6x6

the art of vehicle maintenance: further notes and take-aways from Why Buddhism is True

great railway journeys: an intrepid duo visit every train station in the United Kingdom over fifteen weeks

urban spelunking: thieves bore into Paris cellar from catacombs and make off with a quarter of a million euro worth of vintage wine, via Super Punch

interstitial: much like with the latest iteration of the Star Wars saga, fans of Blade Runner will be treated to series intervening short films

psychic-driving: technology and psychotherapy are not guaranteed to be compatible nor risk free

nothing ventured, nothing gained: whilst dashing off to witness the solar eclipse, the Fancy Notions team visited the micronation (we have only gotten to visit one) of the Republic of Molossia 

the birds and the bees

Though I take a little exception with the assertion that humans are the only beings to have recognised the connection between sex and babies (even considering the gestation period does put a lot distance between conception and birth), I had never really appreciated how profound reproductive awareness and how defining that hallmark of humanity can be.
Evolution and our genes drive us to procreate and perhaps, achieved though realising that the consequences of the act of mating, we’ve ritualised courtship and matrimony in such ways that transcend and indeed run counter to our genetic self-interests. Certain cultural norms and taboos that are contemporary and abiding may have their origins in more socially nebulous but just as focused times and civilisation accommodates. What do you think? Was this the revelatory epiphany that led us outside of the moment and ourselves and informed our cogitative abilities? I’d suspect that a lot of thoughts and feelings, especially the repulsive and unwelcome ones of fear and anxiety, are also genetic baggage developed during far more fraught days. The ability to understand outcomes and plan for the future (even if the biological process remained a mystery and prone to superstition and visitations from the gods) girds the imagination and allows humans to not only work on their own pedigree but also to practise animal husbandry and agriculture—another subversion of natural selection—and advance to the point (we still need to be humble and recognise that we’re quickly getting into uncharted, untested territory) where we can create wholly synthetic beings.

common parlance or twenty-three and me

My Modern Met shares an engrossing graphical representation from National Geographic’s senior editor that depicts the distribution and relative population size of the world’s twenty-three most spoken languages with a format of immediacy that teases out some interesting demographics and linguistic trivia. The criteria for inclusion was languages whose speakers numbered fifty million or above—and leaves out the over seven thousand extant minority ones. One fact that always strikes me is how a handful of majority languages are self-contained—like Japanese or Telugu—but others have broader representation. Acquaint yourself with more facts about language and the legend of the chart at the link up top.

epigenesis or hms ctenophore

Æon magazine may be sending us the inaugural dispatches from a new frontier in our understanding of life on Earth and beyond having seemingly discovered that “shadow biosphere” that they’ve pondered about before with an in depth look at the unique and alien ctenophore.
Ranging back to the realisation of a marine biologist of Russian extraction at a harbour in Maine in 1995 to the acceptance by the scientific community about how profoundly different that these creatures—once dismissed as weird jellyfish—are. The creatures glide along with the currents, powered by multiple ridges of cilia (the only non-microscopic animal to do so) like a galley propelled by oarsmen and are voracious and efficient hunters with a unique method of capturing prey with comb-like tentacles and though they are part of the part of the same great chain of being and have the same basic DNA structure as other animals, their cobweb-like brains rely on chemical transmitters shared with no others. The fact that evolution on Earth could accommodate such departures and convergence could help inform and guide the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and not overlook Nature’s resourcefulness.

goldilocks

Back in 2013, professor and biophysicist Jeremy England stirred some controversy with the theory that life is not some happy accident of biology or necessarily the collusion or just the right conditions but rather the natural conclusion of the laws of thermodynamics.
As organised and coherent as life is in comparison to the chaos surrounding it, living things are also the most efficient vehicle, according to Professor England’s on going models, to increase the level of disorder—that desired state of entropy. It is still very much a chicken-or-egg question and I am sure many physicists would be inimical to the suggestion that the follies of biology are the inevitable, highest expression of the rules of physics—rather than just bound by them and the theory does hold that the outcome is universal nor a forgone guarantee but it is something to ponder that the Cosmos might entertain such emergent fine-tuning and flagrancies to conserve energy.

post-modern prometheus

Over the coming year ahead of the bicentennial anniversary of its publication, we learn courtesy of BCC’s Inside Science, that Arizona State University in collaboration with many other thinkers are releasing a special annotated, transmedia edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus to encourage the vital political dialogue that is corollary to ethics and literacy in the sciences as well as celebrating all its influences and derivative works. The prescience of this cautionary tale has yet to be fully unpacked and its resonance and currency in today’s scientific milieu when one can without asking permission but perhaps forgiveness seemingly easily de-extinct not only woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers but also Neanderthals is certainly to be heeded.

