oooops, I've somehow lost track of tracking the publications in German, so there is a little gap in the record, but let's just carry on with July/August as if nothing happened ...
So in these two hot summer months we've had molecular wires, mysterious membranes, and the smells of summer:
Molekularer Draht von Hand gemacht
Chemie in unserer Zeit Volume52, Issue4, August 2018, Pages 211-212
Access via Wiley Online Library
(molecular wire made by atomic manipulation - related content in English)
Merkwürdige Membranen
Nachrichten aus der Chemie Volume 66, Issue 7-8, Pages 722-724, Juli ‐ August 2018
Access via Wiley Online Library
(why the membranes of archaea are so strange - related content in English)
Der Duft der Sommerferien
Nachrichten aus der Chemie Volume 66, Issue 7-8, Page 811, Juli ‐ August 2018
Access via Wiley Online Library
PS: I've now updated my publications list, so the missing German pieces should be here.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Monday, August 13, 2018
food for evolution
Open Archive Day
I try to avoid the three notorious f-words that are already getting way too much attention (fashion, food, football), but this was one story about food that I actually found fascinating - how a certain kind of diet, based eg mainly on seafood, or on plant food, can over many generations shape human evolution, producing genetic variants that are still observable today.
Read all about it in my rare foody feature which is now on open access:
How our diet changed our evolution
Own photo. For the reasons mentioned above, I don't have many photos of food, but found some plant-based dessert option ...
I try to avoid the three notorious f-words that are already getting way too much attention (fashion, food, football), but this was one story about food that I actually found fascinating - how a certain kind of diet, based eg mainly on seafood, or on plant food, can over many generations shape human evolution, producing genetic variants that are still observable today.
Read all about it in my rare foody feature which is now on open access:
How our diet changed our evolution
Own photo. For the reasons mentioned above, I don't have many photos of food, but found some plant-based dessert option ...
Saturday, August 11, 2018
16,000 words
In a review of the book “vox” by Christina Dalcher I read the claim that people – men and women alike – speak an average of 16,000 words a day. The research, published in Science in 2007, was designed to debunk the myth that women talk three times as much as men, and it duly found that both talk the same amount within error.
Still, as somebody who prefers writing to talking, this strikes me as a huge amount. That must be around two hours of solid monologue, or four hours of conversation, if you allow the other person half the time. Longer, if you take time to reflect between your exchanges. Just to get a measure of how much text that is that people talk on average, consider this:
I typically write around 1000 words a day (I read a lot more, and I’d reckon I speak fewer). Just imagine I could come up with 16,000 meaningful words a day – which of course I would not dream of wasting on the fickle oscillations of air, but would rather write down for publication. At a fairly typical rate of 40p per word, these could theoretically earn £ 6400 in a day, or two million in a year.
Well the bug in that calculation is that I can’t come up with 16,000 words worth of meaningful content every day, nor can anybody else, which is why people tend to talk about the weather and repeat themselves all the time. Yes I do realise that all that small talk serves a social function, but why can’t people just rub each other’s backs instead? In that respect, chimps and bonobos are more civilised than we are. Failing that, playing music with people works for me. A way of communication as well, but with fewer words.
I appreciate that the 100-word limit imposed on women in Dalcher’s dystopian novel amounts to torture (the lowest word counts reported in the science paper were closer to 500), but 1000 words is probably a daily budget I could get along with. Add to that 1000 written words, and I’ll swap the rest of the 16,000 for wrong notes played at the wrong time. This blog entry contains 373 words, by the way.
PS: The Guardian reviewer doesn't like the book ...
Still, as somebody who prefers writing to talking, this strikes me as a huge amount. That must be around two hours of solid monologue, or four hours of conversation, if you allow the other person half the time. Longer, if you take time to reflect between your exchanges. Just to get a measure of how much text that is that people talk on average, consider this:
I typically write around 1000 words a day (I read a lot more, and I’d reckon I speak fewer). Just imagine I could come up with 16,000 meaningful words a day – which of course I would not dream of wasting on the fickle oscillations of air, but would rather write down for publication. At a fairly typical rate of 40p per word, these could theoretically earn £ 6400 in a day, or two million in a year.
