David Bradley – Page 66

Unweaving the rainbow

Newton (in)famously split sunlight into the visible spectrum with his prism. His findings revolutionised optics but led to accusation of his unweaving the rainbow. As if that somehow subtracted from our appreciation of the natural world. To my mind, it does nothing of the sort. Knowing that white light comprises all the colours of the rainbow and these can be separated at the interface of two materials of different refractive index actually adds to the beauty.

Knowing a rainbow is photons of different frequencies stimulating the cells at the back of your eyes and impinging on your brain’s visual cortex does not detract from the fact that a rainbow is still a wondrous and beautiful thing. Those with the artistic aesthetic get that as do those of a scientific bent. Those with only the artistic aesthetic don’t get the bonus of understanding the science. I’d always choose being a polymath over one or the other and many in science are both scientific and artistic. Although it often seems that too many people in the arts are less interested in the flipside of the reality perception coin.

As you know by now (surely?), I take a lot of photos. Birds, moths and butterflies, flowers, trees, beaches, sunsets, moonshots, and more. Occasionally, I’ll post one on my Instagram with a sciencey caption just for fun.

Viz, a recent trip to the North Norfolk coast in search of avian visitors such as Snow Buntings and Shorelarks, had me snapping the waves too with a short shutterspeed on the camera to capture the action. I posted a frozen wave and captioned it as “Agitated aqueous sodium chloride solution”. It is what it is. One view offered a tongue-in-cheek response: “Looks much nicer than that description.”

Well, yes, admittedly, it does. But…I assume visitors can appreciate the little chemical joke alongside the photo. It’s not a great photo and I could’ve also talked of the fractal nature of fluids in motion, fluid dynamics, hydrogen bonding, and other such matters. Knowing about such things does not take away from how peaceful and wondrous it is to simply watch all those refracted solar photons skipping over the waves as they break on a windy shore as the sun goes down. It’s not gilding the lily, it’s not unweaving the rainbow, it’s adding new layers to our understanding and appreciation of the natural world. Do you get my meaning? Do you too aspire to be a polymath or do you prefer to sit in one camp only and ignore and miss the joy of the flipside?

I just searched the Sciencebase Science blog for the word polymath and discovered that I wrote a very similar essay to the above about a decade ago, here.

Snow Buntings at Holkham Beach

Second trip of the year to the North Norfolk coast. A much brisker, sunnier day than our New Year’s Day trip to RSPB Titchwell. Hoped to see Shorelarks, but apparently there are only five around the beach at Holkham at the moment and even the hardiest of birders who spent all day waiting yesterday saw none. We did, however, see 60 or so Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivalis.

The Snow Bunting is a relatively chunky bunting and in winter has what can only be described as a snowy kind of winter camouflage plumage. It takes on a sandy/buff appearance with more mottling of the males’ upperparts than its black and white of summer.

The “Snow Bunt” breeds in the Arctic regions from Scandinavia to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland and heads south in winter. They are an Amber species in the UK as they are quite scarce here in terms of breeding. So, very nice to see a relatively large number of 60 or so picking over the scrub on Holkham Beach.

Sighted today: Black-headed Gull, Brent Goose, Common Buzzard, Common Gull, Common Scoter, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Kestrel, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Linnet, Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Oystercatcher, Peregrine, Pied Wagtail, Red Kite, Redshank, Robin, Rock Pipit, Sanderling, Stock Dove, Stonechat, Velvet Scoter, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Snow Bunting…

Lots of Common Scoter out at sea. 400 or so in this flock alone

Black-headed Gulls at sunset at Hunstanton

Norfolk seal deaths

Just before Christmas 2019 there were news reports of two seal pup deaths at a popular tourist site along the Norfolk coast. One pup had been surrounded by visitors to the beach and their presence had so scared the mother that she abandoned the pup. The second death was caused by children chasing a seal pup into the sea. The fur of such young pups is not waterproof and the animal could not swim and drowned.

This is not acceptable. Too many people get too close to the seals, often to get a selfie. They let their dogs and children run amok among the basking animals. I assume that there are moves to make this region a protected zone and perhaps even to close the beaches when there are pups present. I must admit prior to our visit, I had thought that was the case and that the only way to see them was from a dune-top viewing platform rather than walking on the sands.

