sequencing all species

I reported about the Earth BioGenome Project, which aims to obtain genome sequences for all eukaryotic species known to science, when it launched back in 2018. Since then, continuing progress in technology has enabled the project to keep on its somewhat ambitious course, so it now is approaching the finish of phase I (out of three) and beginning to make detailed plans for phase II. Which means it's a good time for a new feature about the project. The focus of attention this time lies on the fact that much of the biodiversity yet to be sequenced resides in the countries of the Global South, so the project needs to build capacity where the species are found.

My feature is out now:

All eukaryotes great and small

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 20, 20 October 2025, Pages R937-R939

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

The African BioGenome Project aims to contribute genome sequences for more than 100,000 species. (Photo: Antonius Smal/Unsplash.)

a workshop guide

Three years ago, just before I embarked on my pirate luthier journey, I discovered a book about lutherie techniques in the Oxfam bookshop at St. Giles:

The making of stringed instruments
A workshop guide
by George Buchanan
Batsford 1989

It contained all the techniques I needed to restore my aunt's old violin to a playable condition. It cost me £ 4 and enabled me to do a repair for which I had been quoted £ 250, so I call that a good deal from the start. It has continued to be a useful resource ever since, even though I sometimes also consult youtube videos from professionals for specific repair techniques that aren't covered in the book.

While I haven't read all of it yet, and haven't got any plans for making string instruments from scratch, I thought the book has deserved a space in my pirate luthier blog series, so here it is:

Scan of the dustjacket of my edition.

One day I will read it cover to cover. But what if it inspires me to build lots of cellos? That could become a problem ... I might end up like this guy:

(a vintage postcard I recently spotted on Flickr)

violins played by Einstein

Einstein's violin sells for £860k at auction, the BBC reported this week (on 8.10.2025). The trouble is, he owned several violins through his life time, apparently called all of them Line (US sources tend to say "Lina"), so I'm getting confused and need to sort this out.

• According to the BBC the one sold in October 2025 was made by Anton Zunterer in 1894 and believed to be his first (although he supposedly learned from age 5, which would have been much earlier - so this may have been his first full size one, or the first he bought for himself as another source said). Zunterer (1858-1917) was a Mittenwald-trained luthier who established his workshop in Munich in 1888.
• One that the top notch luthier workshop of W.E. Hill in London saw when Einstein visited in October 1933 which may or may not be the same as the above. As Kate Kennedy reports in the book Cello (based on her research using the Hill workshop diaries), the luthiers were disparaging about Einstein's instrument, and somewhat unfairly made him compare it with a Stradivarius they happened to have around.
• A later one which was made by Oscar Steger. a cabinet maker, amateur cellist and hobby luthier in the US after Einstein found refuge there. It sold at auction in March 2018 for just over $ 500,000. According to this page, Einstein eventually gave it to a Princeton University janitor whose son was learning the violin.
• Of another late violin, Paul Halpern tells me that Einstein "bequeathed in his will one of his violins to his grandson Bernhard Caesar (who is no longer alive). Consequently, Albert's great-grandson Paul Einstein became a violinist and has played that violin in concert". I think this is the event and the instrument mentioned in my entry about Einstein's favourite sonata, K304 (which incidentally I am meaning to learn on the violin too). German newspaper clippings of the event held at Ulm in March 2004 on the occasion of Einstein's 125th birthday are here.
• One violin he didn't accept was a Guarneri that was offered to him according to this article from Oxford physicist Brian Foster. He stuck with his more ordinary instrument on the grounds that more sophisticated players would make better use of the power and complexity of the Guarneri. I presume he tried it at least, so I'm listing it here among the instruments he touched.

Here's a longer piece about his violin playing first published in 1980, based on interviews with musicians who played chamber music with him. It includes the names and short bios of many people with whom Einstein played, including both scientific colleagues like Max Planck and professional musicians like Fritz Kreisler. There's also glimpses of the kind of music that that he played, preferring Bach, Mozart and Haydn more recent composers like Brahms or Wagner. Sadly though, not a single word about the instruments as such.

