Euro vote ends GM food ban.

In case you missed it, the big debate about GM foods in the UK occurred last month. The website dedicated to the debate is pretty disappointing as far as I'm concerned. It looked all the world like the pro-GM lobby set it up as the "pro" arguments were much better formed than the "anti" arguments.

What would be better is a bit of detail, like 5 Reasons to keep Britain GM-free which, despite being termed "somewhat hysterical", is rather more in-depth.

That said, whoever wrote the headlines on that article was a bit of a drama queen.

Ah, jeez, this is terrible. A Taiwanese company has created a genetically modified fish that glows neon.

If you've ever seen a bulldog with a jaw so deformed it can't eat you've already seen how cruelly we can mess with animals through selective breeding. And that's normal directed breeding. Once we can do anything, these creatures may end up suffering in ways we can barely imagine.

"Aquatic industry specialists are worried TK-1 may be the first of many GM pet fish destined for Britain. In particular, some tropical fish are being bio-engineered to tolerate cold and could colonise UK waters if they escaped, disturbing the present ecosystem."

Introduced species also wreck havoc. Think about mink in Britain's waterways and hedgehogs in Scotland.

Tsk.

Cool programme on BBC1 about a project to re-introduce wolves to New Mexico. They showed a couple-years on of Yellowstone wolves who have learned to hunt as a group and whose numbers are increasing more quickly than they anticipated. A good thing, though, because the elk population has now stabilised and the overgrazing reduced. Nice to see the system working much better than artificial management.

Here in the UK, (and funnily enough, precisely 1 year ago), one of Scotland's wealthiest landowners called for wolves to be re-introduced to the highlands after the last one was shot in the 18th century.

Needless to say, this has proven controversial and the Wolf Trust is working to improve awareness of wolves in the hopes it will change some minds.

The programme simulated wolf vision periodically, using a sort of bluey tinted filter which was probably pretty accurate.

Mr. Bush can fuck right off.

Do you ever get the feeling you're being bullied?

I do. And if Tony joins the bully boys, he can fuck off as well.

It's all complete rubbish - kinda like the justification for war. Hmm, I sense a pattern. Indeed, genetically modified crops will help only a few people, and they happen to be friends and cronies of the Bush administration. Funny that.

In 2002, an estimated 145 million acres of farmland around the world were planted with genetically modified crops. The biotech acreage is dominated by four moneymakers: soybean, corn, cotton and canola. None is considered particularly useful for nourishing hungry people in developing countries.

Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic organization interested in applying biotechnology to farming problems in Africa, offered this analysis in a speech last month:

"The field is dominated by ... five very large multinational corporations. For these corporations, there is no profit to investing in expensive research on new products that can only be purchased by subsistence African farmers with little money.

"So quite logically, these companies are not focused on improving the basic crops of the developing world such as millet, sorghum, cowpeas, yams or cassava."

That comes from this article.

Perhaps running the risk of information overload, but still quite a cool idea. Take a look at the bag of potatoes sitting in your potato place (I don't have a potato place, which is, I'm told, why my potatoes sprout). Just below the "Display Until" there may be a number that you can use to track where your potatoes came from. Potato Info is Sainsbury's organic traceability facility, which allows you to trace your potatoes back to the grower. A bit OTT as websites go maybe, but a way to trace all your food would be very cool.

Probably. Or it could just be me being a food geek.

I expect that capitalism will win out - greed being the powerful force it is - and GM is pretty much an inevitability. Hopefully I won't be around to see it, but being full of predictions today, I think we'll end up in quite a mess in a couple hundred years when all that GM stuff starts going haywire. Former environment minister, Michael Meacher is urging caution and mentions:

...the only human GM trial commissioned by the Food Standards Agency found genetically modified DNA did transfer to bacteria in the human gut. Many scientists had denied this was possible.

"But instead of this finding being regarded as a serious discovery which should be checked and rechecked the spin was this was nothing new and did not involve any health risk," he said.

Like any "scientific" report released by biased parties, we really shouldn't believe anything in the EPA's Environmental Report.

As sweet as stories about animals living in haromony with man are, I'm not sure I'd be ready to admit to my town having an annual Beaver Day.

Following on from the extra male brain-gene thing and continuing the battle of the sexes, the BBC is asking, What are the 78 differences between women and men?.

Already the thing is broken with one person insisting that "Women have the 'Oh dear, the toilet paper is on its last sheet; must replace it immediately' gene," which I must have missed out on entirely. So far the others simply focus on colour perception (women like colours, men ignore them - probably because they're more often colour-blind). [Update: the list is getting better! Some nicked quotes in there, but some hilarioous ones as well, like: "At weddings, women cry then get drunk. Men get drunk, then cry" and "For men, 2am is time for sleep. For women, 2am is time for a discussion about where our relationship is going". ]

So, what are those other 77 different genes for, do you think?

Scientists have deciphered the Y chromosome and found that men have an extra "brain gene" that the women don't possess.

They forewarned us about the inevitable map-reading and parking gene jokes, but I reckon I know what it's really for.

It's the switch that shuts the brain down when that other organ kicks in.

Once again, excuse me if I have a mini-rant against GM foods. Despite the continual ravings from the right that denying GM foods to poor African farmers is somehow evil (supposedly because countries that grow GM crops can not sell them in Europe, Europeans being fairly dead-set against GM), the truth is GM is motivated by corporate greed, not altruistic warm fuzziness for the world's poor.

The real reason corporates want to press for GM foods is purely commercial. Multinationals want to control the world's food chains and can not sell that which is natural and free. They can only sell those seeds for which they have a patent. There's big money in GM foods - not for the poor, but for the biotech giants.

Says George Monbiot in the Guardian:

The principal issue, perpetually and deliberately ignored by government, many scientists, most of the media and, needless to say, the questionnaire being used to test public opinion, is the corporate takeover of the food chain. By patenting transferred genes and the technology associated with them, then buying up the competing seed merchants and seed-breeding centres, the biotech companies can exert control over the crops at every stage of production and sale. Farmers are reduced to their sub-contracted agents. This has devastating implications for food security in the poor world: food is removed from local marketing networks - and therefore the mouths of local people - and gravitates instead towards sources of hard currency. This problem is compounded by the fact that (and this is another perpetually neglected issue) most of the acreage of GM crops is devoted to producing not food for humans, but feed for animals.

The second issue is environmental damage. Many of the crops have been engineered to withstand applications of weedkiller. This permits farmers to wipe out almost every competing species of plant in their fields. The exceptions are the weeds which, as a result of GM pollen contamination, have acquired multiple herbicide resistance. In Canada, for example, some oilseed rape is now resistant to all three of the most widely used modern pesticides. The result is that farmers trying to grow other crops must now spray it with 2,4-D, a poison which persists in the environment.

The third issue, greatly over-emphasised by the press, is human health. There is, as yet, no evidence of adverse health effects caused directly by GM crops. This could be because there are no effects, or it could be because the necessary clinical trials and epidemiological studies, have, extraordinarily, still to be conducted.

Along these lines is this article from Transnational drawing attention to the biodiversity pirates hoping to cash in on South America's rich pickings.

Once a biological resource with commercial potential is identified, the corporation that "discovered" it can claim a patent on it, and thus turn what was once freely available to all into private property. Corporations are applying for patents on everything from trees and rice varieties to proteins, gene sequences and human stem cells. All living organisms and their components are patentable.

Unfortunately for Corporate America, most of the world's biodiversity is outside the borders of the United States and is concentrated mostly in the tropical countries of the Third World.

Finally, for another example of why GM is risky business, consider the fact that rice, the world's staple food and the one that was among the first to be patented has more genes than humans do. As Steven Pinker points out in The designer baby myth, "it's easier to disrupt a complex system with a single defective part than to improve it by adding a single beneficial one."

Surely that's a frightening prospect?

This really sucks. According to the Guardian, Royal Mail is abandoning the trains, shifting the 14% of mail currently transported by rail to the roads.

That's 160,000 lorry journeys per year added to our already over-burdened highways. The government, on the other hand, has set a target of increased freight on the railways by 80% over 10 years. If the Royal Mail can't be persuaded, that (very fine) idea seems doomed.

Bastards.

A study of nature reserves in Ghana seems to imply that polygamous species are less likely to go extinct than those that are true to only one mate.

I wonder what that says about our rather extensive human population, hmm?

The article also closed with this rather stunning statement:

Conservationists are beginning to realize that a knowledge of behaviour is "fundamental to understanding the likelihood of extinction".

D'oh! Only just beginning to realise?! That explains a lot...

The Pew Oceans Commission in the US has presented a plan for protecting the oceans around the US. Their spokesman points out that recognition of the interdependance between sea and land has been slow to dawn.

