Australia's wildlife in peril

As the Great Barrier Reef is beginning to suffer catastrophic bleaching from the current El Niño warming, Australia's unique biodiversity on land is also under threat from deforestation and habitat loss. I've rounded up a few of the issues currently being fought over especially in Queensland in my latest feature which is out now:

Fate of Australia's wildlife in the balance

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 7, 4 April 2016, Pages R257–R259
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.035

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

The iconic koala is one of many species losing large areas of habitat as deforestation accelerates in the state of Queensland. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

one plucky little ship

As Ireland commemorates the centenary of the Easter Rising, I’ll chip in with what little I know about a relative of mine who played a small role in this story, as second officer on the Aud (Libau), which was to deliver weapons to the Irish rebels.

UPDATE:
Date/Time: Saturday 17th December 2016
Event: Official Launch of The Aud Exhibition on Spike Island
Location: Spike Island, Cork Harbour
Additional Information: With the support of the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Cork County Council is undertaking an exhibition to the Aud on Spike Island; Spike Island having been the only Irish soil that the crew of the Aud set foot on in 1916. The exhibition will be launched by County Mayor Cllr. Séamus McGrath. Places on the boat over and back will be limited but for those interested in attending more information is available by emailing cork.heritage@corkcoco.ie. - source

Walter Düsselmann was born at Krefeld 22.12.1882 the third of five children of August Düsselmann (1844-1899) and Anna Josephine Hagermes. August was the founding director of Krefeld’s fire brigade when it became professional in 1890. He was one of 13 children from this "Krefeld clan" benefiting from that town's silk weaving boom.

In 1904, Walter was steward on the ship Elfrieda, from Rotterdam to Portland, Oregon, arrival 21.5.

In 1913, he was third officer on the Volturno, which caught fire in the North Atlantic on 11.10. 1913. The ship carried 657 people including 500 migrants from Rotterdam to New York. It had to be evacuated completely, with nine other vessels coming to the rescue. Heavy seas made the rescue operation difficult, and 136 people died in the disaster.

In March 1916, he was recruited as second officer on the Libau, with the mission to evade the sea blockade and to deliver arms to Ireland’s Easter revolution. Masquerading as the Norwegian fishing vessel Aud, the Libau took the long route to Ireland, via the Arctic circle.

Against considerable odds, the ship reached its destination, the town of Tralee on Ireland’s west coast, on April 20, but its signals remained unanswered. (The Easter Rising began on Monday 24.4.) It was then captured by the Royal Navy and escorted to the harbour of Queenstown on the southern coast, where the crew destroyed the ship to keep the weapons out of enemy hands.

The crew were held prisoners between two and four years. The captain of the ship, Karl Spindler, later wrote a book about the adventure, with the occasional honourable mention of Walter's contributions.

At Christmas 1921, Walter gave a copy of Spindler’s book, published that year, to his cousin Josephine Bender (1881-1966). The book is still in the possession of Josephine’s descendants.

On 17.10.1943 Walter died in the war, not clear where.

In 2012, one of the anchors of the Aud is retrieved from the wreck and conserved under the supervision of the National Museum of Ireland.

Descendants of Aud crew members have called for the crew to be honoured in the course of the centenary celebration, but no specific recognition has been offered so far.

Strangely, I can't even find a crew list online, so I'll just type it out here, as given in Spindler's book (leaving out military titles, filling in first names where I know them):
1. Kommandant: Kurt Spindler
2. I. Offizier: O. Heß
3. II. Offizier: Walter Düsselmann
4. Obermaschinist: P. Rost
5. II. Maschinist: K. Hauenschild
6. III. Maschinist: Wilhelm Augustin (1890)-1972)
7. W. Bruns, Steward
8. R. Strehlau
9. P. Mathiesen
10. Friedrich Schmitz (1892-1977)
11. A. Schabbel
12. A. Hoffmann, Schiffskoch
13. Signalgast K. Battermann
14. Chr. Meyer
15. F. Schildknecht
16. P. Gutzner
17. H. (Jans) Dunker (1891-1978)
18. G. Pöhlmann
19. I. Kuligofski
20. A. Böthling
21. G. Schmidt
22. H. Brock

Map from Spindler's book.

Sources:

Arthur Spurgeon: The burning of the Volturno, Cassell and Company Ltd. London, 1913.

Karl Spindler: Das geheimnisvolle Schiff. Die Fahrt der Libau zur irischen Revolution, August Scherl Verlag, Berlin, 1921. English translation published as: Gun running for Casement in the Easter Rebellion, 1916. W. Collins 1921.

