sniff it out

Open Archive Day

I am currently reading a book about smell, which I'll need to review when I'm through, so it may be useful for me to reread my smelly feature from last year, which was all about odour space, and is now on open access, so sniff it out:

Odour space - the final frontier




Beetroot is becoming popular thanks to a trend towards more vegetarian and vegan options, but one of its odorants can spoil the pleasure for many. (Photo: © Marco Verch/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

running slowly

A courante is a running dance, of course, supposed to be played fast. In my effort to learn the Courante from the first cello suite, however, I don't think I'm getting past walking speed. Works for me - more time to appreciate the music - but don't try dancing to it.

The other problem with the courante is that it has more notes than I can memorise in a month, so I got about half way with memorising it. So I can play the movement at half the required speed and can play half of it from memory. Count it as a half-way success. Incidentally, I note that the person who used the score before me also made fewer annotations to the courante than to the other movements I have played so far. May have been running out of steam too.

Well, anyway, moving on, or rather backwards within the first suite, we now come to the Allemande.


Resources for this movement:

A slow version from Cellopedia is a helpful starting point as the fingerings are clearly visible at all times. And he plays at a speed that even I can manage (judging by the length of the video, it appears to be 2/3 the normal speed).

For a performance at the proper speed, try this recording from Denise Djokic.

And then consider the helpful hints from Inbal Segev. She's done a short tutorial (or two in some cases) for every single movement.Underneath this one there is also a list of helpful links and resources regarding the suites in general which I hadn't seen before.

Bonus material: A lovely arrangement for guitar played by Ana Vidovic

I'm also adding these videos to my youtube playlist "cello repertoire".




(Not our cello this time but an artwork I saw at a Frieze sculpture exhibition in Regent Park, London, last September)

Revision list (newest addition first)

1.3 Courante
1.4 Sarabande
1.6 Gigue
1.5 Minuet I&II
3.5 Bourree I&II

Telemann's dozen

Two years (and a bit) ago I learned to play Telemann's fantasia No. 2 in a minor, which must have flicked a switch in my flute brain, as I have been playing a lot of unaccompanied baroque pieces ever since. In May, with the lockdown going on and flute lessons being off, I decided on an exploratory run through the remaining 11 fantasias, trying each one for a week, to see if I find one I want to spend more time with. I'm now in the last week of the project, so I have played every note in this lovely book, although not necessarily at the right time:



Oh, and I have added a version of each to my YouTube playlist with flute repertoire.

I have already earmarked No. 11 G major for further study, might also consider 6, 8 or 9. Number 9 is in E major (4 sharps, ####) but what I learned from it is that the fourth #, namely D#, is actually making life easier compared to playing ###, as you don't have to lift the little finger coming down from the E to play the note below. (Obviously, I haven't practiced all of my scales, otherwise I would have known that.)

Here are some interesting thoughts on the fantasias from Rachel Brown, who also has released a CD with the complete set.

Any flute players out there, tell me which one is your favourite?

PS Various artists have identified dance forms in the movements. None of them is marked in the score so I'll add to the list here whatever I can find:

1. Fantasia in A major (Vivace – Allegro=Passepied)
2. Fantasia in A minor (Grave – Vivace – Adagio – Allegro)
3. Fantasia in B minor (Largo – Vivace – Largo – Vivace – Allegro=Gigue)
4. Fantasia in B-flat major (Andante – Allegro=Polonaise – Presto)
5. Fantasia in C major (Presto – Largo – Presto – Dolce – Allegro – Allegro=Canarie)
6. Fantasia in D minor (Dolce – Allegro – Spirituoso=Hornpipe/Rondeau)
7. Fantasia in D major (Alla francese=including a Rondeau – Presto=Folk dance?)
8. Fantasia in E minor (Largo=Allemande – Spirituoso – Allegro=Polonaise)
9. Fantasia in E major (Affettuoso=Sarabande – Allegro – Grave – Vivace=Bourrée)
10. Fantasia in F-sharp minor (A Tempo giusto=Corrente – Presto – Moderato=Minuet)
11. Fantasia in G major (Allegro – Adagio – Vivace – Allegro)
12. Fantasia in G minor (Grave – Allegro – Grave – Allegro – Dolce – Allegro – Presto=Bourrée)



PDF sheet music is freely available, eg from flutetunes.com, from where I also nicked the bourrées and rondeaus that weren't specifically assigned in Rachel Brown's essay about the fantasias.

playing cat and mouse

After the Covid communications feature, I needed a little bit of light relief and was very grateful to discover through the twitter feed of French newspaper Libération a recent paper about how mice became associated with human settlements. Obviously, once we had mice in our houses eating all our grain provisions, we also needed cats. Libération referenced an ancient story about cat domestication from the 00s, but I was sure I had seen something more recent elsewhere, and I found it, and so I could close the circle of life: humans - grains - mice - cats - humans. That was very satisfying, and it fits in really nicely with lots of earlier features I wrote about things like the evolution of agriculture, the Indoeuropean languages, dogs, Bronze Age civilisations, and more.