One scary fact quoted in the BBC article about this paper never even occurred to me, but is pretty obvious when you think about it:

"Every eight months, nearly 11 million gallons of oil run off our streets and driveways into our waters - the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill."

OK, just one more and then I really have to get to work...

Hungarian researchers have tested the abilities of wolves and domestic dogs to determine if a dog's ability to follow a gaze is inate or a result of having lived for thousands of years with humans. Says the article, "it has been suggested that the ability to follow a gaze demonstrates an understanding of mental states, indicating a "higher mind".

The article described how hand-reared wolves would keep their head down to try and figure out a tricky problem, while dogs would look to their human masters for guidance and assistance.

This reminds me of a television programme I saw recently about autism and how a mother of two young boys, one normal and one highly autistic, described the most obvious differences between the two. The normal child, when faced with a problem (a broken toy perhaps), would seek out his mother to assist, while the autistic boy would not, the implication being that he had difficulty recognising the fact that his mother did not share his thoughts - he lacked a concept of "self" as opposed to "other".

I wouldn't suggest that these differences between wolf and dog behaviour are enough to determine whether one possesses a "higher" mind than the other, however, it's an interesting question with possibly far-reaching implications.

Sluice gate closes on 3 Gorges dam.

How much do you know about this essential resource? Take theBBC Quiz. ( I got six correct.)

I rather like a bit of salmon now and again - especially sashimi - but had recently gone off of it due to reports of parasites and dyes. Just as well as another report from the WWF shows wild stocks of the fish crashing as a result of the increase in farmed salmon.

Vegetarianism seems to be inching its way closer every day (or perhaps I'll become a beefatarian).

New Scientist reports another in a long line of speculation about the origins of the SARS virus as scientists find evidence of the disease in exotic species that are considered culinary delicacies in China.

I'm perfectly happy to accept this if it discourages people from eating and trading in wild and often endangered animals, but knowing human nature, it's just as likely to result in mass culls.

The Environmental News Service sums up Worldwatch Institute's "Vital Signs 2003" annual report on the world's future. It's sobering reading but it's clear that we have to think of the whole - it's not just about cute furry animals.

Globalization has deepened economic disparities, Renner explained, and the gap between the world's poorest and richest nations has more than doubled since 1960.
...
The consequences of poverty manifest in the form of terrorism, war and contagious diseases, Renner said, and the effects are felt both by the world's poor and its rich.

"An unstable world not only perpetuates poverty," Renner said, "but will ultimately threaten the prosperity that the rich minority has come to enjoy."

Desertification has made even subsistence farming difficult for many of the world's poor. And just as the fruits of the world economy are not shared equally, neither are the consequences of environmental degradation. The poor are more vulnerable to weather related disasters caused by land clearing, deforestation and climate change.

(via every forest)

DNA analysis is rapidly changing the way that animal species are classified as we learn that physical attributes aren't necessarily the most accurate bases for taxonomy.

Most recently, scientists have determined that the similarity between humans and chimpanzees is so pronounced that chimps and bonobos should be moved into the Homo genus along with neanderthals and other "fossil humanoids".

While not a new suggestion, the conclusion is more than just a boost for animal welfare campaigners, but tells us important things about ourselves and our place in the world.

It probably wouldn't surprise anyone to learn that I don't believe in a god as such, nor in a humano-centric view of the world, but instead see the earth itself as a gigantic organism of which we are only a rather lucky and widespread part.

We are lucky because, regardless of how it occurred, our ability to communicate in such a rich fashion, and more importantly, retain knowledge across hundreds of generations and thousands of miles means that we have the ability to rise above our more base instincts. It reminds us that without knowledge and education, we are subject to the same natural laws as the rest of the animal kingdom and explains why without it, we descend into violent competition and brutality.

I was just off to bed, but I couldn't go without posting this wake-up call on extinction wave.

"UK scientists have issued a clarion call to the world to recognise the galloping rate of species extinction" says the article and the Royal Society believes that the web, in combination with better monitoring can help slow down the losses.

About one in ten of the world's bird species and a quarter of mammals are listed as threatened with extinction. Out of the other species, as many as two-thirds are endangered, putting biodiversity at serious risk - diversity that humans and the planet depend upon.

If there was ever a cause...

Apparently the government is planning on allowing farmers to grow genetically-modified crops because a ban would be 'illegal' under European law.

I've mentioned this before, because I believe that despite the studies that find no evidence that GM foods are dangerous, the complexity of life in general means that we often have little idea what we are doing when we genetically modify anything. The knock-on effects and possible mutations of our mutations may take years to appear, while nature herself has her own ways of dealing with genetic mutation. What hubris to think that our pathetic 50 years of experience is somehow better than billions of years of evolution.

Of course, the Euro-sceptics will use this as an excuse for bewailing the UK's beholdedness to the EU, while from my perspective, it simply looks as though the government picks and chooses amongst those EU directives it wishes to pay attention to.

Of course, a looming trade war with the US over the disclosure of GM ingredients in imported foods may also have something to do with all of this...

The US federal government is planning on opening up Wyoming's Greater Red Desert to unregulated oil and gas drilling. This area is home to desert elk, golden eagles, mountain lions and more than 50,000 pronghorn antelope. I've never been to Wyoming, but always had a romantic vision of its wildness. My grandfather was from Wyoming and he met my grandmother while she was studying nursing there in the 20s. They were a little late to be pioneers, but did travel from there to Nevada where they settled while my grandfather helped build the Hoover Dam (which was then known as Boulder Dam).

The Environmental Defense group wants people to take action and save Wyoming's Red Desert.

Am I being cynical in thinking the only action that could possibly save America's wild places is to get the oil barons out of the US government?

Truly horrifying report from the BBC speculates that 90% of large predator fish have been cleared from the seas in the past 50 years.

Ninety percent! That's absolutely unbelievable, but somehow very beliveable when you think of the knock-on effects of intensive commercial fishing. One of the biggest problems, as far as I'm concerned, is the unbeliveable wastefulness that we are prone to. Just think how much supermarket fish is discarded at the end of the day. Now multiply that by the thousands and thousands of supermarkets around the world and you have a whole heap of dead fish, every single day. The problem there, of course, is that the huge profits supermarket chains make when bulk buying means they hardly feel the pinch of their wasteful ways.

Whilst trying to find a statistic, I ran across "Choose Food, Choose Farming", a Friends of the Earth initiative which promotes sustainable farming in the EU.

Not sure who promotes sustainable fishing, though I know that the EU themselves are working on it by cutting cod quotas by 45% recently and has restricted fishermen to 15 days a month at sea in the hopes that North Sea stocks might one day return .

The Natural History Museum hopes to encourage gardeners to plant native trees, shrubs and flowers and to help, they've put their very cool Postcode Plants Database online.

Pop in a postcode and you'll get a list of flora and fauna that were already present before the formation of the English Channel.

Besides the rather cool general interest, they've listed a selection of benefits to gardeners:

• local plants are adapted to local soils and climate and have low maintenance requirements
• Once established, native plants usually withstand long periods of dry weather
• Many will grow in difficult areas of the garden with little or no fertilizer
• Local plants are the essence of regional identity and preserve the character of the English countryside

I love the plants names, as well: Dove's-foot Crane's-bill, Interrupted Brome, Nodding Bur-marigold, Tasteless Water-pepper, Viper's-bugloss, Selfheal, Sneezwort and my favourite, Bastard-toadflax.

Right next to that animal morality story is another article about how army ants share genetic markers that indicate they evolved from a single ancestor over 100 million years ago.

Not sure what the form of the ancestor was, but it's reasonable to assume it's not hugely different from today's ant (at least by the tone of the article). If that's the case, then their complex, collective behaviour existed way back then as well.

So, what do you think they've been talking about all these years?

Those nice Compassion in World Farming people are holding their "Understanding Animals" conference next week in which they are saying that animals are moral creatures whose displays of altruism resemble human behaviour.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that I very much believe this is true and, rather than anthropomorphism, I feel it's an important evolutionary trait that crosses species boundaries.

Thinking about it, there is a difference between those who feel that survival of the fittest is an individual thing - one must survive oneself to face another day - and between those who believe that evolutionary survival belongs to the species who can best promote itself as a group. Socialism vs. capitalism in our human-centred world, maybe.

Anyway, whether in a herd or a tribe, caring about the welfare of your mates is clearly advantageous to the whole and there are plenty of studies to back that up. And if altruism is explained away as self-preservation, so be it - that works to explain human altruism as well.

