marine litter

Surely, palaeontologists of the distant future will label our slice of geological time the plastocene, as a layer of plastic waste will be our signature remnant. Plastic pollution already affects the oceans to an extent that scientists aren't sure what if anything can be done about it, and whether or not particles of crumbling plastic are entering the food chain and may end up on our dinner plates.

I summed up the sorry state of this situation in a feature which is out in today's issue of Current Biology.

It is freely accessible in

HTML and

PDF format

(at least for now, while the issue is current).

Photo by Bo Eide, via Flickr

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PS Bo Eide was also involved in making this lovely video on the problem of marine litter.

DNA nanotechnology gets real

DNA nanotech is a field I've followed from its very beginnings, i. e. Nadrian Seeman's DNA cube in the early 90s. Back then, it was playful "misuse" of the tools developed for molecular biology, but increasingly, the methodology has become more versatile and sophisticated, leading us to a point now, where people can design complex and useful things, like nanopores, self-assemble them rapidly and efficiently, and rely on getting the structure they designed. There aren't many molecules you can do that with on a scale of tens of nanometres. So, while it remains an oddity that people misuse an information molecule to build machines, DNA nanotech has grown up into a technology to be taken very seriously.

My latest feature on this field is out in Current Biology today:

DNA nanotechnology gets real

Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 3, R95-R98, 4 February 2013

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.049

Free access to

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(Image: with permission from Langecker et al., Science (2012) 338, 932.)

PS: I've also covered the same work in an article in German, published in May 2013:

Spektrum der Wissenschaft 5/2013, S. 16

Materialwissenschaft: DNA-Nanotechnologie vor dem großen Sprung

First para and limited access to PDF

Bach for cello and flute

Looking through the flute tag on tumblr earlier this week I came across an ancient video of Jethro Tull performing "Bouree" (not sure what happened to the second "r" but that's what they call the piece), based on Bach's Bourree from BWV996, which I played on the guitar many years ago.

As Jethro Tull play the Bach bit with flute and electric bass, I thought that should work for flute and cello as well, so I found a guitar version on noteflight and converted it to cello and flute, with both instruments taking turns in the repeats.

Sounds ok when noteflight plays it (though it doesn't do the pizz I wanted). Will try out with real instruments soon.

now and later

Written and directed by French director Philippe Diaz but filmed in Los Angeles and in English, this film juxtaposes a hippie-style, free love and social justice world view to the view of the financial/political/military power. It could have been called “Make love not war”, although the actual title is really quite lovely and clever as you will realise after about 30 minutes.

In principle, we have a chamber piece setting these two world views up against each other. In one corner we have Bill, a disgraced banker, representing the people who think that their money and/or power will let them get away with anything - but, having been ejected from the system he supported, he is now ready to change his views and indeed his life philosophy.

In the other corner, Angela (Shari Solanis), the illegal immigrant offering him shelter for a few days in her gorgeously hippie-styled penthouse flat on top of a derelict hotel, where both the toilet and the shower are completely open-plan and in plain view of everything else, and where part of the neon sign of the hotel serves as lighting for the single room. That room alone is reason enough to watch the movie.

Angela embarks on the re-education of banker Bill, trying to reconvert him into a useful member of society – although it will have to be the society of a different country, as the US authorities want him locked up. With her priorities firmly on her sensual desires, she goes in for the sex first, fitting in the political education later.

To me, as someone who has essentially grown up with the Nicaragua solidarity movement, her political lecturing was a tad over-familiar, although I appreciate that the vast majority of the US audience will not know (or in fact believe, if told) that the CIA sold arms to Iran to finance the removal of a democratically elected government in Nicaragua (it’s called the Iran-Contra affair, look it up). This scandal, which was exposed in November 1986, is kind of hard to reconcile with the prevailing US ideology that “we’re the good guys”, but I can confirm that it is true, I was alive (and young and angry) when it happened. Bill’s response “you read too many novels” was hilarious to me, but probably representative of what a vast number of people would say if confronted with these historical events.

