Author: David Bradley

VE-Day Go-as-you-please

I have spent the last week organising another virtual “open mic” session, this one as part of our lockdown, social isolation VE Day celebrations in the village. I persuaded several local musicians to contribute a song or two.

The Fen Edge VE-day Go-as-you-please (#FEVEG) features Barbara “Daphne” Duckworth, Ms Grice (via Nadina Grice), Lucy Maynard, Danielle Padley, Chloe “Clarissa” Watson, David Bradley, Patrick Coughlan, Will Hall (via Stephanie Louise Hall, Julian Lerway. The D&C  sequence is by Georgia Duckworth.

It premiered at 08h00 prompt on the 75th anniversary of VE Day, 8th May 2020 in the Fen Edge unEvents group on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/cottenham

Also, right after the main event we had a Django Reinhardt special from father and son duo Alistair Brown and Oliver Brown.

 

Weave your antiviral facemask from cotton and silk

If you’re wondering what materials to use to stitch together your antiviral mask, it seems it could be that you need a couple of different fabrics for it to work best – woven cotton and a piece of silk or chiffon…

Tightly woven cotton acts as a physical barrier to viral particles and droplets carrying the virus. Silk and chiffon can both build up quite a static charge and this will help trap viral particles electrostatically.

Screengrab from OnlineKyne's facemask howto video linked below

Together the materials will reduce the risk of the wearer shedding virus from nose or mouth into the environment and on to other people or surfaces that others might touch. Conversely, the mask will, to some extent reduce the risk of you inhaling viral particles from the air. The researchers say that substituting chiffon or silk for flannel or using a cotton quilt with cotton-polyester backing could be just as effective. But, Sciencebase would add that it’s not so strong a fashion statement

There is also the added benefit of wearing a facemask in that it will reduce how often you touch your nose and mouth with your filthy, disease-ridden hands. Now go and wash them thoroughly with plenty of soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds!

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2020/april/the-best-material-for-homemade-face-masks-may-be-a-combination-of-two-fabrics.html

The research paper is in ACS Nano here. OnlineKyne howto video here

Do not mix, drink, nor inject disinfectants, cleaning agents and bleach

Before the Covid-19 lockdown I was working with my Editor at Chemistry World on a feature article on the hazards of handling, and specifically not mixing, different cleaning agents, such as ammonia, acids, bleaches etc. The article was written and edited, then Covid-19 hit hard and other materials took priority in the final editing queue.

However, last week reports came in that showed that accidental poisonings in the USA had risen dramatically during the Covid-19 lockdown compared with the same period last year. Indeed, they are up 20 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Moreover, there were more than 45000 emergency calls related to exposure to disinfectant and cleaning agents. About two-thirds of the incidents involved bleach and the others non-alcohol disinfectants and hand sanitisers. Serious problems can arise with ingestion or inhalation of fumes from any of these chemicals, but worse are the problems if certain ones are mixed as they can produce huge volumes of toxic gases, such as chlorine, and even explosive chemicals.

I spoke once more to my expert witnesses, we did the final edit, and ran the article…

Then, Trump’s illogical thought processes exploded with that ridiculous ill-informed and fundamentally stupid remark about “cleaning” the body of the germ, the virus, it’s tiny, you can’t see it, by injecting disinfectant or radiating someone with ultraviolet light. Neither idea has any basis in medicine and both are incredibly dangerous! Of course, you can kill the virus with disinfectant or soap and water. You can kill it with ultraviolet let, even sunlight will kill it. But, you cannot treat someone infected with it by injecting such chemicals into their body or irradiating them. Sheesh, he makes “Dubya” look almost intelligent…

Anyway, the feature article on not mixing cleaning agents is now live on the Chemistry World website and is getting a lot of reads and a lot of social media shares.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/explainer-why-is-mixing-cleaning-chemicals-such-a-bad-idea/4011257.article

Purple Thorn – Selenia tetralunaria

Mrs Sciencebase spotted this fellow roosting in the garden last night…it was the moth that was roosting, not Mrs Sb. It’s a Purple Thorn. So-called because the larva (caterpillar), which is stick-like in appearance has a spiky projection and the adult has a purple hue to its wings.