Compassion in World Farming, by the way, believes that farm animals will be killed for their meat but believes animals are sentient and possess conscious awareness and wants them treated humanely. A very balanced, middle way approach of which I approve...

Sat in the garden yesterday listening to the blackbirds having their afternoon convos. It's quite amazing to listen to as they seem to have such a rich vocabulary - an amazing range of songs and phrases, many of which they repeat three or five times in a row before moving on to something else.

So, I was almost going to believe this story about a university student who claims that his pet thrush is teaching him Italian.

OK, so a thrush is similar to a blackbird, although I'm not sure I've ever heard one mimic human speech. But fluent Italian? Plus 500 words in Romanian?

Not that I wouldn't like to see it, of course...

Researchers have decided that fish do feel pain after all.

It seems difficult to make the case for them not feeling pain, to be honest. After all, the first thing a bunch of cells do when they come together is to find some method of communicating - and that's often going to be to communicate damage. The central nervous system is the first to develop and was the first to evolve - why in the world would they not feel pain? Even Hydras detect sensory input and respond accordingly.

Of course, whether the sensation they feel is anything like what we do is another question and perhaps one that needs better definition. Of course, I'm not too sure that what I feel when I walk into a door is the same thing you feel either...

Oxford University researchers have noticed that rodents arrange objects in their path to help them remember routes. Or so they think. They believe that these are mini "roadsigns" that allow the animals to recall where they've been.

Rabbits aren't rodents, but they seem to go about things in slightly the opposite way, disliking it when objects are moved and always ensuring that certain paths are cleared. They'll systematically move objects away from the wall - including large and heavy items if they don't belong. They also seem to enjoy picking things up and flinging them...

The Beeb has pointed me towards Lorenzo Climbs Everest, an audio blog of Lorenzo Gariano who is determined to climb the highest peaks on each continent.

Anyway, not dissimilar to the North Pole Challenge I blogged recently.

I must say, however, that I'm not a big fan of audio blogs. I can never be arsed to listen to some guy talking. It simply takes too long and you can't "skim" to the interesting bits. I can read much faster than someone can talk. Am I the only one that feels that way?

According to the Independant, cheap coffee is threatening wildlife as poverty-striken farmers attempt to increase production of cheaper varieties of coffee at the expense of the environment. Coffee prices are at an all-time low and farmers are infringing on forest reserves to increase production. Research has shown that deforestation rates relate directly to the price of coffee paid to farmers.

Says the article, "The free-market, free-for-all seen in the past decade is not the model to follow. We need new trade agreements to stabilise prices and we all need to be prepared to pay a little more for coffee."

So, Fair Trade still sounds like the best way to go and on the one hand it seems that drinking FT coffee is a compassionate move, helping to support poor farmers by ensuring good prices and on-going income, however, on the other, I drink too much coffee and would be healthier if I switched to Fair Trade tea.

So I will. (Ha! Let's see how long that lasts)

(Update: Thanks to Michael, I just visited Orangutan.com who believes that the Sumatran Orangutan could be extinct in as little as 5 to 10 years. You only have to look at the intelligent faces of these creatures to know that we really can not let that happen.)

Shall we decree today DNA day?

Twenty-five years ago today, Crick and Watson sent their famous letter to Nature, outlining their structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.

...or five. PGTips knows that tea is high in flavinoids, but a new report from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School suggests that five cups of tea a day will "sharpen the body's defenses against disease".

Ooh, I could just murder four cups of tea right now...

(gosh, I'm prodigious today)

Poor Andre the Seal was getting into trouble for poaching salmon in Loch Lomond. Divers were unable to catch the slippery scoundrel to relocate him and the rescue co-ordinator said the seal had out-witted them.

Clever boy. He's only gone and got himself a fishing permit.

Central Asia is a magical place - home to some incredible scenery, an amazing culture, ancient history and a lot of highly endangered animals, including the Chiru which is a target for poachers who kill the animal for its wool.

The snow leopard is killed for it's pelt, the musk deer for it's scent glands, the bharal for its fur. They are all highly endangered.

When I was working on a game set in southern China, Bhutan and Tibet, we started to research the wide range of animals indigenous to the region. Rather than let it go to waste, I've put it online. Please note that this was internal research not actually meant for external consumption, so most of the images are lifted from around the internet. Copyright holders are welcome to waggle their finger at me sternly.

I was wondering if this was going to be the cause again - a New Scientist article from last week says SARS is probably "a new hybrid that mutated in the intensively farmed livestock of China's Guangdong province," specifically chickens, ducks and pigeons.

I'm inclined to believe that's what's responsible for SARS rather than it being a man-made disease, as some have suggested. I'm not sure how it works with viruses - the method by which they mutate - however, I would imagine that when there are larger populations of hosts, there are probably more chances of harmful viral mutations emerging and taking hold. The close conditions then allow the diseases to spread more rapidly. Intensive farming is a bad, bad thing and proves itself as such all the time. If it turns out to be responsible in this case, then the world really needs to take a hard look at the long-term viability of the practise.

Very cool Horizon programme about caves. Reminded me that I ran across this excellent QTVR panorama of the Slovenian Nova Krizna Jama whilst following a link from somewhere I can't recall. Go look. The whole site is very cool.

Also, more about the Lechuguilla Cave at Deep Secrets (ooh er).

In what Vassili Papastavrou, an Ifaw whale biologist, calls "commercial whaling in a threadbare disguise," Iceland bids to resume whaling.

A couple of days ago, I rashly posted a link to what turned out to be an Onion article which then evolved into a more considered conversation about religion vs. science over at fuddland.

Coincidentally, I attended a science festival talk at the local Buddhist Centre on Sunday entitled Modern Science meets Ancient Insight. I'm still trying to gather my thoughts about that, but in the meantime, another coincidence turned up this highly relevant (6.6Mb) mpg of Douglas Adams speaking at the Digital Biota Conference we organised in 1998. I understand that the full text of this talk is reproduced in his posthumous collection of writings, Salmon of Doubt.

(Many apologies for the dreadful quality - I'm going to try and get the .swa to work at some point.)

A couple of days ago, I pointed to Matt's comment about genetic engineering: "Change by selective breeding uses the mechanisms that have evolved to change the genome by environmental feedback (set methods?) -- the data return path from the phenotype to the next iteration. New GM methods play with the genome itself, editing private variables. Who knows what they're used for."

Lest anyone think I'm against genetic engineering in any form, I should qualify my agreement with his statement.

Selective breeding in a Mendelian fashion does indeed use the same techniques that nature does in selecting for survival or in our case, robustness, flavour, whatever - and there's nothing wrong with that sort of fiddling. But genes are hugely, unfathomably, complex and the lion's share of the genetic material really is a mystery to us. We have no idea what most of it does or why it's there. Consequently, we have no way of knowing the long term consequences of micro fiddling.

The trick, in my opinion, is to start small. Enrico Coen, at the John Innes Centre in Norwich uses genetic manipulation in concert with a computer model to identify subtle genetic effects in flower blooms; things like local gene expression, for example.

A far better approach than barrelling in ham-fisted into human cloning, in my opinion...

What kind of bird is this, does anyone know? I don't think it's a ruddy duck because it's more goose than duck-sized, but I could be wrong...

But Matt said it better. Just swap his "unsure" about genetic modification for my "uncomfortable".

The frogs have spawned in our pond overnight...

Add jojoba oil to the vegetable oils suitable as replacements for fossil fuels, albeit in small quantities. According to New Scientist, researchers at the United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain and at the Helwan University in Cairo ran an engine on a fuel called jojoba methyl ester - methanol, a catalyst and raw jojoba oil.

Jojoba compared favourably with diesel and runs quieter. It contains less carbon than diesel and contains no sulphur, so no sulphur oxides and a longer-lasting engine.

And, obviously, as a desert plant, can be grown in poor soils and arid conditions.

The Independant has an interview with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in which he states his support for the tooth fairy and Father Christmas, "Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three."

I met Richard Dawkins once, you know. He's lovely.

(via Linkmachinego)

The Aussies are bidding for their national animal to be the next in line for gene sequencing, reports Nature. The Tammar wallaby is in the running against the cat, pig and rhesus macaque. I'd vote wallaby, myself.

Another interesting Cambridge Discovery Lecture at the Department of Earth Sciences, this time given by Charles Darwin's great, great grandson:

Darwin and the Brain of an Ant

13 February 2003
Sedgwick Museum, Dept of Earth Sciences
Downing Street, Cambridge
Doors open 6.30pm. Talk starts at 7.00pm.

Randal Keynes talks about Darwin and his friend John Lubbock's
interest in ants, bees and wasps, and shows how it feels to be an insect.

