/fennec-friday-.html

Third image of the day is of a two-week old red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) baby. Sadly, this species is very rare in Britain these days, thanks to the arrival of the larger and more aggressive grey squirrel from the Americas.

Image by JJM (no copyright- for details, click [here])

Finally, sticking with the furry-mammal theme, today's final image is of Gunnison's Prairie Dog, Cynomys gunnisoni, which, like other prairie dogs and, for that matter, marmots, chipmunks and groundhogs are part of the squirrel family (Sciuridae).

This image also has no copyright (for details, click [here])

Chilean Volcanic eruption,The Corpse Flower and Quote of the week- Frank Lloyd Wright on trees,

2011-06-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum, copyright-free image (for source and details, click [here])

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

For the past few weeks, I have been buried in mountains of floral photographs, as I sort, arrange and edit the images for two new books. The first book is “Spring Flowers and Summer Rain” and has a lot of arty botanical photography in it with a selection of vaguely philosophical quotes by various great, good (or just-famous) people. The second- “Natural Wonder” is also a photo-rich, coffee-table style book, but has more of a popular science angle to it and features a lot of animal pictures, too. There will be more details of both books on here when the publication contracts have been sorted out, but that may be a while yet. One of the harder parts of both books has been getting the captions correct. As a zoologist, I tend to forget just how fluid “species” are in the plant kingdom and how many of the common plants around us are obscure hybrids and morphs of various better known (but often visually very different- at a first glance, at least) species.

So, given this week’s botanical focus, it seems appropriate for quote-of-the week, on Weirdbeautiful to be about plants -

"The best friend on Earth of Man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the Earth"
- Frank LLoyd Wright, American Architect, 1867- 1959.

The first of this week's links is to a stunning picture roaring lions (courtesy of stumbleupon.com)-
http://tinyurl.com/444q9fw

This week's second link is to a news item (video) about the Corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum)- one of a few famously foul smelling blooms in the world. This particular flower (in the video) is in the Botany Department of the University of Washington in Seatle. The flower, which is native to Sumatra, Indonesia, supposedly smells of rotting flesh- a scent that is attractive to the flies which pollinate it in the wild. The video is online here- -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/43341732#43341732
and you can find out more about Amorphophallus titanum,[here]

Image= "Puyehue Lake and Volcano seen from the main East-West road (road 215), 8 km east of Entre Lagos township" by Clem23 (for picture creative commons license details, click [here])

Finally, one story that has been much in the news is the Eruption on the 4th June of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano complex (pictured above, before the latest eruption) in Puyehue National Park, Chile. Some of the most striking images of the eruption are online here-

http://www.emol.com/especiales/2011/fotoshd/erupcion-volcan/

The British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail ran the same story under the characteristically hysterical title "Hell on Earth: Monster Volcano can be seen from SPACE as it spits fire into the sky", however their article does have some really stunning images of the eruption, taken by the orbiting Aqua satellite -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000166/Chile-volcano-seen-SPACE-spits-sky.html

You can find more details about the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex (PCCVC) [here]and about the June 4th 2011 eruption, [here].

(Many thanks to Iva Lee for the tip off about the Corpse flower news video and to Patricia P. for the link to the emol.com volcanic eruption pictures).

E. coli, Polar Bears, Sanderlings and Kenya- Science News round-up.

2011-06-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

Female Polar Bear (photographed beside Whale Carcass at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA by Alan D. Wilson) (for image source and (creative commons) license details, click [HERE] )

Recent science news has been dominated by the E. coli outbreak in Germany and its casualties in various parts of Europe. The latest news on this, according to both Sky news and The International Herald Tribune, is that the source of the outbreak was or was associated with sprouted beans from a German organic farm-

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/05/world/europe/AP-EU-Contaminated-Vegetables-Europe.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Organic farming is widely considered more healthy than standard farming by the general public, however, it does have its own problems; so the idea that organic farming could be associated with bacterial problems is not as surprising as the Agriculture Minister seems to imply in this article. Known potential problems with organic food include a higher risk of toxic and carcinogen-producing- moulds growing on the produce than with conventionally farmed vegetables.

One of the more beautiful stories this week is the creation of an ice bear sculpture in Sydney to highlight climate change-
http://tinyurl.com/5wzlgqo

Sticking with the Polar bear theme , the first Quote-of-the-week this week is taken from the Kenya Diary the British Army Intelligence Officer, voracious Game Hunter, Ornithologist and Diarist Richard Meinertzhagen-

“I sat by the lake most of the day, watching the hippo, duck and flamingo. There are still a few northern waders about, notably greenshank, marsh sandpiper and little stint. One single sanderling attracted my attention for being so far inland. To consort with hippo in winter and polar bears in summer must be a delightful experience and yet that is what this small bird must do every year.”

-Richard Meinertzhagen, 21st Feb 1903, Lake Nakuru, Kenya.(Kenya Diary, 1902-06 (1902-1906))

Sanderling, picture by Pierre Camateros, (for image source and (creative commons) license, click [HERE] )

The Sanderling, which has been described, variously, by three biological names- Calidris alba, Crocethia alba and Erolia alba – is a small wading bird with a famously long migratory route. It is unusual because it has also been known to form polyandrous (one female and two male) pairings in the mating season, with one female pairing off with two males, instead of the more usual monogamous pairs of one male and one female.
(You can find more details about it [HERE]).

Meinertzhagen’s diaries are famously blood-soaked accountsof his army tours and hunting exploits in East Africa and reading them, as I have been doing this weekend, it is hard to find more than a few lines of wildlife description that does not end in the creature in question being shot. None-the-less, there are moments of beauty, not to mention weirdness, such as his accounts of dealings with cannibalistic tribesmen and his taking measurements of the speeds of different animals in the wild.

The second, and final quote-of-the-week, then is his comments on viewing a lunar rainbow -

“I went to the top of Silie Hill after supper. It was full moon at the time with a fairly heavy mist. I witnessed for the first time a lunar rainbow, which was very beautiful, though somewhat weird”

- Richard Meinertzhagen, 12th November 1905. Silie Hill, Nandi, Kenya, Kenya Diary, 1902-06 (1902-1906)

Image of lunar rainbow (moonbow) over Victoria Falls (image by Calvin Bradshaw – for image source and license details, click [HERE]).

Mars, Water on The Moon, Earthquakes and Zebras

2011-05-23T15:48:00.001-07:00

Mars: Picture by NASA.

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Today's scientific links are on Earthquakes and Distant planets, starting with the associated press story that "Millions of people in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are at risk from deadly tremors which can strike out of the blue in unmapped earthquake zones".