6x6

fish and visitors: Icelanders are growing weary of insensitive tourists

meal-ticket: clever man works hospitality loopholes to eat for free for nearly a year before people got wise to his scheme

by jove: amazing, arresting images of the Giant Red Spot of Jupiter

je pense, donc je suis: our sense of self understood through the power of attention

theatre-in-the-round: the workshop of a LEGO expert constructs a zoetrope with minifigs, plus an original precursor to animation encoded as a GIF in bacterial DNA

sanli tu: medieval abridged guide to the Chinese classics of protocol and divination goes on display alongside some of the artefacts pictured therein

heirloom variety

Indeed a thing we would not know if they did not blog intermittently, the distinction of open-pollination explained succinctly:
allowing crops to breed naturally, either assisted by resident pollinators, the wind or self-pollinating to produce offspring consistent with the desired traits of the parent plant.  We became impatient in the name of efficiency and the resultant, sustainable population explosion that came with the discovery of the Haber process at the turn of the century, which also ushered in the decline of open-pollinators. Monocultures and hybridisation have meant that the resultant seeds (a hybrid inbred) will not germinate or at least not in a predictable way, which is why modern agriculture has become reliant on a handful of seed providers—and the pesticides designed for them. At least one group is actively working to establish seed banks and a cooperative to educate consumers and farmers and give them a viable alternative.

halophyte

To be able to adequately feed ourselves, conserve our biosphere and transition away from fossil-fuels and release carbon that albeit isn’t without consequence but was only not sequestered for millions of years and so have a zero-sum effect on the atmosphere, we are going to have to be willing to cede lands back to Nature and no longer encroach on wildness.
One solution, as Æon magazine puts forward, is to expand into those brackish, liminal lands and coastal deserts and bring with us those few, little studied salt-water tolerant plant varieties to raise food crops or bio-fuels. Whereas most plant-species that we are familiar with a cultivated, agricultural sense wither and die in the presence of salt—sowing tracts of land with salt was from ancient times a way to discourage re-settlement, dying the death that’s on one level equivalent to the effects of carbon-monoxide poisoning for mammals. Interest is building slowly, but with limited fresh water supplies also creeping upwards in salinity, hopefully a new approach to farming could help prevent further injury to both flora and fauna.

gipfel oder hanseatic league

The CDU party economic summit earlier this week may have gotten a fore-taste of what’s to be expected from the G20 summit that’s to take place in less than a week in Hamburg when Dear Leader’s commerce secretary, due to a scheduling conflict, attended by looming video teleconference and droned on well beyond his allotted time, chiding NATO partners for not paying their fair share, accusing Germany of protectionist trade policies that presented a barrier to entry for the US, unwillingness for the EU to buy genetically modified and untested crops or hormone laden beef—for which there will be consequences.
Event organisers eventually muted the US commerce secretary in mid litany, repeating the grievances that Dear Leader had already expressed and cut the video-feed.
Some in attendance at the Berlin conference centre applauded and laughed. The Chancellor was next to speak—but I believe she realises that what’s coming will be even more fraught with difficulties and there will be no kill-switch for the race-baiting, misogynistic and selfish court of amateurs that are coming.
The American regime has demonstrated itself to be far misaligned with the rest of the world when it comes to immigration, the environment and especially trade—preferring bullying and bluster to negotiation and dialogue and seeking to bust down those institutions that have given smaller nations leverage against tyranny and hegemony.
As America is poised to shirk more and more of its global commitments—not just the voluntary reduction goals of the Paris Climate Accords but also the financial regulations put in place to prevent another banking sector collapse like in 2008 and for which the G20 was created as a safeguard against it reoccurring, Germany is taking the lead on forming a united front upholding those values of a free and open market that have become rather inimical to the US. Hopefully Dear Leader is not foolish enough to precipitate a trade war.

soylent blue

The private bioinformatics company’s that’s responsible for the research that drives several different markets from medicine to agriculture to biofuels latest venture involves harvesting algae as an energy source.
Usually the by-products that humans find useful are rather inimical to the organisms continued existence—fat in this case which the algae produces but only naturally in dire situations and when it’s deprived of essential nutrients. Some gene-editing, however, can induce simulated starvation and cause the algae to produce fat that is efficiently converted into fuel, almost equivalent to a vegetable oil. While earlier iterations of renewable biofuels were fraught with controversy as green-washing and not truly sustainable as it was competing with food-crops, there’s algae in abundance and this particular variety can thrive in polluted and brackish waters and perhaps even cleaning them up a bit in the process. What do you think?  Do developments like these take some of the edge of engineered Nature and ought they?