Gabriele Jordan, formerly at Cambridge and now at the University of Newcastle, and Jay Neitz, a molecular biologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee are both searching for a woman with a very special kind of vision. New findings about colour vision suggest the existence of tetrachromats - people who are able to see an additional range of colours between red and green, possessing, as they do, four instead of the requisite three cone photopigments.

What's even stranger is that these people are exclusively women due to the particular characteristics of the X chromosomes.

(via interconnected)

-----------------
I've quoted a large chunk of the Red Herring article below as it explains the specific circumstances in which this occurs quite well.

Dr. Neitz and Dr. Jordan each plan a more definitive search for tetrachromats. Dr. Neitz plans to take advantage of the fuller understanding of the underlying genetics of color vision. His will be the first experiment that will use genetic techniques to identify women with four different color photopigments.

What will he be looking for? Let's start with the basics. The genes for the red and green photopigments are adjacent to each other on the X chromosome; strangely, blue is way off by itself on another chromosome. Women, of course, have two X chromosomes and therefore two sets of red and green photopigment genes. Men have only one X, so they have just one shot at getting the red and green photopigment genes right.

Unfortunately for men, it turns out that those genes are prone to a kind of mutation that occurs when eggs are formed in a female embryo. When the eggs are created, the X chromosomes from the maternal grandmother and grandfather mix with each other in random places to make the egg's brand-new X chromosome. Because the genes for the red and green photopigments are right next to each other, those genes sometimes mix. That's perfectly normal. But every once in a while, the mixing occurs in a lopsided way, and the result, 30 years later, could very well be a man who has to check with his wife every time he dresses.

A lopsided mix can have three outcomes: (1) the egg in the embryo has an X chromosome that's missing either a red or a green photopigment gene, (2) the X chromosome has two slightly different red photopigment genes, or (3) the X chromosome has two slightly different green photopigment genes. In any of these cases, if that egg gets fertilized and becomes a male, the man will get that X chromosome and be color-blind.

Here it gets interesting. Suppose a woman inherits one X chromosome with two slightly different green photopigment genes. And let's say her other X chromosome has the normal complement of red and green photopigment genes. Because of a well-known biological phenomenon called X inactivation -- which causes some cells to rely on one X chromosome and others to rely on the other -- that woman's retinas would have four different types of photopigments: blue, red, green, and the slightly shifted green. (It would also be possible, through a different genetic sequence, to produce blue, green, red, and a shifted red.) X inactivation is only possible in women, so there has never been, and probably never will be, a male tetrachromat.

True tetrachromacy would require a few other characteristics in addition to retinas with four different photopigment receptors. For instance, there would have to be four neural channels to convey to the brain the sensory inputs from the four receptors, and the brain's visual cortex would have to be able to handle this four-channel system. If a woman were born with four types of photopigments, would her brain wire itself to take advantage of them? No one knows for sure, but some experts strongly suspect it would. "Yes, definitely," says Jeremy Nathans, a pioneer in color-vision research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. One reason to think so is the brain's great plasticity in other respects. People with special skills -- musicians, bilinguals, deaf people who learn sign language -- often show characteristic brain patterns.

Dr. Nathans also believes, however, that for full-blown tetrachromacy, the fourth photopigment must not have a peak in sensitivity that is too close to the peaks of either the red or the green photopigments. That's the rub, as far as he's concerned -- he suspects that most female tetrachromats would have only mildly superior color vision, because the genetics indicates that the fourth photopigment would almost always be very close to either the red or the green. Every now and then, however, an oddball photopigment might appear, well separated from both red and green. "The genetics do not rule it out," Dr. Nathans explains. "It would be a rare event. But who's to say it hasn't happened? There are a lot of people out there."

More interesting articles on colour vision:
Processes in Biological Vision

Colour Vision FAQ

Colour Vision Lab

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found that meditation is 'good for the brain' in a small-scale study. Electrical activity in the frontal regions of the brain became more active in the participants who practised mindfulness meditation.

This mirrors another study by a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in March of last year that found increased frontal activity in Buddhist monks whilst meditating.

Ever since I noticed that organically-grown salmon was not the bright garish red that non-organic salmon is I wondered what it was that they were feeding to those fish to make the colour so bright. Now I find that the EU has limited the use of canthaxanthin which is added to feed to make salmon appear more reddish, and chicken skin and egg yolks appear more yellow.

Thankfully, I only buy organic salmon and eggs, so the news that high levels of this chemical can damage the retina doesn't worry me much.

It might worry you, however, as the new regulation will cut levels of this purely cosmetic food additive by over two thirds.

The Frankfurt Zoo and German radio station FFH have a GiraFFHen-Cam set up in giraffe Chiras' stall ready for her baby's birth in a few days.

Update: If you have trouble with the direct link, navigate from here. It's in German, but not hard to work out.

The New York Times reports on Tsering Gyaltsen's plans to build an internet cafe at Everest base camp just in time for the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's first ascent of Everest.

Tsering Gyaltsen is the grandson of the only surviving Sherpa to have accompanied Hillary on his famous trek and will be charging climbers for internet access with the proceeds going to the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a nonprofit environmental group that is responsible for disposing of the mounds of garbage on Everest. The local village will also benefit from free 'net access.

I was trawling around the site I linked to yesterday and found that the company who runs the site also runs Global Economic simulation workshops for high schools and universities.

The World Game Institute was founded in part by the philosopher and designer, R. Buckminster Fuller. He conceived the model as an alternative to War Games and envisaged the goal as making "the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, and without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone."

I'd heard of R. Buckminster Fuller, but never really knew who he was and was surprised to learn that he invented the geodesic dome and even designed the old Spruce Goose dome in Long Beach which turns out to be the world's largest clear span dome in the world.

"Not a lot of people know that"

Researchers in California have engineered the first truly artificial organism, reports New Scientist.

Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute have encouraged E. coli bacteria to produce a 21st amino acid to make a protein, using only sugar and water.

Unfortunately, they have no idea what this 21st amino acid does for the E. Coli bacteria, but stress that it has been engineered to die without the special nutrients supplied by the lab and so won't be running wild.

Those of us who've read Jurassic Park may not neccessarily be comforted by that assurance, but then that's science fiction. Isn't it?

According to a study of DNA from 35 species of walking stick insects, biologists at Brigham Young University have found that wings lost in primitive insects re-evolved at least four times over tens of millions of years.

The research challenges a basic tenent of evolution that says once a trait is lost it cannot be regained.

The Environment Worldometer is a sobering reminder of the irreversible effects of human population. Watch our topsoil erode and remember that we are at present mining the last remnants of rock phosphates and potassium needed to supplement our topsoil and once washed into the sea, it is irretrievable.

Read also the Erosion of Civilisations.

(via Idletype)

It's probably the longest I've gone without posting since I started the blog, but I've been a tad busy. I've also found my home laptop less than pleasant to use these days (it needs replacing rather badly), so I'm spending more time away from it.

Nevertheless, I do bookmark the odd interesting snippet now and again. Here's a selection from my draft posts:

Writing for the Web
Via Mediakit (aka "Not All Who Wander Are Lost") comes the source of this post's title. Webraw has some tips on writing for the web. There's some excellent advice there - particularly suggestions about keeping column widths down. I was also interested to read that people read web pages up to 25% slower than printed text, which I suspected but never saw documented. Unfortunately, their page suffers from excessive width and horizontal scrolling, but nevermind...

Writing the Book of Life
Aunty Beeb reports on scientific community's goal of finding and naming every species on Earth within the next 25 years. The article contains one of the finest quotes I've ever seen from Lord Robert May of the Royal Society in answer to the question of why this should be done: "The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces."

Finally, Re-writing all the Good Books...
Another comic to add to the list, Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida is an irreverant look at all sorts with an emphasis on taking the piss out of religion. You may wish to start at the beginning.

These panda baby photos are, without a doubt, the cutest things since cute was invented. Makes me want to go down and hug my rabbits. In fact, I think I will...

(via fellow bunny-lover Jahva)

No, not us, but orangs. It appears that orang-utans' behaviour hints at a social culture and may suggest that human culture developed much earlier than previously thought.

According to George Monbiot at the Guardian, 1974 was great, but it's all downhill now.

He sums up this sobering thought by stating that "just as Christians imagine that their God will deliver them from death, capitalists believe that theirs will deliver them from finity."

Our resources are not infinite - they are surprisingly finite and we are reaching the point of exhaustion. According to Monbiot:

"Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of oil is likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75bn tonnes of topsoil are washed into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the loss of around 9m hectares of productive land.

