Neanderthals old and new

Way back in the summer of 2003, Firstborn and I did some volunteer work helping to dig for Neanderthal remains in a cave in the Murcia district, Southern Spain. A single Neanderthal tooth that my daughter spotted was the most exciting thing that the hard work of 15 or so people produced during an entire week. There was also a femur head (the “ball” of the hip joint), but it was impossible to tell whether it was hominid or perhaps from a large mammal such as a deer. See my book The birds, the bees and the platypuses (pp77-80) for a more detailed account of our Neanderthal adventures.

I never went back to the cave and lost contact with the research team in the following years. Imagine my surprise then, as I researched an article on modern (genomic, imaging, etc.) methods of research into Neanderthals and found out that in the years 2005-2008, the very cutting where we had scraped around for a week had yielded skeletons with articulated parts of three Neanderthal individuals, found in an arrangement that suggests they may have been buried ritually (with their hands close to their heads, as has also been observed in other Neanderthal graves).

Given the slow progress of the excavation, which is carried out only during the summer months, we must have been less than a metre away from those skeletons. While there have been similar finds further north in Europe, this burial site is a first for the Mediterranean coast, and it may allow comparative studies re. how Neanderthals lived under different climate conditions. Sadly, however, attempts to retrieve DNA from the Spanish Neanderthals have remained fruitless. It appears that the genetic material doesn’t survive very well in the hot climate of southern Spain.

The discovery and excavation of the three skeletons is described in great detail in

M. J. Walker et al., Quaternary International 2011 (in press), doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.03.034

As the cleaning and detailed characterisation of each skeleton proceeds, individual studies will also become available. The first one appeared in September in PNAS:

M. J. Walker et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2011, 108, 10087

Oh, and my news feature on how genomics, imaging etc. is revolutionising palaeoanthropology is out in Current Biology today:

Virtual Neanderthals
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 21, R871-R873, 8 November 2011
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.031

Abstract and FREE access to PDF file

Shakira live from Paris

As I've seen Shakira's Sale el Sol tour only twice, I can't wait to get the DVD, which is out on December 6th, as has just been officially announced. Full details are here. As the title suggests, the show was filmed at the Bercy, Paris, but not during the December 2010 gig that I saw. There were an additional two shows at the Bercy in the summer of 2011 which were used for the DVD.

As the UK distribution is hopeless again (amazon.co.uk offers the DVD for an astronomical price of £ 26.75 and doesn't give a date when it might be available!), I've ordered my copy from amazon.de.



Oh, and there is a new live video out to promote the DVD, it's Antes de las seis from the Sale el Sol album. One of my favourite songs.

dying stars

The current issue of Chemistry & Industry contains my review of the book:

From dying stars to the birth of life
by Jerry L. Cranford, Nottingham University Press

which is an attempt to popularise astrobiology. I can't really recommend the book, for the reasons outlined in my review, so I'll just politely fall silent here ...

tintin revisited

Dear Mr Spielberg,

many thanks for offering your 3D, motion captured, animatronic, and everything else take on the Tintin stories, but I'm afraid I've decided to stick with the original:



This edition of "Le secret de la licorne" (the secret of the Unicorn) is even older than me, not dated, but from the list of other Tintin adventures on the back, it must have been printed between 1960 and 1963.

For some deeper insights into the Tintin oeuvre, see the brilliant book Tintin and the secret of literature by Tom McCarthy, which I reviewed here.

PS: Further reasons not to watch the film:

why the CGI doesn't work and only produces zombie impressions (interesting in that it tells us how our brains process people images differently from everything else!)

Tom McCarthy on how Spielberg missed all the interesting bits in Tintin

Peter Bradshaw's review of the film

Nicholas Lezard trying to cope with the trauma the film inflicted on him

PPS Art critic Jonathan Jones tries to mediate between Tintin fans and those who appear to like the movie.

illuminating brain function

As I have followed the story of bacteriorhodopsin - the biological computer that never happened - for many years now, I was very pleased to learn that somebody found something very clever to do with this and similar microbial opsins. Specifically, the recently developed methodology of "optogenetics" involves expressing microbial light-responsive ion channels or pumps in neurons, meaning that one can activate or inactivate these neurons by shining light of a certain wavelength onto them.

Stanford researcher and practicing psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth, who invented the method and pioneered its use, is keen to apply it directly to psychiatric questions. Others think a few fundamental things need to be sorted out first. Read more about all this in my feature, which is out in today's issue of Current Biology:

Shining new light on the brain
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 20, R831-R833, 25 October 2011
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.007
Summary and free access to PDF file

walking with molecules

Among the molecular motors of the cell, there are quite a few that appear to walk on two legs like we do. However, the rules in the nanoworld are very different from our world. Walkers there can't rely on gravity to keep them connected with the track, and they have to muddle through the chaos that is Brownian motion.

