36.2055 years in science communication
A sunny Saturday morning, local church opens its doors for a historical tour and a chance for the lay public to climb the stairs of the bell tower to the roof and take in the fenland vista with views stretching to Ely Cathedral northwards, King’s College Chapel and the University Library in Cambridge to the south and the surrounding villages, farms, fens, and windfarms. Oh, and there was some wildlife, pigeon eggs on the roof and a bat in the belfry.
A beautiful immigrant from Southern Europe turned up in our garden last night, attracted to the 40-Watt ultraviolet light of the scientific moth trap. At first glance, I thought it was a confusing aberration of the Silver Y, but it wasn’t quite right, the Y/gamma didn’t have the Y-shape and the other markings and overall shape were wrong. It turns out it is quite a rare vagrant visitor to the British Isles – Dewick’s Plusia, Macdunnoughia confusa (Stephens, 1850).
In the 20th Century it was recorded only a few dozen times, and is generally seen on the south and east coasts when it does hit our shores, most commonly in August but can appear any time between July and October. However, records are close to 500 now.
Anyway, it’s the middle of September and we are miles from the coast. The Cambridgeshire County Moth Recorder tells me that they’re regular but not common in the county, there have been 3-4 recorded for the last three years or so.
The moth was named for A. J. Dewick who is from Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. It is found across continental Europe to Siberia and down to Lebanon and Israel, and even Japan.
UPDATE: I’ve been mothing for five years as of July 2023. Always love to see Burnished Brass when it appears. Here’s the latest, although there were two that morning.
One of the more eye-catching of the moths I’ve seen during more than a year of mothing goes by the name of Burnished Brass (Diachrysia chrysitis). This is also an owlet moth, one of the noctuids, the noctuidae. It rests with its wings folded into a tent shape as many of them do, but what makes it stand out is that, as its name would suggest, it looks metallic. It shimmers in the sunlight and as it begins to warm it set its wings aquiver to speed up the process, revving its engines, as it were, before it can fly away into the garden shrubbery to vanish from sight. But, not before a quick photoshoot, of course.
For materials scientists, such shimmering is very much of interest. The scales on the wings of the moths and butterflies, the Lepidoptera (which simply means scaly, or tiled, wings) are inspirational for those looking to mimic the reflective, iridescent, and photonic properties of natural materials. I wrote about Burnished Brass for the magazine section of the journal Materials Today not long after I spotted my first one in the scientific trap in July 2018.
Yesterday, I had my birding lens (150-600mm zoom) on the camera when I snapped those invertebrates feeding on the ivy overgrowth in All Saints’ churchyard in Rampton. Today, I took a 90mm macro to get a different type of closeup of the butterflies, bees, flies, and hornets. No hornets in sight and no ivy bees either.
The enormous ivy (Hedera helix) overgrowth on an old tree behind All Saints Church, Rampton, was heaving with honeybees, bumblebees (various species), hoverflies (and other diptera), ivy bees, hornets, and red admiral butterflies during a sunny and warm lunchtime. I knew it would be, I’ve been keeping an eye on it for a week or two waiting for it to blossom. The acrid and yet pleasantly heady aroma hits you first as you walk into the churchyard. And, almost simultaneously you notice the buzzing. A lot of buzzing, the buzzing of thousands of pairs of tiny wings.
Ivy blossom is so important in the autumn for invertebrates once the usual flowers are beyond nectar making and their sugary food supply dries up. I have let the ivy on the fence at the rear of our garden grow quite wild again this year. After dark, I spotted lots of night feeders – several Large Yellow Underwing, some Vine’s Rustic, an Angle Shades, and various flies and other critters. The leaves had plenty of snails after the rains.
As of 9th September 2019, I have tallied more than 10000 moth specimens of approximately 300 different species via the scientific trap. I started trapping this year on 20th February and there have been a few short breaks for holidays in between lighting-up sessions. And then there was the outage when I smashed the UV light…
These numbers represent a tiny fraction of the total number of moths that will have passed through our garden in that time and the species count is barely 12 percent of the total number of species in the British Isles.
