A Cure for AIDS?

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

Turkeys, Silver Firs and Cultivating Christmas Trees

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

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

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

Picture V. Neblik, 2010.

Science News- Links of the week- Pancreatic cancer

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

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

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

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

"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

"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

"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

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)

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...

...
"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

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

"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"

(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

"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

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"

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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....

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

Return of the Cheering up Bird- Hummingbird

Good Morning. Happy Monday.
The Cheering-up bird is back on Weirdbeautiful today with this wonderful image of a Hummingbird leaving some Montbretia (Crocosmia sp.) flowers. The picture is by Mila Zinkova and it is not the first time her work has appeared on Weirdbeautiful (or wikipedia, for that matter). Mila Zinkova also took this swallow tail butterfly image (posted on Weirdbeautiful back in March) and this picture of the Californian quail (cheering-up bird number 20) .

Today's hummingbird image has a creative commons 3.0 GNU licence (for license details click [HERE]).

While I am on the subject of beautiful images, take a look at this shot of a Cabbage white butterfly (presumably) feeding on Buddleia- http://www.flickr.com/photos/28865736@N04/3808612720/ This is from Chris Owens's photostream on Flikr.

Links of the day- baby sloths, photosynthesis and self-assembling solar panels

First Link-of-the-day today is this to gallery of pictures of baby sloths from a wildlife resuce centre in Costa Rica: sloths don't generally rank highly on most people's lists of cute animals: these pictures may change your mind-

http://thestar.blogs.com/photodesk/2010/08/the-daily-beast-august-29-2010.html

Today's second link is this article reporting research into solar panels/ photosynthesis: according to the link, scientists at MIT have created a synthetic process that imitates photosynthesis. By combining phospholipids and carbon nanotubes, they have been able to produce a "self-assembling solar panel": this is an over simplification, of course, the details are here-

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/09/scientists-disc.php

Link of the day- bull-sharks, ants, trees and elephants...

Image: Bullshark- photographed in Beqa Lagoon, Fiji by Terry Goss (Mr Goss is known as "Pterantula" on flikr- you can find his photostream [here])This image has a GNU free documentation licence- details [here]

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

First link-of-the-day today is this article in the New York Times (and International Herald Tribune) talking about how ants living in certain specific trees protect them from elephant attack- essentially by swarming and biting any approaching elephants. The ants, which feed on a sweet secretion released by the tree, thereby protect the tree from damage/being eaten and safeguard their own food source and habitat. The full length article gives more details-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/science/07obants.html?ref=science

The second link-of-the-day is this blog post by J. Freedom du Lac from The Washington Post; it talks about an 8-foot (2.4 metre) long bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) being caught in the Potomac river in Maryland, USA. This is further north than the species' usual range, but the creatures are believed to be feeding on rays and crabs in Chesapeake Bay. The post is here-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090203794.html

Link of the day- pictures of the night sky...

...a stunning image gallery from The Independent-
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/picturing-the-night-sky-2075838.html?action=Popup&ino=1

Quote of the Week- Thomas Huxley - challenging orthodoxy

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority"-
Thomas Huxley

Link of the day- Natural Wonders of the World...

Socotra dragon tree, Dracaena cinnabari - image by Boris Khvostichenko- this image has a creative commons 1.2 licence- details [here]

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Link of the day today is this feature/ gallery of natural wonders of the world by MSN-http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=149582185

look out especially for the "Andean Penitentes" - bizarre ice formations found mostly in Chile and Argentina- http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=149582185&page=3 ,

for the stunning volcanic crater known as "Hell's gate" in Turkmenistan-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=149582185&page=4

the weird plants of Yemen's Socotra Archipelago- notably the famous Socotra dragon tree-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=149582185&page=15

and the otherworldly landscape of the Salar de Uyuni saltflat in Bolivia-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=149582185&page=27


Penitentes- image by "Arvaki"- this image has a creative commons 1.2 licence- details [here]

Blog post by Victoria Neblik- for more details of Victoria's latest photographic book- "Rock in the Landscape", click [here] or search for "Victoria Neblik" on amazon.co.uk

Quote of the week- Gerrard Battail, Kalevi Kull and Biological signals

[mainstream biology]"remains basically concerned with the flow of matter and energy into and between living entities, failing to recognise [that] the information flow is at least as important" - Gerrard Battail, Telecom Paris-Tech

