Author: David Bradley

Cheddar Man

It’s hit the news today, but the Natural History Museum posted a story about their Cheddar Man research in January. It’s fascinating stuff, especially the fact that the DNA evidence suggests that he was probably brown-to-black-skinned and had blue eyes.

I know I am simply adding to the Channel 4 free publicity for their TV programme about Cheddar Man by mentioning him again. However, I am confused as to why so many outlets are referring to him as the first man to have lived on the British Isle when he dates back a mere 10,000 years. There were humans here before that, long before that including Homo antecessor or Pioneer Man whose footprints were found in Happisburgh, Norfolk, dating back 850,000 years! Cheddar Man who is something of an “incomer” in comparison. Of course, we don’t have the skeleton or any bone fragments of anyone who left those ancient footprints.

The point is, I know, that he is presumably one of the first people to resettle the British Isles after the last Ice Age. That’s the point. This part of the world was basically uninhabitable to humans until the ending of the major glaciation (around 11000-12000 years ago) of the most recent Ice Age. Incidentally, that Ice Age is ongoing, there is ice at the Poles, after all, we are simply between major glacial periods that cake the continents with 3-4 kilometres of ice. There have been lots of comings and goings…and there will continue to be so, even after Brexit.

Morning Moon

The moon is still fairly high in the sky this morning. It’s in the Third Quarter phase, also known as the Last Quarter Moon. This phase occurs about three weeks after the New Moon and is so-called because the Moon is three-quarters of the way through its orbit around the Earth, in case you were wondering, because obviously it looks like “half a moon”.

The Moon will have risen at about midnight last night from the eastern horizon and will set in the west at about midday. Next New Moon will be 15th February.

Are snowdrops really appearing earlier these days?

At this time of year, give or take a week or two, we expect to see snowdrops in flower. They are purportedly one of the first signs of spring and a welcome sight, despite the imminent snowstorm we’re supposed to be facing in the coming days. Now, earlier varieties of Galanthus nivalis aside, are snowdrops really vernalising sooner rather than later? Here’s a quote from the experts at Kew Gardens, London, who keep an eye on such things and study phenology (year to year changes in seasonal events):

Recent signs of change include a shift in the average flowering date of the common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis). In the 1950s the flowers commonly opened around the end of February, but over the decades flowers have gradually appeared earlier, such that since the 1990s the flowers have opened in January.

So, climate change, what we used to call global warming, is indeed leading to earlier snowdrops, or is it? What about the years before the 1950s. I did a quick scan of the scientific literature and found a paper (albeit on a study in Germany) that looks at the trends in the emergence of snowdrops and has done a Bayesian analysis of the data (to get a better statistical picture than would normally by available of any trend. That study (PDF here) seems to show (Figure 2a) that back in the 1920s snowdrops emerged around the end of January, as they seem to be doing these days, but there was a trend towards blooming in late February in the 1950s and 1960s. Their plot as is often the case looks like a shotgun has been fired at a target, but the Bayesian analysis provides the curve based on sound statistics.

I’m not making any claims to a detailed inspection of the science, but hearsay and folk memory about when snowdrops first bloomed that might be skewed by particular weather patterns, different varieties available then and now and moreover, the difference in altitude and longitude that people might have experienced could all skew the perceived trends.

Will polydimethylsiloxane cure baldness?

The title of this blog post is a QTWTAIN.

There’s a piece of fake news circulating on social media that suggests that polydimethylsiloxane (a food additive used as an anti-foaming agent in the production of French fries for fast-food restaurants) could somehow be used to treat baldness…

…the tabloids seem to have deliberately got the wrong end of the stick. From a quick read of the research paper it looks like the researchers used polydimethylsiloxane to make a gas-permeable membrane for their culture dish for growing stem cells. They then found that the stem cells would differentiate into hair follicles more effectively in this culture dish than in conventional laboratory equipment with non-permeable materials.