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/millions-risk-earthquakes-175919138.html

Meanwhile, one of the weirder stories in the past few weeks has been the New Scientist competition to win a part of Mars rock. The magazine wants competitors to suggest the first words that should be spoken by the first man landing on Mars: the next giant leap for mankind-
https://www.newscientist.com/marscompetition/login

Sticking with the theme of astronomy, the press association has also published a story saying that "water may be as plentiful in the moon's interior as the Earth's". This statement is based upon a study of lunar rocks that were first brought to Earth in 1972, by the last manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17. Trapped water was found in tiny volcanic glass beads within the rock samples and it has now been suggested that "there could be 100 times more water in the lunar mantle, the thick rock layer beneath the surface crust, than was previously thought". The full article is online here- http://uk.news.yahoo.com/moon-could-plenty-water-183040048.html

Grey's Zebra Stallion: image by "Rainbirder" (this image has a creative commons 2.0 license- for details, click [here])

Good news was recently announced by Edinburgh Zoo, where two Grevy's Zebras have had foals. Grevy's Zebras are endangered in the wild- their population has now fallen to between 2,000 and 2,500 animals (less than 20% of what it was 30 years ago).
http://news.uk.msn.com/environment/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=157680732

Finally, Xixiakou Wildlife Zoo in Weihai, Sahndong Province, eastern China has released a picture of a dog nursing liger cubs after they were abandonned by their mother. Ligers: the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger: are hybrid animals with interesting biology- not least, their tendency to grow much larger than either lions or tigers. You can find more on ligers [HERE]

and the zoo story (worth the detour for the picture alone)is online here-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/28TtWg/www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2011/05/24/20110524china-dog-nurses-tigers.html

Links of the day- Panda Cubs and Komodo Dragons

2011-05-22T02:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

First link of the day today is this humorous article about the joys of keeping a Komodo dragon as a pet-
http://7reasons.org/2010/09/24/7-reasons-a-komodo-dragon-is-the-ideal-pet

Weird link-of-the-day is this stunning picture of camel-thorn trees in Namibia, which, contrary to appearances, is a photograph, not a painting-
http://www.juxtapoz.com/Current/this-is-a-photograph-not-a-painting

The other links-of-the day are to baby giant panda pictures for no reason other than whim- that and that baby pandas have been in the news recently-

for Baby Panda Picture 1, Click-[HERE]

for Baby Panda Picture 2, Click- [HERE]

for Baby Panda Picture 3, Click- [HERE]

finally, Baby Panda Picture 4 is of a 30-minute old cub from the Wolong Breeding centre- click [HERE]

Quote of the Day: Conservation- the Dalai Lama

2011-05-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Pansies- Viola sp.

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Quote-of-the-day today is on the theme of conservation-

"Ultimately, the decision to save the environment must come from the human heart. The key point is a call for a genuine sense of universal responsibility that is based on love, compassion and clear awareness"

- The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (in "Humanity and Ecology").

The first Link-of-the-day today is to this graphic on the "Information is Beautiful" science-in-society website. The graphic- "Mountains out of molehills" shows how the relative coverage of scientific events, disease outbreaks etc. is not very closely correlated to the severity of the incident- http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/mountains-out-of-molehills/

Today's second, vaguely scientific link is this piece in The Guardian giving advice on spotting the space ship "Endeavour" in the skies over Britain in late May-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/18/spacewatch-endeavour-shuttle

Echidna

2011-05-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful
Link of the day today is an article about an echidna being treated at Taronga Zoo (Sydney) for injuries he sustained when hit by a car-

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cec-the-echidna-bubbles-over/2006/07/25/1153746845587.html

Quote of the Day: Snails

2011-05-09T20:33:00.000-07:00

"One [practitioner of science] is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snail's eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ."
- Loren Eiseley (3rd September 1907– 9th July 1977),
American Anthropologist and Science Writer.

Women in science

2011-05-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful!

Today's links are about women in science.
The first is to the web comic xkcd, which partly inspired the other two links-
http://xkcd.com/896/
(thanks to Joe W. for that link)

The second is to the wikipedia entries for Lise Mietner and
Emmy Noether

It is said that most mathematicians make all their truly important contributions prior to the age of around thirty. Emmy Noether is a nice example of a mathematician who bucks this trend. The German mathematician and theoretical physicist Hermann Weyl described Noether's life's work as occurring in three "epochs"- the last of which, ran from 1927, when she was 45, until her death (from complications of surgery)in 1935.

The Flowers of the Inca Trail

2011-05-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful!

Today’s installment of weirdbeauty is a guest post on the wild-flowers of the Inca trail, it was co-written and entirely illustrated by Lazáro Pina. All of these pictures were taken at high altitudes along the Inca trail:

“The Inca trail runs from Cusco city, in Peru to Machu Picchu, through the Andes Cordillera and takes four days to walk. I went there in January (this year).There were not very many flowers along the trail, but, because I was alone almost all the time, I was able to spend my time peacefully observing all the natural details and photographing those I saw. I found all of these flowers in separate places- these pictures were taken on different days and on different parts of the trail.

I believe that the plant above is a kind of lupin (there are between 200 and 600 species of lupin), possibly and Andean lupin. The bean of the Andean Lupin (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_Lupin) , Lupinus mutabilis (locally known as “tarwi”, amongst other names) were actually used as a food across the Incan Empire.

The trail is tiring to walk, because the air is thin- the Inca trail ranges in altitude from around 2800m above sea level, to 4215m at its highest point. Actually, at some points along the trail, local people have set up markets with stalls selling tea made from Coca leaves: the same plant that is used to make cocaine. People drink the tea because it helps with altitude sickness, although I am told that it has a very bitter, unpleasant and leafy flavour.

The plants and flowers on the Inca trail are very unlike those I am used to in Brazil; here the plants are very different as the weather is so much hotter and we don't have that high altitude. In fact, I could never have imagined a flower with just one petal, like the one above. The weather along the Inca trail was very cold and wet, at least, it was when I was there and, at night, it was below freezing.

The area around (lake) Laguna Cochapata is known as deer habitat, but I didn't personally see any animals at all on the trail, beside birds (there were a lot of birds).
These two pictures below were both taken in an Inca ruin- there were a lot of flowers here-in this one place, that had grown up between the rocks on the wall. The others flowers were rare, I just saw them once or twice during the entire trek. The flowers on the Inca trail are sometimes weird and sometime beautiful, but the scenery and views are all just amazing. For example, on the last day, I saw the sunrise at Machu Picchu, which was really outstanding.”

Guest post by Lazáro Pina- Images by Lazáro Pina, Text L. Pina & V. Neblik

Quote of the Week - Albert Abraham Michelson on the future of physics

2011-04-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

Hindsight is a wonderful thing-
have a look at this quote by the physicist and Nobel laureate Albert Abraham Michelson (born 19th Dec, 1852)-

“The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”

- he made this comment in 1903, two years before Albert Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity....

Hedgehogs

2011-04-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

By the time you read this post, I hope to be half way up a Swiss Alp, taking pictures of pretty much anything weird or beautiful, floral or fauna-l. Pictures will be posted on here when I get back. In the meantime, there's just one link I want to post today; to an old newspaper story (new to weirdbeautiful but published in 2008); mainly the link is because of the baby hedgehog picture at the top of the article-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1935609/Hedgehogs-arrive-early-with-warm-weather.html

Jellyfish pictures and why we don't believe science

2011-04-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

"Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow."
- Aesop

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

First link today is this set of jellyfish pictures that are both weird and beautiful at once-

http://www.designswan.com/archives/beautiful-monsters-from-the-white-sea-by-alexander-semenov.html

The second link is to an article called "The Science of Why we Don't Believe Science"- part psychology, part philosophy-of-science, it's an interesting read-
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

Nuthatches, Sniffer-Wasps and Antibiotics

2011-04-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

(c) Iva Lee, 2011 | All rights reserved

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Beautiful image of the day is this picture of a Brown-headed Nuthatch, Sitta pusilla, by the South Carolina photographer Iva Lee . The Brown-headed Nuthatch is a small songbird native to pine forests of the Southeastern USA- it is one of the smaller nuthatch species, measuring around 9cm (3.5 inches); the Eurasian Nuthatch, Sitta europaea, for example- the creature that is so loved by British twitchers- is a good 5cm (2 inches) larger.

Many thanks to Iva Lee for letting us this image on weirdbeautiful.