So, great fun, and I hope you enjoy it too.


Of mice and men, cats and grains

Current Biology Volume 30, Issue 14, 20 July 2020, Pages R783-R786

FREE access to full text and PDF download




New analyses of ancient rodent remains suggest that the house mouse moved in with Neolithic humans even before they started storing grain. (Photo: Chris Game/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)


PS It just dawned on me that this was my 222nd feature in this format, published on July 20, 2020. Also, if you're on instagram (I'm not), you can find the feature here, and like, share, comment, or whatever people do on instagram.

les chansons de mon enfance

In my pre-teens, i.e. before I began to control what music I wanted to expose myself to, I spent a lot of time in France and got accidentally exposed to a lot of French popular music, much of which I then never heard again for decades. And some of that buried stuff comes back now, as musicians famous in the sixties die, as youtube recommends videos to me, or by some other random coincidence.

So here and in a new playlist on youtube I'm collecting French songs that I haven't heard in decades between my early childhood and say the last ten years. Obviously, that rules out the French music that I have consciously explored and chosen to listen to in the interim, such as the works of Brassens, Brel, Moustaki, Piaf, etc.

Work in progress, as I'm sure other musical memories will resurface.

So, here goes, in chronological order (some of the songs are older than me):


1962

Richard Anthony, J’entends siffler le train
(French version of 500 miles written by Hedy West)
A video made with the original sound recording.

Françoise Hardy (1944-2024), Tous les garçons et les filles de mon age
Rediscovered when Pomme recorded a cover. In this case I can't rule out that I may have heard it being used in some film - at least I was aware of the title and knew it was by Françoise Hardy.




1964

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018), Hier encore
A poignant performance from 2016, in Armenia.

1965

Charles Aznavour, La Boheme

Christophe (1945-2020), Aline
When he died I saw the newsclip on TV5 Monde and I was so sure I had never heard of him, and then they played Aline ...

Hervé Vilard, Capri c’est fini

Les feuilles mortes, the version sung by Françoise Hardy

1966

Françoise Hardy, La maison ou j'ai grandi

1968

Françoise Hardy, Comment te dire adieu
I'm following the very amazing Pomplamoose on YouTube and they did a stunning cover of this song, which I am positively sure I haven't heard since 1973.

As I got obsessed with playing Those were the days on the fiddle, I looked it up and found that there was a French version: Le temps des fleurs, by Dalida, released in 1968. I recognise bits of that which pull at my heartstrings, so that is definitely a positive test.

1969

Michel Legrand (1932-2019), Les moulins de mon coeur
Windmills of your mind was composed by Michel Legrand for the soundtrack of the film The Thomas Crown Affair, then recorded by him in a French version. The very catchy circular part of the tune comes from Mozart's Sinfonia concertante, K 364.
I think what happened was that I had watched couple of videos from the French/Arabic cultural interface and the YouTube bots concluded that I should watch the clip of Hiba Tawaji singing this on the French edition of The Voice, starting in French and switching to Arabic in the middle of the first verse (watch out for Mika's reaction which is priceless). If you prefer proper concert performance of the Arabic version without the Voice nonsense, click here. Legrand died last year too, but I think the YouTube bots found me before that.


1973

Michel Sardou, La maladie d'amour
In the movie La famille Belier, music by Sardou was featured prominently. I recognised a few songs, of which this was the earliest.

Update 4.12.2021

Just re-discovered Les feuilles mortes, the version sung by Françoise Hardy in 1965.

Update 22.1.2022

I've ignored everything by Charles Trenet so far as it's typically earlier than my memories, but his "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?" covered recently by Pomplamoose rang a bell (specifically the piano tinkling starting at 1:54) and I found out it was used extensively in Truffaut's film Baisers volés (1968), which might explain how I could have heard it on the radio in the late 60s.