I hope we were responsible during our visit. We wanted to see them but kept well away. While we were there we saw groups of people walking within a couple of feet of the animals and worse two people with an Alsation attempting to get a selfie on the rocks next to a pup and its mother.

In related news, a total ban on parking on Beach Road, Winterton, came into force on 13th January. Just so you know if you were planning on visiting the seals.

Science, songs, snaps, stuff

UPDATE: The poll is still running today, “more science” has dropped to quite a bit less than 2/3 and “more snaps” has jumped up to well over 1/5, proportion of voters asking for “more silence has fallen a little too.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I please myself with what I post on this website and my various social media. I’ve been online since January 1989 and started my first website in December 1995. Sciencebase.com was created in July 1999 and I was on Facebook, Twitter, and the others within the first year of their public launches, if I remember rightly.

So, to iterate, I do what I do for my own entertainment, although I am always very happy if my creative output entertains, educates, or informs others.

Anyway, I initiated a twitter poll before the end of 2019 to test the water on what my 42000+ followers there wanted more of from me in 2020. Not with any intention of changing what I do, but just to see if feelings coincided with my inclinations tweetwise.

At first, the pollsters came back with a resounding “more science” call, that gradually dropped from most of them to about three-quarters and then closer to two-thirds. Very few people wanted “more songs” and a few wags wanted “more silence”. There is pleasingly a strong one-fifth of the respondents who want “more snaps”.

Like I say, I’m not adapting to suit other people, but I had felt that I wasn’t posting quite enough science stuff, given my origins and so there could be a few extra posts on the various topics in that realm that interest me. Where I can illustrate a science story with my own photography then I will do a little more of that too.

The songs will keep coming, even if it’s less than one in ten of voters who want more of them. Of course, everyone might just prefer the status quo…although I will not be doing any covers of that band, I hasten to add. As for more silence? Well, I’m in a choir called bigMouth, so how do you think that last option is going to pan out?

Meanwhile, for those who want even more snaps (photos) – check out the Sciencebase Instagram, at the time of writing I’d almost got to 500 followers. I’d hoped to have reached that landmark by 2020 but it wasn’t to be. 1000 by the end of the ’20s?

New Year’s Day 2020 at RSPB Titchwell 64 birdcount

Once again, we partied afternoon and early evening on New Year’s Eve 2019 and avoided the midnight shenanigans and so we were sufficiently compos mentis to drive to RSPB Titchwell in North Norfolk for the second year running. Last year, we ticked 54 bird species, although the rangers reported 103. This year we ticked 64, and the rangers saw 90-something.

Birders at RSPB T(w)itchwell, North Norfolk

Avocet, Blackbird, Black-headed Gull, Bar-tailed Godwit, Black-tailed Godwit, Blue Tit, Brent Goose, Buzzard, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Coot, Cormorant, Carrion Crow, Dunlin, Dunnock, Gadwall, Golden Plover, Great Black-backed Gull, Great Tit, Great-crested Grebe, Greenfinch, Greenshank, Grey Heron, Grey Plover, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Jackdaw, Kestrel, Knot, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Little Egret, Little Grebe, Long-tailed Tit, Magpie, Mallard, Marsh Harrier, Meadow Pipit, Moorhen, Mute Swan, Oystercatcher, Pheasant, Pink-footed Goose, Pintail, Redshank, Ringed Plover, Robin, Rook, Sanderling, Scoter, Shelduck, Shoveller, Sparrowhawk, Spotted Redshank, Starling, Stock Dove, Teal, Tufted Duck, Turnstone, Water Rail, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Wren.

What is Esketamine?

You may have seen that an antidepressant called “Esketamine” has been approved for use in the UK. Sounds a bit like ketamine you’re thinking, and you’d be right. It is a purified form of the more well-known drug, commonly thought of as a horse tranquiliser and often used as a drug of abuse.

Many drug molecules come in two forms, what you might refer to as a left-handed and a right-handed form. When they are manufactured, both the left (known as the S) and the right (labelled R) form are produced, usually in equal quantities. Often one form, R or S is more active than the other, as is the case with the painkiller ibuprofen.