First weird link-of-the-day today is this article on sciencedaily.com on research by Dr Martin Kaltenpoth showing that wasps cultivate antibiotic-producing bacteria in special glands beside their antennae:-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110411194823.htm

Sticking with the theme of wasps, today's second link is weirder still: an article claiming that because of their impressive sense of smell, wasps can be trained to sniff out explosives, toxic chemicals and food/crop mould...-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0702-wasps_mans_new_best_friend.htm

2011-03-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Little Green Bee-eaters (Merops orientalis) sandbathing, Gujarat Province, India. Picture by J. M. Garg. This image has a creative commons attribution 3.0 licence.

The Week, The Liben Lark and Using Snail Slime to Treat Wrinkles

2011-03-28T10:33:00.001-07:00

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Quote of the week this week is from "The Week" the news-recapping magazine-

"Until last week, I'd never heard of the Liben lark, a diminutive songbird living in a remote corner of Southern Ethiopea, but its fate, according to the naturalist Michael McCarthy may mark "a milestone in our destruction of the planet". For there are now fewer than 100 Liben larks left and it's very likely that within five years, there'll be none....the Liben lark is set to become the first bird from Africa to go extinct in recorded history. McCarthy guesses that some 200 species of birds have disappeared over the last 500 years, from the dodo to the great auk. But mainland Africa is so vast and robust that "at least in ornithological terms, it has been able to soak up the punishment [that] we humans have increasingly inflicted on its ecosystems."....A week ago, the Ethiopean ambassador to London (sic) was presented with a cheque for £242,000 raised by last year's British Birdwatching Fair in Rutland, to fund general conservation work on the Liben plain...."
-Jolyon Connell published in The Week, 19th March 2011)

The Liben lark is also known as the Sidamo Lark, Heteromirafra sidamoensis. You can find out more about it [HERE].

Today's other link is both weird and- potentially beautiful- the use of Snail slime
as an anti-wrinkle cream.... Now admittedly, this was published in a tabloid newspaper, so I make no guarantees about its accuracy or truthfulness, but it is an interesting story-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3493885/Snail-slime-cream-to-be-showcased-in-Milan.html

Science Communication, CNN and the Fukushima power plant incident

2011-03-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Today's first link is about the nuclear incident in Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. The reason I am posting this particular news piece is that it is a beautiful example of really good science communication. In Britain, the tv news has been attacked/lampooned several recently for its over-simplification of technical stories and for patronising its viewers; this applies to economic and political stories but especially to science stories. This is CNN's take on the Fukishima incident- the news reader paraphrases the expert's oppinions so perfectly it is -well- just a beautiful example of really good science communication-
http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2011/03/11/exp.arena.nuclear.japan.quake.cnn.html

Hydrogen explosion, Fukushima Daiichi Power plant, Japan, picture from Ctv, Winnipeg (licence details [here])

You can find wikipedia's coverage of the Fukushima incidents here-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

For comparison it is interesting to look at the corresponding articles on the Three Mile Island Accident-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

the Windscale Fire*-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

and the more severe Chernobyl accident-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Chernobyl nuclear reactor, as seen from Pripyat, public domain image by Jason Minshull

*I should probably mention that there are one or two minor problems with the Wikipedia Windscale fire article- it states that "the fire has been described as the worst reactor accident until Three Mile Island in 1979. Epidemiological estimates put the number of additional cancers caused by the Three Mile Island accident at not more than one; only Chernobyl produced immediate casualties"- this and especially its implication that Windscale did not result in additional cancer cases is arguable. Earlier in the same article, the following sentence appears "It had previously been estimated that the incident caused 200 additional cancer cases, although this figure has recently been revised upwards to 240.". In other words, Windscale did lead to an increase in cancer incidence, Three Mile Island did not. This contradicts the idea that Windscale was less severe than Three Mile Island.

In 2001, The Scientific Illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Hornegger published a really great book looking at the effects of radiation on insect populations in various areas. It is called "Heteroptera: the beautiful and the Other, or Images of a Mutating World"
and its central argument is that even supposedly sub-clinical/ non-significant levels of radioactivity do produce noticeable increases in mutations in living creatures. The book is not scientifically rigourous- in its current state, it would certainly not stand up to scientific peer review, but that is not really its objective. As it stands, there is not enough evidence for the book's central idea, but it does raise some very interesting questions. Hesse-Honegger may well be right - I would be very interested indeed to see it thoroughly investigated. The book has other attributes, however, and not just the stunning illustrations it contains; the accounts of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident it relates are particularly interesting. Local people described feeling and intense and sudden burning sensation on their skin, like sunburn, and tasting a metallic taste in their mouths as the radiation reached them. This strange taste associated with radioactive elements is not unusual- the chemist Louis Slotin described experiencing a bitter taste in his mouth (and had a strong burning feeling in his left hand), during the nuclear accident that later killed him.

I confess to having a (possibly macabre) fascination with nuclear physics, nuclear accidents and radiation: the science behind it is really interesting, complex and subtle. Partly for this reason, it took a while before the events at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were fully understood. In due course, we -the world public- will, no doubt, discover exactly what is occuring at this very moment in the Fukushima nuclear power plant. For the sake of Japan's people and ecosystems, we can only hope that the plant's current problems are safely resolved.

Romulus Whitaker

2011-03-13T17:50:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I had the pleaure of interviewing (e-interviewing in this case) the Indian conservationalist and herpteologist Romulus Whitaker. Whenever I interview people, I take some time to read about their career and track down at least the abstracts, and often the full texts of their publications. In this case, I came across this article from 1994 about Romulus Whitaker by his (then) wife Zai Whitaker-
"I married a croc man"

It's a nice piece of science writing and an insight into the enviably eccentric life that a career in biology can bring.

Today, Rom is perhaps best known for his work with the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station: a fascinating-sounding place that combines research, conservation and public educational roles.

The interview will appear in the next issue of "Practical Reptile Keeping" magazine (pub: Kelsey).

Banana Slugs, Freaky Phenomena and Fake-Tongue Lice

2011-03-02T06:22:00.000-08:00

Good morning and Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Things have been a little quiet on this blog for the past couple of weeks because I have been busy writing a new book and finishing off a coffee-table book of botanical photographs. The new book- "Demons and Jellyfish" is an anecdotal popular science book about the 10 years I spent studying animals across 19 countries and 4 continents. It is- loosely- written in the style of Dan Walsh/Gervasse Phinn/ David Feinberg/ David Sedaris et al. The photobook is a short coffee-table book called "Where Flowers Bloom". It is a mixture of calming pictures and loosely philosophical quotes by famous people- mostly about relaxation, flowers, happiness and life in general. I will post more information about both books on this blog when they are finished/ published, respectively*.

One of the creatures that comes up, in the "Demons and Jellyfish" book, in the chapter on California, is the Banana slug, Ariolimax spp. -the lurid yellow mollusc in the picture above. This strange beast is actually the mascot of the University of California in Santa Cruz. This morning, I was given a copy of "Freaky Phenomena" by Joel Levy; it is probably aimed at older children and teenagers, but it is a fairly entertaining read; one of the book's claims is that the slime of the banana slug tastes of bananas. I have no idea if this is true or not. It seems more likely that the creature's name comes from its colouration, but, then again, the taste theory, sounds like the kind of thing that drunk students would have investigated.... In any case, we do know that the slime contains pheremones that attract other slugs for mating purposes. There's more on the banana slug [here]

One of the other amusing (or disturbing, at any rate) entries in the "Freaky Phenomena " book is this section on the fake tongue louse, Cymothoa exigua:

"[The] fake tongue louse....is a parasite that lives in the rose snapper fish. It gets into its host's mouth, eats away the tongue and then sits in its place, pretending to be the fish's own tongue and feeding on particles of food the fish catches."

