sexual politics

My latest feature investigates the important question why so many stupid things are said and done at the interface between sex and politics, pegged to Todd Akin's remarks on rape victims not getting pregnant, but I think the stupidity in this field is eternal.

It is a serious problem, but on the other hand it's also an opportunity to make fun of ridiculous things, so I should admit that writing this was as much fun as one can have with one's clothes on (to tick the only sex-related clichee that I haven't used in the article itself).

Anyhow, you have been warned, 18+ readers only are invited to read the full story in today's issue of Current Biology.

When reproductive biology becomes political

Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 18, R779-R781, 25 September 2012, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.09.006

Read the story in HTML and PDF format (NB: my features remain on free access only until the next issue appears, i.e. normally 2 weeks, sometimes 3, and they return to free access a year after publication)

gecko book out now

My latest book, a collection of recent nanoworld stories in German, is now officially out and in the shops.

Michael Groß:
Von Geckos, Garn und Goldwasser:
Die Nanowelt lässt grüßen.
Wiley-VCH Sept. 2012
pp. 302, ISBN: 978-3527-33272-4,
€ 24.90, £ 22.50

Further information here. The shelf with my collected works now looks like this (there is a copy of everything that has its own ISBN number, hence hardback and paperback editions of the same title side-by-side):

ecce homo

When I was 18, there was some kind of party involving my dad’s work colleagues in our garden. Observing from the sidelines, I noted that one of the secretaries wasn’t much older than me. She was polished to perfection, all fake smiles, polite phrases, small talk and social graces. As a grumpy teenager who had none of these attributes and gloriously failed to see their point, I probably wondered how much voltage you need to convert a human being into this kind of robot.

Later that night, it fell to me to drive this very same robot home, and during a half-hour drive I was surprised to find that there was a human being behind that robot façade. I don’t recall what we talked about, but I was so impressed I might have fancied her if I hadn’t seen her other side earlier in the evening, the memory of which still scared me. (I wrote a poem about this, called ecce homo, which you’ll find below – in German.)

Now I had a similar revelation from the infamous topless photos of the woman formerly known as Kate Middleton (easy to find on tumblr). I hated the whole wedding shebang with a passion and found every one of the officially approved fake-smile photos revolting, but on seeing those paparazzi shots I got, for the very first time, the impression that there may actually be a human being behind that robotic façade.

As the editor of the Italian magazine Chi said, they show two normal human beings in love. Maybe that’s why we (here in the UK) are not allowed to see them. The monarchists don’t want us to know that there are normal human beings underneath all the fancy clothes. In that case, there actually is a very strong public interest case to be made for publication of the photos, in order to break through the deception we’re getting all the time.

It is also noteworthy that, on the travels during this affair, she put on a headscarf when visiting muslim countries where women are expected to do so, but when visiting Pacific island nations where women go topless, she didn't adopt the native dress code. Very puzzling all this.

Still, why a lively human female in her 20s would choose to live a robot’s life, remains a mystery to me, in both cases.

PS: I tend to agree with Jonathan Jones's recent comment on all this.

---

I have found a lovely photo I would like to use here, just asked the photographer for permission and am awaiting response. In the meantime, enjoy the cover of Chi magazine and Steve Bell's topless royal family, and please check back tomorrow.

OK, giving up on that photo, here is plan B:

Spare a thought for poor old Kate Topping, she will have a lot of unexplained traffic on her linked-in profile this week! But seriously, while Google Germany categorically refused to censor the autocomplete algorithm just last week, when the ex-president's wife asked them to stop the auto-propagation of rumours, it looks like Google UK has decided to lend the royals a hand. Another scandal within the scandal.

---

ecce homo

vorgestellt

als funktion
von erwartung
und leistung

als apparat
mit optimalem
wirkungsgrad

als kommunikations
element geölt
mit höflichkeit

doch dann
aus dem
rahmen getrennt

sieh da
ein mensch

heart of matter

My review of the book

Nucleus: A trip into the heart of matter
Ray Mackintosh, Jim Al-Khalili, Björn Jonson, Teresa Peña
Dundee University Press. Second edition. 2011

is out in the September issue of Chemistry & Industry, page 49. The online version is premium content, but here's a little snippet for you:

"The authors of Nucleus attempt to make this big picture - how the atomic nucleus connects to everything and influences virtually every aspect of our world - accessible to a lay readership. With just over 130 pages, colour illustrations throughout, and a total absence of formulas, the book has the right kind of look for it."

amazon

Homo sapiens: rise and fall

In my latest feature I'm exploring the recent discoveries of surprisingly large numbers of rare genetic variations in individual human genomes. Experts have attributed these to the rapid population expansion since the beginning of agriculture. There is still some debate re. whether or not the accumulation of such mutations poses a threat to the future health of our species.

