Beamlines

Sir Archibald
Henry Bodkin, KCB (1862–1957) was our British Director of Public
Prosecutions from 1920 to 1930.  He particularly took a stand against the
publication of what he saw as ‘obscene’ literature.

So it was that in the summer of 1988 I discovered America.Now doesn’t that sound like a very ‘arty’ sort of statement?  It comes from Forever Today by Deborah Wearing, and though the lady herself has a musical background, there are parts of this book which should be of great interest to Science 2.0 readers.  To give the context, here is the start of the book description. 

SaffronIn one of my school history books, as I remember, there is a story that saffron was introduced into Europe by a pilgrim from concealing some corms in his staff, to avoid the death penalty if found by the agents of the Sultans who controlled its export.  However, the history of saffron, including a 14-week ‘saffron war’, seems much more complicated that this.

I was watching the recent two-part BBC series Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero, about Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913), in which Bailey and his hidden camera team travelled through Indonesia sampling the joys of the rainforest while following the great naturalist’s journey.  The first episode was spent on Borneo, the second on

Recently, there was found in Spain a shelled Pre-Cambrian Critter which showed distinct evidence of a gut.  This got me thinking about the distinction between the deuterostomes and protostomes, interest in which was sparked again by the even more recent article from National Geographic:

In 2001 there was a massive outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) in the United Kingdom.  This caused, in terms of prices at that time £8bn / $13–16bn of loss to the UK economy, and much distress in agricultural communities.  One of the most memorable things of that time was images of cattle and other carcasses being burned.

Not long ago, we acquired a range of inexpensive storage vessels, ideal for

keeping leftovers in the fridge before they go into yours truly, the family

dustbin.  Here is an example: the steel dish is covered by a tight-fitting

plastic (presumably polyethylene) lid.  Or it was tight-fitting when we bought

it, but some of these lids are now so tight-fitting that they won’t even go on

at all, and one or two have split in the attempt to force them

on.  

Going round the exhibition of the Association for Science Education always

leaves me with a few small challenges, such as “how much can I really take in of

what an exhibitor is telling me?” and “how much school science do I really

understand?”  For example, on the same table as the Toilet

Roll Fungus, part of the NBCE exhibit, I came upon

two fuel cells.  I’ve had to think quite hard before writing this one

up

Some years ago, I was a bit mystified as to the distinction

between prebiotics and probiotics.  These days, one can easily look them up on

Wikipedia, and find that prebiotics are meant to

encourage the growth of ‘good’ bacteria in the gut, while probiotics are supposed

to deliver the bacteria directly. 

Boxing has been in the news lately, what with this young lady (Nicola Adams) becoming the world’s first female Olympic boxing champion.  So when I saw claws like the ones in the next picture two days ago, I immediately thought they might be used for combat, like the outsize claw of the male fiddler crab.