Thursday 22 December 2011

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

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".

Tuesday 20 December 2011

December in the Mediterranean

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)



 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]

Tuesday 6 December 2011

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

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

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Small Furry Tiger Cubs

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.


Friday 21 October 2011

Fossils and Hover Flies

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

White fossil

Monday 17 October 2011

What matters?


I suspect there comes a point in everyone’s life when they start to wonder if they are spending their days well and 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 people make 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 to mankind?” “Which questions and problems should scientists/mankind be trying 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 qualified enough to attempt to answer that question, or comment upon Dr Rulison’s ideas, but they do make interesting reading.

On a lighter note, pictures have now emerged of a baby pygmy hippo born in early September in Zurich zoo. The print version of The Telegraph newspaper had a wonderful photograph of it, but I can’t find this online. You can see a video of the baby hippo here- (WARNING: this video has music)

Friday 14 October 2011

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



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


Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Just three links today-

The first is this cute picture of a baby panda-

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

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

Some years ago (circa 1999/2000), when I was still a microbiologist and busily looking for a PhD studentship, I was interviewed for a project looking at virulence in foot-and-mouth disease. Over the course of the interview, it became apparent that the project would, essentially, involve devoting three years of my life to examining a small section of RNA at one end of the Virus’s genome and culminate- in all probability- in a single scientific paper on the subject. The aim was to investigate which mutations caused the virus to become more deadly/virulent and which, less so. If I remember correctly, the section of RNA to be examined was only around 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, in lectures about virology, to marvel at the ingenuity of past microbiologists and to be excited by the prospect of working on similar puzzles. The problem, is that reality- in the form of various doctoral projects- often does not seem to match up. For this reason, the most enthusiastic students 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 switched to zoology, studied jellyfish and spent three and a half awesome, globe-trotting years working on about a dozen different species. 


Incidentally, a couple of years after that foot-and-mouth PhD interview, the UK suffered a very costly, widespread and fairly unexpected foot-and-mouth outbreak. So, whoever did get that studentship must have taken some pleasure in the fact that their project, although narrow in 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-mouth disease [here] and on black death [here]. The full-text of the scientific study on black death mentioned above is currently available free online [here].

Wednesday 28 September 2011

News story of the week- Hummingbird Smuggling




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.  
-   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -

Friday 23 September 2011

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

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

Friday 16 September 2011

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


Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Quote-of-the-week this week is somewhat longer than usual:-

One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage....He took me through his work rooms.
In the first room, I saw parts of the original calculating machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before...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 do all that it was capable of doing and much more.”
We went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the oworking of the elements of the Analytical machine...” I have never completed it”, he said, “because I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method...”
Then we went into a thirds room...I saw no trace of any working machine. “It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have taken to complete the analytical machine.”
I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart; when he 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 useful purpose.
-        
--         - Lord Moulton (John Fletcher Mouton)
-          British Mathematician,
-          (1844-1921)
Source: Inaugral Address to the Napier Tercentenary Congress, Edinburgh, 1914, printed in Napier Tercentenary Memorial Volume 1915.

This quotation comes from the “Eccentricity” exhibition which is currently on in the Museum of The History of Science in Oxford. "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 other exhibitions in Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science, take a look at their website [here]. Materials from their previous exhibitions are online [here]. The Museum, which is one of the hidden gems of Oxford, also contains a blackboard used by Albert Einstein and still covered in equations written in his own hand. Admission to the museum is free.

More information on Lord Moulton is available online [hereand on Charles Babbage [here].

Thursday 15 September 2011

Autumn in Oxford



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.

Thursday 1 September 2011

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




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.

Tuesday 30 August 2011

Science News- Mount Etna Errupting


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]

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Birds of the Gambia

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.

Sunday 14 August 2011

Quote of the Week- George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood



"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).

Friday 12 August 2011

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


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.

Sunday 7 August 2011

Link of the day- food dyed ants

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

"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.

Wednesday 3 August 2011

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

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

Sunday 31 July 2011

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


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].

Thursday 28 July 2011

Quote of the Week- Thomas Huxley on Peace and Happiness




"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)

Sunday 24 July 2011

Sweet Peas, Endangered Butterflies and The Emperor Water Penguin,

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.

Saturday 23 July 2011

Link of the day- Adorable Baby Slender Loris

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

Thursday 21 July 2011

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



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.

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

Friday 15 July 2011

Quote of the Week- Desmond Morris on Apes & Mankind


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)

Sunday 10 July 2011

Links of the day- Hermit Crabs & Rainbow Toads

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

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Link of the day- Britain in Photographs

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.

Thursday 30 June 2011

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

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)

Friday 17 June 2011

Porcupines, Fennec Foxes, Prairie Dogs and Red Squirrels

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,


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).