This is a more recent article in National Geographic but very much the same content as the earlier pieces as far as I can tell.

There is also a musical theatre piece about Einstein's violin playing, by Paul Wingfield, who also helped to authenticate his first violin when it came up for auction. Trouble is, after this record-breaking auction result, the title of the piece, "Einstein's violin" has become virtually unsearchable.

Einstein playing the violin. Photo by Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski - Zeitbilder 21/1927, 1927-05-22, p. 1 (online), Public Domain, from Wikipedia

While getting that photo from the English edition of his Wikipedia entry, I found out that the German edition, although marked with a star as an outstanding entry, lacks the info on his music playing - there's only one mention of his learning to play violin as a child, under his education record, but no mention that it was a lifelong passion. I'm afraid that may be telling us something about the lack of appreciation for amateur music making in German culture.

Researching all of the above, I realised that Einstein (1879-1955) was a near contemporary of the amateur chamber music player in my family, Heinrich the cellist (1882-1958). Surely I can find an excuse to include a few paragraphs about Einstein in my 100 years of cellotude?

I was also amused to learn from several of the sources that Einstein's counting during playing was very much relative. Which is very true of my playing as well.

a new old cello revealed

Pirate Luthier update

Two years ago, when I was looking for a cello as Heinrich the family cello was about to move out to rejoin the young cellist, I looked at an old German cello which wasn't playable because the bridge was dangerously warped and the glue was coming unstuck in a couple of places. I didn't buy it then as I needed a reliably playable instrument.

Now as I heard from somebody else looking for a cello to play, I checked up on that old cello and it was still in the same state. After two years of fiddling with lots of fiddles, I now felt ready to fix something bigger and took it on.

It doesn't have a case yet, so I lent it one of my old sweaters for protection against knocks:

Which also has the advantage I can do a dramatic reveal - it is actually a very beautiful old cello, reportedly dating from the 19th century and possibly from Mittenwald:

It also has a very beautiful backside:

It has a fake Stradivarius label much like eg my aunt's violin, which is more of a Markneukirchen kind of instrument, and a serial number stamped into the inside of the pegbox, which I'm not sure about - maybe just inventorised by a trader?

I happened to have an bridge sitting around (decommissioned by a professional cellist but perfectly good for me) and some strings from the same source. So set it up with these recycled materials keeping two of its original Larsen strings, but the lower two strings were corroded and not usable). So the setup now looks like this:

I glued the bits that needed to be glued and cut a cava cork to shield the spike (like I did for the double bass a few years ago), visible in the first photo above. I also got Heinrich's old cloth bag down from the attic for when it needs a dust cover, although I am quite happy with the sweater solution at the moment. The cello is now perfectly playable and beginning to sound quite nice. I'm still playing it in with Suzuki pieces and such like, but am hoping to take it to orchestra and other musical adventures from next week.

In other pirate luthier news, violin number 30 has arrived on the premises with the most beautiful wooden case ever. I'll report on that separately later in the month, with an updated list.

a Denisovan skull

I completely missed the memo when this happened but two separate molecular studies published earlier this year convincingly show that a known hominin skull unearthed in the 1930s at Harbin, China, actually represents a Denisovan. After more than a decade of knowing this hominin species (as closely related to us as Neanderthals) only by the genome, some small fossil bones, and traces of DNA left in modern humans, Denisovans finally have a face. I only became aware of this when I looked at a paper using predicted phenotype trends to try and identify Denisovans among the known fossils, and the Harbin skull, whose identification as Denisovan was published while that paper was under review, came out as the one most likely to be a Denisovan, so that's a third line of independent evidence.