There was an image of a fake tongue louse by Matthew R. Gilligan here -this image was reproduced from WIKIPEDIA, WHERE IT WAS LISTED AS A PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE. Unbeknown to me, this image was incorrectly listed and has now (late September 2011) been flagged on wikipedia as not public domain. Rather than notifying me of this fact, somebody has complained about this image being posted here. You might have thought that the complainant would have had the common good manners of assuming good faith on my part and/or informing me of the wikipedia mistake, before a) before casting aspersions in my direction and b) rushing to report this blog to the DCMA. You might assume that, but, unfortunately, you would be giving him/her too much credit, whoever he/she is. I enjoy giving good free publicity to people doing nice work and to companies selling that work, so it is always a shame when that is snubbed.

Wikipedia offers some more information on the fake tongue louse-

"This parasite enters through the gills, and then attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper's (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue. It extracts blood through the claws on its front, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish's tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue. It appears that the parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish. Once C. exigua replaces the tongue, some feed on the host's blood and many others feed on fish mucus. This is the only known case of a parasite functionally replacing a host organ." (-full article [here])

I'd like to link to the original scientific paper that first described this behaviour, but, unfortunately, it is held by JStore, who sell the rights to view the article. The reference is "Tongue Replacement in a Marine Fish (Lutjanus guttatus) by a Parasitic Isopod" by Richard C. Brusca and Matthew R. Gilligan and it was published in "Copeia" Vol. 1983, No. 3 (Aug. 16, 1983), pp. 813-816

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*If you want advance notification, you can join the book notification mailing list by sending an e mail to mail@victorianeblik.com- with the title of the book you want information on in the subject line. Your e mail will not be passed on or sold to third parties or otherwise abused: we hate spam as much as you do.

Pandas, Teeth and Bloody Fungi

2011-02-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

Hi, Welcome (back) to weirdbeautiful. The image above is a panda cub in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, photographed by Sheila Lau. It fits with today's beautiful link of the day today is this picture of panda-handlers in Sichuan province, South West China dressed in Panda-suits as the prepare a 6-month-old-cub for release into a more naturalistic environment than the one he has previously inhabited.
-http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3423228/Researchers-dress-as-panda-parents-to-help-cub-get-used-to-its-own-species.html
The costumes are to prevent imprinting. The Sun posted a similar article back in December about China's Hetaoping Research and Conservation Centre here.

Weird link-of-the-day, is this photoessay on cracked.com with the promising title "10 Creepy plants that shouldn't exist". Perhaps the most disturbing of the list (and there is quite some competition for this accolade), is the "Bleeding Tooth Fungus", Hydnellum peckii- the life-form (for want of a better description)shown in the picture above. Ok, so fungi are not plants- they are actually more closely related to animals- but the article deserves a little room for poetic (scientific?) license, as it is so satisfyingly weird. The Bleeding Tooth Fungus is found on the floor of conifer forests; only the young "fruiting bodies" (toadstools) produce the bright red pigment- older fruiting bodies are a duller brown colour and incapable of oozing this characteristic red chemical.

One of the other plants in the "10 creepy plants..." list is the Chinese "Bat Plant", Tacca charentieri, which is a relative of the yam (more details [here]). Actually, I have seeds for both the black and the white-flowered varieties of the Chinese Bat plant- they are two of a selection of oddities obtained from jungleseeds.com. No doubt there are other suppliers.

The bleeding tooth fungus picture above is a wikipedia image attributed to B.Baldassari and to "Bernypisa" (image licence details [here]).
Thanks to Nurit for the "10 creepy plants..." link.

Island of Pigs

2011-02-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Cute link of the day today is to this wonderfully illustrated (tabloid) article about a group of pigs that have been left to their own devices on an island-Big Major Cay - in the Bahamas for several generations-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3368057/Lucky-swines-have-own-island.html

Image of the day- Capybara

2011-02-11T00:03:00.000-08:00

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Image of the day today is a Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) by Vigilance Prime. (this image has a GNU creative commons license -details [here])

The world's largest rodent, the Capybara is a herbivorous South American creature that can grow to 1.3 metres(over 4 feet) in length, and weigh up to 65 kg (just over 10 Stone).

Dogs detecting Bowel Cancer

2011-02-09T20:31:00.001-08:00

Image: "Beano" by V. Neblik, 2008. This image has a creative commons attribution licence 2.0

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
Probably just about anyone who has ever had a pet dog will tell you what amazing creatures they are. Today's first link is about the weird and amazing ability of dogs- specifically labrador retreivers - to detect signs of early bowel cancer in humans. In tests conducted by Dr Hideto Sonoda, from Kyushu University, specially trained dogs detected 37 out of 38 cases of early bowel cancer. Standard medical tests for early stage bowel cancer rely upon finding traces of blood in stool samples and only detect around 1 in 10 cases.
The full story is here-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12322790
The article also mentions that the ability of dogs to detect the scent at various concentrations varies not only between dogs but also within the same dog on different days.

Today's second link is to this article on the perils of sleep deprivation-
http://uk.health.lifestyle.yahoo.net/Lack-of-sleep-a-ticking-time-bomb-for-health.htm

Thanks to Lizzie B. for the bowel-cancer link.

Images of the Day- a bird in the hand....

2011-02-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

Hi, Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
Today I have just 3 images for you- all courtessy of damnhot.net. These are just a few of the animal pictures from a series called "64 images to make you smile". The rest of the pictures are on a huge range of subject- not jus wildlife, but they include some nice shots of snails and lions and camels and things. You can find the full series [here]

Thanks to damnhot.net

Link of the day- The Brain and Meditation

2011-01-29T20:44:00.000-08:00

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Link-of-the-day today is this article claiming that regular meditation alters the structure of the brain-
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/

Genius, Quotes and... Prawns

2011-01-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

.

The shrimp Heterocarpus ensifer.

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. At the moment, there is no shortage of scientific breakthroughs in the news. Perhaps one of the most exciting is this story about the potential use of chitosan: a substance found in the shells of prawns and crabs: to rebuild damaged human nerves and ultimately, it is hoped, offer a cure for certain paralyzed patients-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616164002.htm

The structure of Chitosan

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"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age."
- Aldous Huxley

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One of my long-term preoccupations is with the human mind: a truly weird and beautiful thing. Consequently, I was very interested to read this article on genius, which was recently brought to my attention-

http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html

Essentially, it highlights the extreme separation of people of extremely high intelligence from the general population. IQ tests are-indisputably-unreliable and often flawed in many regards, but that clearly does not mean that they have no use. I am not sure that I fully endorse the article and its conclusions, but they are certainly thought-provoking.

In her excellent biography of Rosalin Franklin,
"Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA",
the science writer Brenda Maddox talks about the "otherness" of working in research science- the sense of separateness from society that can arise when one's work is beyond the ken of "ordinary" people and the loneliness of a life where one toils on abstract problems that perhaps -what?- 80%? 90% ? 95%? of the population cannot really grasp in outline, let alone in detail. She mentions it in the context of Franklin's struggles in her mid career and her sense of isolation. It seems to me that this overlaps with a lot of the ideas in the "outsiders" article.

The article also explains the reason that childhood prodigies are often quoted as having apparently astronomical IQ scores that later "regress towards the mean" as they age. Essentially, this is an inherent problem with the measurement of childhood intelligence and not any indication of brain decline.

Many thanks to Nurit for the genius article link.