Update 6.5.2023

These updates are getting messy, I am now filing them under the year when the song was released and only leave a note here. Today's update is Le temps des fleurs sung by Dalida in 1968.

Update 14.6.2024 - Revisited this entry after the passing of Francoise Hardy and added a link to her video of Comment te dire adieu. And unearthed another song of hers, La maison ou j'ai grandi.

sloths set free

Open Archive Day

Last year I wrote a feature about the very fascinating (if slightly slow) lifestyle of sloths, and then I spent a year doing nothing, hanging around and waiting for it to come to the open archives, and here we are, the sloths have now been set free and you can read them for free (in your own time):


How sloths got their sloth





A young two-fingered sloth feeding on leaves. (Photo: Proyecto Asis/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)

science news 10.7.2020

Just some covid-19 news today (from zoonotic sources to human behaviour issues), there doesn't seem to be much else:


A global system for monitoring wildlife pathogens to prevent zoonotic disease spillover
In a Perspective, Mrinalini Watsa argues that a rigorous decentralized system for global wildlife disease surveillance is needed to address the looming potential for outbreaks of novel zoonotic diseases.

Bats offer clues to treating COVID-19
Bats carry many viruses, including COVID-19, without becoming ill. Biologists at the University of Rochester are studying the immune system of bats to find potential ways to "mimic" that system in humans.



Bats--the only flying mammals--are highly mobile, constantly bringing new pathogens into their communities. According to University of Rochester biologists, that's one reason they have evolved to have immunity to so many viruses that plague humans, who have only recently (in evolutionary terms) come to be highly mobile and more likely to live in densely populated centers.
Credit: Getty Images photo


For background for these two, see my recent feature on the zoonotic sources of Covid-19 (Open Access).


New study supports remdesivir as COVID-19 treatment


Distorted passage of time during the COVID-19 lockdown
A survey conducted in the U.K. suggests that social and physical distancing measures put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted people's perception of how quickly time passed compared to their pre-lockdown perceptions. Ruth S. Ogden of Liverpool John Moores University, U.K., presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 6, 2020.

Our itch to share helps spread COVID-19 misinformation
A study co-authored by MIT scholars contains bad news and good news about Covid-19 misinformation -- and a new insight that may help reduce the problem.
See also my feature on covid communications, which is out now and on open access.

science news 7.7.2020

Today's selection of science news. Links are normally to press releases on EurekAlert (at the bottom end I may also add a couple of newspaper stories). I include quotes from the summary in italics in cases where the title alone doesn't reveal what the story is about. My own thoughts appear without italics if I have any.



astrobiology

Study: Dying stars breathe life into Earth
As dying stars take their final few breaths of life, they gently sprinkle their ashes into the cosmos through the magnificent planetary nebulae. These ashes, spread via stellar winds, are enriched with many different chemical elements, including carbon. Findings from a study published today in Nature Astronomy show that the final breaths of these dying stars, called white dwarfs, shed light on carbon's origin in the Milky Way.


earth

First direct evidence of ocean mixing across the gulf stream


evolution

A tiny ancient relative of dinosaurs and pterosaurs discovered
I'd just call it a tinysaur.



Illustration of Kongonaphon kely, a newly described reptile near the ancestry of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, in what would have been its natural environment in the Triassic (~237 million years ago).
Credit: Alex Boersma


ecology

Desert algae shed light on desiccation tolerance in green plants

Colony-level genetics predict gentle behavior in Puerto Rican honey bees


light and life

New study resolves mystery surrounding unique light-harvesting structures in algae
specifically: a supercomplex consisting of PSI with specific FCPs (PSI-FCPI) from a marine centric diatom Chaetoceros gracilis.
The paper is on open access

To quench or not to quench: Understanding the role of a cyanobacterial photosystem protein


biomedical

Common hypertension medications may reduce colorectal cancer risk
People who take angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE-i) or angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) for conditions such as high blood pressure were less likely to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer after having a normal colonoscopy. This is the first study to show potential benefits on colorectal cancer development from these commonly prescribed hypertension medications, based on a study of more than 185,000 patients.


dystopian futures

New research reveals privacy risks of home security cameras

Researchers foresee linguistic issues during space travel
This is about subsequent interstellar travel groups shifting their languages in transit such that at the destination they won't understand each other. I don't think this is ever going to be a real problem - we'll have a babelfish (universal translation technology) long before we are able to travel to other stars.