7x7

alpha quadrant: astronomers spy more terrestrial exoplanets in our corner of the Milky Way

glymphatic node: new anatomical system discovered charged with cleansing the brain and spinal cord

 twitterpated: applying artificial intelligence to group and identify bird song

sub-space: a helpful, accessible explanation of that Chinese satellite network’s quantum entanglement experiment, disabusing our expectations of instantaneous communication

kalkül: images from a vintage East Germany children’s maths text book—site tip from Everlasting Blört

lacquer: Australian researchers are making advances with “solar paint” that pulls hydrogen from the atmosphere like a photosynthesising plant

tame: in depth genetics study suggest cats self-domesticated—or maybe it’s their humans that are house-broken

taxia or great chain of being

While it may seem a bit early in the year for annual superlatives, the state university of Syracuse, New York’s International Institute of Species Exploration of the campus’ College of Environmental Science and Forestry releases its list of top ten candidates of the most unexpected, unique finds of the animal and plant kingdoms to roughly coincide with the 23 May (1707) birthday of Carl Linnaeus, the founder of the discipline of taxonomy.
Inscribed to this year’s rolls include a sort of wild spicy tomato that appears to bleed when cut from Australia that’s propagated by bush fires, a spider whose camouflage resembles the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter matriculation ceremonies and a new species of Xenoturbella, a primitive marine worm that either resembles the missing half of an orphaned purple sock or fried churro pastry, depending who you ask. At a time when biodiversity is in grave peril and we have no idea about the natural innovation and wonders that we are losing without even the most superficial acquaintance, the institute wants to showcase the bizarre as a reminder that less than an estimated twenty percent of all species on Earth have yet been discovered and described and fewer still with any detail.

one million b.c.

Like forensics experts working on a case that went cold hundreds of thousands of years ago, archæologists are discovering that equipped with the next generation of genetic sequencers that there able to find bits of ancient hominid DNA when sifting through the sediment of practically any old cave.
No fossil evidence nor artefacts, though surely that’s pretty exciting to uncover, is required to trace how our direct ancestors and Neanderthal cousins spread across the continents and perhaps interacted. Surely this can be expanded to the whole of the plant and animal kingdoms, as well.  I wasn’t expecting that our machines were so finely calibrated to detect biochemical markers as so faint a trace, but this is sure to be revolutionary as palæontologists have already managed to extrapolate and reconstruct whole monstrous dinosaurs and more modest primogenitors of our kind out of just a fragment of a tooth or a little toe bone.

sorry gina

As a cruel corollary to taking away affordable health insurance from not just the millions who benefited directly from Obama Care but also the general population of America—everyone besides those in the ruling caste and the independently wealthy—the Republican party have sponsored another resolution, as Boing Boing informs, that seems impossible to halt that would enable employers to coerce their employees to submit to DNA screenings or face stiff consequences. Privacy and right to refuse disclosure was previously protected by a 2008 expansion of civil liberties protections called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) that helped to protect those who might be predisposed to being a bad insurance-risk in the eyes of underwriters.
A company, just because it contributes to its employees’ health coverage, could not force employees to undergo any testing against their will or own up to any future problem that a doctor had discussed with them in confidence, but now all those safeguards are undermined, since the government will allow DNA screenings to be incorporated into workplace wellness programmes, something completely voluntary but something that companies can also accentuate and incentivise however they choose. This is state-based eugenics—even if an individual benefited by participation by discovering some ticking time-bomb in time to diffuse it, no company would insure them and probably none would employ them either. What do you think? Let’s hope this is quickly remedied in America and never has the chance to be exported. It’s far more fraught with peril than the algorithms that pass judgement on our spending-power and is another hallmark of inward-turning ignorance that rejects scientific literacy and exploits an opportunity for profit without considering the repercussions. With workers surrendering their genes and traits that they could potentially pass along, business (with the government’s consent) are not far from instituting breeding programmes and sterilise those of us of inferior or subversive stock.

landmark and legacy

Though probably more out of oversight (which can be just as cruel) rather than any sense of institutionalised prejudice—unlike that town in Alabama that choice to honour a pest rather than the individual whose advice against monoculture stopped it—there’s been no monument created for the inestimable contribution to medical science and genetics called Henrietta Lacks, not at least as a tangible destination, until now with this pop-up tribute from artist Elisabeth Smolarz.
Without Mrs Lacks’ knowledge or consent, her cells—deemed uniquely immortal (see previous link)—became the subject countless trials and propagated directly played the main role in almost every study and therapy from the polio vaccine onward. This appreciation comes to us as part of the annual Art in Odd Places “intervention” in Manhattan that confronts different themes each year. Emphasising that art and message can be anywhere, the focus of AiOP this time was on race, and also included a poignant installation of an interactive bubble-blowing frame, that recalled the rather ironic kaon “how many bubbles in a bar of soap” that appeared among the list of questions on the Jim Crow-era voter literacy tests in the US.

