open archives

As I may have mentioned, my features in Current Biology become freely accessible one year after publication. So, by now, all features published in 2014 or earlier are in the open archives. Here are some of the highlights of 2014:

November: How wild do you want to go? - rewilding efforts in the UK and elsewhere

July: Connecting with the natural world - use of modern technology in conservation and ecology

June: Phage therapies for plants and people

May: Chronic stress means we're always on the hunt - featuring "blue mind"

May: Learning to live with sharks

April: The complicated origins of our species

March: Latin America's resources: blessing or curse? - featuring Colombia's gold and Ecuador's oil.

March: The past and future habitability of planet Mars

PS: It just occurred to me that I could look at the viewing stats of the relevant blog entries - according to those the rewilding feature was the most popular one in 2014, followed by the one on stress and the blue mind. Glad my selection wasn't entirely decoupled from what readers want ...

Part of the information that went into those features ... (own photo)

our place in the Universe

no matter if you believe in Santa Claus or not, the end of year with its long nights is as good a time as any to look up at the stars and reflect on our place in the Universe. In this seasonal spirit I have written up a feature on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which has recently received a major cash boost, combined with recent findings from the study of extrasolar planets.

The feature is out now and appears to be on open access for now (until the next issue appears in 2 weeks):

Listen out for life

Current Biology

Volume 25, Issue 24, pR1151–R1153, 21 December 2015

Full text and access to PDF

should that not work, here is a magic link that allows free access for 50 days after publication. When that expires, you'll just have to email me for a PDF file. The feature will then return to open access one year after publication.

The feature also served as an excuse to reproduce the Hubble extreme deep field image - even though, of course, the galaxies shown in this picture are so far away in space and time that it is completely impossible to communicate with them, so the picture is just here to show what a mindboggling big place the Universe is:

This Extreme Deep Field image obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope shows galaxies from 13.2 billion years ago. It compiles observations from a minute patch of sky that would appear empty to normal telescopes, so every speck of light seen in this image is a distant galaxy. (Image: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team.)

blue moon

The harvest of the German magazines in November and December includes cephalopods (on the cover of Nachrichten aus der Chemie, below), neon on the moon, and molecular electronics:

Blickpunkt Biowissenschaften: Die wundersamen Fähigkeiten der Tintenfische
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2015, 63, 1186-1188.
related content in English

Ausgeforscht: Neon auf dem Mond
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2015, 63, 1259.

Materialforschung: Biomolekül als Elektronikbaustein
Spektrum der Wissenschaft No. 11, 17-19

cover of Nachrichten aus der Chemie, Dec. 2015.

world on fire

Only recently, I wrote a feature explaining how fire is part of the natural cycle of life for many biotopes around the world. This is definitely not the case for the Indonesian peat lands and forests that have been burning for several months, through to early November. These fires were a major environmental catastrophe caused by a combination of factors including an exceptionally strong El Niño, the use of fire to clear land for agriculture, and the draining of peat lands. With its complex connections to global climate and trade, this catastrophe may well be a taste of what the future holds, as I explain in my latest feature, out now:

A fire with global connections
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 23 December 07, 2015, Pages R1107-R1109

Summary and open access to the full text.

PS: Underlining my point re. global connections, publication of this feature was delayed by severe flooding in Chennai, India (where typesetting and production for Current Biology is done), which may also be due to the exceptionally strong El Niño happening right now.

Greenpeace observers found new oil-palm seedlings planted in freshly burnt lands, demonstrating the connection between the fires and the deforestation for palm oil plantations. (Photo: Ardiles Rante/Greenpeace.)

more Huguenots

When I reported on the suspected Huguenot connection of my ancestor Jean Bonnedame (* 1666 Mörlheim, today part of the city of Landau) , I didn’t know the last name of his wife, Maria Sara, whom he married in 1724. We now know that she was called Maria Sara Bouquet, (*1699 Minfeld).

It turns out that her family appears to be of Huguenot origin as well. Specifically, her father Philipp Bouquet was probably born around 1655 in the pays de l'Alloeu, a small patch of land just west of Lille (today in north of France) which originally was one of the provinces of the Spanish Netherlands. He came to the town of Billigheim (in the Palatinate, just south of Landau), which had a significant population of Huguenot refugees, with his father Laurent Bouquet (Boquai) in 1664. We don’t know anything about his mother. In 1685 he married Christina (last name unknown) at Archenweyer near Billigheim. Their son Isaac Bouquet was born in Archenweyer in the same year.

Like many other Huguenots, the Bouquets followed the invitation from the Duke of Prussia and moved on to the East, to the Uckermark area around Prenzlau in 1686, and were still there in 1690. (A list of residents confirms there were no Bouquets left behind in Billigheim by 1692.) However, there are no family events recorded in the Uckermark and by 1699 they were back in the Palatinate, where Philipp was administrator (Hofbeständer) at Minfeld. Sara Bouquet was born there in December 1699. Philipp Bouquet died on the Baltic island of Rügen, which must have been in Swedish possession at that time. We have no idea how or why he got there, so any clues appreciated. Christina died at Mörlheim in 1733.

There are a few Bouquet (Bocquet, Boquai, etc.) families documented in the area that is now the region Nord/Pas de Calais, but most are catholics, so ours are the black sheep. If anybody knows anything about protestant Bouquet families in that space and time, all hints would be much appreciated.

A couple of generations down the line this means that the couple that emigrated to the Black Sea, Johannes Klundt and Eva Maria Hust, may both have had quite a lot of “migration background”. Johannes Klundt has three grandparents of suspected French or Swiss origin. The odd one out is Anna Apollonia Schmitt. And the name Hust may also be of French, ultimately of Hungarian origin.

Sailly sur la Lys - one of the four towns of the pays de l'Alloeu.

« Prevote » par Médard — Travail personnel. Sous licence CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prevote.jpg#/media/File:Prevote.jpg

climate responses

The upcoming climate conference COP21 at Paris (which I hear will go ahead despite the recent attacks) will reveal whether or not our civilisation can deal with the challenge of man-made climate change. To mark the occasion, I've had a look at how nature suffers from, responds to or copes with climate change. The resulting feature is out now:

How nature copes with climate change

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 22, pR1057–R1059, 16 November 2015

open access to full text, PDF file.

Paris, place de la republique - own photo from February 2014.

microscopes for molecules

Researchers at the Center for Chemistry at the Space-Time Limit (CaSTL) are using a whole range of fascinating methods to achieve visualisation of molecules at the time and space resolution that is relevant to molecular bonds and reactions, i.e. 0.1 nm (Angstrom) and femtosecond. In an attempt to understand how they do it, I wrote a feature about what they call "the chemiscope", which is now out in the November issue of Chemistry & Industry:

Here's looking at molecules
Chemistry & Industry November 2015, 22-25

abstract, preview of first page and restricted access to full text.