- this is actually a quote from an article by Liz Else in This Week's New Scientist magazine (No 2774, 21st Aug 2010) about the growing field of "biosemiontics". "Biosemiotics" could be roughly deinfed as "the study of biological signals and their importance to living organisms". Liz Else's article also quotes Kalevi Kull from the University of Tartu in Estonia on the same subject; generating this more complicated description of Biosemiotics and its importance-

"Biology has studied how organisms and living communities are built. But it is no less important to understand what such living systems know, in a broad sense; that is, what they remember.....what they recognise (what distinctions they are capable and not capable of), what signs they explore (how they communicate, make meanings and use signs) and so on. These questions are all about how different living systems perceive the world, how they model the world, what experience motivates what actions, based on those perceptions"

Liz Else's full article is onsale in New Scientist magazine. The article also recommends this link http://www.bit.ly/axHqMO

Brains, Berries, Camouflage and taking out the Biochemical Rubbish

"Wild" strawberries

Hi. Welcome to Weirbeautiful. First link-of-the-day today is this brief news article reporting recent research that claims eating berries including strawberries and acai berries, wards off brain diseases, such as dementia. There seem to be endless health claims made about various foods, but in this case, at least, a biochemical mechanism has been proposed (supposedly the berries help the brain clear biochemical detritus that would otherwise accumulate and cause problems) -
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100823/thl-berries-help-to-clean-up-brain-d831572.html

Second link is to this impressive gallery of camouflaged animals, from shale grasshoppers, to pigmy seahorses, from The Sun newspaper-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3108508/Amazing-photographs-of-creatures-camouflaged-for-survival.html

Thought for the day/Quote of the Week- Steve Jones on snail sex

"In the Middle Ages, they believed that snails, because of their shells, don't have sex. So the snail was an image of purity and, here, [in "Annunciation" by Francesco Del Cossa] the Immaculate Conception. We know now that they were completely wrong- snails have sex in the most gothic and complicated ways you can imagine" - Prof. J. Steve Jones- University College London, quoted in "Intelligent Life" magazine (vol 3, issue 4,p138) Summer 2010.

(above- two snails that won't be having sex anytime soon- image by V. Neblik).

Zombies, Ants, Syphilis and Zombie-Ants

(image= "A Zombie at twilight in a field of cane-sugar in Haiti"- by Jean-Loel Lafargue- this image has a "copy left" licence- for details, clcik [here]

Hi, Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today I am responding to a request from a regular "Weirdbeautiful" reader, Dolev, who has asked me to post about the Zombie ants story, which has been all over the internet in the last few days. The story is about the fungus Ophiocordyceps, which "turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death", according to The Guardian news paper; the ants in question being carpenter ants of the species Camponotus leonardi.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/18/zombie-carpenter-ant-fungus

This is "Weird Science"'s take on the same story (thanks for this link, Dolev)-
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/weird-science-unleashes-its-fossil-zombie-ants.ars

Parasites and diseases that manipulate their hosts'/victims' behaviour are rare but not unheard of: the best known example, is probably neurosyphilis (a possible complication of untreated syphilis), which can cause increased libido in its victims- there is an obvious evolutionary basis for this, since this increase in sex-drive can cause the dying syphilitic person to infect others, helping the causative organism (the spirochaetal bacterium- Treponema pallidum)to spread. There's a really interesting account of neurosyphilis in an elderly woman in Oliver Sacks 's brilliant book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat".



While we are on the subject of Zombies and book recommendations, one of the best books I have read in a very long time is



"The Serpent and the Rainbow" by Wade Davis; as the book's cover explains, it is the tale of "A Harvard scientist's astonishing journey into the secret societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis and Magic". The book is partly about the anthropology of the Haitian voodoun religion/tradition and partly about the chemistry and the pharmacological effects of the various plants used in voodoo ceremonies. Dr Davis's Haitian trip started with a plan to investigate anesthetic drugs from plants and animals used in Haiti/Haitian folklore and ended up with him witnessing various aspects of "Zombi creation"- for want of a better description: a fascinating book.

The Remipede...

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today, I just want to post a couple of links to articles on "the remipede". I think I've said before that, as a zoologist, I never know whether to be ashamed of my ignorance each time I learn of a new speices, or astounded at the world and the evolutionary process that genereated all these creatures. Weird animal of the day is the "Remipede": a cave-dwelling relative of the crab, lobster and woodlouse. In the case of this bizarre creature, it was at least fairly recently discovered- in fact the "Speleonectes" species discussed in this article has only been known to mankind for around a year, as the article explains-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824115813.htm

Coincidentally, this odd little beings also feature in this month's National Geographic magazine, in the feature on diving in the Bahamas' "Blue Holes", where they are described as "living fossil[s] nearly unchanged for 300 million years". Interestingly, these weird troglodytic predators have venomous fangs, which they use to kill their prey (mostly other crustaceans, such as shrimps).

