the peachdate mall or gruen transfer

Shopping centres all over the world generally have names that reflect a balance between the conservatively familiar and the elegant, exclusive—no matter how humble the location and the anchor stores, and of course artificial intelligence tasked with naming a mall ought not to upstage its human imagineers and nor should it be guilty of the crime of ‘overfitting,’ the tendency of neural networks to sometimes find the most obvious solution through plagiarism. After a few iterations and trial-runs, our friends Lewis & Quark (aka, AI Weirdness, previously) got the hang of the job at hand (with illustrations) and began churning out suggestions like Town Centre at Citylands, Outlets of the Source Mall and South Unit Presence.

unkraut bleibt unkraut

The other day I was weeding a bit as part of getting our yard prepared for Autumn—a presumptuous task I realise since only so called weeds managed to do any growing at all during the hot and dry summer, and while pruning back one plant that was growing too close towards the foundation, I noticed where the stem broke away from the root (I do that on purpose so I feel I haven’t killed anything) there was a carrot-like bit of meal and there was some orange splotches on my hand from the plant’s latex (Milchsaft—like the fluid in the stems of dandelions).  Afterwards, I researched a bit and found that I had come across a bit of Schöllkraut (properly known as the greater celandine, Chelidonium but with some unfortunately English folk names like the nipplewort.
The plants use an interesting though not unique strategy to propagate their seeds called myrmechory, that is in Greek, dispersal by ants, by topping of each seed with a little nutrient morsel that the ants will take back to their nests as food for the growing larvae. Once the larvae have eaten off the coat, the seeds are disposed of in the workers’ burial chambers and benefit from the nutrient-rich environment there. Evolutionary biologists believes one finds this symbiotic relationship in temperate, fertile climates as well—and not just in drier places, because the seeds that the ants bear away are not eaten by other predators and stand a better chance of germinating. Native to Eurasia, it’s considered a bit of a nuisance elsewhere but this plant related to the poppy has some noteworthy pharmacological merits including antimicrobial properties owning to the range of alkaloids it contains, which can be in large amounts toxic to humans and animals as well—especially during the Fall when the chemical is concentrated in the roots. It’s efficacy in traditional medicine as a topical treatment for toothaches, foot odour and skin disorders should be taken with skepticism and any relief is probably due the afore-mention antiseptic properties.

corallivorous predator

Underwritten in part by Google, we learn via Slashdot that those working to preserve Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have gotten a new, powerful ally in the form of Rangerbot, an autonomous aquatic drone that is designed to detect and administer a lethal injection to a very specific type of starfish plaguing the reef.
The crown-of-thorns starfish feeds exclusively on coral polyps—which makes it seem already like the most rubbish, laziest hunter in the animal kingdom already—and while not an invasive species, overfishing and climate change have made those creatures who’d help keep the starfish’s numbers in check are few and few and the starfish is free to munch on the coral unchecked. Scuba divers have been culling this poisonous pest responsible for coral bleaching and nearly as much harm as fertiliser run-off, overfishing and warming oceans for years themselves, but this drone will patrol the reef day and night, programmed not to give its poisoned injection if there is any doubt about the identity and guilt of the target, as well as gathering a wealth of data on the health and well-being of the ecosystem. What do you think? It strikes me as a preferable alternative than swallowing a spider to catch the fly but deputising a drone with license to kill seems (especially in the light of a New Zealand island debating the outlawing of cats for similar reasons) problematic.

le syndrome d’effondrement des colonies d’abeilles

France has announced a ban—restrictions that go above what the European Union has deemed allowable, permitting the use of some members of this class of pesticides for greenhouse farming only where cross-contamination is less likely—on all neonicontinoids, long suspected of being a contributing factor to colony collapse disorder and the general loss of insect life that plays a vital role in maintaining the food chain. This class of pesticides were introduced in the 1990s as a less toxic alternative to existing products on the market, and structured on the nicotine molecule, the companies pitched their new formulations as safer and targeted without lingering in the environment.
Not quite able to pinpoint the lethal mechanism, the pathology, the industry invoked other factors like cell phone signals, monoculturing and noxious automotive emissions—which cannot be ruled out—but also possibly served as a cover and distraction for the real dangers of this substance. Researchers have now taken a nuanced, holistic approach to their field studies and suspect that they may have been overlooking the addictive property that these chemicals have for insect neurology and behaviour, making the bees exposed to it chemically dependent on the substance and thus overriding the instincts of the individual and the hive to make good choices about where to forage and how to defend the hive. It’s like Drone Dad that flew off to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned. If science is only getting wise to this consequence in bees, just imagine how disruptive introducing an addictive substance could be for less-studied bug lif, even when they are considered pests.  I hope other places follow France’s lead and not enter into large-scale experiments prematurely and uninformed.