Sometimes, one form is active and the other form causes side effects. This is the case with thalidomide, although the forms are interconverted in the body so it is impossible to make a safe form of that particular drug for women who are or might get pregnant.

Standard manufacture of ketamine produces the R and the S form, (R,S)-2-(2-chlorophenyl)-2-(methylamino)cyclohexanone. The R form, interacts with additional receptors in the body that are not the chosen target of the drug and so lead to side effects. Hence, the need to produce ketamine as the S form only for use in treating depression. The drug S-ketamine, thus becomes esketamine. The S form is twice as potent as the mixture of R and S. The R form is nominally arketamine, clever naming.

Esketamine is marketed as Ketanest and Spravato, commonly used as a general anesthetic (intravenous) and now for severe, treatment-resistant depression (nasal spray). The drug acts by blocking the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor in the nervous system and also acts as dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Dopamine release is associated with pleasure and feelings of reward, these feelings can, theory goes, be made to last longer if the dopamine remains active and is not “reuptaken” back into nerve cells too quickly.

Ketamine can be addictive and so can its S enantiomer, esketamine, which as mentioned has now been approved in the UK. Some physicians are concerned about its use. Addictive nature aside, there is the issue that esketamine increases glucose metabolism in the frontal cortex of the brain and this may be responsible for the more psychologically dissociative and hallucinogenic effects of esketamine. Arketamine decreases glucose metabolism in the brain and is thus reportedly more relaxing.

On balance, the ratio of benefits to risk is considered high enough that it can be safely used for some patients with severe and very debilitating forms of depression.

Footnote

The one thing I’ve not yet ascertained is whether or not the manufacture of esketamine begins with the 50:50 racemic mixture of the R and S forms and involves their separation prior to formulation of esketamine or whether the manufacturer has an enantioselective synthetic route that gives them a bigger proportion of the S form and less waste when they remove the R form prior to formulation. Luddchem pointed out a cyclodextrin paper published by Wiley here.

The (New) Elements Song

I mentioned my friend Helen Arney‘s marvellous update of the classic chemical song by Tom Lehrer a while back (December 2016). Now, the team from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemistry World magazine, led by another, Ben Valsler, have crowdsourced a choir to join Helen and Waterbeach Brass (the brass band from the village eastwards across the A10 road from us here in Cottenham) to record a new rendition as we come to the finale of the International Year of the Periodic Table. It’s super!

Science on TikTok

UPDATE: Well, it was worth a try…some of the vids I posted had a few hundred views and a handful of likes, one got 1500+ views and a few dozen likes. But the vast majority of the stuff on there is pointless nonsense and there seems to be little engagement to be frank. Even attempting to find STEM people has not really worked so far. I am going to leave it to brew on the backburner for a while over the Christmas period and come back to it next month.

You may have heard about TikTok, it’s a fairly new video platform (actually, it’s ancient, founded in September 2016!). Rumour has it that’s mostly youngster doing silly stunts and pranking each other and if it’s not that then its craftspeople and builders and decorators showing off their skills in plastering, bricklaying, tree-felling, carving, plastering, and other stuff. There’s been some 15-second activism that hit the headlines recently and seems to be growing…

I registered with the app soon after it launched, but never used it at the time. Well, as I mentioned here a few days ago I was inspired by engineer-inventor Dr Lucy Rogers to take a closer look as I imagined that there could be potential for engaging and perhaps even inspiring some of those youngsters with some sciencey videos.

My early postings are a bit eclectic, some music, some moths, a stylish stile, silly snowy filters, and others bits & bobs. Some seem to have been viewed several hundred times and liked by a few dozen users; others don’t seem to have hit the target at all.

Anyway, as I did with Twitter more than a decade ago, I thought it might be nice to start compiling a list of STEM people active on TikTok and maybe even encourage a few who aren’t but who have content that they share on other social media to take a look. So, I’ve made a start and will add anyone who is in STEM and sharing experiments, demos, and other pertinent stuff, just let me have your handle and I’ll take a look.