Image of the day- Panda

2011-01-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

Giant panda cub - Image by Colegota (this picture has a creative commons 2.5 licence- for details, click [here])

There are a lot more pictures of panda cubs and information about them here-
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/panda_nursery_china.htm

Quote of the Week- Albert Einstein on the key to his thoughts

2011-01-20T19:43:00.000-08:00

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”

-Albert Einstein

Key picture by Evan Amos.

Weird-creature Ping-pong tree sponge.

2011-01-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

Weird creature of the day is the so-called "ping-pong tree sponge":
Chlondrocladia lampadiglobus, which was featured in the November/December Issue of American Scientist, but, according to wikipedia, discovered back in 2006, by Jean Vacelet. This bizarre creature is carnivorous, as are all the sponges in the genus Chlondrocladia, which is a very unusual adaptation in sponges, which are generally filter feeders. In a recent paper, Prof. Vacelet and colleague Michelle Kelly, suggested that this carnivorous feeding habit had evolved in this group of deep sea sponges in response to the "difficult conditions of [their] deep sea environment".

http://madethere.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/mbari_chondrocladia_72.jpg

The American Scientist article was called "An Empire Lacking Food" ( volume 98 number 6, pages 470-477). There is a blog-post with a photo of the pingpong tree sponge on the American Scientist website [here], although there is an error in the post (bioluminescence is very common in sea creatures, especially, deep sea ones, but it is not really "the norm", as the article says).

Link of the day- Baby Bats rescued from Australian floods

2011-01-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

Picture by Luke Marsden/Newspix / Rex Features. For full article and more pictures, see The Sun newspaper.

If you thought Bats weren't cute, think again-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/Green/3337211/Baby-bats-are-Australian-flood-orphans.html

Science Update- Unexplained mass wildlife deaths

2011-01-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

Red-winged Black bird,image by Alan D. Wilson of naturespicsonline.com. (This image has a creative commons 2.5 licence- for details, click [here])

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful!

Today's links are definitely weird, rather than beautiful.

In recent days there have been 3 separate incidents of mass wildlife deaths that are as yet not fully explained.

The first was [this story] about the mysterious death of more than 1000 Red-winged blackbirds(Agelaius phoeniceus) on New Year's Eve in Beebe, Arkansas. The birds apparently fell, dead, from the sky over the small town in White County.

You can find more details online here-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110102/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_dead_birds_arkansas

and here-

http://www.examiner.com/political-spin-in-national/dead-birds-beebe-arkansas-break-record-for-single-kill

The second was a similar, also unexplained, instance of around 500 birds- mostly blackbirds and other small to medium sized birds- falling from the sky in Louisiana, around 30 miles from Baton Rouge and around 300 miles from Beebe, Arkinsas.
The full story is online here-
http://abcnews.go.com/US/bird-deaths-louisiana-911-calls-released-arkansas-blackbird/story?id=12544093

The third was the finding of two million (mostly juvenile) dead fish off the coast of Maryland. The most likely explanation for this event is currently considered to be that the fish were killed by "heat shock" caused by the rapid and large temperature changes over the past few weeks. For more details, see-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20110105/twl-two-million-fish-found-dead-in-maryl-3fd0ae9.html

Antshrikes, Seals and African Solar Panels

2011-01-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

Barred Antshrike, Thamnophilus doliatus by Brazilian photographer Dario Sanches. This picture has a creative commons attribution licence - you can find details of that [here].

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful and Happy New Year!

First beautiful item of the day today is the wonderful bird above- the Barred Antshrike, which is a central and South American species, found from Mexico, right down to Northern Argentina. The bird shown above is a male: the females are redder in colour, like this-

This picture is also by Mr Dario Sanches. You can find details of the image licence (also Creative commons 2.0) [here].

The barred antshrike is an insectivorous creature, eating ants and other insects and arachnids, plus occasional lizards and/or berries- you can find out more about it [here]

Sticking with the "beautiful" theme, second link of the day today is this seal photograph c/o stumbleupon.com-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1o6F6m/www.clarin.com/diario/2006/10/19/um/fotos/morsa3.jpg

Finally, today's third picture link I have for you is... not exactly beautiful, but certainly pretty amazing- baby crocodiles from babyanimalz.com-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1XA6MK/www.babyanimalz.com/

There has been no shortage of scientific stories in the media, either, lately.
The International Herald Tribune published this story on the International Marine Census earlier today-
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/science/04scibks.html?_r=1&ref=science

Essentially, it talks about the publication last year of a census of known marine life- including some of the odder beings on this planet. Several of the pictures have been published before, but if you haven't seen them, they are worth a look.

Meanwhile, this article, by Eleanor Rosenthal (also in the International Herald Tribune)looks at the growth of renewable energy in Africa- notably the use of solar panels in Kenya; undoubtedly a very positive application of science.

A Cure for AIDS?

2010-12-21T21:29:00.000-08:00

http://scienceray.com/biology/a-cure-for-aids/

Turkeys, Silver Firs and Cultivating Christmas Trees

2010-12-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

Poinsettia leaves changing colour to their characteristic Winter-red (image by V. Neblik)

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful

In honour of the rapid approach of Christmas,today's link is to one of the American wildlife site - eNature 's Field guides- to the Wild turkey- an indisputably weird creature-
http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=BD0171

The second link is to Wikipedia's entry on Chritsmas Tree Cultivation.... I am beginning to wonder if there are, in fact, any topics for which there is not a wikipedia entry.

Today's final link is to this factsheet from Borealforest.org on the "original Christmas tree" - the Silver fir, Abies alba.

Links of the week- The Beauty of Earth from Satelites and the wonders of the Brain

2010-12-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

First link of the day today is to this review of the new book "Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century" by Carl Edward Schoonover. As the book and reveiwer (Ian Sample of The Observer) explain, trying to depict the amazing and strange world of the human mind has been the preoccupation of some of the greatest human minds for centuries. In recent years, new insights from PET and MRI scanning technologies have brought us insights that our forebears could only envy. The future should be very interesting indeed....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/28/human-brain-pictures-neural-connections

Second link-of-the-day is from the Observer's weekday sister paper, The Guardian- this stunning set of satelite images of the Earth, appropriately entitled "Our Technicolour dream world"-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gallery/2010/nov/21/landsat-satellite-images

2010-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

"In riding a horse we borrow freedom".
-Helen Thomson

Picture V. Neblik, 2010.

Science News- Links of the week- Pancreatic cancer

2010-12-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

Nelfinavir molecule (no copyright)

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today's links are both on the subject of Pancreatic cancer. Long-feared as one of the most difficult cancers to treat, Pancreatic cancer has been the subject of two interesting articles in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper this year- the first of these, published back in February is this article by Richard Alleyne, reporting a study showing a connection between consumption of sugary soft-drinks (but not fruit juice) and increased incidence of pancreatic cancer. You can read the full newspaper article here- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7168769/Soft-drink-consumption-may-increase-risk-of-pancreatic-cancer.html

The study described in the article was by Noel T. Mueller and collegaues - you can find an abstract of it [here]- http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/19/2/447.abstract

Last Sunday, however, The Telegraph published the much gladder tidings that the anti-HIV drug Nelfinavir is showing remarkable and unexpected promise as a treatment for Pancreatic cancer. There is a blog post on that subject [here]-http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/118819.php

you can find the full telegraph article online [HERE] - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/telegraphchristmasappeal/8164996/Telegraph-Christmas-Appeal-Last-year-I-was-dying-of-cancer.-Now-I-might-be-cured.html

Nelfinavir (also known as "Viracept") is a protease inhibitor - as its name suggests, it works against the HIV virus by preventing the virus's protease enyme from functioning. In cancer it seems to interfere with communication (cell signalling) processes of cancerous pancreatic
cells and to render them more vulnerable to being killed by radiotherapy.