Image source: CaSTL. The image relates to the research paper:
Vibronic Motion with Joint Angstrom/Femtosecond Resolution Observed through Fano Progressions Recorded within One Molecule Joonhee Lee, Shawn M. Perdue, Alejandro Rodriguez Perez, and Vartkess Ara Apkarian*, ACS Nano VOL. 8 ’ NO. 1 ’ 54–63 ’ 2014

The same issue also contains a book review on page 49 - not exactly a recommendation, so I won't name the book here.

deep mysteries

A recent report from the European Marine Board looked into the question of whether and how the economic opportunities present in the as yet unexploited deep ocean could be used in a sustainable way. The short answer is, we don't know nearly enough about the deep sea to handle this challenge responsibly. A slightly longer answer is in my latest feature which is out today:

Deep sea in deep trouble?
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 21, pR1019–R1021, 2 November 2015

Abstract and open access to the full text and PDF download.

A crab observed at 700 metres depth off the coast of Ireland. (Photo: MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen.)

writing history

Asterix: Le papyrus de César

The 36th Asterix album – the second from the new team, Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad – addresses a question of utmost importance for the historical consistency of the whole oeuvre: Why on earth did Caesar not mention the indomitable Gauls and their numerous victories against his legions in his famous De Bello Gallico? Did he falsify the historical record by omission? Are all the zillions of schoolchildren who start their Latin reading with “Gallia est omnis divisa …” fed a pack of lies?

The issue is addressed with a very satisfying story, resulting in an album worthy to be read alongside the Golden Era ones written in the years before Goscinny died. On the basis of this story, there are deep discussions to be had about how history is written, the contribution of reportage, the value of oral tradition, and the philosophy of truth. Oh, and the vanity of writers and the publishing industry. And Assurancetourix the bard (Cacofonix / Troubadix) plays an early example of a Stroh cello, so what’s not to love?

Intriguingly, this arrived on my doorstep just after I started reading another recently published book featuring the origins of Caesar’s famous opus. In the third volume of his fictionalised biography of Cicero, Robert Harris imagines Cicero’s secretary Tiro visiting Caesar in Gaul and reading the beginning of his 12th chapter: “Flumen est Arar quod per fines Haeduorum et Sequanorum in Rhodanum influit, incredibili lenitate ita ut oculis in utram partem fluat iudicari non possit.” Seeing that Tiro is believed to have written a biography of Cicero which is lost, while Caesar’s book is so ubiquitous that it would survive the apocalypse, this encounter between two authors is also an interesting reflection on the vagaries of history writing.

looks like a fragment of the lost scroll survived in the font of the word "papyrus" - maybe the authors should reveal that in full ...

PS: here's an interview with the creators, from the Guardian.

killing the wrong animals

I don't often write about food, but when October approaches I somehow feel obliged to contribute to the various harvest festivities happening in the northern hemisphere, so I wrote a feature about humanity's unsustainable hunger for meat from an ecology / evolution perspective.

The feature is out now:

Can we change our predatory ways?

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 20, pR965–R967, 19 October 2015

abstract and open access to full text, PDF file

A vegan cafe/shop I snapped on my recent visit to Leipzig, Germany.

Alexander Calvelli @ Freudenthaler Sensenhammer

The painter Alexander Calvelli, whose work I have been following for a while, has a new exhibition coming up at a small museum in Leverkusen, the Freudenthaler Sensenhammer (a place where they used to make scythes). I just love the name of the place, and Alexander tells me it's a lovely little museum mainly run by volunteers.

The exhibiton Alexander Calvelli - Hämmer & Sicheln - Arbeitswelten opens on the evening of Oct. 23rd:

11. Leverkusener Kunstnacht
Freitag, 23.10.2015, 19.00 Uhr (Einlass 18.00 Uhr)
details

how to wake up sleeping beauties

Among the German publications in September/October we have sleeping beauties (research papers that find belated fame), green roads into the future (made of algal residues), and even one serious article about artificial cells:

Nachrichten aus der Chemie Vol 63 Issue 9, page 967
Ausgeforscht: Grüne Straße in die Zukunft
DOI: 10.1002/nadc.201590318

Nachrichten aus der Chemie Vol 63 Issue 10 pages 1002–1004
Blickpunkt Biowissenschaften: Künstliche Zellen
DOI: 10.1002/nadc.201590319
related content in English

Nachrichten aus der Chemie Vol 63 Issue 10, page 1051
Ausgeforscht: Dornröschen wachgeküsst
DOI: 10.1002/nadc.201590340

how life shaped Earth

History of Life on Earth - a special issue of Current Biology with lots of goodies is now online.

For my contribution, I looked at Earth from an astrobiology angle and examined some of the many ways in which life caused it to become different from our neighbouring planets and much more complex in its chemistry and geology.

How life shaped Earth
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 19, pR847–R850, 5 October 2015

Open access

Table of Content

more films we're not allowed to see

UPDATE 16.6.2024 - the new list for films from 2021 onwards is here: films not shown - part 3

Back in 2010 I started a blog entry listing interesting (mostly European) movies that did not get a cinematic release in the UK. Many updates later, this entry has become just a little bit unwieldy, with two lists running in opposite directions, so I suspect I’m the only one who still finds anything in that entry (although it has been viewed more than 2500 times and is among the five most-viewed entries of all time).

Thus, I decided to start from scratch with a clean slate and just one list of films running chronologically forward, so starting with the earliest ones. I’ll start with films produced in 2012, because that’s where the old review/appreciation list fizzles out (unlike the watch list, which also included films that were more recent and those that I hadn’t seen yet). Within each year, the films that I actually managed to see are listed first. Oh, and female directors are now also highlighted in bold font (work in progress).

So, without further ado, off we go:

Camille redouble (Camille rewinds) - France 2012, Noémie Lvovsky - Charming if slightly illogical time travel story featuring the director in the lead role. It was - released in around a dozen countries but no UK date in sight.

La fille de nulle part - France 2012, Jean-Claude Brisseau - this low-budget ghost story looks like poor old Brisseau is now reduced to filming in his own flat and playing the lead himself, but it is still interesting.

Mapa para conversar (A map for love) - Chile 2012, Constanza Fernandez, starring Andrea Moro, Mariana Prat, Francisca Bernardi - three women in a cute little chamber piece mostly set on a small boat. Restrictions clear the mind, as one of the characters says. Available on DVD from the lovely peccadillo pictures.

Des morceaux de moi (Pieces of me) - France 2012, Nolwenn Lemesle, starring Adele Exarchopoulos (before she became famous in that other role) - growing up in a dysfunctional family in the middle of nowhere (in this case Picardie, northern France) can be hell, as the contrast between Adele Exarchopoulos' character, Erell, and everything around her demonstrates. Erell tries to cope by recording a video diary of her daily life, thus locking up her teenage trauma in a little box which she can eventually leave behind.

La vie d'une autre (Another woman's life) - France 2012, Sylvie Testud, starring Juliette Binoche, see my review here.