As a result, we can maintain current levels of food production only with the application of phosphate, but phosphate reserves are likely to be exhausted within 80 years. "

(via the always clever IdleType)

Kanzi, a bonobo ape at Georgia State University, has suprised its trainers by making up individual sounds to represent objects, reports New Scientist. Kanzi is the latest primate to challenge the view that language is a human-only trait.

This also reminds me of a story I read recently that shows how prairie dogs can identify individuals by their clothing and whether or not they have a gun and can warn their fellows with calls. If that's not language...

Says Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University, "Here's an animal people think of as simplistic vermin, yet it has a complex cognitive brain that can form concepts and remember things for long periods. I think prairie dogs have a lot to teach us."

I think we should worry what else they're saying about us.

Australia's best known tree-dwellers are living happily with their human neighbours thanks to a group of residents, researchers and property developers who have built Koala Beach Estate on New South Wales northern coast.

The researchers plotted the trees used by local koalas before building the estate around them, then dogs and cats were banned. At first the developer worried that a cat and dog ban would discourage potential residents but found that people were so keen to be a part of the estate, some found new homes for their pets.

Six years on, the estate is a success - there are more koalas living on the estate than before it was built and other native species are also flourishing.

Sea World in Australia is giving its polar bears a white Christmas by providing 50-70 cubic metres of manufactured snow for over the holiday.

The younger of the four bears had never seen snow before trials earlier this month and not surprisingly, they're loving it.

Polar bears are the world's largest land predators with adult males weighing as much as 1,500 pounds. Interestingly, polar bear fur is not white, but instead is pigment-free and transparent with a hollow core. Polar bears appear white to us because the hollow core scatters and reflects light. They give off no detectable heat and do not show up in infrared photographs. Studies have also revealed them to be highly intelligent - perhaps as intelligent as apes.

Polar Bears International is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the worldwide conservation of the polar bear and their website has much, much more information about Polar Bears and their current preservation status. SeaWorld also has a gallery of photos of the bears enjoying their present.

Following on from the hedgehog culling in the Western Isles, you can actually register to foster a Hebridian hedgehog.

It seems that the greater mouse-eared bat - presumed extinct - was found hibernating in Sussex. (Just gone for a kip and wondered what the fuss was about, I'm sure.)

So the good news is, nature does bounce back, but that doesn't mean we should be taking liberties. I'd rather live in a diverse world, personally.

Sadly, it appears that the Iberian guillemot is probably extinct as a result of the sinking of the Prestige off the coast of Spain a month ago.

In a related note, Amazon has recommended Energy Evolution: Harnessing Free Energy from Nature and it sounds quite interesting.

Fossil fuels are soooo last century.

The Outer Hebrides are looking to cull as many as 5000 hedgehogs that threaten local bird species.

Poor hedgehogs - I'd adopt a couple for my garden. We have lots of nice snails and frogs...

A Japanese group has created genetically engineered worms that spin a thread that contains a form of the human protein collagen that could provide a low cost method of producing proteins for medical uses.

Nature points out that silkworms are cheap, quick and easy to farm and spin themselves cocoons within 3 days, producing around 60,000 tons of silk per year.

Pity they have to kill the pupae before retrieving the silk/skin.

A St Bernard apparently joined the queue at a hospital in Manchester because he had sore paws.

I love this story in Nature that explains how of the millions of ways to lace a shoe, we've "evolved" the best two.

The same can't be said for tying the bow, however, as our choices are "'notoriously unstable' compared to reef knots, " explains the mathematician who conducted the investigation.

I used to work at a diner in the states that was very fussy about the way we tied the bows on our frilly aprons (gag!) and I learned then that "swapping the orientation of the second half-knot" when tying the bow made it stay tied longer.

The use of plastic corks in wine bottles threatens Mediterranean wildlife because the reduced demand for cork encourages local people to cut down the forests to plant other crops.

Proper wine should have proper corks anyway. So there.

Watching the excellent BBC series Life of Mammals, I was enchanted by the segment about pikas, tiny hamster-like critters and the inspiration for the much loved/hated Pikachu.

Pikas live in rock piles in the North American Rockies, southeastern Europe, and parts of Asia. Being lagomorphs, they are related to rabbits and hares but are much noisier, barking loudly as they rush to and fro collecting plants and grasses that they stockpile for the winter in "haystacks".

There are 29 species of pika worldwide, a population of which lives in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, but are now endangered as logging and ski resorts intrude on their habitat. The pika is a habitat specialist and depends heavily on its particular environment to survive.

A joint report by the US-based Conservation International and the Mexico-based Agrupación Sierra Madre indicates that one half of the planet can still be considered wilderness, but human pressures are increasing and acting now, they suggest, offers the opportunity to save large amounts of nature at little cost.

Pika pika!

This one should probably be filed under "you gotta admire the fact that they conned an arts agency out of £2 grand": Woolly writing creates new poetry, thus proving the old axiom about monkeys and typewriters...

b3ta thinks the sheep might be annoyed at such blatant exploitation.

Scientists at the National Chemical Lab in India have found a way to use sugar to make plastic biodegradable by mixing subunits of polystyrene with a substance that "provides a chemical hook for sucrose or glucose pieces". This allows bacteria to break open the chain when they consume the sugar.

Unfortunately, it's unknown whether the polymer biodegrades into non-toxic substances, but it's a start...

Chemistry is so cool.

It's enough to make you want to cry. Protesters in Spain are angry over the oilspill that is fouling their coasts.

This should be a lesson to those who don't believe that environmental protection is important. Yes, the sea and the coasts will right themselves in time, but it's going to be a long, long time and in the meantime, it's the people of Spain and Portugal that will suffer along with the sealife.

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Just ran across this at interconnected, which seems appropriate:

There's a passage in Babylon by Victor Pelevin (at Amazon.co.uk) on page 116: "As far as I am aware, the most profound revelation ever to visit a human being under the influence of drugs was occasioned by a critical dose of ether. The recipient summoned up the strength to write it down, even though it cost a supreme effort. What he wrote was: 'The universe is permeated by a smell of oil'".

Caddis flies are freshwater insects that belong to the order Trichoptera. Cased caddis larvae build and inhabit underwater cases made from a silken threadlike material they produce as well as materials such as twigs, sand, and leaves. Artist Hubert Duprat , however, collaborates with the little dudes to create stunning sculptural "jewelry".

"Since the early 1980s, artist Hubert Duprat has been utilizing insects to construct some of his "sculptures." By removing caddis fly larvae from their natural habitat and providing them with precious materials, he prompts them to manufacture cases that resemble jewelers' creations. Information theory, as explained by biologists such as Jacques Monod and Henri Atlan, helps us understand what seems to be the insect's aesthetic behavior. The activities of the caddis worm, as manipulated by Hubert Duprat, are prompted by the "noise"---beads, pearls and 18-karat gold pieces---introduced by the artist into the insect's environment."

(cheers muchly Andrew)

I don't have any sheep, but if I did, I'd want a sheep-llama to guard them.

Come to think of it, I want one anyway.

A thinktank has suggested that trains 'should replace planes' and that "instead of encouraging airport expansion and proliferation, it is essential that the government should divert resources into encouraging a shift from air to high-speed rail for internal UK travel and some intra-European journeys."

I like flying and going to exotic places, but I'd prefer not to see any more airports or runways built, even if it means less flights and higher prices. The proposed airport at Cliffe in the Thames estuary, for example, is an airport that shouldn't be built, regardless of the demand for air travel.

The Thames estuary's coastal wetlands are a vital resting stop for over 155,000 wading birds and wildfowl arriving from their arctic breeding grounds in the autumn and building an airport there would be an environmental disaster. The RSPB is currently launching a campaign to stop the new airport.

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According to the RSPB:

"In summer, the marshes are buzzing with breeding wading birds, including over 100 pairs of avocets, the RSPB's emblem. Because of the abundant bird life, the RSPB has created a wonderful network of reserves here, totaling nearly 900 ha, which includes Cliffe Pools and Northward Hill. The Thames estuary and north Kent marshes are one of the most important wetlands in Europe

By 2030, Government predicts a tripling in unconstrained demand to 500 million passengers, of which 300 million will be in the south east. Increasing airport capacity is seen as the main solution, with new runways the main options set out in their consultation papers. Central to the Government's proposals in meeting future air traffic demand in the UK is what to do in south-east England. Here they have set out a series of options, most of which centre on expansion of existing London airports at Heathrow, Stansted and Luton. The Government has ruled out expansion at Gatwick due to an existing legal agreement. The most radical option put forward by the Government is to build a brand new four runway airport near Cliffe on the north Kent marshes in the Thames estuary.

OK, so you'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to buy anything, but DesigNAgifts creates unique rugs, prints, jewelry and other artworks based on your genetic profile.