People who don’t like the gospel she preaches may resent the dialogue, but, as washed-up banker Bill proves, Angela’s charm is irresistible, whether or not you share her political opinion. And her roof-top paradise from where she looks down on the social divisions on LA with eagle eyes, is equally seductive.

I’m not exactly sure that the film will convert many Bills to Angela’s views, not least because it is effectively being boycotted and hasn’t been released in the UK at all, neither in cinemas nor on DVD. In the US, it remained unrated and got a review in the New York Times in 2011, when a Manhattan cinema showed it as part of a series of unrated films. Still it remains important to uphold the opposition to the sexual, military and financial oppression of our age, and linking these three may help to broaden the horizons of people who were only aware of one or two.

amazon.com

After the explanations above, it is almost needless to say that the film did not get a release in the UK (and thus joins my fast-growing list of films not shown here). However, it is available on DVD in the US and also in Germany. I’m showing the US edition here, as the German one shows a photo at the top of the cover that isn’t from the film, and I have a nagging suspicion that somebody may have had racist reasons to put Bill’s ex-wife there in her bra (who only appears for 2 minutes in the film, sitting in a café, fully dressed) rather than Angela.

Update October 2024: rewatched the film 11 years later and still love it. A bit worried re what happened to Shari Solanis, she hasn't been in any movies since.

art and biology

Over the xmas holidays I wrote a feature on various cross-connections between art and biology, which is now out in Current Biology:

Where art and biology meet
Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 2, R47-R50, 21 January 2013
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.007

Free access to the article in

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Among the art discussed is Angela Palmer's Ghost Forest, which I covered on this blog when it arrived in Oxford. But here's a biologically inspired piece of art that I haven't mentioned in the article:

iron fertilisation

The January issue of Chemistry & Industry contains my feature on iron fertilisation and climate change, which is now accessible online as HTML text and appears to be freely accessible.

In the same issue, I also have a review of the book:

Natural products in chemical biology
Natanya Civjan, ed.
J. Wiley & Sons, 2012

which is premium content. Give me a shout if you would like PDF "reprint" of either publication.

The cover of the issue has nothing to do with my pieces, I just include it for the heck of it, because I like the look of it:

food security and climate change

Last month, I attended a discussion meeting on food security and climate change at the Royal Society, London. As in other areas, it appears that change is going to hit those people hardest who are already in a precarious situation and can least afford to protect themselves. However, I also heard of some approaches promising efficiency improvements with very simple means, such as clever combinations of crops.

I've summarised some of the things I learned there in a feature which appears in this week's issue of Current Biology:

Food security in the times of climate change
Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 1, R1-R4, 7 January 2013
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.

Full text and free access to PDF file.

O

O: The intimate history of the orgasm
Jonathan Margolis
Century, 2003

Der Mensch wird auf natürlichem Wege hergestellt, doch empfindet er dies als unnatürlich und spricht nicht gern davon. Kurt Tucholsky, Der Mensch

Every one of the seven billion humans alive today, as well as everybody who has lived before, owes their life to at least one person having an orgasm, as Margolis points out at the end of this book. (Although twins and sperm-donor children may have to share one, I might have added.) When it’s off its reproductive duty, the orgasm is free and healthy, though short-lived fun accessible to most people. So why have dominating cultures and religious creeds demonised it for centuries, insisting that women should feel no sexual pleasure at all, and men should limit theirs to procreation?

Following the cultural history of sexual pleasure – for which he uses “the orgasm” as a shorthand – Margolis gives a broad overview of the shifting attitudes towards it. His history starts off a bit shakily with speculations on stone-age sex, where he repeatedly admits that we don’t really know what went down, but then continues to speculate anyhow.

The writing gets much stronger as soon as the killjoy tendencies of the Christian church start to kick in, which he contrasts with the more liberal attitudes in other cultures including ancient China and India. Margolis argues convincingly, for instance, that the restrictive sexual morals of the catholic church, gradually getting worse as its power grew, also infected other cultures and religions, which started out with a much more relaxed attitude than they have today.