Cheering up Birds- Hornbills

2010-12-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

Unknown Hornbill Species (Labelled as a West African species), artist unknown- possibly E. F Skinner, ca. 1910. Source: Harmsworth Natural History Volume 2, 1910 (further details on request).

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Stumbleupon.com recently sent me this link to a gallery of beautiful bird pictures, from Great Egrets and Eagles to Kingfishers and Puffins. http://www.webdesigncore.com/2010/11/24/40-breathtaking-examples-of-bird-photography/

Science update- Florida keys, The Lionfish derby and the death of Frank Fenner

2010-11-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Antennata Lionfish, picture taken in Zoo Schönbrunn, Vienna, Austria by Christian Mehlfuhrer (this image has a creative commons 2.5. licence- details [here])

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

First link of the day today is to this article on the Lion fish (also known as the Scorpion fish): a stunningly beautiful fish that has been popular in the pet trade for some time. The creature is native to the Indo pacific region but, after first being discovered in the Florida Keys area in 2009, has become a worryingly succesful invasive species there. In fact, Lionfish have now become such a major problem in the Caribbean and off the Florida keys, that an annual "lionfish derby" has been established to reduce their numbers - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/science/23lionfish.html?_r=1&ref=science

There is more information on Lionfish on wikipedia [here].

On a sadder note,Frank Fenner, who was perhaps best known for his work for the World Health Organisation's small pox eradication programme died this week. You can read his obituary in the New York Times [here], including his depressing prediction that mankind will become extinct- possibly within a century due to our over-exploitation of the environment.

Science News- links of the week- Parthenogenesis in Boa constrictors and Why stress leads to sickness

2010-11-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

Boa constrictor- picture by Leo Fleck (this image has a creative commons 2.5 licence- details [here])

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Things have been a little quiet on this blog of late, for the simple reason that I have been juggling writing articles with conducting magazine interviews, scripting and producing two short films and preparing for some public talks (watch this space...). However, scientific progress continues relentlessly, so there have been quite a few interesting science stories in the news lately.

The biggest biological news of the last few weeks has been the discovery of parthenogenesis in Boa constrictors by Dr Warren Booth of the University of North Carolina. You can find the original press release of that story [here]and "Discover" Magazine's take on the news [here]

There will also be an exclusive interview with Dr Booth in the next issue of Practical Reptile Keeping Magazine.

If you have ever wondered why, when you are stressed, you are much more vulnerable to diseases, the emerging field of "Microbial Endocrinology" sets out to find the answers. In 1992, American endocrinologist Mark Lyte, of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, proposed that the situation was more complicated than just human stress hormones (cortisone, adrenaline etc) supressing the imune system, but rather that harmful bacteria are triggered to attack the body when these stress hormones are abundant. Prof Lyte and Dr Primrose Freestone of Leicester University, UK have now co-edited the first major book in the field; you can find more details here-

http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2010-archive/november/dawn-of-a-new-scientific-discipline-microbial-endocrinology

Quote of the week- Tatanga Mani

2010-11-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

"I have learned a lot from trees; Sometimes about the weather, Sometimes about animals, Sometimes about the Great Spirits"
- Tatanga Mani (Walking Buffalo)
(1871-1967)

Baby Dolphins and Electrons

2010-11-14T03:17:00.000-08:00

"Dusky Dolphin"- Image by Allen McC (this image has a creative commons 2.5. licence- details [here] )

Good morning.
Welcome to Weirdbeautiful
Weird link of the day is this science blog post on electrons-
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/11/why_does_matter_take_up_space.php

and Beautiful link is this picture of a recovering baby dolphin (rescued from fisherman's nets)-
http://news.uk.msn.com/photos/week-in-pictures/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=155223214&page=2

2010-11-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows all by itself"
- Zen Proverb.

Link of the day- lion cubs swimming and white bats

2010-11-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

There are 3 links of the day today the first-
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2010/10/lion-cubs-go-for-their-first-swim-at-national-zoo.html

is a wonderful article from the LA times with pictures and videos of lion cubs at The National Zoo in Washington going for their first swim.

The second, is a set of pictures of Honduran white bats from the blog "The Featured Creature"-
http://www.thefeaturedcreature.com/2010/10/honduran-white-bats-are-fluffy.html

The final link has more to do with science than wildlife- a stunning gallery of pictures from the Mir space station-
http://news.uk.msn.com/in-depth/space/special-photo-galleries.aspx?cp-documentid=155143006

Drugs, Pharmaceutical Companies, Marketing and Quote of the Week (James le Fanu on Zantac)

2010-11-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Psychiatrists talk about the phenomenon of “perception filter”- no sooner has your attention been drawn to a particular fact or word, than you become aware of this item/subject everywhere. No sooner had I got [this short article] published on the role of marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, than the subject seemed to be everywhere I looked.

The idea that drugs may be promoted inappropriately is not a new subject -one of the allegations that has dogged the “antidepressant industry”, doctors and patients alike has long been that antidepressants are being prescribed inappropriately (over-prescribed). In the case of antidepressants, this “debate” seems to date pretty much from the advent of SSRIs, such as Prozac, over twenty years ago. None the less, the role of drug-company-marketing on prescription and disease diagnosis rates is probably being discussed a little more in the media of late. The context to this may or may not be the release of the book “Sex Lies and Pharmaceuticals” by Ray Moynihan last month. In any case, quote of the week this week is one comment on the topic that has slipped through my current “drug-marketing” perception filter-

“Manhattan-based advertising executive Vince Parry describes how childhood Christmases were always marred by an uncle’s withering pessimism about the whole business.... Then, in the Eighties, psychiatrists described the now well known Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as a depressive illness associated with shorter winter days and treatable with antidepressants or light exposure. “My uncle was thus transformed from a curmudgeon into a sympathetic victim by the coining of a simple phrase”....Parry has since become one of the most influential people in contemporary medicine by working closely with the pharmaceutical industry to persuade doctors that common symptoms are in fact due to some potentially serious but under-recognised condition – hence treatment with some costly drug...”

- Dr James le Fanu writing in The Sunday Telegraph 31st Oct 2010, page L21 (“Life” section).

le Fanu concludes his piece by relating the phenomenon of “blockbuster” drugs (those which have sales exceeding $1 billion per year), noting that the first of these- Zantac- was for indigestion. This may be a little unexpected, not least since treating indigestion is certainly not one of the most obvious ways to make a fortune, but there are a further 27 drugs with similar (or greater) sales. Some of these treat serious and unmistakable conditions, such as Enoxaparin for thrombosis, Quetiapine for schizophrenia, Metoprolol for high blood pressure and Budesonide for asthma, but the list includes other anti-indigestion medicines, such as Omeprazole (aka "Losec" or "Prilosec") and Esomeprazole.

Bookshelf Number 2- other people's bookshelves...