El amigo aleman (The German friend) - Germany, Argentina 2012, Jeanine Meerapfel, starring Celeste Cid - a slightly confused story of confused identities as the the daughter of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany gets entangled with the son of Nazi refugees from postwar Germany, with both protagonists moving back and forth between Argentina and Germany.The fact that in both families the parents talk German to their children who answer back in Spanish reflects the mix-up. I do have a soft spot for Sulamith though, played by Celeste Cid.

Una pistola en cada mano - Spain 2012, Cesc Gay - Shown in Germany (Ein Freitag in Barcelona), and at the London Spanish Film Festival 2013.
Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the world) Germany 2012, Detlev Buck. Adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann's bestselling novel.
Klip (Clip) - Serbia 2012, Maja Milos
Weil ich schöner bin - Germany 2012, Frieder Schlaich
3 - Uruguay, Argentina, Germany 2012 - Pablo Stoll - oops, there are too many movies called 3, I was looking for this one and first found the one below, and got all confused.
Tres - Ecuador, Argentina, Germany 2012
3 Zimmer/Küche/Bad (Move) - Germany 2012
Baad el Mawkeaa (After the Battle) - France / Egypt 2012
Después de Lucía - Mexico / France 2012
A perdre la raison - Belgium 2012, Joachim Lafosse, starring Emilie Dequenne
Buscando a Eimish - Spain 2012, Ana Rodríguez Rosell, starring Manuela Vellés, Emma Suárez - shown at the London Spanish Film Festival 2012
Joven y alocada - Chile 2012, Marialy Rivas
Goltzius and the Pelican Pelican Company - UK 2012, Peter Greenaway

---

Angélique (I) - France 2013, Ariel Zeitoun - A fresh-looking new adaptation of the bestselling history romances by Anne and Serge Golon. I admit I watched part of it during travels in a hotel room and kind of liked it, so I ordered the DVD. Review to follow.

Landes - France 2013, François-Xavier Vives, starring Marie Gillain - gloomy reflections on life, boredom and social problems in the vast pine forests near Bordeaux set in the early 20th century. Compare and contrast with Therese Desqueyroux, starring Audrey Tautou, which did get a UK release.

Jack et la mécanique du coeur (Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart) - France 2013, Stéphane Berla, Mathias Malzieu - interesting CGI-fairy tale in a surreal steampunk-style setting. One could spend hours unpicking cultural references from Jules Verne through to modern ones.

Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (Witching and bitching) - Spain 2013, Alex de la Iglesia, starring Carolina Bang, Carmen Maura. Shown at various festivals in the US and UK. Too much horror and buddy movie for my tastes, so I won't even attempt to review it, but here's the New York Times' take on it.

Arrêtez-moi - France 2013, Jean-Paul Lilienfeld, starring Sophie Marceau, Miou-Miou. Powerful and disturbing chamber drama about lives destroyed by domestic violence.

Chez nous, c'est trois! - France 2013, Claude Duty, starring Noémie Lvovsky. Very cute little film with a funny sideplot relating to the age-old question of how many kisses people in France exchange for greetings, hence the title. The main plot is about a struggling film director played by Noémie Lvovsky, who in real life directed the equally charming Camille redouble just the year before (listed above) so it could also be read as a reflection on the lack of global success of that work.

Flores raras (Reaching for the Moon) - Brazil 2013, Bruno Barreto
Ayer no termina nunca (Yesterday never ends) - Spain 2013, Isabel Coixet - shown at the Berlin International Film Festival 2013, and at the London Spanish Film Festival 2013
La marche - France 2013, Nabil Ben Yadir, starring Hafsia Herzi - I only know about this film because the trailer is on a DVD I own, probably one I bought in France.

---

Todos estan muertos - Spain/Germany/Mexico 2014, Beatriz Sanchis, starring Elena Anaya - the first full-length feature from Sanchis is a nice little film on a former pop singer traumatised by the accidental death of her brother and bandmate. Mecano may have been a musical inspiration. Only released in Spain and Mexico, and shown at a few festivals.

Les yeux jaunes des crocodiles - France 2014, Cécile Telerman, starring Emmanuelle Béart - a spirited defense of authors' rights, in a way. Based on the best-selling novel by Katherine Pancol.

Die geliebten Schwestern (Beloved sisters) - Germany 2014, Dominik Graf, starring Hannah Herzsprung. Young poet Friedrich Schiller's love life - it's complicated.

On a faillie être amies (Almost friends) - France 2014, Anne Le Ny, starring Karin Viard, Emmanuelle Devos, Roschdy Zem. Some nice scheming going on in this female-led comedy where the male chef serves as a trophy husband.

Arrête ou je continue (If you don't, I will) - France 2014, Sophie Fillières, starring Emmanuelle Devos, who gets lost in the woods and finds herself. Otherwise somewhat depressing relationship breakdown.

Respire (Breathe) - France 2014, Mélanie Laurent - shown at lots of festivals around the world, released in half a dozen countries. Managed to catch it on TV5 at some point but memories are evaporating fast. Felt kind of ethereal.

Ocho apellidos vascos (Spanish affair) - Spain 2014, Emilio Martínez Lázaro - only shown at the London Film Festival 2014.
Sous les jupes des filles - France 2014, Audrey Dana
Marie Heurtin (Marie's story) - France 2014, Jean-Pierre Améris, starring Isabelle Carré
Week-ends - France 2014, Anne Villacèque - released in Germany as "Wochenenden in der Normandie"
Au fil d'Ariane (Ariane's thread) - France 2014, Robert Guédiguian - released in Germany in Dec 2014 as "Café Olympique - Ein Geburtstag in Marseille"
Las insoladas (Sunstrokes) - Argentina 2014, Gustavo Taretto - released in Germany in August 2015.
Qui vive (Insecure) - France 2014, Marianne Tardieu, starring Adele Exarchopoulos
Une rencontre (A chance encounter) - France 2014, Lisa Azuelos, starring Sophie Marceau.
Tu veux ... ou tu veux pas? (Sex love and therapy) - France 2014, Tonie Marshall, starring Sophie Marceau (I'm on a roll adding all of Sophie Marceau's movies since 2012, as none of them have been shown in the UK.)

---

Jamais contente - France 2015, Emilie Deleuze - starring nobody I've ever seen before, this is a 21st century version of La Boum where the girl gets to sing in a band rather than going to a party. I wanted her band to be more punk though.

Qui c'est les plus forts? (You'll never walk alone) - France 2015, Charlotte de Turckheim, starring Alice Pol, Audrey Lamy. Charming comedy ticking off all the social issues of our time, maybe too obvious in its box ticking, but extra kudos to the director for casting herself in an unlikable role.