The feature appears as part of a special review issue on Evolution and Human Health in today's issue of Current Biology:

Rapid population rise bad for our health? Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 17, R702-R705, 11 September 2012 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.040

Free access to full text available in HTML and in PDF format.

The other articles that are part of the special themed section are also on open access.

Prague slide show

I spent a rather lovely week at Prague, checking out the EuCheMS conference and also spending a lot of time roaming the city in the footsteps of Kafka, Dvorak, Jacopo Strada, Tycho Brahe, Kepler ...

Here's a slideshow of a small selection of my photos:

ant orientation

In a feature that was a bit off the beaten track for me, I've covered the orientation of desert ants, which can make use of a wide range of tools from step counter to vibration sensing. One of the interesting questions in the field is how the ants compute the information coming from their various navigation tools and how they eventually decide where to go.

My feature is out in Current Biology today:

How ants find their way
Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 16, R615-R618, 21 August 2012
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.004

Read the story in HTML and PDF format.

(free access)

Photo: Kathrin Steck.

¡no pasarán!

Loving this week's SPIEGEL cover showing Pussy Riot member Nadyezhda Tolokonnikova sporting a ¡No pasarán! T-shirt.

Der Spiegel, issue 33/2012

That brings back so many memories of Nicaragua solidarity events and all that :)

Those who "will not get through" according to the use of the slogan at the time, were of course the Contra - right-wing insurgents (as we like to say today) enthusiastically supported by that nice Mr Reagan. Earlier uses of the phrase include Spanish Civil War, says Wikipedia.

DNA origami

My essay review of the book

Materials Science of DNA

Jung-Il Jin and James Grote, eds., CRC Press 2012, ISBN 978-1439827413

appears in the August issue of Chemistry & Industry on page 51. It is premium content, but here's a little snippet:

All in all the book is accessible enough to serve a broad interdisciplinary field, so it can equally be recommended to biologists who want to branch out into nanotechnology and to materials scientists and nanotechnologists who consider adding DNA to their repertoire of nanoscale building materials. Even for those a bit further remote from it, this area is definitely one to watch.

amazon.co.uk

PS: If you're reading the magazine and have tried to figure out the connection between the picture and the review - there isn't one. Due an error, a completely unrelated (but nice) picture was printed with the review.

life is a mad circus

Review of (or, rather, a first attempt at figuring out):

Balada triste de trompeta (The last circus), Spain 2010, Alex de la Iglesia

based on DVD imported from France, as film was not released in UK.

I love Alex de la Iglesia’s knack for absurdity, and I don’t normally mind his over-the-top violence too much, as it is clearly described as absurd, so it’s just actors messing about with ketchup, as far as I’m concerned. So I do make an effort to get to see his films, even if it's sometimes tricky around here.

I suppose this one is about trauma handed down from the generation of the Spanish civil war to the next one, along with cultural traditions and the jobs of circus performers. Very normal in one way, but also completely pointless once you start to question it. As in the previous films I saw, there were lots of absurd details I liked in this film too, but I was somehow missing a positive element to balance it out. As the only female protagonist is variously beaten by one clown and kidnapped by another (just like in real life, come to think of it), I was missing a positive character, like the prostitute in 800 balas. The only relief we're getting here is the realisation that our real lives aren't quite as mad as the mad circus shown here.

Still no reason to censor it, as de la Iglesia clearly has meaningful things to say, even if he expresses them in unusual ways. For instance, the satirical depiction of Franco and his people will have been more meaningful for the domestic (and older) audience than for a foreign observer of post-Franco Spain like me. I'm looking forward to seeing what he will (one day) make of the absurdities of the current economic disaster that has befallen Spain.

I was intrigued to see the film uses a Spanish version of Je l’aime à mourir, by Francis Cabrel – wondering whether that’s what inspired Shakira to use it in the concert for the Live from Paris DVD. The film was released in Spain on December 17th, 2010, and the song showed up in the Paris concerts of June 13th and 14th 2011. You do the maths.

cover of the French DVD, which I ordered from amazon.fr. It doesn't have English subtitles though. There is a US edition available as region 1 DVD, under the title "The Last Circus"

both of us

I loved B.O.B.'s airplanes (with Hayley Williams) at the time, but that could have been a one-off. Now he's done it again, with Taylor Swift:

Oh, and price tag, with Jessie J, was good too. So, conclusion (and memo to Shakira) B.O.B. is the man to duet with ... seems a much nicer guy than that pitbull person.

mysteries of diatoms

I have covered the research relating to the silica shells of diatoms - their morphogenesis and use in bio-nanotechnology - for many years, but have now for the first time taken a look at the wider context of diatom biology and its links to climate change and other earth systems. The resulting epic feature article is out in today's issue of Current Biology:

Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 15, R581-R585, 7 August 2012 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.07.041

HTML text Free access to PDF file (NB: my features remain on free access only until the next issue appears, i.e. normally 2 weeks, sometimes 3, and they return to free access a year after publication)

photo: Wikipedia