Mario Vargas Llosa: El sueño del Celta. / The dream of the Celt

plague's progress

Here in Europe we have the plague so firmly associated with the Middle Ages that many are not aware that the disease's causative agent, the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is still going strong in natural reservoirs eg in the western parts of the US. At the moment we don't need to worry too much, as it can be easily treated with antibiotics, but what if it develops multidrug resistance? Or if some unsavoury characters develop it as bioweapon complete with drug resistance?

Reason enough to worry a bit and to look at the trail of destruction that Yersinia has left in the past as well as its current presence and future risks. All this cheerful stuff appears in my latest feature which is out now:

A plague on mankind
Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 6, p R219–R221, 21 March 2016
Abstract and FREE access to full text

The city of Marseille suffered the last major outbreak of the second plague pandemic in Europe in spite of sophisticated quarantine procedures. After heavy casualties, the epidemic was confined to this area and died down there. This contemporary engraving is by the artist Michel Serre (1658–1733), who distinguished himself in the city’s response to the disaster. (Photo: Robert Valette/Wikipedia.)

clear coast

People in Norway are kept very busy cleaning marine litter off their famously fractal coastline. Bo Eide, who was involved with my first feature on the issue, has just told me that they have made another video, Ren Kyst II. Like the first one, it's a very neat clip on a very messy subject:

See also my more recent feature focusing on microplastics, from February 2015, so it must be freely accessible now.

how plants think

Plants don't have a brain, so any claims that they can conduct cognitive processes are bound to be controversial, as they challenge our views of cognition. And yet, over the last few years, evidence has accumulated showing that plants can communicate, remember, count ... This still doesn't mean that they understand when we talk to them, but at least one should keep an open mind to be able to discover cognitive processes that may look very different from the ones in animals but ultimately serve the same functions.

I've rounded up some examples of plant cognition in my latest feature which is out today:

Could plants have cognitive abilities?

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 5, 7 March 2016, Pages R181–R184 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.02.044

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

The root space of plants is a highly complex and insufficiently understood system described as the rhizosphere. It enables communication both among plants and between plants and other species. (Photo: N. H. Groß)

time for fairtrade

Today starts the Fairtrade Fortnight in the UK, so watch out for special promotions and discover new fairtrade products. This year's fortnight runs under the slogan:

Make your breakfast count.

Mine consists mainly of Traidcraft's GEO muesli which you can see in this earlier roundup of fairtrade products and the content is in closeup on flickr.

So, instead, I decided to spill some beans this year:

PS: shockingly, the range of products I buy is still very much the same as in the 2012 roundup - plus fruit according to season. I really should go out and discover some new stuff.

ma ma

UPDATE June 2016: UK release on June 24th! I'll just have to watch it again ...

Julio Medem’s eighth full length (fiction) film features an unexpected megastar in Penelope Cruz who did some of her best work with Pedro Almodóvar (Volver). Maybe they did a swap, as Medem’s early muse Emma Suarez stars in Almodóvar’s latest, Julieta.

Cruz plays a cancer patient who only has months to live and makes the most of it. Most of the time her character, still very much alive and lively, contrasts sharply with the sterile white background of hospital wards etc., and she has life to spare for the male characters surrounding her (too many blokes for my taste, perhaps), and even to create a new life.

If I don’t sound quite as jubilant as I did after Medem’s previous films, it’s probably due to the subject matter, which I’m not all that keen on, even though I admit that I’m getting to the age where one has to take mortality seriously, and Medem, who is a few years older than me, is probably right in addressing it at this point. But why oh why does the gynaecologist, master over life and death, have to look like David Cameron? That’s just a bridge too far.

Sweetening the bitter pill of mortality for the fans of his work are numerous allusions to his earlier films, including the use of white spaces (Los amantes del circulo polar), swimmers filmed from below (Lucia y el sexo), hypnotic countdowns (Caótica Ana), “Natasha” (Room in Rome), and more. There is even a plug for his book “Aspasia”, which in the film is credited to Alberto Lafont (Lafont being the surname of his mother, which is his second surname in the Spanish tradition). I know how satisfying it is to find that everything you do connects to everything else somehow, so I can’t blame him.

The title plays with the words for mum and breast, showing how the life affirmation and the death threat are both connected to the same gland.

I ordered the DVD from amazon.es

cover of the Spanish DVD (it does have the option of English subtitles)

gender transitions

Transgender people have often featured in the news recently, including famous ones going public and less fortunate ones suffering to the point that they are driven to suicide. Personally, I find virtually nothing in the stereotypical view of maleness that I could identify with, and thus have huge sympathy for everybody who tries to escape the box that society puts them in, but I have struggled to understand why so many people would choose to take drastic measures to fit into a different, equally restricting box. If I've learned one thing from researching this topic, it's that the whole situation around our sexes and gender concepts is much more complicated than traditional world-views would have us believe.