More information on the remipede can be found here-
http://whyfiles.org/2010/remipede/
and
here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remipedia

The Moon is Shrinking?

Hi Welcome to Weirdbeautiful,

Link of the day today is to this bizarre story that the moon may be shrinking (due to internal cooling): the evidence for this comprises images of unusual fault lines on the lunar surface that were captured by a probe. The lines- called "lobate scarps"- have been found in the moon's highlands, as this article explains-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100819/tsc-moon-may-be-shrinking-say-experts-4b158bc.html

Link of the day- Red Clover and Images of Outerspace

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

First link-of-the-day today is this article on "The Garden Lady"'s blog on the Red Clover- I can't endorse any of the author's comments about the plant's medicinal benefits since I know nothing about the scientific research on this (or even if there have been any studies of its pharmacology), but it's an interesting article none-the-less-

http://www.thegardenlady.org/2010/02/15/red-clover-pink-purifier/

Today's second link is this "dazzling" gallery of images of outerspace released by NASA and other agencies, such as the European Space Agency- they include images of Asteroids, the Sun, Cassiopea and the surface of Mars.

http://news.uk.msn.com/photos/photo-galleries.aspx?cp-documentid=154300290

Third link-of-the-day is to this article in the International Herald Tribune about the activities of the oil-slick degrading bacterium Alcinovorax borkumensis (Alkinovorax- roughly translates as alkane- eater) in digesting the giant oil slick off the coast of Mexico-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/science/earth/05microbe.html?ref=science

I wrote on this blog back in May that this would be the most likely end result of the spill and that the clean-up process could be speeded up by introducing this bacterium to the water (it exists in very low concentrations in sea water naturally)- you can find the link to that here-
http://victorianeblik.blogspot.com/2010/05/horseshoe-crabs-and-oil-spill-in-gulf.html
so now, at last, it seems to be happening.

Actually, I got the idea for that (no doubt scores of other microbiologists were thinking exactly the same thing, privately) by reading a great research paper by Susan Schneiker and colleagues some time ago. The paper- published in volume 24 (issue 8) of the journal "Nature Biotechnology"- described the sequencing of this amazing bacterium's genome and -essentially- went some way towards explaining some of its remarkable metabolic abilities. For what it is worth, there is a brief summary of the paper here-
http://ezinearticles.com/?Bees-and-Bacteria&id=2883002

Quote of the Week- E. O. Wilson on Insects

Peacock Butterfly, Inachis Io,on Buddleia bush (Buddleja sp.), England.

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Quote-of-the-day/week today is this cheering little gem from the American Scientist,
E. O. Wilson (b. 1929)-

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. "

You can find more information on Prof Wilson's work [here] and in this interview with him in Discover magazine by the Science Writer, Richard Conniff. (Richard Conniff is the author of the excellent book "Spineless Wonders", amongst other things).

Both photographs = Peacock Butterfly, Inachis Io,on Buddleia bush (Buddleja sp.), England, Victoria Neblik, 2010.

Floating Giraffes

Picture of the day-Giraffa camelopardalis,2010, taken atChester Zoo.

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Today, I wanted to share this link-
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/giraffe_flotation_dynamics.php to a great blog post by Darren Naish. His post is all about a research paper he produced with Don Henderson called 'Predicting the buoyancy, equilibrium and potential swimming ability of giraffes by computational analysis'; the title says it all, really. Anyway, Darren Naish's post is a great read and certainly fits in the "weird" category of this blog. You can find the full paper in The Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Thanks to Dolev R. for the tip-off to this link.

Links of the day- Diving Tigers, Sponges and "The First Animal".

(Image- "Fish Tank, London Zoo"- by V. Neblik- image not for sale- for more images and prints that are on sale, see: victorianeblik.com)

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

There are two links-of-the-day today, but first, I've put the "followers" box back on this page, so if you want to be able to find this blog again easily, please scroll down and click on the "follow" button- it's on the right near the bottom of the page. You can follow either publicly, with a picture and link back to your blog, or privately, in which case you'll be listed as an anonymous follower and there'll be no link back to you that anyone can find or follow.