Researchers have been able to build synthetic walkers from DNA for a few years now, and recently have also introduced the first small molecule walker that matches the key criteria of the walking molecules in the cell.

I wrote a feature about all this which is out in Chemistry & Industry this week:

Walking in the nanoworld
Chemistry & Industry issue 19, pp 20-22

free access to full text (html)



A couple of macroscale walkers appear on the cover of the issue by coincidence.

don't play with food

Following the deregulation of the finance markets in the early 00s (whose bright idea was that?), finance people have discovered food commodities as a new toy to play with, and the prices have become unpredictable and decoupled from the real world parameters such as supply and demand. While the guilty parties deny that their gambling has any impact on the real world, experts increasingly believe that speculation does drive real people into real hunger.

For more info about this scandalous situation (and some of the science behind it, including, again, herding), read my feature in today's issue of Current Biology:

Don't play with food
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 19, pages R795-R798, 11 October 2011
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.09.037

summary and free access to pdf file

On the same issue, the World Development Movement (also mentioned in my feature) have today issued a press release:

450 economists call on G20 finance ministers to stop speculation fuelling hunger

October crop

the roundup of German pieces in October has philosophical insights gained in mitochondrial research, RNA scaffolding in synthetic biology, crop protection, and an appreciation of the conical flask / Erlenmeyer flask on its 150th birthday.


Die Energie der Mitochondrien und ein bewegtes Forscherleben, Spektrum der Wissenschaft 2011, Nr 10, 100. (review of "Feuersucher" by Gottfried Schatz)

RNA-Gerüst bringt Ordnung in die Zelle, Chemie in unserer Zeit 2011, 45, 351
restricted access to PDF file

Ungestörtes Wachstum erwünscht, Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2011, 59,966

Eine schräge Geschichte, Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2011, 59, 936



Erlenmeyer's original design drawing, apparently. Source: wikipedia

when, where, and why people riot

I've rounded up some experts to explain the science behind the "English riots" that happened in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and some other cities at the beginning of August. Geography, social issues, crowd psychology, network science all have something to say about it, though detailed research, such as the Guardian's collaborative effort with the LSE, Reading the Riots, is only just beginning.

My feature about all this is out in Current Biology today:

Why do people riot?

Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 18, R673-R676, 27 September 2011
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.09.015

FREE access to full text and pdf file

PS: Results of the detailed study of the 2011 riots are published here.

broken britain 2011

food fight

I don't often write about food and agriculture, but hey, it's harvest time, and world population is going to pass the 7 billion mark soon, so naturally our thoughts turn to how to feed all those people.

Chemical crop protection is under attack from all sides, as GM crops push some of it out of the global market (though not the European one, where people mistrust GM), resistance to established herbicides is spreading, and the fears of side effects (most recently: on bees) aren't going away either.

So I've looked into what direction the industry may take to get out of this trouble, and found a few interesting new approaches.

Read my feature in today's issue of Current Biology:

New directions in crop protection
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 17, R641-R643, 13 September 2011
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.08.055
Summary and limited access to PDF file




Don't know what they fed this quince tree (not mine)!

book projects

It turns out that I have two new books to complete by the end of January, so there won't be much time left for random blog entries until then. For the first time in nearly 12 years of self-exploitation, I've had to make a weekly timetable to allocate ringfenced time slots to both projects. Will keep plugging my feature articles though (one coming up tomorrow, in fact) and gradually reveal more about the upcoming books.

Meanwhile, the completely revised and updated second edition of Astrobiology: a brief introduction is available around the world now, so get your copy to find out everything you always wanted to know about Life and the Universe. (Note that the hardback is made for library use and therefore doesn't have a dustjacket, so it's just plain black and you don't get the lovely cover design.)

budapest globalised

The next thing I noticed about Budapest (after the red trolleybuses) was how thoroughly Western brands have taken over the place. It's not just the fast food outlets and coffee shops that you find everywhere in the world. The supermarkets are called Tesco and Spar, the banks are German, the phone booths (rusty and red, like the trolleybuses) were decorated in the livery of German Telekom (of T mobile fame) and had their trademark pinky-purple receivers:



Add to that the German-built cars that block the roads (traffic is a bit of a nightmare on the main routes through the city, but amazingly, drivers very willingly stop to let pedestrians cross), and you'll come to the conclusion that the profits of virtually every economic activity that goes on around there (with the possible exception of haircuts) will be skimmed off by somebody in the west. Oh well.

Funny that after 18 years in the UK, finding the German logos in Hungary is just mildly amusing. It's the Tesco branches, ranging from "expressz" to "hipermarket" that really annoyed me. From our experience here we know that these spread like Japanese knotweed.