(Really? I'm not supposed to buy anything?)

The UK's Nature Conservancy has announced their findings of a large population of orang-utans in the forests of Borneo. Researchers found 1,600 nests which provides evidence of at least 1,000 orangutans residing within a 345,000 acre area. It may be that there are now 10% more wild orangutans than previously thought.

This is certainly good news, but still amounts to a very small population of one of our closest relatives and the world's largest tree-dwelling mammal.

Jane Goodall, better known for her work with chimpanzees, has picked up a new cause as she seeks to halt hunting of the North American cougar.

"Sport and trophy hunting of cougars was banned in California under a 1991 law. Yet other western states including Wyoming, Idaho and Montana -- which are home to the vast Yellowstone park -- and Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Utah still allow cougar hunts.

"They are also the only animal in the United States allowed to be shot when they have dependent young and at the current rate of killing, wildlife experts say, they will soon be gone."

A volcanic island submerged off the coast of Sicily for the last 170 years could reappear in the next couple of weeks if seismic rumblings continue, reports a Reuters article.

Apparently the site of some competing claims to the land back in 1831 when it last appeared. It seems that scientists call the island Graham Bank, but Italians still call it Ferdinandea. Any relation to Fernando Poo, I wonder?

Maybe not new, but new to me, and good for a project I'm working on, a cool website with a simple overview of how food works.

The science of genetics is a wonderful thing. We are learning so much from it beyond it's medicinal value and the deeper understanding we are gaining of ourselves and our place in the world. We're also learning a new language - like an ancient script, newly discovered, that tells us about the history of the world and of ourselves.

Genetic analysis has shown us the routes that humans have taken as they spread throughout the planet and now has pinpointed exactly where man's best friend first joined him.

Making video games is very much about creating simulated worlds in which games can be played and experiences can be had. My company's flagship title, Creatures, took this to somewhat of an extreme as computer games go since we were trying to create an entertainment experience that had, at its heart, artificial life-forms with which you could interact.

In the beginning, some people accused us of "playing god" because the creatures, having their own biochemistry and neural network brains, were capable of experiencing pain, albeit a simulated pain. Being a non-believer myself, I couldn't care less if we're trying to compete with someone's idea of a god's role, but the question remains, can a creature who exists only on a computer, no matter how sophisticated, ever be considered alive and if so, do we have any moral obligations to it?

Recent thinking about the structure of the universe at its most fundamental implies that we and our world are a part of the ultimate simulation and composed, essentially, of information.

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This concept of the world as information has been around since the late 80s and artificial life as a science very much grew up around this idea, in combination with new research into quantum mechanics and chaos theory.

As I learn more about Tantra (also this link), I realise that at its core is the idea that all things are constructed of fundamental units that are at once polar and non-dual. Yes and no; on and off; ones and zeros. The world exists because we perceive it. The cat is alive. The cat is dead.

If we have a moral obligation of protect life in the real-space that we think we inhabit, why should other universes, even those of our own making, be any different? I don't have the answer, not so much because I don't know where to draw that line (although I certaily don't), but because life is as much about death as it is about life and sometimes in the course of our experiments with Creatures, our little friends needed to die - sometimes in massively painful ways and I can't say for sure that it didn't affect me in some way. As with most everything, simply being mindful is probably the best way to deal with both the feelings and the consequences (should there be any).

Another question that was frequently asked of us was whether the virtual life forms we create could ever escape, say onto the internet? When we did work for the MoD, investigating whether our life forms could be evolved to fly jet fighters independantly, people asked if this wasn't a worrying concept?

And the answer was mostly, "not really". Our creatures depend upon their virtual environments to provide them with context and are not able to exist outside of what we designed them to do and be. But is that really the case? If an organism, digital or otherwise, is designed to grow and evolve, could a simple random mutation error provide that lifeform with the possibility of an existence outside of its digital ringfence?

It's an even stickier question when biologists attempt to create new life in a petrie dish. Are we so full of hubris that we assume we know everything about every combination of molecule, amino acid and protein? We are confident that there's no way there could be results we aren't expecting or can't control?

Finally, our own mental real-space and our digital lives are about to meet in a The Sims online, upon which early beta testers are just beginning to report, including Celia Pearce who commented that ""I think, intellectually, the idea that you have a mental model of the whole world, and you are the one who's influencing whatever's going on, is fundamentally different than there being a real person on the other end of the line." (via GameGirl Advance)

Yahoo! News Photos offers a slideshow of a the Leonid meteor shower from around the world.

It's a lovely mental image - swirling flakes of hydrogen floating briefly in the silent darkness at the beginning of time...

Nature reports on how two Swiss physicists have calculated that two-atom molecules of gaseous hydrogen could have condensed into solid flecks during a first cosmic winter when the Universe was less than a billion years old.

Honey has been used as a traditional medicine since time immemorial. Now research is proving that honey kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria and is an effective treatment for chronic wounds. They're still not certain what ingredients are responsible for this, however.

It seems that otters are making a spectacular return to Britain's waterways. This is a welcome bit of news, considering the numbers of water creatures that are currently losing their lives elsewhere.

I've never seen any otters in the Cam, but I have heard reports of them - especially towards Granchester. (By the way, there are more walks around my neighbourhood on that site, if you're interested.)

You may be aware that the Leonid meteor shower peaks tonight, but conditions aren't looking good for actually seeing it (especially if you live in foggy East Anglia). Apparently, you can tune your FM radio to the low end of the band (below 91.1 MHz) and listen to the Leonids.

A recent conference of population geneticists and archaeologists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island has provided additional details of the emigration of the earliest humans out of Africa.

Geneticists can track emigrations because genetic errors accumulate in various regions of DNA. When a population splits, people that go one way will have a different set of errors than those who go the other way. They use the Y chromosome to track the movements of men, whilst mitochondrial DNA is used to track the movement of women.

The article summarises some of this work and gives an outline of current thinking regarding the movement of humans out of Africa around 100,000 years ago.

If you haven't read The Seven Daughters of Eve by Brian Sykes or The Great Human Diasporas by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, I can recommend both as highly accessible explorations of the subject.

Cavalli-sforza, by the way, is Director of Research in Microbiology at the Istituto Sieroterapico Milanese and was a pioneer in the subject of human migration tracking via DNA research. In 1991, he coordinated the gathering and analysis of DNA samples from ethnic groups around the world.

CITIES, the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species has overturned an earlier decision to reject a proposal to protect the Whale Shark. They have also agreed to give similar protection to the Basking Shark, which is the largest shark found in British waters. This is fantastic news and makes me and my shark-loving friends very happy.

(via Rogi)

CITIES has also voted for additional protection for mahogany, the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin, Asian freshwater turtles and Asian leopards.

Tonight's Horizon has been nice enough to provide with a reminder of my all-time worst, scariest nightmare.

Focusing on "freak waves", mysterious walls of water that get up to 30 meters high, the programme featured some amazing and frightening footage. Linear statstics predict that these rogue waves should only occur once every 13,000 years, but new Met Office research shows that quantum mechanics may have a role in them occuring far more frequently - as often as 10 in three weeks (preliminary data).

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Ever since I was a child, I've had a recurring nightmare of being in a ten story building that's hit by a wall of water.

I love the ocean and spent a large portion of my life in it. I'm in awe of it and have tremendous respect for it, but have always felt fairly comfortable with it.

Why, I wonder, is my worst nightmare the ocean?

I'm beginning to agree with those who say the UN is worthless as they fail to protect sharks from an agonising, slow death by greedy, inhuman humans who could certainly live without shark fin soup.

U.N. Allows First Legal Ivory Sales in Years. They say that much of the ivory will come from elephants that died naturally, but that's going to be impossible to regulate and monitor and this will serve only to provide a market for poachers. I have to question why anyone needs ivory anythings anyway.

I think we should start selling UN advisor teeth instead.

[Update: here's one petition that you can sign.
And another.
I'll be on the look-out for others)]

Via Nature comes news of a virtual nature reserve that's been designed to monitor the vulnerable habitat of the Mountain Gorillas of the Virungas Mountains. The Mountain Gorilla Geomatics Project began as a collaboration between the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Dr. Scott Madry of Informatics International, a geospatial and geoinformaticas consultancy.

They are taking advantage of a joint European Space Agency/UNESCO initiative that uses satellite radar and other remote sensing technologies to help manage the project.

A University of Richmond study of rats suggests that motherhood makes women smarter. Yay!

A recent Swedish study apparently adds some credence to the mostly poo-pooed theories of French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose theory of transmutation reckoned nurture played an evolutionary role. The classic example is that of giraffes gaining their long necks as a result of stretching to reach tall leaves passing on this long-neck-edness to their offspring.