As I have covered the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes for 20 years now (see the Neanderthal tag), I found this extremely exciting and was a bit shocked that it didn't make a bigger splash in the general media. After all, this is a discovery on equal terms with the first Neanderthal skeleton. So obviously I had to do another Denisovan feature, which is out now:

Finding Denisovans

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 19, 6 October 2025, Pages R897-R899

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

The Harbin cranium, which has now been identified as Denisovan by several independent measures, has a size within the range of modern humans but some distinct archaic features. (Photo: Reprinted from Ni et al. (2021) Innovation 2, 100130, with permission.)

an odd-sized violin

Pirate Luthier update

The second violin I discovered during that lucky day on Gloucester Green market, number 29 on my books, is a funny size, between 3/4 and 7/8 (342 mm body length). Some other details are peculiar as well. The back is flamed in the wrong direction, with the stripes running lengthwise. Still made of two halves though, with the line between the halves ever so slightly tilted. It starts in the right place at the tail end, but ends up closer to the G string at the top. The tailpiece is from a lovely piece of wood (rosewood?) and held by a proper old school tailgut. The chinrest is from the same material although not quite as nice. There are three rather clunky adjusters on D A and E, but there isn't really enough space underneath the tailpiece to use their range without scratching the wood underneath, so I am thinking of replacing these. A more compact design would also provide the opportunity to put the strings 1 mm lower at the bridge.

It came with an interesting old bow and a wooden case lined with green felt inside and covered with black sticky stuff on the outside, so let's say mid 20th century? No label or trademark of any kind (apart from the little smily face scratched into the belly by a student). The odd features make me think it may come from some place that doesn't have a long established tradition of violin making. Still it sounds ok for a smaller instrument with strange features and its original mix of strings.

I tidied 2/3 of my desk as well, so that is a lovely surface that I haven't seen in a while and that serves nicely as a background for photos.

How lovely is that tailpiece?

I like the bow. I'm glad it still has enough hair to play, because I have a backlog of bows I need to rehair!

 

List of violins in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 10) is the 3/4 sized one with a broken neck and traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired. I kept it for a couple of months to check the neck stays in place, then gave it away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 13) is still broken

violin 14) is a half-size Lark which I gave away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 15) is a 3/4 size Stentor student 2, which I gave away to a local school in October 2024

violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, sadly not made by the Mittenwald luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name.

violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.

violin 18) is the slightly drunken but nice sounding violin from Poland, which I restored and returned to its family.

violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 violin which only needed a little TLC, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.

violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. I have labelled this one as an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.

violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.

violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite, although I'll have to fix that crack at some point. Because of the crack I play it only at home and take number 24 to sessions.

violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on).

violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam, and which I currently play at sessions.

violin 25) is the fleamarket find from Neuss

violin 26) is the lady in red, which has now rejoined its family.

violin 27) is the Czechoslovakian student model

violin 28) is the black one I found three minutes before number 29), so they're basically twins.

violin 29) is the odd-size instrument described above

Balance 27.9.2025:
Of the 29 violins listed above, 8 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 16 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, flea markets, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 2 taken in for repair only and returned to their families.
Of the 27 acquired, 8 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 12 currently in house and ready to play, 2 in house and still broken.

List of other instruments in the pirate luthier series:

an old Irish banjo

guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.

guitar 2) is one I spotted in a charity shop "sold as seen" for a very affordable price with nothing more than a broken string, and I bought and repaired it because I knew the owner of the next one needed one while their guitar was out of service.

guitar 3) had a broken neck which I glued back on with hide glue at the same time when I repaired violin 10). It has now returned to its family.

the zither I found at the flea market in Dusseldorf.

and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.

planet aqua

It's strange that we are calling our planet "Earth" as there isn't all that much earth around here. There's a metal core, some rocky stuff around it, and just a very thin layer of earth covering less than a third of the surface. So, looking at it from the outside, it makes sense to call it Planet Aqua instead, and to write a book about how the history of civilisations is really about managing the flow of all that water, and how due to the climate catastrophe which we have caused, we are now losing that control over the hydrosphere. Which Jeremy Rifkin has done:

Planet Aqua: Rethinking our home in the Universe
by Jeremy Rifkin
Polity Press 2024

My long essay review of the book is now out in the September issue of C&I:

Go with the flow

Chemistry & Industry Volume 89, Issue 9, September 2025, Page 34

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I can send a PDF on request.

fake news in nature

Living organisms communicate on many different channels, from chemical signalling to ultrasound, and wherever researchers look they find that these means of communication can also be used to deceive and spread fake news. A recent paper on deceptive pheromone signals in mantises luring the hopeful male partners to their death inspired me to have a deeper look at various kinds of natural deception that were discovered recently.

My feature is out now:

Deception on all channels

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 18, 22 September 2025, Pages R865-R867

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

In the springbok mantis Miomantis caffra, hungry females use dishonest pheromone signalling to attract males, which they then consume. (Photo: Bernard Dupont/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)

a callipygian book

Some thoughts on

Museum bums: A cheeky looks at butts in art
Mark Small and Jack Shoulder
Chronicle Books 2023

Back in the good old days of twitter, I used to follow @museumbums for a daily dose of cheeky art, but now our ways have parted as they're on bluesky and apparently haven't bridged to Mastodon (yet). Hence it made my day when I accidentally discovered their book in charity shop and I mainly bought it as a souvenir to remind me of the happy days of twitter.

Turns out, however, that the cheeky text accomppanying the callipygian photos is very educational too, so I gave the book a proper reading. In the process I learned that callipygian means "with a beautiful bum" - I don't know how I missed that before, that's what you get for not having Ancient Greek at school. I will now use this word at every opportunity to make up for lost time.

The authors are proper museum bums, sorry, experts, who know their art history from the bottom up, and they manage to tie it in with today's social concerns in a highly entertaining way, bringing up all the inherent biases and prejudices in the Western art canon without ever losing the fun side out of view.

Now if only they could bridge their account to Mastodon, I could continue to educate myself every day ...

PS I hear they may be doing wall calendars as well - will look out for that!

ukbookshop.org

paint it black

Pirate Luthier update

After a month without new arrivals, I found two violins to rescue at the antiques fair on Gloucester Green on the same day, within five minutes in fact. The first one, number 28 in my books, is a cool shiny black. It isn't branded at all, but looking online I see companies like Gear4music selling similar ones in black or other colours.

As I found it (and bought it for £25) it looked completely new, just had a couple of dents in the fingerboard and in the outside of the case, probably due to inadequate storage or transport arrangements. I would suggest that it has never been played, because it wasn't playable and hadn't been set up properly. The bridge was almost raw, so I had to cut that to the right shape and size. Then the pegs were all sticking to an extent that made tuning impossible. Once I fixed that with peg paste, they slid deeper into the holes meaning that in two pegs the holes for the strings disappeared in the sides of the scroll because they were clearly in the wrong places. So I had a couple of extra holes to drill and then everything worked ok.

After setting everything up, I was left with one problem that I can't fix: The fingerboard is slightly out of kilter with the straight line from the scroll to the tailpin. Once the strings are tuned up, the physics of the considerable pull forces doesn't lie - it chooses the shortest path, and that isn't quite where the fingerboard is attached. While this misalignment could in theory be due to the tailpin being in the wrong place, I checked by pressing a ruler to the sides of the fingerboard to extrapolate its direction. It is a good 5 mm off (to the E side) with respect to the F-holes. So the instrument looks a bit lop-sided but it is playable now. I'd even say it sounds quite nice for a cheap factory fiddle with obvious manufacturing flaws. Nice and warm sound in the lower register, nothing boxy about it. So whatever is hidden under the black paint, it isn't a cigar box.

Oh, and we have a new rug ...