The results of this learning experience are now published in today's issue of Current Biology:

Transitions to new concepts of gender
Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 4, pR141–R143, 22 February 2016
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.02.014

FREE access to full text.

Laverne Cox, transgender actress and LGBT advocate. Image source: Wikipedia

galician folk

Since last summer, I got to know most of the regular folk sessions going on in Oxford city (thanks to the young folkie in the family). While I don't spend all that much time listening to folk, the democratic spirit meaning that I can just walk into a pub and join in is very attractive.

In the process, I discovered that Galician folk is my favourite variety. That’s music from the Northwest corner of Spain, the square that sits on top of Portugal – not to be confused with the region in Eastern Europe which for a short time bore the same name, I think the Habsburg Empire only renamed that area to annoy the Polish, or something along those lines.

Anyhow, so the traditional music from Galicia is really lovely, and it also knows a few keys other than G major. I’ll start a new tag on it beginning with this master post listing some of the links I have discovered so far.

local:

Oxford Pandeireteiras

Galician session at Oxford

Xogara – Oxford-based band mixing Galician and other influences

global:

Radio galega: son galicia Galician music 24/7 - two other radio channels in Galician also available via this page.

Xeitona – YouTube tutorials - also on blogspot, twitter, facebook ...

Luar na Lubre – a Galician band that became famous worldwide in the 90s after collaborating with Mike Oldfield, but is still active today.

Ghastas pista? news from the Galician folk scene

Folkoteca galega (tunes database)

Video evidence to follow soon ...

PS In the process I also discovered the Galician language, about which I'll rave some other time.

catalysts for change

I grew up in sight and smelling distance of - not to mention fed by a salary paid by - a major petrochemical site, so I do have a tiny bit of sentimental attachment to this industry. However, if I look at the flow diagrams of what the industry produces, it strikes me that they represent an huge one-way track leading from fossil resources to products of limited lifetime to waste that may persist in the environment for much longer than the products were used, along with carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change.

Considering the limits on our planetary resources and the impact of waste on the environment, we are now all well aware that it would be better if that flow diagram looked more like a roundabout and less like a highway to hell. There are many ideas how to reuse this or recycle that, but considering the gigantic scale of that one-way system from resource to waste, they have limited chances of changing the big picture. Thus I was thrilled to learn that chemists at the NSF-funded “Center for Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis” (CENTC) are addressing the problem on a bigger scale by developing new catalysts for industry and combining known catalysts in new reaction schemes, gradually redesigning the way the world makes chemical products.

The resulting feature is out now:

Catalysis quest
Chemistry & Industry
Volume 80, Issue 2, pages 36–39, 2016
DOI: 10.1002/cind.802_16.x

abstract and restricted access to the full text

(I can send PDF files of the pages on request.)

Sneak preview of the first page - for reasons explained above I love the illustration:

cultured chimps

I hear today is the start of the year of the Monkey in the traditional Chinese calendar. Not quite sure which species it refers to, but by sheer coincidence, I also have a primate-related feature out today, exploring the concept of cultural learning in chimpanzees and also reflecting the conservation worries for both our nearest relatives, chimps and bonobos.

Chimpanzees, our cultured cousins

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 3 (February 08, 2016) pp R83-R85

OPEN access to full text.

Chimpanzees in the wild are known to use both stones and wooden hammers to crack nuts. Groups differ in the patterns of tool choice for this task. (Photo: C. Boesch/MPI EVA.)

caterpillars and cats

In the roundup of German pieces published in January/ February, we encounter Lewis Carroll's hookah-smoking caterpillar, sticky mussels, tortoiseshell cats and lignin:

Rohstoffquelle und Ballast
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 64, 17-18
open access

Ausgeforscht: Chemische Schwärmereien
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 64,207

Biomaterialien: Der Unterwasser-Klebstoff der Muscheln
Chemie in unserer Zeit 50, 14-15.
Abstract and restricted access to full text

Netzwerk Leben - Das Genom: Ein Chromosom wird ausgeschaltet
Chemie in unserer Zeit 50, 72-73
Abstract and restricted access to full text
(new series of short articles on the network nodes of the genome, starting with Xist and X-inactivation)

Chemie in unserer Zeit (also known as ChiuZ) has just entered its 50th year, so there are also some celebrations and reflections going on in the issue - although strictly speaking the round birthday is at the end of the 50th year, but hey, let's celebrate anyway ...

Update 16.8.2016: The genome of the nicotine resistant caterpillar Manduca sexta (tobacco hornworm / Tabakschwärmer) featured in Chemische Schwärmereien, above, has now been published.