Je suis a vous tout de suite (I'm all yours) France 2015, Baya Kasmi, starring Vimala Pons. Billed as a comedy about a woman who can't say no, it has some rather dark undertones too, but overall manages to keep a warm tone and feelgood vibe. I didn't know Vimala Pons before, will have to watch out for other work. Intriguingly, she did an earlier short film with Baya Kasmi, called "J'aurais pu être une pute" which could almost be connected to this film.

Journal d'une femme de chambre (Diary of a chambermaid) - France 2015, starring Léa Seydoux, shown at the Berlinale, all of which is sadly no guarantee that we will get to see it here (except in the French Film Festival UK showing in a small number of cities.)
Mi gran noche (My great night) - Spain 2015, Alex de la Iglesia, starring Carolina Bang.
Le gout des merveilles - France 2015, Eric Besnard.
Go home - France 2015, Jihane Chouaib
Je suis un soldat - France 2015, Laurent Larivière
La taularde (Jailbirds) - France 2015, Audrey Estrougo, starring Sophie Marceau.

---

Corps étranger (Foreign body) - France/Tunisia 2016, Raja Amari, starring Sarra Hannachi. Very intimate portrait of one refugee's story.

À tous les vents du ciel (Twisting fate) - France 2016, starring Noémie Merlant. Yes, she may be a bit of a manic pixie dream girl stereotype, but the film is amazing in the extent to which it focuses on her and lets all male characters drop by the wayside. (Update April 2022: just spotted the name of Noémie Merlant here, who later shot to fame with portrait d'une jeune femme en feu, I hadn't made the connection at all, and she plays a character much younger than her real age here)

Rupture pour tous (Love is dead) - France/Belgium 2016. Charming and timely little comedy involving nobody I've ever heard of before.

Fleur de tonnerre (Poisoning angel) - France 2016, Stéphanie Pillonca, starring Déborah François - brilliant and quite a bit scary, see my review. IMDB lists no foreign releases at all - not the image of Brittany and of French women that people want to project ...

Maman a tort (Trainee day) - France 2016, starring Emilie Dequenne - bookended by fleeting party scenes reminiscent of La boum, a 14-year-old girl has her moral compass comprehensively crushed by a week-long work-experience at her mum's insurance company. Bottom line: yes capitalism is evil but just play along and find somebody weaker who can suffer so you don't have to. I might have to channel that anger into a separate blog entry.

O Perfume da Memória - Brazil 2016, Oswaldo Montenegro - amazingly stylish chamber piece in the spirit of Room in Rome and En la cama. Montenegro appears to have made it with his own resources and released it free on YouTube. See my review here.

Sex cowboys - Italy 2016, Adriano Giotti. Mildly interesting little no-budget movie made with people who don't even have a profile picture on IMDB. Selling out your sex life on only fans or whatever the 2016 precursor was comes with unintended consequences. Note that the girl gets a complex character, while the boy is mainly there as the love interest.

Egon Schiele: Tod und Mädchen (Death and the maiden) - Austria / Luxembourg 2016
Paula - Germany 2016, Christian Schwochow. A biopic of painter Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Marie Curie - France 2016, Marie Noelle.
Vor der Morgenröte - Stefan Zweig in Amerika (Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) - Germany 2016
Orpheline - France 2016 - starring Adele Exarchopoulos, Adele Haenel, Gemma Arterton.

---

Luna - France 2017, Elsa Diringer, starring Laëtitia Clément - A male victim of a gang assault and a female member of the assaulting gang meet again, a love story as an almost-thriller due to the dark secret lurking in the past. Impressive work from unknown young actors.

Aus dem Nichts (In the fade) - Germany 2017, Fatih Akin - UK release June 2018!!! - on time for the end of the court case against the neo-nazi terror group NSU, the real-life inspiration behind the story.

Plonger (Diving) - France 2017, Mélanie Laurent, starring Maria Valverde. Ignore the trailer, the film is much more interesting than the trailer suggests.

La belle et la meute (Beauty and the dogs)- France 2017, Kaouther Ben Hania, starring Mariam Al Ferjani. Haunting depiction of the aftermath of a rape not shown - it's all to be read from the face of Mariam Al Ferjani.

Prendre le large (Catch the wind) - France 2017, Gaël Morel, starring Sandrine Bonnaire and Lubna Azabal. A textile company moves production from France to Morocco - one of the workers takes up the insincere offer to keep the job and move along. I'm sure I've seen another French film with a small group of workers moving after their jobs ... ah, found it, it's actually from the same year but I had forgotten to include it in this list after I watched it, so adding it now below:

Crash Test Aglaé - France 2017, Eric Gravel, starring India Hair, Yolande Moreau, Julie Depardieu. In this case it's a car factory relocating to India, and the heroines take a car to follow their jobs in easterly direction.

Djam - France 2017, Toni Gatlif, starring Daphne Patakia. Kind of a road movie without transport, and the title character trying to get from Lesbos to Istambul and back. A lot of spontaneous and informal music making happens on the journey otherwise marked by troubles and tribulations. Also dealing with the issue that many refugees have been risking their lives in the attempt to get from Turkey to Lesbos. Some similarities with Tony Gatlif's 2004 movie Exils, which is also set on the EU's southern border, namely between Spain and Morocco.

La mélodie - France 2017, Rachid Hami. This one is based on an earlier Brazilian movie called The violin teacher. Said teacher leads a bunch of kids in a disadvantaged suburb of Paris from zero to a performance at the Phiharmonie. Unlike the treatment such stories get in Hollywood, we don't have a love story thrown in and get only the bare bones of biographical background on the protagonists, which I think is a deliberate choice to show that once they caught the music bug, the project became the most important thing to them, so everything else has to fade into the background.

La lengua del sol (the tongue of the Sun) - Mexico 2017, José Luis Gutiérrez Arias. Lovely little film about the end of the world, so very topical in this day and age, also a nice chamber play in the style of Room in Rome and En la cama. See my review here.

Rodin - France 2017, Jacques Doillon, starring Vincent Lindon and Izïa Higelin
Le Semeur (The sower) - France 2017, Marine Francen - a 19th century man-sharing plot in a village where only women survived the war.

---

El arbol de la sangre - Spain 2018, Julio Medem. See my review here. Medem returns to his Basque roots, which are probably too obscure for UK distributors.

Madame Mills, une voisine si parfaite - France 2018, starring and directed by Sophie Marceau. Wouldn't normally consider watching a comedy with Pierre Richard, but loved this one, see my review here.

Ma mère est folle (My mother is crazy) - France 2018, Diane Kurys, starring Fanny Ardant. Charming and stylish, even though maybe a bit too close to home ...

Joueurs (Treat me like fire) - France 2018, Marie Monge, starring Stacy Martin. Dark stuff from the world of underground gambling, with a compelling lead.

La belle et la belle (When Margaux meets Margaux) - France 2018, Sophie Fillières, starring Sandrine Kiberlain. The 20 and the 45-year-old version of Margaux cross paths and the older tries to be helpful. It is never revealed which rip in the space-time continuum supposedly made this possible, but the encounter is fun to watch.

