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.