Ten-frame focus-stacked shot

Its scientific name (binomial) is Selenia tetralunaria. It has four white crescent moon shapes on its wings, hence the tetralunaria of its binomial. Selenia is the genus and there are a couple of dozen of this type of moth around the world, a fraction of the 180,000 different known moths (and butterflies, same thing)

Birds to listen out for during your exercise allowance

While we’re still allowed out of our homes for a period of exercise each day, have a listen out for some of the birds that are singing and calling right now, various migrants and others you may not have noticed above traffic noise even in the countryside previously:

Swallow

Whitethroat

Buzzard

Reed Bunting

Yellowhammer

Kingfisher

Listen to the birds in an English country garden

People often tell me they don’t know what that bird is they can hear singing or calling but cannot see. There’s an international crowd-sourced project called Xeno Canto that has the calls and songs of almost every bird around the world. But, for local friends and family who might want to know what they can hear in the gardens, here’s a small selection of some of the more likely in England:

Chaffinch

Greenfinch

Robin

Blackbird

Great Tit

Blue Tit

Dunnock

Wood Pigeon

Collared Dove

Starling

House Sparrow

Most of these birds will have a song and a call, some of them seem to improvise or do abbreviated versions of their songs and calls. The sound files you can listen to above are just a starting point for learning how to identify birds you might hear in your garden and then associate them with a visual ID.

Adela reaumurella – Green Long-horn Moth

Day-flying moths among the tops of the sycamores today

Adela reaumurella, the Green Long-horn Moth, is a species of moth belonging to the family Adelidae. It is a small moth with a wingspan of around 12-15 mm. The forewings are metallic green, the hindwings slightly darker. The most distinctive feature of this moth is the long antennae that can be twice as long as the wingspan. The Green Long-horn Moth is widely distributed throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It can be found in a variety of habitats, including woodlands, heathlands, and grasslands.

The species typically has two generations per year. The first generation emerges in May or June, and the second generation emerges in August or September. The larvae feed on leaf litter.

The species is not considered to be a threatened species. However, like many moth species, it is under-recorded and little is known about its population status. As with many Lepidoptera, it plays an important role in the ecosystem as a pollinator of flowers. It is also a valuable indicator species for monitoring the health of woodland habitats.

After the pandemic – plus ca change

There’s an interesting quote purportedly from Arundhati Roy that’s been doing the rounds on social media for a few days. She says something about pandemics making us think of the way forward anew…if only.

Did the massive flu pandemic of a century ago force us to break with the past? What about SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Ebola, Bird Flu, bovine TB, foot and mouth. I don’t think much changed after any of them…

Sadly, it feels like we restarted after the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed on the same industrial, destructive trajectory begun by the Victorians all the way through the 20thC and into this one…giving us the climate crisis, pollution, various animal and plant extinctions, desertification, coral bleaching, deforestation, and even more frequent emergent pathogens than we had before…oh and all those wars…

Look at the people on the streets protesting lockdown while thousands die…once this is over, it won’t be business as usual for a long time, but you can bet that ultimately we’ll go back to our old ways.

Plus ca change, I’m afraid Ms Roy :-(

The Emperor returns

I have a pheromone lure to attract the male of the lepidopteral species Saturnia pavonia, also known as the Emperor moth. It’s a beautiful creature. The male flies during the day drawn to the sex attractant exuded by the night-flying and less brightly coloured female. I’ve photographed them on the wing in the garden previously and also on a stage with a macro lens, as regular Sciencebase readers will know.

I only put the lure out for a few moments once a week or so, but it never fails. A couple of males turned up today within 20 minutes of the pheromones being released. One of them ended up in the conservatory, frantically flapping on a curtain for a few moments, so I got some fast shutterspeed (1/4000s) shots of him before giving the curtain a bit of a gentle flick to send him on his way and putting the lure back in the freezer until next week. It’s wonderful to know that these beautiful creatures are going about their lives with no care for our human woes.

Wren – Troglodytes troglodytes

As regular Sciencebase readers will be well aware, I often work from my laptop in the garden in the summer time, when the weather is fine…I reach right up and grab a camera sometimes…

Showing well today, a rather bold Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes, munching on grubs and caterpillars from various bushes and not worrying too much about my presence. I’ve been making efforts to let the garden go a bit wild, without it simply turning into a couch grass, thistle, and nestle patch. Lots of wildflower seeds are in, the pond is buzzing. Red Valerian and Green Alkanet are thriving, foxgloves are about to burst into bloom (hopefully). There are bird seed (mixed, sunflower, nyjer) and fat (suet) feeders aplenty.