Sofia - France/Morocco 2018, Meryem Benm'Barek-Aloïsi. Life is complicated for an unmarried woman giving birth in Casablanca, Morocco. There is no good solution, but the female family members stick together and muddle through somehow, which is more disturbing than uplifting, but I found the grumpy young mother in denial (Maha Alemi) very watchable.

Victor et Célia - France 2018, Pierre Jolivet, starring Arthur Dupont, Alice Belaïdi. Given that I have no interest in hair and beauty salons, there is an amazing number of French films set in this environment that I actually like, and this one joins the ranks of Venus Beaute and Caramel. Alice Belaïdi is a revelation, she also had a smaller role in Les tribulations d'une caissière, 2011.

La dernière folie de Claire Darling - France 2018, Julie Bertuccelli, starring Catherine Deneuve and her daughter, Chiara Mastroianni. Charming and surreal drama about letting go, kind of fits my age now.

Normandie nue (Naked Normandie) - France 2018, Philippe Le Guay
Amoureux de ma femme - France 2018, Daniel Auteuil, starring Adriana Ugarte. Released in Germany in October 2018.
Sin rodeos (Empowered) - Spain 2018. Shown at the London Spanish Film Festival in September 2018, but no release date scheduled at that time.
Un homme pressé - France 2018, starring Fabrice Luchini, Leïla Bekhti.
L'amour est une fête - France 2018, Cédric Anger
LikeMeBack - Italy/Croatia 2018, Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli

---

Damien veut changer le monde - France 2019, Xavier de Choudens. Charming comedy on illegal ways to help migrant kids stay. Outside France it has been released only in Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco.

Tambour battant - Switzerland 2019, François-Christophe Marzal - with a bunch of unknown actors, this is a musical fable about the incursion of modernity into a Swiss mountain village. Women get the vote (it's 1970!) and the rebel faction of the village band uses modern contraptions like saxophones and tambourines.

Une fille facile - France 2019, Rebecca Zlotowski. Coming of age story set in the obscene wealth of Cannes marina. Not quite sure what to make of this.

Poissonsexe - France 2019, Olivier Babinet, starring India Hair. I got the impression that this was a very strange film, set in a near future where marine life faces extinction and humans may also struggle keeping reproduction going? I only gave it half my attention while doing something else though, so I may have missed some of the subtle clues.

Fabuleuses (Fabulous) - Canada 2019, Mélanie Charbonneau. Fabulous film about three young women, one is a successful influencer, one wants to be her, and one wants to be a professional cellist and objects to the whole influencer nonsense. I was very grateful that the young cellist plays the prelude of the fourth suite, not the one of the first which you'll hear in every other movie that has ever included a cello. I only understood 10% of the dialogues in français québécois (some characters were more understandable than others), so may have to watch it again to see if I can decipher a bit more. I think part of the problem is that it is both heavily coloured by English and invaded by English vocab, but as both the English and the French part of the speech sound the same to me I struggle to keep up with the switches.

Le mystère Henri Pick - France 2019, Rémi Bezançon, starring Fabrice Luchini, Camille Cottin, Alice Isaaz. Lovely and very bookish film, see my review here.

J'irai où tu iras - France 2019, Géraldine Nakache, starring Leila Bekhti. I'd watch Leila Bekhti in anything, and she does a good job here as the alien recently landed on her sister's planet of Celine Dion superfans (the title is from a Dion song too). I resented the talking cars and the attempts at comedy on the back of disability.

Curiosa - France 2019, Lou Jeunet, starring Noemi Merlant. Interesting reflections on the early adoption of photography as a medium torn between poetry and pornography. For that alone I would not mind watching it several times. People more interested in the human stories may find the characters a bit cold and aloof perhaps.

Tu mérites un amour (You deserve a lover) - France 2019, starring, written and directed by Hafsia Herzi

---

Jumbo - France 2020, Zoé Wittock, starring Noémie Merlant, shown at Sundance 2021.

---

last updated 16.11.2024

One of our lovely independent cinemas here, not their fault that they're not getting all these films. (Own photo)

banned books week

Tomorrow is the start of this year's Banned Books Week, and the 55th anniversary of the Lady Chatterley trial is coming up in October, more than enough reason to dig up the old book and read it at last:

The edition on the left is from 1960, just after the famous trial that ended its censorship, first reprinting of the first unabridged edition. The one on the right is from the 1970s. It also includes a preface by Richard Hoggart (an academic who wrote about popular culture and class issues in the UK and an expert witness at the trial), which is really insightful.

artificial cells

The origin of life remains one of the great mysteries that science still faces. One of the approaches to address it is to try building living cells from scratch, an endeavour that has recently seen a boost due to new ways of creating small cell-like membrane bubbles, or vesicles. Additional benefits from this kind of research may materialise in medical applications like drug delivery and imaging.

Read all about it in my feature:

Artificial cells
Chemistry & Industry Volume 79, Issue 9, pages 22–25, Sept. 2015 DOI: 10.1002/cind.799_6.x

abstract and first page (Wiley)

access for SCI members

In the same issue, on page 49, there's also my review of the book: Junk DNA: a journey through the dark matter of the genome, by Nessa Carey.

embracing the octopus

On the occasion of the first genome sequence of a cephalopod species I've had a closer look at the biology of the 8-legged animals and learned many amazing things about their evolution, intelligence, and how they make sure their arms don't bump into each other.

All this is in my latest feature:

Intelligent life without bones
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 18, pR775–R777, 21 September 2015
Open access

The photo shows the octopus Wunderpus photogenicus, found in shallow waters from Indonesia to the Philippines. (Photo: Roy L. Caldwell.)

of dogs and people

In my most recent feature I’m exploring the question whether it makes sense to compare psychology of people and dogs - after all the main selective pressure that shaped dogs as a species was integration into human society, so they’re bound to be a bit like us. I also had a look at recent insights and open questions regarding the mutual domestication of both species.

Are dogs just like us?

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 17, pR733–R736, 31 August 2015

Open access

The photo is one I took at the Oxford antiques fair back in June - another canine shaped by humans ...

living with fire

On the 14th and 15th of September the Royal Society will host a discussion meeting on The Interaction of Fire and Mankind (as of today, it looks like they still take registrations for the meeting). I asked a few of the experts who will be speaking at the event about their latest insights into the importance of fire for ecology and wrote up a feature about this, which is out in this week's issue of Current Biology:

Learning to live with landscape fires

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 16, pR693–R696, 17 August 2015
Open access

Elk escaping a wildfire in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana, USA. As fire has been a natural part of many ecosystems for over four hundred million years, many plant and animal species have evolved suitable responses for survival. (Photo: John McColgan/USDA.)

chain mail and cellulose

Just two pieces to round up for July/August, covering DNA chain mail and nanocellulose:

DNA im Kettenhemd
Chemie in unserer Zeit 49, no 4, 226, August 2015; DOI: 10.1002/ciuz.201590034
abstract and limited access to PDF file

Blickpunkt Biowissenschaften: Cellulose zerlegt und neu zusammengesetzt
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 63, 788-790
related article in English

nature's masterclass

Learning from nature at the molecular scale is a big theme that I've revisited many times since the beginning of my science writing, so when C&I asked me to write about the catalysis work of Theodore Betley, I was glad to see it fitted in with that theme - and with a book about biohydrogen that I reviewed recently.