The red barchart shows the peaks and troughs of total numbers counted after each trapping session. Going from blanks some mornings to a handful in the winter months and into spring and then peaking with several hundred of a few dozen different species at various times during July and then late August (when we had a very hot spell with Cambridge breaking temperature records).
The blue of the chart shows the species count for each session. This peaked on 10th July with 60 different species, and perhaps more micro moths that I am too inexpert to have tallied on the day. There were 276 specimens in and around the trap come the morning of that day. The biggest tally was 27th August with 421 moths of some 43 different species.
For a complete listing of all species with vernacular and scientific names and, of course, record shots of each, check out my Mothematics Gallery on Imaging Storm. I’ve logged 321 moths species (most of them during the period July 2018 to September 2019 and most of those using the garden trap. A dozen or so in the gallery were photographed elsewhere.
I wrote about why scientific moth trapping is an important endeavour earlier in the year and how the modern amateur approach involves releasing the moths alive once tallied/photographed. Someone claimed that there are hundreds of thousands of people mothing. There aren’t. But, given that a single pipistrelle bat eats around 300 flying insects every night it is easy to see that in a country village where there might be three or four people trapping regularly, the bats are taking far more moths out of circulation than moth-ers.
As you can see from this small selection of my photos, moths are anything but grey and beige. Many fly during the day, many are brightly coloured, some are just sex machines (they don’t have mouthparts and don’t eat), all of them from the humblest micro to the biggest we have in the UK, the Privet Hawk-moth are astonishing examples of biological diversity in the invertebrate world.
Swiss researchers have looked at the pre-Brexit settlement negotiated by then UK Prime Minister David Cameron with the European Union and suggest that this was very much a missed opportunity for all parties that might have avoided the need for a referendum on the UK leaving the EU and all that ongoing problems to which that has led, despite the referendum being technically only advisory.
The voting turnout for the referendum in June 2016 was not particularly high and the result was almost equally split with a very narrow margin for the leavers rather than the remainers. Nobody was more shocked by the result than many of those who campaigned to leave other than perhaps the person who called the referendum in the first place – Cameron. He had negotiated many concessions for the UK within the EU.
The question of whether the UK should have retained its membership of the EU had vexed politicians for many years but was not particularly high on the public’s agenda despite the advent of a so-called “independence” party and the agitations of far-right, xenophobic groups with their own political agendas. Even many of the purported Eurosceptics could see the benefits of membership over the country leaving, not least avoiding the likely problem of a renewed call for Scottish independence from the UK and the issue of the border between the Republic of Ireland and the part of the UK that is Northern Ireland.
To quote Cameron:
The decision to hold a plebiscite on quitting the EU is the biggest risk taken in recent British political history.
Max de Boer of Bern Welcome and his colleagues used multi-stakeholder theory and multi-actor negotiation theory to some shed light on the negotiation process between Cameron’s government and the EU. Fundamentally, they say, “the creation of strong issue packages avoided a distributive bargain and therefore made it possible to reach an integrative bargain package based on the common interest that the negotiations are addressing European issues and not only British issues.” The negotiations were to temper the concerns of citizens regarding the politically critical and emotional topics of sovereignty and mobility. Unfortunately, the negotiations had little effect on public opinion, which was swung sufficiently towards voting to leave.
The researchers conclude with a quote from Martin Schulz, then President of the European Parliament who offered that:
"The method that 'I tell you what you have to give me so that we stay' won't work'.
There is now bitterness on all sides and at the time of writing the situation is yet to be resolved not least because the UK itself is now in complete political turmoil wherein the current Prime Minister, the second since the referendum vote, does not hold a majority nor have the confidence of parliament with regards his approach to the UK’s departure from the EU.
De Boer, M., Hausmann, N., Mendelberg, M. and Stammbach, D. (2019) ‘Cameron’s pre-Brexit settlement for the UK within the European Union: failure or missed opportunity?‘, European J. International Management, Vol. 13, No. 5, pp.662—677.