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From the news media:

The Guardian also has the story of the tinysaur

covid communications

Covid-19 challenges the whole world in multiple ways, but possibly the most important crunch points are at the science communication / policy interface, because this is where failures lead to bad decisions, and bad decisions cost lives. Many thousands of lives.

I'm trying not to be parochial, ie not to give the UK perspective undue preference when writing about global issues, but in this case the UK happened to be one of the most outstanding examples, namely on how not to do communications in a public health crisis. So I'm afraid there is quite a lot about the UK's bungled Covid-19 response and science/policy/communications muddle in my feature, but other countries are also mentioned sometimes. And positive examples of good communications also get a shoutout.

As all the content of Cell Press journals relating to Covid-19, this is appearing on open access, but I have also been sent a magic link. So if open access doesn't work for you or stops working within the first seven weeks, try that.


Communicating science in a crisis


Current Biology Volume 30, Issue 13, 06 July 2020, Pages R737-R739

Free access to full text and PDF download




When to wear face protection has been one of the many issues on which conflicting and changeable information has been given to the general public. (Photo: Engin_Akyurt/Pixabay.)

the music instinct

some thoughts on

The music instinct: how music works and why we can’t do without it
Philip Ball
Bodley Head 2010 / Vintage Paperback 2011


To me the most important message from Ball’s book is the realisation just what an incredibly complex process it is to listen to music and to recognise it as something that you connect with, as opposed to a collection of random sounds. As 96 % of the general population (all who don’t have a physiological impairment stopping them) have this amazing ability, the assumption that only a minority can learn to make music, though widely held in Western society, is completely untenable, as Ball notes in his preface. Most of us have the music instinct, and many of those who have it don’t really use it to make music, claiming as an excuse that they aren’t musical or even tone-deaf (as some 17% claimed in a survey cited – the real number is 4%) . Even though they happily sing along with the radio.

For more details of how our music instinct works and just how amazing it is that even young children with no music education can build expectations of what might come next (expectations being a very important part of why we enjoy music), there are 400 more pages with comprehensive details from neuroscience through to ethnomusicology. Those who make music and wonder how it works should read it. I should have read it earlier. For those who don’t make music or deal with it much, the details and examples may be a bit much, I imagine. Maybe they should, after the preface, go away and start making some noise, and come back to the book later? Just an idea.

But as a warning, anybody who tells me they’re not musical will have this book thrown at them forcefully.



This paperback cover is more colourful than but otherwise using the same design as the hardback which I picked up from an Oxfam shop some time last year.

science news 3.7.2020

Today's selection of science news. Links are normally to press releases on EurekAlert (at the bottom end I may also add a couple of newspaper stories). I include quotes from the summary in italics in cases where the title alone doesn't reveal what the story is about. My own thoughts appear without italics if I have any.



astrobiology

Unprecedented ground-based discovery of two strongly interacting exoplanets


evolution

The secret double life of histone H3 as a copper reductase enzyme
In a study that takes another look at histones' origins, researchers report these proteins, known for DNA-packing, may have evolutionary roots in early life in helping to maintain the use of metals like copper - fundamental for biological processes, but which became toxic to eukaryotes as they adapted to global oxygenation.


ecology

Twenty-year study tracks a sparrow song that went "viral" across Canada
PR includes video with the very lovely sparrow song, both old and new version.



This image shows a white-throated sparrow.
Credit: Scott M. Ramsay

Climate change threat to tropical plants
Half of the world's tropical plant species may struggle to germinate by 2070 because of global warming, a new UNSW study predicts.



Covid-19

Newer variant of COVID-19-causing virus dominates global infections

Study supports link between COVID-19 and "COVID Toes"

Evolution of loss of smell or taste in COVID-19
This survey-based study examines the clinical course of the loss of sense of smell and taste in a case series of mildly symptomatic patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection.


sustainability

Global threats: How lessons from COVID-19 can prevent environmental meltdown
COVID-19, climate emergencies, and mass extinction all share striking similarities, especially with regard to their 'lagged impacts.' In each, early intervention can prevent further damage.


humans

Fans love musicians' personalities as much as their music
I guess we all knew that anyway ...

(US) States with highest income inequality experienced a larger number of COVID-19 deaths


dystopian futures

Science fiction becomes fact -- Teleportation helps to create live musical performance


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From the news media:

An interesting long read from William Davies on how WhatsApp is breeding conspiracy theories and extremism.