(Thanks to Pete for the link)

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Lamark published his Philosophie Zoologique in 1809, 50 years before Gregor Mendel performed his famous pea experiments and Charles Darwin published his world-changing "Origin of the Species".

In Mendelian inheritance, the whole situation is somewhat reversed from Lamark's ideas. Rather than passing on long necks because a giraffe spent its life stretching, the long-neck would have been due to a random mutation that enabled some lucky giraffe to survive whilst the short-necked giraffes died before they were able to breed.

I heard about this the other day, but it's worth mentioning that animals have long memories. Our speciesist hubris always assumes that animals are so much more primitive than we are, but recent studies more and more often show that not to neccessarily be the case.

Ryan Calsbeek, a biologist at the Institute of Environment at UCLA explains how the side-blotched lizard wins the battle of the sexes by having her cake and eating it too. This remarkable lady actually mates with multiple males and somehow selects different fathers for different off-spring after mating.

She chooses small males to father her girl babies and large males to father the boys. Better yet, she then chooses the male with the grooviest house to live with. What a girl! I've now got a lizard for a hero - go figure!

Two physicists, an American and a Spaniard, have revealed why they think that life may require quite precise conditions to exist and these conditions exist in our universe only now. This gives some credence to the belief that we are indeed special and life is unlikely to be as widespread across the galaxy as we might have once believed.

According to the scientists, distant, newly formed galaxies aren't likey to contain as much of the heavy elements needed for planets to form because their weak gravity is less able to hold on to the heavy elements spewed out by exploding stars. As small galaxies are also quite crowded, the planets that do exist are more likely to be subject to traumatic collisions from other space rubbish such as asteroids.

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This echoes Simon Conway-Morris who believes that life on our planet is a very special thing indeed. We are extremely fortunate in that the Earth's position in the galaxy is at a location that allows life to exist and evolve and our "special relationship" with Jupiter means that we are protected from collisions as the giant planet sucks up asteroids that would otherwise have destroyed the Earth and all its life long ago.

In related news, John Armstrong of the University of Washington, Seattle believes that the Moon might reveal first life on Earth as it was present during the "Late Heavy Bombardment" of 3.9 billion years ago and could retain some of the Earth's rubble that was hurled into space as a result of these collisions.

We're used to living with cats and dogs and most people know what they are and aren't capable of. Living with rabbits is a different experience for me. It really is more like living with a little bit of wildlife in your house rather than pets. In fact, one of my friends thinks it's quite surreal to see rabbits bounding around unfettered. I live in TellyTubby land.

But what's so cool about it is that these silly little critters are actually far more clever than anyone gives them credit for.

Last night we were rather surprised to find 2 half-eaten apples in the kitchen. Now, they normally get sliced-up bits of apple - not whole ones - so it stood to reason that someone (and it wasn't the cat), jumped up on the kitchen table and nicked the apples out of the (glass!) fruit bowl. But why two apples? Clearly one would have be enough for the both of them as both were precisely half-eaten.

It could either be that one bunny did the deed, arrived at the floor with her prize and buggered off down the hall. "Way hey! Looky what I've got!" To which the other bunny replied, "heyyyy, where's mine?" and jumped up and got her own apple. Or could it be that one jumped up and passed two apples down to the sister waiting below?

Either way, I was impressed by the resourcefulness and have placed the fruit bowl much higher out of reach (for what it's worth - being almost empty and all). Of course, I am also getting a clearer picture of how Rhianna broke her leg...

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Why do we let the rabbits run free in the house, you ask? Well, they're remarkably clean (if you're not fussy) and are quite good about using a litter-box (again, if you're not fussy - which I'm not). They have way, way more personality than caged rabbits because they are able to display more of their curious nature. They're not especially cuddly - they hate being picked up - but they're definitely friendly. They're actually better at opening doors than the cats - they seem to have a better understanding of the concept of push and pull, even if they aren't as dexterous as the cats are. I like the surrealism and the look on people's face when they first realise that the creature at their feet isn't a cat or dog.

What's best, though, is that I love to see them torment the cats - something they do on a regular basis and seemingly with great glee and intent...

The BBC reports on a plan by UK scientists to turn fish vegetarian. This is because farmed stocks like salmon and cod are fed on smaller fish.

Now, this seems like a great idea on the surface. We know that humans and dogs live fine on vegetarian diets, however, some animals like cats require meat protein in their diet. It seems odd to turn a fish into a veggie. I also have to wonder if this would change the end result. Will veggie-reared salmon have the same levels of lipid and anti-oxident content? What about protein levels? Could that change?

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The depletion of fish stocks in our oceans is of great concern to me. The interdependency of species is well-known to us and still we mess about with it. Hunger and greed are powerful impetus to over-fish and as we increase our numbers, our only chance for survival is to tend the ocieans and our planet in such a way as to ensure it's long-term survival.

Wouldn't it be grand if there was some central body whose job was simply to tend all the world's oceans where the only goal was to feed the world's population for the longest period of time with no interest in financial gain? I expect the oceans would soon return to previous levels of diversity and abundance.

Here's another thought. Two American botonists reckon that nearly half the world's plant species are on the edge of extinction. It would cost only $12.1 million to properly monitor biodiversity hotspots - especially those in tropical locations. That's not a large amount of money - especially when you consider that 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients but less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists (according to numerous internet sources). but think how far it could go in supporting indigenous peoples and the residents of tropical areas if they were trained in these monitoring techniques.

Last night was the Cambridge Discovery lecture "What's inevitable in evolution" givin by Simon Conway-Morris. My mind was reeling afterwards and I want to record my thoughts if I can manage. I was amazed that he managed to cover such an enourmous subject (the entire history of creation!) so succintly in only 45 minutes. I'll hardly do him justice in a few paragraphs.

Conway-Morris, by the way, is Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge and is known for hisinvolvement in the analyse of the Burgess Shale fossils along with Steven Jay Gould, but also for the fact that he's come to rather dramatically different conclusions.

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Our view of evolution tends towards the assumption that life on Earth is a result of a series of fortunate random mutations. Lucky happenstance with no real direction other than to survive as best as possible in our complex world.

But certain developments indicate that perhaps evolution has, perhaps, a more directed goal. A common argument for this lies in the evolution of the eye. A marvelous contraption that has evolved quite independantly at least 7 times in the history of our planet and in each situation, the result if astoundingly similar. The cuttlefish for example, does not share a common ancestor with humans (at least not an ancestor with eyes of any sort), but its eyes are nearly identical to our own. How did this happen? Was a camera eye somehow coded into early creatures?

(never finished this post, but figured I might as well publish it in any event...)

Kenya is fighting to convince signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to refuse to lift the ivory ban. A new, and shy species of forest elephant is also at risk.

Daphne Sheldrick of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust points out that "to kill an elephant for its tooth...brings a lot of grief, sorrow and a lot of suffering to all its family and all its friends."

Elephants are intelligent, emotional and highly sapient and it's worth reflecting on all the implications of such an act.

Latest interview with our erstwhile technology director, Steve Grand, is in Saturday's Guardian.

Steve's is sounding really rather disheartened, but there's some rather good quotes, like this in conversation with a potential investor: "'Tell us what you're going to achieve and by when.' I reply, 'OK, I'm going to achieve fuck all.' "

OK, so maybe we know why he's disheartened...

Nature reports on the success of the Folding@home project which uses distributed computing to predict how proteins fold. This is the same concept used by Seti@Home which is on a mission to find extraterrestrials.

The project is not as "sexy" as alien-hunting, however and getting participants was a bit trickier, nonetheless, the experiment has born fruit and has additionally engaged the participants in the science of biochemistry.

Proteins are very much the building blocks of life and are initially simply long extended molecules which start to fold in on themselves as a result of different types of forces acting upon them. Proteins form fibers (like hair) and networks (like cytoskelleton) and uses them to build new cells, maintain tissues, synthesize new proteins and make enzymes.

In order to function properly, the molecular components of proteins (amino acids) need to physically approach one another and this process is called the 'folding' of the protein.

The protein folding problem entails the mathematical prediction of protein structure and is one of the biggest challenges in biochemistry today. Modeling protein folding requires an array of mathematical techniques including eigenvalue calculations, stiff differential equations, stochastic differential equations and multidimensional approximation of functions.

The Folding@Home project uses distributed desktop computers to simulate the this process and provides insight into protein misfolding disorders such as Alzheimers and Mad Cow disease.