spock is not impressed with your handheld genetic sequencer

I am nonetheless with this achievement of miniaturisation that The Atlantic expertly presents first through the driver of much innovation, pushing our envelop out of necessity, positing how residents of the International Space Station could properly diagnose their ailments and turn to an effective treatment. Many have a weakness for antibiotics to remedy those bouts that masquerade in all those unremarkable symptoms that could be bacterial or viral.
Given the limits of the dispensary, it would be unwise to pursue the wrong plan, so enter the hand-held DNA sequencer dubbed MinION from Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Within the laboratory bulky and delicate, such a device had heretofore been impractical in orbit but could now provide vital information about how pathogens and contagious agents function in microgravity and in close-quarters. The article ponders then the perhaps apocryphal, the stuff of urban-legend, scanning might reveal whose dog is despoiling one’s garden or the walkers who fail to attend to their charges’ business properly might become a civic duty. Beyond forensics, the potential, however, for crowd-sourced research is beyond all bounds—equipped with tricorders, we become minions, legion, and like medicine men or witch-doctors examining our surroundings and finding unique organic compounds and novel interactions.

allele, alelo or progressive trait

While neither condemning nor condoning the practise of tinkering with genetics, the science desk of Buzzfeed (ironically, as it is the males who buzz and annoy but only the silent females that bite and suck blood) presents a really solidly comprehensive article that at least exculpates and explains the methodologies from a community health standpoint behind releasing hundreds of thousands of genetically-compromised males into the wild breeding population to keep it under control. The problematic mosquito that is the vector of dread disease in Brazil and is spreading to neighbouring regions is an invasive species—an import from the Nile region—and although very much still a scourge in its native habitat, the humans, living lived with them for generations, are less prone to outbreaks.
Getting rid of this unwelcome invaded might allow indigenous insect populations to return and bring further natural regulation to the ecology. It is unlikely there’s any correlation between the trials, conducted in 2012 and the present emergence of viral infections—due to time and distance with the incubation period of the Zika virus and the other diseases it transmits being mere weeks. The surge in cases most likely indicates that the testing produced victims of its own success, in much the same way as a concerted campaign in South America to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitoes decades earlier worked just well enough to shove off public notice and eventually caused a relapse. What strikes me as really surprising, however (and again, the mutated males could not spread the virus as they don’t bite), is that the male mosquitoes are not engineered to have woefully short life-spans in a straightforward manner: the mutants, programmed to self-destruct, will live out their normal adult lives provided they are given an antidote, an antibiotic, once every four days. Outside of the laboratory, this substance cannot be found and after mating, the males die and pass along this trait to their offspring. Maybe it was that little detour for sterilisation management gives the conspiracy-theorists ample purchase.

hey mister tally man

Via the inestimable The Browser comes a really fascinating piece on the supply chain logistics of the banana trade and the demands it manufactured to satisfy. Like the Egg Council, Juan Valdez and the California Raisins, who really can be bullies and not just advocates for farmers, Big Fruit created various banana republics in the process of perfecting its delivery techniques, inciting coups throughout Central America and even precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis and enduring tensions, all in the name of ripeness and minimal flecking.

The other aspect to this drama lies in the monoculture of the produce—at least as it’s presented to shoppers in the West. Whereas we might have an embarrassment of choice when it comes to apples and oranges, exotic bananas are all clones of one cultivar—threatened with extinction with the irreversible march of one fungal disease. The way bananas are marketed and grown make them especially susceptible to being wiped out by pandemics, and interestingly the type of banana consumed just one human generations had vastly different characteristics—fruitier and creamier and with a much slicker peel, and hence all those jokes about slipping on a discarded skin that seems physically impossible in the supermarkets of today.

gorgon ou au revoir, ruby tuesday

The French edition of the English language daily, the Local, is tragically reporting that Ruby the Lamb, whose genes were spliced with those of a jellyfish in order to express proteins that would result in transparent florescent skin, was apparently inadvertently slaughtered and served to some hapless diner.

The poor little lamb was created, rather gruesomely, for research purposes (in order to better study organ transplants by allowing doctors to observe them directly) and local authorities are prosecuting the matter as a contravention of environmental regulations against genetically modified foodstuffs, though Ruby was probably safe to eat, chimera-experts opine. The vampire lamb pictured is still at large.