The general perception is that this anti-orgasmic ideology peaked in Victorian times and that things have gradually improved since then, with things like the Kinsey report, the Lady Chatterley trial, and the pill representing the much-cited milestones on our way back to a more natural and reasonable attitude to our own reproductive biology.

Arriving at the present day, one is tempted to think we live in the best of all times and have overcome most of the religious hang-ups. Except that fundamentalism is on the increase, and some of today’s dominating cultural forums play by rules that are downright Victorian. For instance, no breastfeeding pictures are allowed on facebook, and a female nipple on a cinema screen is deemed off-limits for children (who, on the other hand, are allowed to watch people getting murdered). So I wouldn’t quite share the author’s optimism that we’re at the beginning of an age of enlightenment. Things can slip back fairly quickly.

There isn’t much new material or original thought in this work, and it could have done with more thorough editing, but there are lots of lovely quotes and factoids to enjoy along the way, from the pharaohs’ duties in fertilising the Nile with their own seeds to J. Edgar Hoover’s admission that the FBI is powerless against the almighty “oral-genital intimacy.” I am particularly grateful that the author mentioned a book from 1839 with the intriguing title The women of England: Their social duties, and domestic habits. I found that it has actually been re-issued recently and is available to buy.

Thus, as a “review” drawing on a vast range of sources, O is certainly worth reading.

Cover of the Italian edition - very similar to my English edition though.

PS: It is really weird that I seem to have missed this when it came out, especially as I translated/edited Lust and Love in 2004/05, so would have had my eyes wide open for related works. I think it must have been comprehensively ignored by the media around here. I only discovered it a month ago in one of those bookshops where every book is £2. So it was cheaper than the Saturday edition of our newspaper, come to think of it, and it's very good value at that kind of price.

brazilian relatives

Back in 1891, when my great-great-great-great-uncle Christian Gottlieb Weiß wrote up what he knew about his ancestors and relatives, he noted about his aunt:

„Maria Katharina Weiß, geb. 17.2.1786 verh. mit Pfarrer Ried aus Schauern (Hochwald) ist in Rio di jeneire (Südamerika)“

which for a long time was all we knew about that branch of the family. We have now found out, however, that this family emigrating to Brazil has left many dozens of descendants there. They didn’t in fact go to Rio but to São Leopoldo, like a lot of other emigrants from the Hunsrück area did, too. The spelling of the husband’s name is Rieth, and he wasn’t a vicar either.

Helpful fellow genealogists in Brazil sent us a big chunk of data of Rieth descendants, which I’ll summarise the important bits here:

Maria Katharina (or Maria Barbara according to other sources) and her husband Georg Philipp Rieth (1784-1843), together with their two sons Philipp Christian Gottlieb (*1811) and Johann Friedrich (*1814) emigrated in 1829, arriving in São Leopoldo on 25.5.1829.

Both sons married within the community of German migrants from the Hunsrück. Philipp Christian Gottlieb Rieth married Maria Elisabeth Schiehl (born 1820 in Hundsbach near Meisenheim) in São Leopoldo in 1838. Johann Friedrich Rieth, confusingly, married Maria Caroline Rieth (1824-1898), born in Schauren like he was, so more likely than not a cousin. This second Rieth family (the parents are Georg Heinrich Rieth and Johanna Dorothea Schlieper) arrived in São Leopoldo on 29.12.1825.

Each of the two had eleven children, many of whom went on to marry other people from the German community (we find the names Uebel and Purper from Oberstein, Hemb from Niederkumbd, Haag from Sensweiler near Trier), producing more than 40 great-grandchildren for Maria Weiß and Georg Philipp Rieth.

These descendants stayed mostly in the surroundings of São Leopoldo (i.e. in the state of Rio Grande do Sul), settling in places like Lomba Grande, Hamburgo Velho, Sapiranga. In this area, you’ll even find streets and a school named after people with the surname Rieth.

Image source and further info:
Wikipedia entry on German migration to Brazil (in German)

Astrobiologie für Einsteiger

The official publication date for the German edition of Astrobiology - A brief introduction is today (though amazon.de hasn't updated the page yet). Below the picture is a snippet from the preface.