Both my feature on catalysis and the book review appear in the August issue of Chemistry & Industry:

Nature's Masterclass
Chemistry & Industry August 2015, pp 26-29
free access to full text

Pick'n'mix energies. Review of: (Biohydrogen, Matthias Rögner, ed.)
Chemistry & Industry August 2015, pp 50-51
restricted access

the last free-living humans

Three years ago, I read Mario Vargas Llosa's fictionalised biography of Roger Casement, The dream of the Celt, both for fun and for reasons linked to family history. Now the book has come in very handy for the intro of my latest feature, which is on native tribes in the Amazon.

A memory that stayed with me years after reading the novel is that of the shocking abuses committed by rubber companies in the Amazon who captured Natives and exploited them as slaves to harvest rubber in the wild. Sanctions for missing the productivity targets ranged from whipping to murder. (Incidentally, I find it intriguing that the neoliberal politician Mario Vargas Llosa, who ran for Peru's presidency at one point, appeared to be unaware of the novels his alter ego writes!) This happened well within the 20th century and 50 years after Peru officially abolished slavery.

Considering this background, I find it understandable that some of the surviving indigenous tribes in the Amazon aren't all that keen on making contact with our civilisation. Some US academics have argued that if they had the "full information" about our civilisation, they would want to take part. My nagging suspicion is that the Natives have better memory than the academics, and even with full information they might still want to remain as they are, the last free-living humans.

My feature on all this is out now in Current Biology:

How to protect the last free-living humans

Volume 25, Issue 15, pR635–R638, 3 August 2015
Open access

Uncontacted MashcoPiro Indians on a riverbank near the Manú National Park, Peru. (Photo: © Diego Cortijo/Survival International.)

PS (7.8.2015) A comment obviously meant for this post was made under the next post, where it wouldn't make sense, so I didn't publish it. Essentially, one of the anthropologists in this story said they "could have set me straight" if I had contacted them beforehand (I didn't because they had their say in an editorial in Science magazine, no less). Seeing that our disagreement is not about the native tribes as such (ie their area of academic expertise), but over how benign or not our western civilisation really is, I really don't want to be set straight by them. I have enough life experience to judge our civilisation by myself, thank you very much.

platypuses in translation

I'm very pleased to report that my book "The birds, the bees and the platypuses" is now available in Arabic translation thanks to the Hindawi Foundation (set up by Ahmed Hindawi), a non-profit publishing operation aiming to make the world's knowledge accessible in that language.

The steadily growing list of titles they've translated is here (in English). Details of my book are here (in Arabic). I understand the print edition costs $10, and electronic versions are also available.

This is a screenshot, as in my attempt to save the cover image from the site I lost the writing on the cover. No idea how that can happen. Also, I'm afraid the cover features an inverted helix, but I'll let this pass for once.

animals on the move

Thanks to the ongoing revolution in communication technology which now tracks our every move, it is also much easier to track wild animals, even small ones. What's more by tracking many and diverse animals, we can learn more about the biosphere than was possible previously, as animals can become reporters in the service of science, and may help their own survival in the process.

I've discussed these things and the recent book "Das Internet der Tiere " (The internet of animals), shown below, in my latest feature in Current Biology which came out today:

Animal moves reveal bigger picture
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 14, pR585–R588, 20 July 2015
Open access

Das Internet der Tiere: Der neue Dialog zwischen Mensch und Natur, by Alexander Pschera, October 2014.

beyond silicon

Moore's law, the famous (partially self-fulfilling) prophecy that has defined the current technology revolution, turned 50 this spring, and, give or take a few tweaks, it's still holding up ok. However, we are now in sight of some serious physical limits to the further improvements possible with silicon technology. Thus, experts are asking what comes beyond silicon, and in my latest feature in Chemistry & Industry I have rounded up some of the answers, both speculative and real-world ones.

Beyond Silicon

Chemistry & Industry No. 7, pp 42-45

limited access to full text and PDF download.

This all reminds me of the 1990s, when we were also worrying about limits to chip technology, only then it was the wavelength of visible light that limited the optical techniques. Overcoming these limits enabled the boom in nanotechnology and all of today's communication tech. Exotic alternatives such as molecular computation, which I discussed in a chapter in this book:

were already explored back then, but remain in the realm of the less likely paths today.

In the same issue, there's also my review of the book

Low cost emergency water purification technologies by Ray and Jain.

why reduce harm

... when you could go and lock up harmless people?

Well, ahem, don't get me started on the psychoactive substances bill which is currently on its way through UK parliament and may well become law. I find it ironic that this steaming pile of b****t, which will make totally harmless substances like nitrous oxide (used in childbirth and whipping cream, no less) illegal, shows up at the same time as the commercial success of e-cigarettes demonstrates that harm reduction is possible. Sadly though, reducing harm is not what our government wants. Appeasing the Daily Mail is more important, obviously.

Anyhow. My feature juxtaposing these two issues is out now in Current Biology:

Drugs: blanket ban or harm reduction?
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 13, pR523–R525, 29 June 2015
Summary and limited access to full text
(should become openly accessible one year after publication)

Laughing gas has been safely used for over two centuries, as this cartoon from the early 19th century exemplifies.

PS (14.7.2015) Today, Anyone's Child, a group of families who lost children to the war on drugs (including Anne-Marie Cockburn, mother of Oxford teenager Martha Fernback who died two years ago), are taking their petition for a drugs policy based on harm reduction to Downing Street. You can sign their petition here.

folding into 3D

There have been exciting developments recently involving one- and two-dimensional structures that can be induced to buckle or fold into complex three-dimensional architectures. I've explored these in my latest feature in Chemistry & Industry, which is now online:

Scientific origami
Chemistry & Industry Volume 79, Issue 6, pages 26–29, June 2015
abstract and restricted access to PDF file

A sneaky preview of the first page (as shown on the Wiley Online Library page):

On page 49 of the same issue there is also my review of the book:

The price of global health: drug pricing strategies to balance patient access and the funding of innovation

pee-back time

The round-up of German pieces published in June covers African genomics, gene editing, and advanced materials reflecting urine from the much peed-upon walls of St. Pauli district in Hamburg.