Suggesting that ingesting polydimethylsiloxane will cure baldness is akin to suggesting that eating ground up test-tube glass in which aspirin has been synthesised would cure a headache…

LHC short primer

A lot of people were recently reaching Sciencebase using the search phrase “LHC short primer”. I assume they’re after information about the Large Hadron Collider. So here’s a quick executive summary:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle collider, in some ways the most complex experimental facility ever built, and the largest single machine in the world. It was constructed for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 with 10,000 scientists and engineers involved from more than 100 countries. Hundreds of universities and laboratories were involved in its design, construction and implementation. Its construction budget was 7.5 billion Euros.

The LHC sits in a roughly circular tunnel with a circumference of 27 kilometres some 175 metres beneath land on the French-Swiss border near Geneva. Scientists began using it for scientific research in March 2010, running countless experiments until early 2013. The energy levels of particulars in the collider reach 3.5 to 4 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam (7 to 8 TeV total), which bust the previous collider record by approximately four times. It was then temporarily shut down for maintenance and upgrades and fired up again in early 2015 at which point it could operate at 6.5 TeV per beam (13 TeV total).

Basically, the collider fires beams of protons in opposite directions around the circuit and watches what happens when they collide. At these high energies, the collisions release other particles and energy that give scientists clues as to the fundamental nature of matter. One of the biggest results was the detection of the Higgs boson, which was nicknamed the “God Particle” by some observers. This particle generates a field that fills the universe and gives particles their mass.

Cough CPR is fake news

Once again one of those ludicrous health claims is circulating on social media. This time, it’s the deceived wisdom of Cough CPR.

Cough CPR is fake news. It’s been shared around the internet since about 1999 and is plain wrong. You cannot save your own life when you’re having a heart by coughing repeatedly. If you are alone and think you’re having a heart attack, best and only thing you can really do to help yourself is call an ambulance.

Cough CPR has been debunked many, many times over the years, but seems to reappear periodically and the deceived wisdom persists.

British Heart Foundation has the expert opinion.

Eats seeds, shoots and buds – Hawfinch

This winter the Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes), the UK’s biggest finch, with its hefty beak and mouthful of a scientific name has hit even the tabloid headlines as large numbers of countless flocks have made an appearance in various locations across the British Isles. They’re usually quite shy, scarce, and their traditional breeding areas have declined, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) reports, they’re really difficult to spot. In Autumn last year and into December, however, the papers were full of the “Hawfinch invasion” triggered by crop failures in mainland Europe. By November, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) was reporting record numbers. Additionally, the orange sky and the red sun that Storm Ophelia (and other factors) brought to the UK also coincided with the Hawfinch irruption.

Anyway, while the RSPB’s headquarters at The Lodge, in Sandy, Bedfordshire was reporting that all of their Hawfinch had departed their land, there was a small flock (maybe up to about ten) at the National Trust’s Wimpole Hall (West South West of Cambridge) and about 12 kilometres East of The Lodge (as the Hawfinch flies). So, a quick trip to the NT on the off chance that they might still be there on 4th February. A Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) was hanging around the car park as were lots of Great and Blue Tits, a Greenfinch or two and what I assumed at a quick glance were merely chaffinches (they weren’t I now realise in retrospect).

Onwards and outwards we went with the dog in tow, skirting the periphery of the Hall’s extensive parkland hoping to catch sight of a Hawfinch or two on any berry-ridden trees that hadn’t been picked clean by Thrushes, Redwings, Fieldfares, and Blackbirds. A very refreshing two-hour circular walk, with Woodpeckers (green and great spotted, both heard but not seen), Treecreepers (lots seen) and a Nuthatch (and the usual range of Herons, waterfowl, Tits, Doves, Dunnocks, Thrushes, Corvids, and sheep etc) brought us back to the car park where a clutch of birders and photographers had gathered to photograph…you guessed…it Hawfinches.

There were two under a picnic table and one in a tree. So, at last, I got a shot at them. Still on the list though, those elusive Waxwings.