2010-10-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

...
"Bookshelf" is going to be an occasional feature on this blog, posted at irregular intervals. The standard "bookshelf" format will be like that for "Bookshelf Number 1".
This week, however, I want to just post a link to the 15th July (2010) edition of The Guardian newspaper's "Science Book Club" by Tim Radford, which talks about E. O. Wilson and his book "Naturalist". The link is -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/15/zoology-biology

Link of the week- Drugs company ethics

2010-10-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today's link is to an opinion piece on the ethics of drugs companies-specifically with regard to promoting pharmacological treatments for female sexual dysfunction (which generally responds very poorly to drug treatment)-

http://healthmad.com/mens-health/drugs-companies-and-the-battle-between-truth-and-marketing/

Quote of the week- Nathaniel Hawthorne- Happiness is a butterfly

2010-10-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly may alight upon you"
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Writer, 1804-1864)

The picture above is from my new video "The Flowers at Our Feet", which you can see on youtube [HERE]. I believe that the butterfly is a pink cattle heart- Parides iphidamus, which is a Central American species. Image (c) Victoria Neblik, 2010 | All rights reserved.

Bookshelf- Number 1- "Plant Hunters" by Carolyn Fry"

2010-10-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

(Above "The Plant Hunters"- book (bottom) and protective book-sleeve (top))

When I was a child, I used to read a (now defunct) history magazine called "Discovery"; each edition covered a different historical period- the Ancient Egyptians, Heian-Period Japan, Elizabethan England, and so on...

One of the best things about the magazine was that, as well as being well written (something I appreciate a lot more these days), it contained facsimiles of a couple of historical documents in each edition. Things like the confession of Guy Faulkes and various international treaties or declarations of war. At the time (late 80s-1990) this was really very innovative and impressive.

Last month, I was given a copy of "The Plant Hunters" (subtitled "The adventures of the world's greatest botanical explorers") by Carolyn Fry, which I am periodically dipping into. It is a really wonderful book and completely stuffed with "more than 100 images from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens" at Kew (the book was produced to tie-in withthe 250th Anniversary of Kew gardens in 2009). In other words, interleaved in the book are numerous envelopes containing high quality reproductions of historic botanical documents- notes by Carl von Linne and Joseph Hooker, Chinese paintings showing preparation of tea from Camellia sinensis leaves, letters relating to the early trade in natural rubber/latex and much else besides.

(Facsimiles of Notes by Carl Linneaus in "The Plant Hunters")

The author- Carolyn Fry- was also responsible for "The World of Kew" (the book produced to accompany the T.V. series "A Year at Kew", so it not at all surprising that "The Plant Hunters" is similarly well written and readable. Tackled in order and in sequence, the pages chart the history of botany and the discovery and exploitation of plants useful to mankind, but the book also works well as a coffee table-book or for casual browsing. In any case, I heartily recommend it.

Selection of historical documents supplied with "The Plant Hunters"- those pictured include documents relating to the rubber trade, a letter about exporting rubber plants to start plantations and botanical notes on orchids, all shown on the pages of the book relating to the tea trade/ tea growth.

Quote of the week- Max Planck on scientific truth

2010-10-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up familiar with it"
- Max Planck, German Physicist, (1858-1947)

Link of the Day- death of Benoit Mandelbrot

2010-10-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

Prof. Benoit Mandelbrot in 2007- image by Rama. For image license details, click [here]

Good Morning.
Welcome to Weirdbeautiful

Today I just have this link for you reporting the death on Thursday of the Mathematician and "Father of Fractals", Benoit Mandelbrot-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1287320679-rJKXF44A27LV1YxQGYEYrQ
He was 85.

Maths is a very strange subject in so many ways and fractals/fractal geomtery is one of its weirder and more beautiful expressions. There is more information on Prof. Mandelbrot's work- including the famous Mandelbrot Set(s) here-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot

and here- http://www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/web_pdfs/mavericksApprenticeship.pdf

The image above is a picture from a Mandelbrot Set by Wolfgang Beyer taken from wikipedia [HERE]- details of the image license are [here]. The image below (also by Wolfgang Beyer) is another from the same set, this time, the 11th picture in the sequence. Licence details are [here]

Thanks to Komal for the New York Times link.

Link of the week- "make a supersonic man out of you"

2010-10-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting (and less depressing) stories to appear in the papers in recent weeks has been that of the ongoing battle between Felix Baumgartner and Michel Fournier to be the first supersonic man. More accurately, the two men are both attempting to break the sound barrier by riding to the upper stratosphere by helium balloon and jumping out. The full story can be found online on the website of The Guardian newspaper here- http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/05/felix-baumgartner-michel-fournier-supersonic

- a shorter version of the same tale appeared in the news synopsis magazine "The Week" (11th September edition). This week's issue of the same magazine (The Week)relates the discovery of the fossilised remains of a giant "Water King" penguin on the Southern Coast of Peru-
"Inkayacu paracasensis, which lived some 36 million years ago- stood around 5 feet tall and had striking red and brown plumage" The Week reports that the scientific team that made the discovery was led by Jakob Vinther of Yale University. The colour of the penguin's feathers was deduced from the size and shape of fossilized pigment-producing cells (melasomes), which were found to be similar to those producing redish brown or grey colouration in other (living) species of birds and unlike melasomes found in living penguin species.

The full reference for the scientific paper is-
J. A. Clarke, D. T. Ksepka, R. Salas-Gismondi, A. J. Altamirano, M. D. Shawkey, L. D’Alba, J. Vinther, T. J. DeVries, and P. Baby. 2010. Fossil evidence for evolution of the shape and color of penguin feathers. Science 330
and there is an abstract online [HERE]

This is not the first time the colour of a long extinct animal species has been deduced from a fossil. In fact, some years ago, my former PhD supervisor, Prof. Andrew Parker (now of the Natural History Museum in London)discovered evidence of colouration in three long-extinct species of fossilized seed shrimp. In that case, the colouration was caused not by a pigment, but by a light-reflecting structure on the animals' antennae. The tiny structure diffracted light -splitting any light falling on it into its constituent wavelengths (colours)and "scattering" the different coloured light in different dirrections. The result was that the antennae would have had bright, multi-coloured appearance - more details of that are online [HERE].

Today's final link is to this article on a career in making the transition from research science to science writing by Rosalind Pidcook-

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2010_10_15/caredit.a1000101

this is a subject somewhat dear to my own heart (see "A week in the Life of a Wildlife writer"), since I have made the a similar career transition myself; my route was different from Rosalind Pidcook's, proving (if proof were needed) that there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat....

Creature Feature- The Weird Beauty of the Thorny Devil

2010-10-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! Welcome to Weirdbeautiful and Happy Monday to you.
Today's Creature-feature is a Thorny Devil; an Australian lizard with the unfair latin name Moloch horridus. Thorny devils live in arid scrubland and desert in central Australia and can be reared in captivity and- as this photograph by KeresH shows- handled by man without ill-effect. The picture has a GNU Free documentation license- you can find details of that [here]. There is more information on the thorny devil [here].

Science News- update- "Red Sludge" in the Danube

2010-10-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

Good morning,
Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

The Big science news of the week continues to be the accidental release of "Red Sludge" ( a by-product of Aluminium extraction from Bauxite) in Devecser, western Hungary. The sludge :a strongly alkaline mixture containing high levels of Arsenic and Mercury has wreaked havoc, killing seven people so far and injuring hundreds more, after it escaped from a crumbling storage-reservoir. In the short term, part of the problem is that the mixture is so alkaline : in fact, the leak caused parts of the Danube river to turn alkaline, with a pH of around 9.
You can read more about this story just about anywhere, but some of the best coverage is in the IHT -
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/europe/06hungary.html?scp=9&sq=red%20sludge&st=cse

In a follow-up to the original story, the IHT also reports that there are now fears that the reservoir may burst again, releasing yet more toxic sludge:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/world/europe/11hungary.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Opinion piece- Prof. Brian Cox is wrong, science is hard and this is a good thing

2010-10-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

It is very easy to criticise other people and it can be very hard to create something yourself. For this reason, I have thus far only ever posted positive commentary- linked to sites that I have enjoyed or that I think have either scientific worth or aesthetic/entertainment value. However, today I am going to make an exception....