Looks like we may have company as a new species of ape is found in the Congo. DNA analysis shows the unidentified animal to be similar to a chimp, but much larger and more gorilla-like. (via Pete)

The neurons in your brain need to be happy if they want to avoid stupidity says Wired News (via Kookymojito). And worrying too much can make them very unhappy indeed. Interesting analogies that have corollaries to some AI techniques I've encountered.

Anyway, cool advice as well. I'm gonna go out and exercise my little dudes now...

Check out the article on Will Wright and the Sims Online while you're on the Wired site...

Woo, I can't even think how to comment on this story from Reuters that reports on sightings of an airplane-sized bird spotted in Alaska.

A couple of days ago, my daughter was late for school because she idly asked me how to skip stones across water. As a fervent stone skipper, I lost all track of what we should have been doing (going to school) and spent a good half hour searching for appropriate stones and then practicing our techniques on the river. I'm not sure if this makes me a great mum or a really horrible one, but interestingly, New Scientist reports that a French physicist has reduced the pastime to a mathematical formula.

Damn. If I'd only known, I could have told the headteacher we were late because we were conducting experiments in advanced physics.

According to Nature alien hunters are turning to films to test the Rio Scale, their tool for grading the significance of life signs from space.

Scientists have rated Hollywood blockbusters on a scale from 1 to 10 in order to help understand the seriousness of any reported encounter with ET.

The Rio Scale is best at dealing with false alarms, however. Ranking on the Rio Scale depends on a number of factors and according to Nature, "most signals in movies immediately rank high on the scale - Hollywood has no time for false alarms or thorough scientific investigation. The message received in Independence Day, for example, starts off as a 4 on the scale. Within minutes of the opening credits it rises to a 10 - the score reserved for 'a physical encounter with intelligent life, or a message from within our solar system addressed directly to Earth'."

Walking home from dinner along the river, we spotted a bat dipping and diving over the water. There's some news about bats and rabies in Britain, but I'm not too interested in those, but rather more interested in the bats themselves.

The Bat Conservation Trust is the only UK organisation solely devoted to the conservation of bats and their habitats and their website features all sorts of information about British bats.

Amongst the distribution maps and species information are some interesting facts, including:

• Bats rarely live in belfries. They prefer somewhere quiet, not draughty, and free from cobwebs


• In Britain it is illegal to disturb bats or the places where they roost


• Nor can you kill a bat if it bites you


• Bats can live for up to 30 years


• Of about 4,500 different species of mammal in the world, nearly 1,000 are bats


• Valuable foods and derivatives from bat-adapted plants include dates, vanilla, bananas, breadfruit, guavas, kapok, Iroko timber, balsa wood, sisal - even Tequila and chewing gum!


• Britain's commonest bat, the pipistrelle, is only 4cm long and weighs about 5 grams - less than a 2p coin!


• Of the 16 species left in Britain, 6 are Endangered or Rare and 6 others are Vulnerable

I think the bat we saw was either a noctule or a serotine.

Posted at October 02, 2002 | link | comments (3)

Earth's magnetic field 'boosts gravity'

New Scientist reports on research that seems to show that hidden extra dimensions cause measurements of gravity to be affected by the Earth's magnetic field. The scientists involved base their work on string theory (which tries to unify all forces by assuming the existence of extra spatial dimensions). I could throw in some airy-fairy metaphysical stuff at this point, but I'll leave that to your collective imaginations.

Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience

An article in Nature reports that electrically stimulating one brain region repeatedly triggers out-of-body experiences. Apparently out-of-body experiences are incredibly common. My mother used to experience them when I was a child, in fact.

Obviously many people believe that these experiences are proof that the physical body can be left behind and the article points out that the new experiments don't disprove this. "It doesn't show that people with paranormal beliefs are wrong" but demonstrates how the experience could be stimulated, says the researcher. (thanks to Pete1 for this story)

Today was - and I can't believe I missed this - Take your Dog to Work Day. I don't have a dog at the moment, but I was very fortunate to have a most wonderful dog for all too short a time. Tux was the biggest, softest, sweetest animal I've ever known. He was absolutely useless as a guard dog, but was such a sweetie that even the cats loved him. Roslyn even learned to open doors to let him in the house. I used to love to take him to work with me.

In other doggy news, you can see some other wonderful dogs at the American Canine Search and Rescue Tribute dedicated to the dogs who worked the world trade center after September 11.

The Babraham Institute is just south of Cambridge and is a research institute supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Whilst they admit to still using animals in their research, they are also dedicated to finding alternatives for their research activities. They point out that some experiments, especially those that involve complex brain functions are difficult to replicate unless reference is made to the entire, functioning system. Complex systems are a nightmare to debug, I can assure you and as such, I buy this argument. They do insist, however, that they do not use cats, dogs or monkeys in their research. Obviously, I don't feel mice and rodents are any less deserving of life, but, on the other hand, science rocks. Moderation, compassion and balance is what's important.

One of the institute's recent announcements was their finding that sheep can remember 10 human faces for two years, as well as 50 sheep. Their ability to recognise facial features is not much different from our own. So, respect due the sheep!

Apparently, Dr Tony Prave of the University of St Andrews believes that he has evidence to suggest that an ancient form of bacteria colonised the land more than a billion years ago, a date that is considerably earlier than previous estimates. He knows this because he can tell by the way the sand clumps in the sedimentary rocks. How many years do you have to go to school to be able to identify bacteria by the way sand clumps in billion-year-old rock, I wonder?

Hamster found driving toy racing car on seafront

Via Ananova, this Blackpool Today tale of when Hamsters Go Bad. The hot-rodding hamster surprised day-trippers on the seafront at Cleveleys, near Blackpool. Says the article:

"The police log records that 'A member of the public has handed in a hamster in a hot rod racing car.'"

Excellent! Top story of the week! Where are the photos?

Garden invader

Look what's invaded our garden. (Actually, he's kinda cool)

Orange-pendek. All names for the wild man of the forest and now, Ananova reports that tests are being carried out on hair samples found in Sumatra of the "little man of the forest", a legendary creature of the area. So far, no match has been found when tested against reference hairs of orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla, sun bear, red leaf monkey, pigtail macaque, Malaysian tapir and human.

(thanks to my man Petey for pointing it out!)

Radio emerges from goo

This is brill. New Scientist reports that University of Sussex scientists have used emergent systems to generate a simple arrangement of transistors and found that a radio receiver has evolved.

"Treating each switch as analogous to a gene allowed new circuits to evolve. Those that oscillated best were allowed to survive to a next generation. These "fittest" candidates were then mated by mixing their genes together, or mutated by making random changes to them.

After several thousand generations you end up with a clear winner, says Layzell. But precisely why the winner was a radio still mystifies them."

Bunny damage

I just got home after yet another very long day and was looking forward to a nice hot bath. I was disappointed to find that there seemed to be no power to the boiler. It seems those little bunny bleeders snuck into the cupboard and had a good ol' nibble (apparently brown wires are the tastiest, 'though green and blue appear to run a close second).

What I'd like to know is why don't I have roast bunny?

As we finally begin to understand the interconnectedness of life, the universe and everything, we are also learning that we can not sustain humanity if we continue to rape and pillage the earth at such an alarming rate. Nature's web focus on food brings together a selection of recently published material that illustrates how important food is to every part of human existence.

Birds are amazing. I always figured they were much smarter than people gave them credit for. We often sit in the back garden and listen to the blackbirds talk to each other. The exchanges are so complex, I feel that they simply must have meaning.

I used to have a Parakeet named BirdBoy. I can't remember the breed, but he was brilliant. He used to hop up and down the stairs (because his wings were clipped). He'd wake me up in the mornings by jumping on the bed and squawking, "I love you BirdBoy!". An ex-boyfriend "lost" him. I expect he's living it up in some Laguna Beach palm tree as we speak.

Fruit and vegetable pesticide 'risk'

Their quotes. There has always been a risk - both individual and global - from pesticides and there will continue to be one as long as they are used. According to the article, Ian Brown, chairman of the government's pesticides committee, said he would back pesticide free foods "if the same quality and price levels could be maintained for consumers".

That's a brilliant get-out clause for him, but I think a change in consumer attitude is needed instead. Consumers need to stop being so demanding. There's nothing wrong with a few spots on an apple, a less than perfectly red tomato or vegetables that aren't precisely the same size. British consumers also need to get back to buying produce in season and not insist on apples shipped from New Zealand or grapefruits from Israel. The odd exotic fruit is fine, trading with European countries is great, but when most of the fresh food in our stores is grown tens of thousands of miles away, I think there's something seriously wrong. If we can change our attitude towards food in this way, we might even be able to cut down on the outrageous amount that goes to waste every day.

[Update: The BBC has changed the headline to "Pesticide levels 'falling'". Which is slightly bizarre]