Well the bug in that calculation is that I can’t come up with 16,000 words worth of meaningful content every day, nor can anybody else, which is why people tend to talk about the weather and repeat themselves all the time. Yes I do realise that all that small talk serves a social function, but why can’t people just rub each other’s backs instead? In that respect, chimps and bonobos are more civilised than we are. Failing that, playing music with people works for me. A way of communication as well, but with fewer words.
I appreciate that the 100-word limit imposed on women in Dalcher’s dystopian novel amounts to torture (the lowest word counts reported in the science paper were closer to 500), but 1000 words is probably a daily budget I could get along with. Add to that 1000 written words, and I’ll swap the rest of the 16,000 for wrong notes played at the wrong time. This blog entry contains 373 words, by the way.
PS: The Guardian reviewer doesn't like the book ...
Monday, August 06, 2018
shipping news
For some strange reasons I keep seeing adverts for Arctic cruises, which drive me up the wall. The fact that one can now steer a whopping big cruise ship through the Northwest Passage and around the top end of the Americas is of course a consequence of our tragic failure to do something about climate change. But instead of reading it as a sign and changing our ways, we send ships to the formerly pristine Arctic waters to pollute and melt them some more.
So, well, after seeing too many of those ads I didn't book a cruise, but I wrote a feature about the Arctic shipping craze, which is out now:
Arctic shipping threatens wildlife
Current Biology Volume 28, Issue 15, 06 August 2018, Pages R803–R805
FREE access to full text and PDF download
The ice-strengthened passenger expedition vessel Marina Tsvetaeva is one of many vessels that can now travel through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic summer. Marine biologists predict the increase in shipping traffic will impact on vulnerable species including iconic marine mammals. (Photo: Allen Powell by a CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.)
So, well, after seeing too many of those ads I didn't book a cruise, but I wrote a feature about the Arctic shipping craze, which is out now:
Arctic shipping threatens wildlife
Current Biology Volume 28, Issue 15, 06 August 2018, Pages R803–R805
FREE access to full text and PDF download
The ice-strengthened passenger expedition vessel Marina Tsvetaeva is one of many vessels that can now travel through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic summer. Marine biologists predict the increase in shipping traffic will impact on vulnerable species including iconic marine mammals. (Photo: Allen Powell by a CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.)
Monday, July 30, 2018
crunch time for crispr
Open Archive Day
The European Court of Justice has ruled that gene editing using crispr falls under the EU regulation for GM organisms.
This is a little bit surprising, as crispr is a lot more elegant and subtle than old-style GM, which means that a) it is less likely to produce harmful side-effects, and b) it is much harder if not impossible to detect, as a crispr-induced point mutation could just as well be a random mutation.
This is why, a year and a half ago, when I wrote a feature about gene-edited crops, I was fully expecting regulators to classify these new methods separately from old GM. Clearly, they didn't read my article, which is now openly accessible:
Harvest time for crispr-cas?
The European Court of Justice has ruled that gene editing using crispr falls under the EU regulation for GM organisms.
This is a little bit surprising, as crispr is a lot more elegant and subtle than old-style GM, which means that a) it is less likely to produce harmful side-effects, and b) it is much harder if not impossible to detect, as a crispr-induced point mutation could just as well be a random mutation.
This is why, a year and a half ago, when I wrote a feature about gene-edited crops, I was fully expecting regulators to classify these new methods separately from old GM. Clearly, they didn't read my article, which is now openly accessible:
Harvest time for crispr-cas?
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
arpeggione sonata
on my very slow crawl through the repertoire, I've spent almost six months with Schubert's arpeggione sonata. Although I'll never get it into a shape that would be presentable in public, I can play it along with Natalie Clein's version which I have on CD, and that's great fun too.
(Note for the non-cellists: the arpeggione was a string instrument half way between a guitar and a cello, which was invented in 1823 and only survived for a decade or so. Schubert's sonata, today a standard piece of the cello repertoire, is the only reason the instrument is still remembered.)
Next up, some Bach I found at Oxfam ...
(Note for the non-cellists: the arpeggione was a string instrument half way between a guitar and a cello, which was invented in 1823 and only survived for a decade or so. Schubert's sonata, today a standard piece of the cello repertoire, is the only reason the instrument is still remembered.)
Next up, some Bach I found at Oxfam ...