Crispr-Cas: Gen-Schere weckt Neugier, Hoffnungen und Ängste
Chemie in unserer Zeit Volume 49, Issue 3, page 158, Juni 2015
Abstract and restricted access to full text.
related content in English

Blickpunkt Biowissenschaften: Afrikas Genome
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2015, 63, 647-649
related content in English

Ausgeforscht: Clochemerle 2.0
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2015, 63,751

little birds lost

Some large iconic bird species have recovered across Europe, but many less conspicuous ones are still declining. Even "common" species like the house sparrow have suffered dramatic declines, and ecologists have argued that their loss in abundance may make more of an impact than than the plight of the rarer birds that conservation efforts tend to focus on.

This is the topic of my latest feature in Current Biology which is out now:

Europe’s bird populations in decline
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 12, pR483–R485, 15 June 2015
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.057
Open access

PS In lieu of a bird picture, enjoy this beautiful dinosaur on the cover of the issue:

genome editing

Some time around 1994, I heard freshly-minted Nobel laureate Tom Cech (one of the discoverers of natural RNA enzymes, aka ribozymes) give a talk in Oxford, and he finished by saying that most of what he had presented happened thanks to his brilliant post-doc, and we should remember her name, she would go on to do great things. That post-doc was Jennifer Doudna, who now has a very good chance to get a Nobel prize herself for her work on CRISPR-Cas, the “bacterial immune system”, which Doudna and others turned into a turbo-charged gene editing tool.

Currently, researchers are still teasing out some very fundamental details of how this system works in the wild, while its application in the laboratory is turning the world of genetics upside down, as it allows gene editing with unprecedented ease. And while US scientists are holding meetings to call for a moratorium on its application to the human germline, a team in China has proceeded to to just that.

This is the topic of my latest feature in Current Biology. If I got my counts right, this must be the 100th in the new format we introduced in February 2011, when I started providing a feature for every issue of the magazine (i.e. two per month). I think I only missed 3 issues since then, so I guess it worked out quite nicely. So here’s number 100:

Bacterial scissors to edit human embryos?

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 11, pR439–R442, 1 June 2015

Open access

busking protest

We had great fun last Thursday busking "non-compliantly" to protest against Oxford City Council’s plans to use a new Public Space Protection Orders (PSPO) to attach the threat of large fines and a criminal record to “non-compliant busking” i.e. anything that their staff consider to be in violation of the busking code. Much like the notorious ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Orders), the PSPOs are a malicious trick to criminalise behaviours that were previously considered minor misdemeanours. (They also wanted to do the same to criminalise rough sleeping and charge homeless people fines, but the public outcry made them reconsider that part of the plan. NB they're not even the only Labour council to try that.)

The code as such isn’t all that bad. Apart from the much-ridiculed requirement to smile while you're playing (impossible for flautists and other wind players!), I think the ban on CD sales should be removed. It’s been ignored for years, but when the council started to police it last summer, they scared away some of the best busking acts we had, including PerKelt.

Green Party councillors were very supportive and patient listeners. I think the council is still going to debate the changes on June 11, so maybe the Greens can still persuade the Labour majority to fix the problems and withdraw the threat of criminalising harmless musicians?

own picture. A selection of seven pictures appears on my street music blog on tumblr.

 

Further info and updates (newest at the top):

On 11.6., the scheduled decision day, as we held another protest busk, the news broke that a legal intervention from Liberty delivered the same morning had succeeded in persuading the council to think again. Let's hope they arrive at a better conclusion when they're done with it. Oh, and here's a recording of the busking protest orchestra performing "Creep" by Radiohead. I think this was the first attempt, it got better by the third time round.

2.6. The scrutiny committee has unanimously passed the recommendation that the code of conduct should be reviewed before it can be hitched up to the PSPO. However, only 3 (out of 12 or so) members supported a motion to remove non-compliant busking from the PSPO altogether.

ITV coverage broadcast regionally on 29.5.

The next busking protest jam session will be on June 11, meet Cornmarket Street at 3pm.

Scrutiny committee meeting on PSPOs will take place on Tue June 2nd, 6 pm, town hall.

BBC news item with a photo of me tooting my flute

Daily Telegraph coverage - I understand this was on the front page of the paper on the day after our protest.

21.5. event page on facebook

Keep Streets Live

online petition

Paula Cocozza about PSPOs.

oxford alumni divest

In my recent feature on “25 years of climate change failure” I reported among other things the ongoing campaign of Oxford students to persuade the University to divest its massive £ 3.8 billion endowment from all fossil fuel investments.

After deferring the decision in March, the university’s governing body has last Monday chosen a path of the smallest possible action which, with a lot of good will, could be spun as “doing something”. Specifically, the university has asked its money people not to buy any investment in coal or tar sands in the future, as these are the dirtiest kinds of fossil fuels. As I understand it, the university doesn’t hold any such investments at the moment anyway, so it’s not divesting from anything, it’s just promising not to commit any major crimes against our climate in the future. (While they’re sorting out their ethics, maybe they could also pledge not to buy or sell any slaves?)

Nearly 70 Oxford alumni have now protested against this failure to act more decisively by handing back their degrees. The photos below are from a slightly improvised reverse degree ceremony held today outside the University Offices in Wellington Square (proper degree ceremonies are held at the Sheldonian Theatre hence the pun “Shelldonian”). The 59 degrees sent in beforehand were lined up at the start of the event, to which the nine participants added theirs in the course of the ceremony. At the end, the alumni successfully divested from the black stuff, namely the gowns and mortarboards.

Prominent alumni who have pledged to hand their degrees (although I’m not sure if they already have) include environmental campaigner George Monbiot and solar entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett.

All photos my own.

Further reading

Other reports on the university's decision:

Damian Carrington in the Guardian

Miriam Chapman on Fossil Free UK

Similar problems elsewhere:

• Edinburgh

ocean worlds

A few years ago, I reviewed "The goldilocks planet" by Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams, which gave an excellent fast-track account of our planet's climate history.

Now the authors have again provided a very insightful, big-picture view of our home planet, this time focusing on the oceans, which are, after all, the most important factor in making our planet habitable and setting it apart from the around 2000 other planets we know of so far:

Ocean Worlds: The story of seas on Earth and other planets.

In my latest "long-essay" review I have discussed the book in the context of astrobiology. You can find the review in the current issue of Chemistry & Industry:

Chemistry & Industry 2015, issue 5, p 48
(restricted access)

or email me for a PDF file. Or just buy the book.

arks or prisons?

In my latest feature in Current Biology I've explored the ethical quandaries around animals being held captive in zoos and aquariums. Starting from a binary of the animal ark vs animal prison kind, I discovered that there is a third dimension to it as zoos are increasingly also using their expertise to help animal conservation in situ, i.e. in the natural habitat where they belong.

Read all about it:

Can zoos offer more than entertainment?