List of violins in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 10) is the 3/4 sized one with a broken neck and traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired. I kept it for a couple of months to check the neck stays in place, then gave it away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 13) is still broken

violin 14) is a half-size Lark which I gave away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 15) is a 3/4 size Stentor student 2, which I gave away to a local school in October 2024

violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, sadly not made by the Mittenwald luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name.

violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.

violin 18) is the slightly drunken but nice sounding violin from Poland, which I restored and returned to its family.

violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 violin which only needed a little TLC, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.

violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. My current plan is to make this one an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.

violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.

violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite (although I'll have to fix that crack at some point).

violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on).

violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam, and which I currently play at sessions.

violin 25) is the fleamarket find from Neuss

violin 26) is the lady in red, which has now rejoined its family.

violin 27) is the Czechoslovakian student model

violin 28) is the black one described above

violin 29) is an interesting old 7/8 size instrument which I'll feature in the next entry.

Balance 13.9.2025:
Of the 29 violins listed above, 8 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 16 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, flea markets, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 2 taken in for repair only and returned to their families.
Of the 27 acquired, 8 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 11 currently in house and ready to play, 1 in house and just needs setting up, 2 in house and still broken.

List of other instruments in the pirate luthier series:

an old Irish banjo

guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.

guitar 2) is one I spotted in a charity shop "sold as seen" for a very affordable price with nothing more than a broken string, and I bought and repaired it because I knew the owner of the next one needed one while their guitar was out of service.

guitar 3) had a broken neck which I glued back on with hide glue at the same time when I repaired violin 10). It has now returned to its family.

the zither I found at the flea market in Dusseldorf.

and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.

on the origins of alcohol consumption

A recent news release about researchers recycling an ancient word, namely scrumping, drew my attention to the issue of apes and other animals seeking out fermenting fruit that likely contain alcohol. Historically, alcohol appreciation in animals has been dismissed as accidental or anecdotal, but recent investigations seem to suggest there are good reasons for animals to seek fermenting fruit, and thus consumption of some amounts of alcohol may be more widespread than previously thought. It turns out in fact that we share our remarkable ability to digest alcohol with the African great apes, so it is older than our species.

My feature is out now:

Apes appreciate alcohol

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 17, 8 September 2025, Pages R819-R821

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

Update 18.9.2025: The alcohol uptake of chimps has now been quantified reports the Guardian based on a paper in Science Advances.

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

Fruit flies of the Drosophila genus are well adapted to the presence of ethanol in decaying fruit and can even tolerate a limited amount of methanol. (Photo: Martin Cooper/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

in statu nascendi

This month's issue of Nachrichten aus der Chemie is a special issue on science communication and for the occasion I was asked to observe myself during my writing process and do a piece about how I write. I guess for the future AI apocalypse and beyond this may turn out to be an archaeologically relevant thing as evidence that in the early 21s century humans were still able to write stuff.

Anyhow. I followed the process of my writing the feature on migrations and movements across the ancient Mediterranean, which appeared in Current Biology in July. I called the meta-piece "in statu nascendi" which of course is chemical lingo (and Latin) for something in the process of being born, but the journal chose the title:

Vom Gedanken zur Geschichte (From the thought to the story)

which is also nice, especially in its emphasis on thought, which may soon disappear ...

This appears on page of the September issue, so the citation is

Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2025, 73, issue 9, 74-76.

At the back of the same issue I also have one of my tongue in cheek columns, this time making fun of the epidemic of tripartite titles. The main publisher of my German books used these a lot, and I found many of them annoying, but a recent investigation of citations of published papers seems to suggest these titles work. So that fits in with the communications special as well, in a tongue-in-cheek way. The title is also tripartite (and alliterated) of course:

Titel, Thesen, Tintenkleckse

Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2025, 73, issue 9, 112.

PS I haven't been very good at tracking my publications in German either here or on the website, but there should be around 10-12 each year in Nachrichten, half and half of the serious and not so serious type. This communications special piece was out of the normal sequence.