Don’t let your dog die of paralytic shellfish poisoning

There has been a spate of dog deaths on UK beaches, particularly around the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk where pets have eaten starfish and other sea creatures washed up on shores in stormy weather.

The cause of death has been pinned down to paralytic shellfish toxins, although as the BBC reports algal blooms are uncommon in winter so the source of the contamination is not known. These toxins are entirely natural compounds, but neurotoxins nevertheless. They are made by certain types of algae, which are then assimilated by shellfish and other sea creatures further up the food chain, rendering otherwise edible animals toxic and potentially lethal. The toxins can cause a very unpleasant death for mammals, including people, in some cases. Indeed, it’s worth noting that these toxins are not destroyed by heat or acids, so cooking contaminated shellfish doesn’t get rid of them.

Among the toxins, perhaps the best known is saxitoxin, the biosynthesis of which I wrote about in 2017 for Chemistry Views magazine. The compound has the following quite hefty chemical name, the structure of saxitoxin is shown at the bottom of this article:

(3aS-(3a-α,4-α,10aR*))-2,6-Diamino-4-(((amino-carbonyl)oxy)methyl)-3a,4,8,9-tetrahydro-1H,10H-pyrrolo(1,2-c)purine-10,10-diol

Anyway, if you’re walking your dog on the beach, make sure they don’t eat anything in the tideline or indeed anything at all washed up or otherwise lying on the shore, you never know what toxic nasties it might contain.

Super blue blood moon

The Moon is up, the sky is still blue, but our eyes have a higher capacity to cope with the dynamic range from the blue to the light than a camera can do…

Anyway, here’s a quick snap of the Moon this evening, it’s waxing gibbous, 94% of the way to full illumination and heading for a Super blue blood moon on Wednesday when it will not only be closest to Earth in its orbit and full (super), second full month in the same month (blue, not as rare as you think), there will also be a lunar eclipse so will look ruddy through backscattering of Earthshine in red wavelengths (blood), although the lunar eclipse will not be seen from the British Isles, so don’t go looking. Nothing to do with astrology, everything to do with astronomy and partly to do with calendar accidents. That said, blue used to be not just the second full in the month, but second in a calendar (church) period.

Meanwhile, camera settings for this shot:

f/5.6
t 1/500s
ISO 100
Focal length 600mm
Cropped from 5472×3648 original to 1087px square

The locust eaters

If you don’t fancy going vegetarian or vegan to save the planet, would you consider becoming an entomophage instead? Billions of people in 4 out of 5 countries around the world have insects as an important part of the daily nutrition. There are almost 2000 edible insect species, they’re high in protein, low in fat. Some estimates suggest that the water, energy, resources and land needed to cultivate sufficient to replace more conventional “livestock” would be a fraction of that we currently use to grow cattle, sheep, pigs, goats etc.

I bought some mealworm (larvae of the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor) to add to the feast on offer to the birds in our garden. Although they smell rather pungently, they are edible to people and I think that they wouldn’t actually be too unpalatable, maybe braised with garlic and ginger, added to fried rice, and with a splash of soy sauce. However, for now, I think I’ll leave the Robins (Erithacus rubecula) to feast on them in the garden. That said, Mrs Sciencebase just noticed that the starlings can also easily get into the makeshift ground-feeding bird shelter (basically, a metal basked) I placed over the platter of mealworm.

Oh, by the way, The Lotus Eaters (aside from being a Scouse 80s indie band) were the race of people in Greek mythology who ate nothing but the fruit and flowers of the lotus plant the narcotic effects of which left them in a permanent state of peaceful apathy, just as we are it seems when it comes to environmental concerns.

I was trying to allude to this apathy in the title of this blog post, but making a play on the fact that maybe we could drag ourselves out of it by dining on locusts instead of ribeye beef steaks? After all, many of us enjoy shrimp, and they’re more closely related to grasshoppers than cows…