First link-of-the-day today is this popular science book on sponges by former high school teacher, journalist and (present) diver, William Goodwin-

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1469841

- worth the detour for the images alone, there's also a highly readable and informative text to go with them: how educational books should be....

Second of today's links is this great picture of a tiger, diving- tigers are unusual amongst the cat-family for their love of water; however, you'd never guess that from the expression on this tiger's face ....

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1xaE0C/www.zadan.nl/divingtiger/

Diving Tiger link with thanks to StumbleUpon.com

Quote of the week- Henry David Thoreau- the artist and the artisan

"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."
-Henry David Thoreau

I think (for what it is worth) that this quote could probably be adapted to science- "the difference between a scientific "artisan" and a scientific genius is that the artisan applies the rules and practical techniques that others have developped to new problems, the genius/true scientific innovator develops new principals or new techniques".

From my own experience, the obvious example of this was the discovery of electron microscopy and its first application to biological samples in 1942: a development that led to a flurry of publications in animal anatomy (or, more accurately, micro-anatomy) as different scientists were able to exploit the technique. There are a great many examples of this in science- pretty much all scientific "fashions" (with the possible exception of the space race in the 1950s and 60s)historically originated in this way- the fascination with genetics in the 1980s was partly fueled by a technical breakthrough by Prof Sir Edwin Southern in 1975; the popularity of hydrocarbon chemistry in the 1960s is another example.

Link of the day- Seasnakes of England...

Hi. Welcome to weirdbeautiful.
First link of the day today is this odd story in the British tabloid newspaper "The Sun" of a body-boarder who claims he was bitten by a tropical sea snake off the coast of Cornwall (England)-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3067153/Tourist-believes-he-was-bitten-by-a-tropical-sea-snake-off-the-coast-of-Cornwall.html

Quite a few snakes have venoms that cause their victims to bleed from their mouths in the aftermath of being bitten. Similarly, the bite site oozing fluid and blood is characteristic of a lot of snake bites, including that of the adder (Vipera berus)(something -the badly swollen, oozing wounding- I got to witness at first hand, when my dog was bitten by a snake a few years ago).

The Sun is also hosting this impressive gallery-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3067121/Amazing-wildlife-pictures-from-photographer-Scott-Linstead.html

- of wildlife images by Canadian teacher-turned photographer Scott Linstead.

Insect photographs

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Thanks for stopping-by. The weirdlybeautiful creature above is a grasshopper species that I am currently "culturing" on my windowsill. Grasshoppers are famously noisy creatures, but this particular species seems to be almost totally silent- so far, at least.

Over the past few weeks, I have been heavily involved in both entomological and botanical and wildlife photography projects- the pictures below are what happens when photography and entomology collide...











All images in this post (c) Victoria Neblik, 2010. All rights reserved.

Quote of the week- James Anthony Froude- science rests on reason..belief is always sensitive

"Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive."
- James Anthony Froude (English historian and writer, 1818-1894)

Iridescent Bees, Wasps, Ants and Sawflies...

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
This is just a short personal post- I am happy to announce the publication of my book with Prof. Jean-Pol Vigneron (of The University of Namur), "Iridescent Bees Wasps Ants and Sawflies: structural colouration in the Hymenoptera".

This scientific book was the result of a 6-month preliminary-study (plus the time it took to write up)of colouration in bees, wasps, ants, sawflies and various of their relatives- ichneumon flies, for example. It was really to fill a gap in the scientific literature. The abstract will shortly be available on my website; a full-length preview is online at the printers's website [here], where copies are onsale.

Link of the day- odd trees and the wonders of faecal transplantation

Hi Welcome to Weirdbeautiful

Weird-link of the day today is this great article on the potential of faeces to heal... and the wonders of faecal transplantation-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13micro.html?src=me&ref=general

This is not really a new breakthrough, in the sense that the idea has been around for a little while (and previously reported elsewhere), but it is still an interesting story and - perhaps a timely reminder of the often overlooked power of bacteria.

The Beautiful link of the day is this gallery or photoessay on the world's strangest trees, by the search engine Bing-
http://www.bing.com/featured/content/search?q=Fantastic+Trees%3a+Baobab+%28Adansonia%29&FORM=RQHOME
starting with Baobabs and Rainbow Eucalyptus, the features has Sequioas, Jackfruits, Joshua trees, Wolemi Pines and a whole load of other strange trees- not least the magnificent "Dragon Blood Tree"...