Monday, July 23, 2018
bottom-up biology at Birkbeck
Way back in 2001, when I was switching to full-time writing but wanted to keep some kind of connection with the world of academia, I used to trek to London twice a week to reside at the School of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, as a science writer in residence. That was an interesting experience while it lasted, and I got some good articles out of it, but as the railway connection got worse and more expensive over time, it wasn't really sustainable in the long run. (In 1999 I had even applied for a few London-based jobs thinking the railways situation can't get worse but it did!) Moreover, as Birkbeck set up a joint Institute of Structural Molecular Biology (ISMB) with UCL in 2003 and turbo-charged its research in this field, the space I used to have just disappeared.
The ISMB hosts an international symposium every other year, and as I was there when the first one happened, I enjoy the nostalgia trip of attending the latest instalments if and when I'm organised enough to make it happen. This year I was lucky and got there for both days of the symposium. I was rewarded with an amazing meeting that covered both the distinguished history of BBK structural biology (Rosalind Franklin, Aaron Klug, JD Bernal ... ) and its very exciting present. And I got another article out of it which is out now:
Building blocks for bottom-up biology
Current Biology Volume 28, Issue 14, 23 July 2018, Pages R761–R764
FREE access to full text and PDF download
The famously dilapidated pair of Georgian townhouses, 21 and 22 Torrington Square, where Rosalind Franklin worked for the last five years of her life, were later demolished and gave way to this, the Clore Management Centre, which is where the symposium was held (own photo).
PS and I got to test-ride the new rail line Oxford to Marylebone, with Chiltern Rail, which is indeed a bit better than what we had so far.
The ISMB hosts an international symposium every other year, and as I was there when the first one happened, I enjoy the nostalgia trip of attending the latest instalments if and when I'm organised enough to make it happen. This year I was lucky and got there for both days of the symposium. I was rewarded with an amazing meeting that covered both the distinguished history of BBK structural biology (Rosalind Franklin, Aaron Klug, JD Bernal ... ) and its very exciting present. And I got another article out of it which is out now:
Building blocks for bottom-up biology
Current Biology Volume 28, Issue 14, 23 July 2018, Pages R761–R764
FREE access to full text and PDF download
The famously dilapidated pair of Georgian townhouses, 21 and 22 Torrington Square, where Rosalind Franklin worked for the last five years of her life, were later demolished and gave way to this, the Clore Management Centre, which is where the symposium was held (own photo).
PS and I got to test-ride the new rail line Oxford to Marylebone, with Chiltern Rail, which is indeed a bit better than what we had so far.
Saturday, July 21, 2018
9 years on twitter
twitter tells me I've been on there for 9 years now - hover over the line where it says "joined in July 2009" and it will reveal the precise date and time. So many things have changed since then, but one thing I found surprisingly constant is the ratio of posts to followers, i.e. how many tweets to I have to send out to increase the number of followers by one. This ratio has been around 15 for as long as I can remember. Checking today, it is 15.04 posts per follower.
More intriguing still, the number is very similar on tumblr (15.98) where I do very different things. Much bigger on blogspot though (47), where the culture of following people never really took off. And smaller on flickr (7.13).
Obviously, for people who are more famous than I am this twitter impact ratio will be smaller, for others it may be bigger - so maybe it's a useful parameter for sociologists to study the social media pecking order (both figures that go into it are public)?
Another thing worth noting is that, since I started obsessing about the Galician language and occasionally tweeting in Galician or linking to Galician sources, these relatively rare ventures tend to spread very widely. Whenever I look at my stats, there's a Galician tweet in the top three. See for instance, from yesterday:
More intriguing still, the number is very similar on tumblr (15.98) where I do very different things. Much bigger on blogspot though (47), where the culture of following people never really took off. And smaller on flickr (7.13).
Obviously, for people who are more famous than I am this twitter impact ratio will be smaller, for others it may be bigger - so maybe it's a useful parameter for sociologists to study the social media pecking order (both figures that go into it are public)?
Another thing worth noting is that, since I started obsessing about the Galician language and occasionally tweeting in Galician or linking to Galician sources, these relatively rare ventures tend to spread very widely. Whenever I look at my stats, there's a Galician tweet in the top three. See for instance, from yesterday:
Monday, July 16, 2018
two years on
Open Archive Day
We certainly live in interesting times now, in the sense of the famous Chinese curse. As I write this Brexit still means chaos and Trump says Russia didn't meddle with elections because Putin told him so. Oh well.
Not sure if it's much use to look back how it went wrong, but here's my first relevant feature written just after the Brexit referendum.