I’ve resequenced my latest bunch of songs into a 14-track “album” for streaming/download from BandCamp. At the time of writing, it’s “name your price” which makes it priceless or worthless, depending on your perspective
Bridge of Sighs – An immigrant song
Shifting Sands – Funk rock folk
Running Out of Favours – Doobiesque
When the Beat Hits Your Heart – Funk out
Almost Heaven – Nostalgic Americana, 30 years in the writing
Watch Your Step – Vocal noodles on a Fender Rhodes riff and hiphop beatz
Shooting Waste – Acousto-electric un-southern rock
On reflection -Laid-back, collaborative, blue-eyed soul
The Heat – Get back to the 60s
La Gaffe de P̩niche РElectronica gone wrong
The Spate Gatherers – A modern Geordie folk song
A Northern Boy – What if Billy Joel were a guitarist from Chicago?
C6 Deev – Open tuned instrumental acoustic
One by One – Acoustic rocker starts like Zep, ends up like Coldplay
UPDATE: Mrs Sciencebase in action with the minipresso
Sciencebase has had various gadgets to review over the years most of them computing peripherals and related technology. Today, a minipresso from Wacaco Ltd arrived special delivery. As the name would suggest it’s a mini/portable espresso maker. Basically, a container with the requisite metal filter and a push-button pump to build up a head of steam to force hot water through the filter loaded with coffee granules into a receptacle.
All looks very easy to use, although I persuaded Mrs Sciencebase to find the instructions online and she followed through with the Youtube demo. Seems like an ideal device for camping where a full-blown expresso machine might be a little over the top, but where you can usually boil water on your camping stove and bring with you your favour coffee granules.
The claim is to a nice 70-millilitre espresso with a decent crema (the syrupy froth so beloved of many espresso drinkers. Camping season is at an end for us for 2019, but this would definitely be required kit in our big camping box for any future trips.
Once I’ve made myself one, I’ll update the blog with a report on the taste test…
Back in the day, Mrs Sciencebase worked for an innovative and aspirational electronics company. One of the developments they were working on at a time long before mobile phones were ubiquitous was how to make phone calls clearer. They wanted to get rid of the squelch and muffled tones that are commonplace. The idea had to be to do this without increasing the signal bandwidth that is needed to transmit the mutterings of caller and receiver.
The problem was never solved and so remains a serious issue particularly for those who have hearing problems. Turning up the volume doesn’t cut it as that simply makes the mid-range muffle mufflier and squeezes the squelch so that it becomes unbearable. A novel solution has been developed by a startup, Audacious, in conjunction with leading hearing specialists, Brian Moore and Michael Stone.
Potential users do a special hearing test, which they call a Sound Check using their current phone and a web browser. Based on their responses, Audacious can then tweak the sound at source before it is compressed for transmission as usual via the phone network. This, they suggest, improves the sound quality for the recipient and gives them a much better experience than they would have with a standard call that isn’t tailored to their hearing profile.
You use your own phone, but switch to their SIM and all the calls you receive via their system are essentially tweaked so they’re clearer for you. You can retake the audio test periodically and the EQ and compression algorithm will update your account so that you continue to get the best out of your phone.
Now, I know for a fact I’ve got some left-right hearing discrepancy and while I’ve still got pretty got top-end for some in their sixth decade, I know that my mid-range hearing leaves a bit to be desired and given that that is the range at which most of the characteristics of speech are heard. I tried the test and when I’d finished, the system played some speech as it would be with an Audacious SIM card and lets you hear how it was before and after. It did seem to make a significant difference to hear the call with the Audacious treatment as opposed to the muffled and squelchy calls I hear on my phone with my current provider.
I’ve tried doing the built-in Samsung EQ sound improvement in advanced sound settings that also involves a simple hearing test on your phone, but that’s not really improved things enough to give me clearer calls. Until audio/video messaging is as accessible as conventional phone call this does sound like the way forward.
You can take the Audacious sound check here and hear the difference for yourself. The assumption is that you have some kind of hearing deficit, which most of us of a certain age, and especially musicians and concertgoers often do, and anyone who has a career in a noisy environment. Find out more on their website or via their Facebook.
Can you hear me, Mother? Can now, son!