I want to talk about "The Sun" newspaper but, more specifically this quote, attributed to Prof Brian Cox, who is “The Sun[‘s] Professor”

“What do science, technology, engineering and maths mean to you? They are known in schools as STEM subjects and for many people they sound like hard work - things only clever people with frizzy white hair and lab coats do. I never felt that way. .... If you are reading this at school, then you can choose to be a scientist, mathematician or engineer as I did. These are careers for everyone, not just a brainy few”

As I see it, there are two problems with this statement. Firstly, it seems to me that this “Science isn’t all geeks, it’s actually cool and fun” message is getting a little tired. It has been expressed, rephrased and re-expressed over and over again in popular science. I am not convinced that anyone really sees science in terms of those “clever people with frizzy white hair and lab coats” stereotypes anymore; quite aside from the fact that the average person sees their local pharmacist or beautician in a lab coat far more often than they will ever see a scientist in one. In fact, the main people who hold and perpetuate those stereotypes are the media themselves, including those parts of the media who are constantly rehashing them, in order to surprise us with the twist that “science is actually interesting”.

The second problem is that the last comment “These are careers for everyone, not just a brainy few” is just plain wrong. This is not a value-judgement, but a simple statement of fact. Can you imagine the sporting equivalent?- “Professional Football is a career for everyone, not just a sporty few” or the musical version? - “A career as a concert pianist is a one open to everyone, not just those with musical aptitude”. ... absurd, aren’t they?

I think this is very telling. There is no shame in not being a professional athlete or musician- in society’s eyes (the child picked last for the team every single games lesson will have a different view of this) but science communicators do think there is shame in not being “brainy” and, like the self-aware racist who never says anything offensive, but sees the whole world through a lens of race, some science popularisers seem to fall over backwards to pretend that science is not difficult and that it is a career open to everyone.

Clearly this isn’t the case. If you are “unintelligent”, you will never be a successful scientist- why pretend otherwise? This does not make an “unintelligent” person (whatever that means and however “intelligence” is assessed) a less worthwhile human being or a less valuable member of society. I would also like to point out, having been a research scientist at Oxford University, myself, that I have met just as many supremely intelligent people outside academia as inside it and some of them had never even finished primary school.

A.A. Milne famously wrote that -
“A third rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority, a second rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with a minority and a first rate mind is only happy when it is thinking”.

For these “first rate minds” – i.e. those that we should be attracting into science and those that will stand the best chance of succeeding in it, the fact that it is “hard” (for which read “stimulating”) is not a bad thing, but a selling point. Lisa Simpson may be a fictitious character, but young (wo)men in her mould are more common than the media realises. A better message is that science is hard- choose a career in science and you will have to work very hard for many years, however, it will be very interesting and this does not mean that you should not pursue it. .

The final point I would like to make is that science is not unique in being difficult, nor is it uniquely difficult. There was talk some years ago of replacing trial-by-jury in certain fraud cases on the grounds that the general public (jurors) simply had not understood the financial intricacies of several high profile cases and that this had had a critical bearing on the outcome of the trial. Despite this, I have never once heard accountants, economists or even lawyers described as “brainy” or “geeks”.

At a complexity theory conference a few years ago, I met a linguistics professor who told me that all his life he had wanted to study “the hardest and most complex subject” he could find and, to that end, he had left a successful career as a nuclear physicist to study linguistics... “Hard” and “brainy” are, at least partly, in the eye of the beholder.

I do feel, in writing this, that I am pointing out the blindingly obvious, but if an influential person, like Prof. Cox is quoted saying such things in a newspaper read by over 7.5 million people every day, this needs to be challenged.

Cheering-up toadstool...

2010-10-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! Welcome to Weirdbeautiful. In honour of Autumn in place of a Cheering-up-bird today, we have a cheering-up toadstool. This is a Fly agaric, Amanita muscaria. The picture is by Tony Willis, who also took one of last week's pictures- the image of a Pied/ New Zealand fantail posted [HERE]. Today's image has a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license- you can find details of that [HERE].

Cheering up Birds- Rufous Fantail and New Zealand Fantail

2010-09-27T05:01:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! Today's Cheering up bird is the Rufous Fantail, Rhipidura rufifrons; an Australasian insect-eating bird. The image above is by Brett Donald and has a creative commons attribution share alike 2.5 licence- you can find details of that [here]

There are more details about this active little bird on wikipedia [here] and about its relatives - the fantails of Asia and Australasia -[here]

The obvious birds of New Zealand are things like the various Kiwi species, Apteryx spp, the Kakapo, Strigops habroptila, and the Kea,Nestor notabilis, but the country also has some fan-tail species, including the aptly named New Zealand fantail, Rhipidura fuliginosa (pictured below).

Pied fantail (also called New Zealand fantail)- picture by Tony Willis. This image has a creative commons attribution share-alike 3.0 licence- you can find details [here].

Links of the day-The great pacific Garbage patch, Harvest mice photo gallery

2010-09-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today's first link does exactly what it says on the tin- it is a gallery of photographs of some harvest mice released from captivity and followed in the wild for a year-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/2010/sep/22/animalbehaviour-animals?%2F%3Fpicture=366939504&index=0&ref=nf#/?picture=366939504&index=0

Today's second link is also a photo gallery- this time from The Sun newspaper. The paper gives pride of place to a stunning image of a hummingbird and a green pit viper by Hungarian photographer Bence Mate but also includes some other stunning pictures. There is a scene of masses of frog spawn at the bottom of a mountain pond and one of a hermit crab taking shelter in a bottle-top, in lieu of a shell-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3150962/OK-you-humm-it-and-Ill-sssing-it.html

On the subject of waste bottles, one article I have been meaning to link to for some time is this piece by Ed Cumming of The Daily Telegraph on "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". The article, was originally published as "Bottling up a Problem for the Future" on 16th March of this year in the paper version of the newspaper. It looks at the enormous problems posed by (mostly) plastic bottles in the ocean.
This quote gives an idea of the sheer scale of the problem-

"In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that there were 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. With its stubborn refusal to biodegrade, all plastic not buried in landfills – roughly half of it – sweeps into streams and sewers and then out into rivers and, finally, the ocean. "

to put this in a biological context, as Mr Cummings's article explains, "there [is] eight times as much plastic as plankton in the North Pacific". The problem is that this material ultimately gets broken down into "nurdles": a really great word, if ever I saw one. Unfortunately, nurdles- tiny grains of plastic- are not a great thing, not in the ocean, at any rate, since they are not only harmful on their own, but they are very absorbent, and "soak up waterborne toxins, such as pesticides and cooling agents". The poison-saturated nurdles are ultimately eaten by filter-feeders at the very bottom of the food chain, and then make their way up it. As any good biologist knows, toxins become increasingly concentrated up the food chain. Aside from the environmental damage this situation will cause, since humans, are at the top of their food chain, this is all bad news.

You can find Ed Cumming's full article online under the title "The Biggest Dump in the World"- [HERE]

Sweet Peas and Autumn Trees....

2010-09-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Image: "Autumn Trees" by Victoria Neblik. Now available as a print (for details, e mail mail@victorianeblik.com)

Link of the day today is this article about a breakthrough in skin-graft technology,using sweet pea Lathyrus odoratus ; the article is from The Guardian newspaper-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/31/researchanddevelopment