Angry voters may turn back the clocks
The feature warned of a possible Trump victory, so here's one of my photos from last Thursday's anti-Trump demo at Blenheim Palace:
We certainly live in interesting times now, in the sense of the famous Chinese curse. As I write this Brexit still means chaos and Trump says Russia didn't meddle with elections because Putin told him so. Oh well.
Not sure if it's much use to look back how it went wrong, but here's my first relevant feature written just after the Brexit referendum.
Angry voters may turn back the clocks
The feature warned of a possible Trump victory, so here's one of my photos from last Thursday's anti-Trump demo at Blenheim Palace:
Monday, July 09, 2018
sequence everything
It's three decades since the Human Genome Project was organised and 15 years since it published the draft sequence, so it may be worth asking what could be the next big thing for biology.
One possibility that is being looked at is to sequence the genomes of every single eukaryotic species known to science. The Earth BioGenome project, which promotes this idea, has calculated that this could be done within 10 years and would cost no more than the first human genome did.
A crazy idea? Find out in my latest feature which is out now:
The genome sequence of everything
Current Biology
Volume 28, Issue 13, 9 July 2018, Pages R719-R721
FREE access to full text and PDF download
Beetles account for a substantial part of eukaryotic diversity and will keep genome sequencers busy for a while. (Photo: Tim Sackton/Flickr.)
One possibility that is being looked at is to sequence the genomes of every single eukaryotic species known to science. The Earth BioGenome project, which promotes this idea, has calculated that this could be done within 10 years and would cost no more than the first human genome did.
A crazy idea? Find out in my latest feature which is out now:
The genome sequence of everything
Current Biology
Volume 28, Issue 13, 9 July 2018, Pages R719-R721
FREE access to full text and PDF download
Beetles account for a substantial part of eukaryotic diversity and will keep genome sequencers busy for a while. (Photo: Tim Sackton/Flickr.)
Tuesday, July 03, 2018
chemistry stories
These days, I don't write as much about chemistry as I used to as the features for Current Biology keep me reasonably busy, but here's a couple of news stories I did for Chemistry World. The one that came out today involves Harry Anderson's lab at Oxford - I consulted him about something else and asked what he was up to these days, so I found out about this:
Most complex reaction ever triggered by atomic manipulation makes molecular wire
Chemistry World August 2018, vol 15, issue 8, page 32
And the other was something that Chemistry World commissioned while this one was sitting around waiting for the original paper to come out. This is about new ways of predicting how several elements may be combined to form new materials:
AI teaches itself to identify materials – and predict new ones too
Chemistry World August 2018, vol 15, issue 8, page 38
Image source
Most complex reaction ever triggered by atomic manipulation makes molecular wire
Chemistry World August 2018, vol 15, issue 8, page 32
And the other was something that Chemistry World commissioned while this one was sitting around waiting for the original paper to come out. This is about new ways of predicting how several elements may be combined to form new materials:
AI teaches itself to identify materials – and predict new ones too
Chemistry World August 2018, vol 15, issue 8, page 38
Image source
Monday, July 02, 2018
plight of the primates
Open Archive Day
We all know that orangutans are in trouble, and the other great apes are also having a rough time in the anthropocene. While these are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, our extended family, the order primates, is endangered across the board, with over 60% of the species listed as threatened.
In a paper based on literature review and modelling of land use until the end of the century, researchers from the German Primate Centre (Deutsches Primatenzentrum, DPZ) highlight the plight of the primates and paint an even darker future for them.
Which chimes with the take-home message of my feature from a year ago, which is now on open access (and which happens to have the same title as the DPZ press release, but I admit it wasn't a terribly original title anyway):
Primates in peril
a male mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz)
Image source: Wikipedia
We all know that orangutans are in trouble, and the other great apes are also having a rough time in the anthropocene. While these are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, our extended family, the order primates, is endangered across the board, with over 60% of the species listed as threatened.
In a paper based on literature review and modelling of land use until the end of the century, researchers from the German Primate Centre (Deutsches Primatenzentrum, DPZ) highlight the plight of the primates and paint an even darker future for them.
Which chimes with the take-home message of my feature from a year ago, which is now on open access (and which happens to have the same title as the DPZ press release, but I admit it wasn't a terribly original title anyway):
Primates in peril
a male mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz)
Image source: Wikipedia
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