@sciencebase
@DrLucyRogers
@RuthAmos
@RobIves
@DavidDobrik
@ChemTeacherPhil
@Rahul
@InstituteofHumanAnatomy
@TheJKGamer1
@SarahMackAttack
@lab_shenanigans
@TheTikTokScientist

The International Space Station, ISS

I totally forgot that I’d had another got a photographing the International Space Station, ISS, as it flew overhead a few nights ago. The photos were not very good, so I headed outside to try and catch this evening’s very bright, overhead flypast and was a little more successful.

If it’s flying over where you live and it’s night time and the sky is clear, look to the western horizon for a steady, bright light that travels across the sky heading East, it will take several minutes to cross the sky, it moves quite quickly so hard to get a focus lock on with a big lens. There’s no twinkling, no flashing lights, just a very bright steady and steadfast light.

This was the best of a large sequence of photos I snapped where you can definitely see the shape of the beast and how it is rotating as it travels across the sky. Full-frame SLR with a 600mm zoom lens, EV turned down a few notches, ISO as low as I could go and get an exposure. f/5.6 but that’s irrelevant and a short shutterspeed to preclude shake while handholding the machine.

This is a 48×48 pixel crop from my original 5472×3648 photograph scaled up 4x and coupled with a NASA photo of the ISS so you can see better what it is you’re actually looking at here!

Below is a 768 pixelwidth crop of the original. The white speck in the middle is what I’ve cropped to in the view above

Spare a thought for our winter visitors

Many people are well aware that the British Isles welcomes a lot of summer visitors – the cuckoos, swifts, swallows, house martins, and many other migratory species that head north in the spring from their season in the sub-Saharan sun. But, there are also visitors in the winter, birds that head south from the cold to catch a little of the warmth of the Gulf Stream. As far as we know many birds adopted migratory behaviour in response to the Ice Age and having evolved to cope with that are locked into that pattern, at least until climate changes in a significant way once more.

I wrote about a winter visitor that reaches our shores some time ago in this newsletter – the starlings. While we have lots of starlings all year round, those vast flocks we know as murmurations occur when the starling forces are bolstered by visitors. If you head out to the local nature reserves and even just the outskirts of the villages you are likely to see many other visitors among the flocks of gulls and crows, for instance. Among the grey and white clouds of the more well-known gulls, there might be something a little less common, an ivory gull for instance or perhaps even a glaucous gull and we did have a hooded crow on the outskirts of our village, Cottenham, last year.

Among the other winter visitors that turn up in greater numbers are a couple of thrush-type species, related to the blackbird and the song thrush, namely the fieldfare and the redwing. Both species will make a winter home on farmland and use the hedgerows and bordering trees and woodland. Both eat a lot of berries and will attempt to out-compete the resident blackbirds and thrushes for supplies. Should the weather turn foul, as happened when we had the so-called “Beast from the East”.

These birds headed for the relative shelter of our gardens and began stripping firethorn and rowan trees of any remaining berries. Another reason not to be too tidy in pruning back your bushes in the autumn. Incidentally, there were still fieldfares to be seen in the trees that border the allotments and the recreation ground as recently as April, despite most winter visitors having departed for their northern summer homes.

waxwing benton 2 e1523904354898 — Waxwing

Of course, having some vast wet spaces and in being so close to Norfolk, we have plenty of waterfowl visitors in winter – geese, ducks, swans. These head south from Scandinavia and elsewhere to take advantage of the relative warmth here when the chills really do set in up north. Many readers will no doubt have visited WWT Welney to see the large numbers of Whooper and Bewick’s swans and other waterfowl that arrive each autumn there.

Among the less common birds you might see around the village and in local woodland that turn up for the winter are goldcrests. This species holds joint first place with the firecrest as our smallest bird species, far smaller than the resident wren, which is our most common resident. That said, you can see goldcrests and firecrests at any time of year.

Another relative rarity to watch out for, especially around trading estates and supermarket car parks where there are often lots of berry-laden trees is the waxwing. This elegant and bohemian species spends the summer in the far north, but is peripatetic, rather than migratory, in the winter, and often turns up unannounced in large flocks to those berry-rich sites when food is short in the north. Watch out for huddles of people in olive green and beige with thinly insulated hats hanging around The Beehive Centre or the guided busway parking areas with binoculars and ‘scopes pointing them hopefully at rowan trees and the like and you might just spot an elegant visitor.