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 10, pR391–R394, 18 May 2015
Open access

Expatriate animals in Lille, France (own photo).

catching liver cancer early

It’s always great to hear from my former postdoc colleagues who have gone out into the world to set up labs and do exciting research that I can then write about, just occasionally (most of the work I report comes from people I never met). So here is the latest news from the lab of Jenny Yang who arrived at the Oxford lab just a couple of months before me, back in the olden days. She used to work around 25 hours per day, and it’s good to see that her efforts have been rewarded, as she’s now a Distinguished University Professor and associate director of the Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics at Georgia State University at Atlanta.

 

Jenny’s group at Georgia State developed a protein to bind gadolinium ions, which can then be used as contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging of cancer in the liver. Other gadolinium-based products have been available, but due to their magnetic properties (low relaxivity) and other problems, they yielded poor contrast capability , which meant that they could only detect cancers that were already quite big. The new protein now enables the detection of liver tumours (both primary tumours and metastases from elsewhere, as quite a few cancers have the habit of establishing metastases in the liver) at a much earlier stage.

ProCA32, the researchers’ newly developed contrast agent allows for imaging liver tumours that measure less than 0.25 millimeters, compared to a current detection limit of 1 cm. Thus the method is more than 40 times more sensitive than today’s commonly used and clinically approved agents used to detect tumours in the liver. (Note that a tumour 40 times larger in diameter would have 40x40x40 = 64,000 more cancer cells, which is a scary thought.)

Specifically, ProCA32 widens the MRI detection window, which is found to be essential for obtaining high-resolution images of the liver. This application has important medical implications for imaging various liver diseases, the origin of cancer metastasis, monitoring cancer treatment and guiding therapeutic interventions, such as drug delivery.

“Our new agents can obtain both positive and negative contrast images within one application, providing double the accuracy and confidence of locating cancerous tumours,” Yang said. “These agents are also expected to be much safer with reduced metal toxicity.”

The researchers have shown proof-of-concept that ProCA32 can be used to detect cancerous liver tumours at an early stage with high sensitivity. In the study, they have also demonstrated that these new agents better facilitate the imaging of multiple organs, including the kidney and blood vessels, in addition to the liver and tumours.

“ProCA32 may have far-reaching implications in the diagnosis of other malignancies, which could facilitate development of targeted treatment, along with effective monitoring of tumour burden reduction,” Yang said. “Our agent and methodology can also be applied to study the brain and monitor treatment outcomes in a number of disorders, including stroke and recovery, Alzheimer’s disease, brain tumours and gliomas.”

reference:

Protein MRI contrast agent with unprecedented metal selectivity and sensitivity for liver cancer imaging
Shenghui Xue, Hua Yang, Jingjuan Qiao, Fan Pu, Jie Jiang, Kendra Hubbard, Khan Hekmatyar, Jason Langley, Mani Salarian, Robert C. Long, Robert G. Bryant, Xiaoping Philip Hu, Hans E. Grossniklaus, Zhi-Ren Liu, and Jenny J. Yang
PNAS 2015 ; published ahead of print May 13, 2015, doi:10.1073/pnas.1423021112

This entry is based in part on the Georgia State press release.

Georgia State University researchers (left to right) Shenghui Xue, Jingjuan Qiao, Shanshan Tan, Mani Salarian and Jenny Yang developed the first robust and noninvasive detection of early stage liver cancer. Credit: Jingjuan Qiao, Georgia State University.

feminist utopia

Book review:

El país de las mujeres

Gioconda Belli

(2010)

In a small Mesoamerican country called Faguas, a volcanic eruption has enriched the air with an antidote to testosterone, turning its macho men into kind and docile human beings who don’t put up too much resistance when the feminist Partido de la Izquierda Erótica (PIE) sweeps to an election victory and its charismatic leader, famous for having exposed prominent sex traffickers in her TV show, becomes president with an all-female government promising to “clean up” the country.

In a time when much of the more imaginative writing goes in the dystopian direction and the state of the real world may also be headed that way, it is unusual and refreshing to find an unashamedly positive utopian novel. Especially for me with a political background that has quite a few connections to the author’s, the general idealism feels like home and the protagonists the PIE committee are very sympathetic characters.

I’m not entirely sure if the novel would work for anybody who doesn’t experience this huge political feel-good factor. The postmodern structure which mixes different kinds of testimonies and documents is at first a bit confusing until you’ve worked out who’s who. Until about the middle of the book it appeared gratuitously random to me and I would have appreciated a frame, maybe set in the distant future, such as the work of a future historian who explores these developments. Belli has used distant times to great effect in The scroll of seduction as well as in The inhabited woman, and it might have improved this effort as well.

As it stands, this is an interesting book and a heart-warming story for those who still have a heat-conducting heart, but maybe not quite as spectacularly brilliant as the two earlier novels mentioned above. Depressingly, there doesn’t seem to be an English translation at all, although it has been translated into German (Die Republik der Frauen), Dutch (Het land van de vrouwen) and Portuguese (O País Das Mulheres) among other languages.

migration mapped

My great-great-great-grandparents, born in the early 19th century, appear all to have been very solidly German and settled in their respective little patches of the very colourful map of that time. These 28 people (there's been a bit of inbreeding) come from 8 geographically separate regions within what would in 1871 become the German Empire, so they are a meaningful statistical sample of the German population.

I had to go back a further three to six generations to find out that the picture of settled clans rooted in their respective landscapes was completely wrong. For instance, entire villages in the Kraichgau area - one of the 8 regions where my ancestors lived in the 19th century - had been resettled with Swiss immigrants at the end of the 17th century. Elsewhere, Huguenots left their mark, as did skilled metal workers hired in from Wallonia and further migrants from Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, today's Belgium, and probably other places yet to be discovered (I'm gradually building a collection of migration stories here).

I concluded from these findings that everybody has migration background - one just has to dig deep enough to find it. Genomics and genotyping techniques allow scientists to investigate the bigger picture of human migrations on a country, continent, and global scale with unprecedented resolution. The studies confirm the conclusion that I drew from my family research - people have always migrated to seek opportunity and flee hardship, and deep down we are all migrants.

I've had a detailed look at the new science of the genetics of human migration against the backdrop of current political haggling over migrants in my latest feature which is out now in Current Biology:

Genetic traces of mankind's migrations
Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 9, 4 May 2015, Pages R345–R347
Open access

Own photo of the Cowley Road Carnival which every year celebrates cultural diversity around here.

the trouble with photosynthesis

If you look at plants from a technological point of view, there is a fascinating flaw in photosynthesis which is simply down to the fact that it evolved in an atmosphere with virtually no oxygen, and now it is having problems with its own waste product. Some tropical plants like maize and sugar cane have found a fix, but other crops like rice and wheat are massively inefficient at turning carbon dioxide into food, which is why various research groups are trying to improve them.

Read all about it in my feature:

Fixing photosynthesis
Chemistry & Industry April 2015, pp 42-45
Free access to the full text

In the same issue I also have a "long essay review" of the book Fracking by Hester and Harrison (from the series Issues in environmental science and technology)

Fracking - points of view
Chemistry & Industry April 2015, pp 50-51
limited access