Auszug aus dem Vorwort:

Auf der Grundlage der umfassenden (wenn auch unvollständigen) wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse über das Leben auf der Erde stellt die Astrobiologie sich drei fundamentalen Fragen über das Leben im Universum:

• Welche physikalischen Eigenschaften ermöglichen es unserem Universum, Leben hervorzubringen?

• Wie spielte sich die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Lebens auf der Erde ab, und wie verschieden könnte dieser Prozess anderswo abgelaufen sein?

• An welchen anderen Orten im Universum könnte Leben entstanden sein, wie könnte es aussehen, und wie können wir es finden?

Der Wert der Astrobiologie liegt zum Großteil darin, dass diese Fragen vielleicht zu den fundamental wichtigsten Problemen der heutigen Wissenschaft gehören. Sie sprechen grundlegende Bedürfnisse des Menschen an, nämlich, zu wissen, wer wir sind, wo wir herkommen, und ob wir in den Weiten des Weltalls allein sind. Zusätzlicher Nutzen ergibt sich daraus, dass diese Fragen eine ungewöhnlich interdisziplinäre Vorgehensweise erfordern. Die Astrobiologie berührt eine Vielzahl von traditionellen Disziplinen wie Kosmologie, Astrophysik, Astronomie, Geologie, Chemie, Biochemie und natürlich die Biologie. Dieser Umstand verleiht den einzelnen Wissensgebieten einen neuen Grad an Bedeutung, da sie in einem weiter gefassten Kontext eingebettet werden. Andererseits macht die interdisziplinäre Natur der Astrobiologie auch eine reibungslose Kommunikation zwischen weit auseinanderliegenden Disziplinen erforderlich. Es gilt, Astronomie für Biologen verständlich zu machen, und Zellbiologie für Astrophysikerinnen. In diesem Sinne versuchen wir mit diesem Buch, den gegenwärtigen Stand der Astrobiologie einem breiten Spektrum von wissenschaftlich Interessierten, „also Hörerinnen und Hörern aller Fakultäten“ zugänglich zu machen und beschränken uns deshalb auf die notwendigen wissenschaftlichen Einzelheiten.

sea floor surprises

I used to think that our civilisation's lack of knowledge of the deep sea was just embarrassing - as often summarised in the statement (still true, I think) that we know the far side of the moon in greater detail than the sea floor. However, in the course of research for my latest feature, I realised that it is downright dangerous.

The bottom of the ocean is the boundary between the Earth's crust, which is reduced, thus may contain large amounts of methane, and the oxygen-bearing oceans. Microbes ensure that the methane reaching the boundary gets oxidised and metabolised. If it escaped this process and managed to rise to the atmosphere, a climate disaster would hit us that might be even bigger than the one we're currently producing ourselves.

And yet we have very incomplete knowledge of the chemistry going on in sea floor sediments, as two recent, completely unexpected discoveries have revealed - one demonstrating novel redox biochemistry with S(0) intermediates, the other electron transport through bacterial filaments.

My feature is out today in Current Biology:

Surprises from the sea floor

Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 24, R1023-R1025, 18 December 2012 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.11.053

Free access to

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Bacterial filaments that act as conducting wires in sea floor sediments (Photo: Nils Risgaard-Petersen).

peptides, proteins and poo

the articles published in German this month cover innovative toilets, non-ribosomal peptides, and the story behind this year's chemistry Nobel (G-protein coupled receptors).

WC 8
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 60, 1175

Peptidsynthese ohne Ribosomen
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 60, 1198-1199

Enthüllungen aus dem Reich der Sinne
Spektrum der Wissenschaft Nr. 12, 24-27

PS Oh, there's also a book review in the special review section of the "in unserer Zeit" journals:

Kleine Nachhilfe: Antworten auf Kinderfragen (review of: Endlich Mitwisser, Holger Wormer and Michael Dietz)
Chemie in unserer Zeit 46, Nr 6, Treffpunkt Buch plus, V