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.