OneGuyFromBarlick

BBC, 17 February 2015
`The school growing a digital forest in Rwanda'
"How did pupils at a state school in Somerset end up in discussions with the Rwandan government to build a digital forest? And what role did technology play in making this happen? Simon Pugh-Jones is a science teacher at Writhlington secondary school in Bradstock. The school has a secret that is not shared by any other in the country - it is a world-renowned orchid conservation centre. Its unusual work has, from inception utilised technology. "Back in the 1990s we used digital cameras that allowed the children to share their work. Then we started using data loggers to collect data," explained Mr Pugh-Jones. This allowed them to conduct some breakthrough work, comparing data they gathered on field trips to that in books - it led them to discover that many of the assumptions about orchid conservation were in fact wrong.

"Now the school is one of eight in the UK working with Intel to find way of introducing the internet of things into the curriculum. As part of that children are issued with Intel Galileo boards - a rival to the Raspberry Pi - which they can use to build robots, soil sensors or weather stations. At Writhlington soil sensors are used to help take care of the orchids By embedding sensors in the soil meant that humidity, temperature and other variables could be carefully monitored and data uploaded to the net."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30913711

Wonderful what's going on in the most unlikely places! See THIS for another unlikely discovery, that limpet teeth are one of the hardest substances in nature.....

See THIS for the 'latest news' on the role of black rats in the transmission of the Black Death in the 1340s. I have bad news for the scientists, this is not new. See my articles on the Black Death, in the course of my research I uncovered the evidence for other small mammals being the vector. Someone missed this when reviewing the evidence!

There is an interesting story here about new findings on how chameleons change their skin colour rapidly. It was thought to be all due to changes in pigment chemical distribution but this shows that there is another mechanism involving changes in the spacial distribution of crystals. This latter effect is similar to the iridescence colours shown by beetles and butterflies and in some cases by mineral crystals and opal.
The report is on the this BBC page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31819588

There is more about butterfly wing iridescence here: http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/15A.html

Quite amazing....
THIS caught my attention this morning. Bird Flu has receded from attention of late but it is still out there and when it hits the economy of the US it becomes news again. Puts a totally different aspect to 'Southern Fried Chicken'. When you consider the massive size of the global poultry industry and the potential reservoir for infection, not least Salmonella, it makes you wonder how we manage to survive.

Ah, Tysons! Just over a year ago they were in the news with this:
`Tyson recalls over 33,000 lbs of chicken over potential Salmonella outbreak; two are hospitalized'
"Industry giant Tyson Foods is recalling over 33,000 pounds of mechanically separated chicken products that may be contaminated with salmonella. "
Note the phrase `mechanically separated chicken products'. This is where the trouble begins. This, and mincing meat, spreads any contamination throughout a product so that a few bad chicken carcasses can potentially contaminate around 15 tons of product and have an affect across the whole USA.

Quite Tiz! I wouldn’t knowingly touch mechanically recovered meat with a barge pole. This is why I avoid processed foods, you don't know what has gone into them. A chicken bought from my local butcher may possibly (even probably) carry Salmonella but by the time I have cooked it thoroughly it is as safe as houses. I'm old fashioned enough to have been reared believing that all meat should be, in my mother's words, "Well done".
Mind you, in her case sometimes this was actually burnt!

My Dad will still eat corn flakes only if the milk is hot. We always heated milk up to almost boiling before putting it on breakfast cereal when I was a child. I think my parents got this habit from their parents and would have been a protection against disease bacteria carried by milk, especially before it was pasteurised. Even after pasteurisation milk still contains live bacteria. It's `only sterile if it's been sterilised', which might seem obvious to us but it isn't to a lot of other folk even though they know pasteurised milk `goes off' after a time. Pasteurisation was designed to kill the well-known, serious pathogenic bacteria, not to sterilise it of all microorganisms. Some years back the supermarkets demanded that the pasteurisation conditions were made more rigorous when they realised that they might in the future face criticism for having allowed people to be exposed to bacterial infections.

Very true Tiz. In the trade we used to call it 'paralysed' milk. I got Brucellosis from raw milk and they tell me I still have it but it hasn't bothered me for years. In those days it was called Undulating Fever. It's Contagious abortion in cattle. When TB in milk was cracked 'Attested Milk' was switched to Brucellosis free from TB.

See THIS for an interesting report on an experiment on the effect of breast feeding on IQ. Perhaps Mother Nature does know best after all.....

Keeps some people in a job stating the bleeding obvious.

Reading the other day that we are about to witness a 'Super Moon' I decided to look some facts about the moon on Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon
I was surprised at how little I knew.

Interesting pictures here of `dirty thunderstorms' - volcanic lightning...
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150323 ... understorm

Am I right in thinking that very large fires can sometimes trigger lightning strikes?

Yes...from the US National weather Service:
"Lightning Causes Forest Fires. Can Forest Fires Cause Lightning? Yes, smoke and carbon micro-particles, when introduced into the upper atmosphere, can become the initiators of static. Sufficient atmospheric static can spark discharge as lightning. Reports of massive lightning storms in coastal Brasil, Peru and Hawaii have been linked to burning of sugar cane fields. The late 90's Mexican forest fires resulted in unusual lightning activity in the USA High Plains area (Lyons, et al.) So too can dust in an enclosed grain elevator create a static discharge. Recent reports (Orville, et al) show the Houston TX petrochemical industry, discharging copious amounts of hydrocarbons into the upper atmosphere, may be responsible for higher-than-normal lightning activity in that area. (National Lightning Safety Institute)"
http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/myths.shtml

Regarding government funding of science in the UK...
BBC Analysis by David Shukman, BBC science editor
"How much of last night's TV grilling of David Cameron and Ed Miliband was devoted to science and engineering?
None.
Did anyone even mention them despite all the major parties describing research and innovation as being vital for future prosperity?
No.
In the cut and thrust ahead of the election, the economy and the NHS and immigration are commanding attention - and the world of British science is struggling to make its voice heard. The argument is simple enough: that although Britain punches well above its weight as measured by Nobel Prizes and research papers and academic citations, it is falling behind its global competitors in terms of how much they spend. The numbers speak for themselves: Britain devotes less of its GDP to R&D than the United States and Germany and far less than that innovation powerhouse South Korea. The latest figures show it even falls below the average of the 28 members of the European Union. Prominent figures in science all say they get a sympathetic hearing from politicians and that things could be far worse. But they also realise that while the coming weeks present an opportunity to make a case for a big increase in the spending commitment, it will be tough work even getting noticed."
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32086204

The Guardian has published on the same topic on 13 March:
`UK research funding slumps below 0.5% GDP – putting us last in the G8'
http://www.theguardian.com/science/occa ... search-gdp

Thanks for the answer to the lightning query Tiz. As for the lack of attention to research and R&D. Yet another example of the short term thinking of our leaders. They know nothing about the real world but only understand their chosen subject, politics which never added value to anything apart from real estate in Westminster.....

News that an anglo Saxon remedy for styes kills MRSA. Its made from Cow bile and garlic

I saw that as well Wendy. The researchers said they were quite surprised at how well it worked. Perhaps our ancestors weren't totally stupid!

If I was threatened with cow bile and garlic I'd get better PDQ!

You'd love the benefits of being vaccinated with pus from cow pox blisters though.......

And we won't even mention what they used mercury compounds for, and how they were administered, until quite recent times!

I will! You've reminded me of Harry White who used to be a sergeant in the cavalry in the Great War. They used a lot of mercury based ointment (I have an idea this was the infamous Green Salve we used when hot iron castrating) for treating horses legs. Harry knew it was used in the treatment of Syphilis for putting on the chancres and had a healthy little sideline selling it to afflicted squaddies. One day the MO took him on one side and told him that if he'd stop treating his mates, he'd promise not to interfere with the way Harry doctored his horses. Harry protested that it was 'curing' them. The MO agreed but said it was also rendering them impotent! Harry took notice and said that he noted after the war that the mates he was still in contact with after the war seemed not to be having any more children..... Not a recommended method of birth control!
Anyone who has read the final version of my father's life story will remember that he was incredibly lucky, he spent almost the whole of his service in the Anzacs as a patient in military hospitals with Gonorrhoea picked up from a lady in Edinburgh. If he was treated with mercury it didn't harm him because my siblings and I were all conceived after his war service.

In earlier times you were lucky if you got away with only an ointment. You've gone and forced me into mentioning it now. OG members shouldn't read the web page linked below if they are of a nervous nature (which means all of them will read it!):
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/brought ... x?id=92814

And ten there was the universally dreaded 'umbrella' which was inserted closed into the urethra and opened as it was drawn out. The intention was to 'clear' the passage. Those were the days......