35 years in science communication
The original Sciencebase, founded in July 1999, following on from the Elemental Discoveries website established in December 1995
I have run a lot of websites over the years. First one was December 1995. I built up various topic hubs under specific names. However, things change, people move on. I am now selling some of the old domains associated with those hubs:
You can contact me directly, if you’d like to purchase any of them or simply visit the domain to get sale details. A direct sale could save us both money, however.
The Apple Leaf Miner Moth, Lyonetia clerkella, is a tiny insect with a wingspan of just 7-9 millimetres. It is widely distributed across the UK. Its larvae burrow under the surface of the leaves of apple trees (Malus) and Prunus species. Leaving a trail through the leaf known as a leaf mine.
This species of moth is double brooded. The second or a subsequent brood will hibernate/overwinter and reappear in the spring. The adults are night flyers and attracted to light, hence my photo of one drawn to my 20W actinic Skinner moth trap last night.
Rather than using blanket pesticides on orchards, we should be studying the interaction between the moth and its natural predators or parasitoids Studying the ecological relationships in the context of the moth’s lifecycle could provide valuable insights into maintaining a balanced ecosystem within agricultural landscapes. Developing sustainable and eco-friendly approaches to managing this moth species is crucial to preserving fruit yields and at the same time ensuring the health of the wider ecosystems.
Incidentally, there was a much bigger moth drawn to the same light in the garden last night, the Red Undering, Catocala nupta. This moth’s wingspan is ten times that of L. clerkella. Only the second time I’ve seen Red Underwing in the garden, previous time was 3rd August 2019, exactly four years before this appearance!
I spotted something moving very slowly along a wall in the house this morning and took a close look. I thought maybe it was a bagworm at first, but a couple of experts on Twitter, Colin Foote @MothIDUK and Richard Lewington confirmed it as the larva of the Case-bearing Clothes Moth, Tinea pellionella. These are sometimes colloquially known as bagworms, but they’re not fully fledged bagworms, that word is reserved for a group of moths known as the Psychids.
Now, I’ve almost certainly seen the adults of this species, although there are several very similar Tinea adults that are almost indistinguishable, so I couldn’t tell you for certain. But, I’d definitely not seen the insect in the larval stage…as with the bagworms (the Psychids), the Case-bearing Clothes Moth makes a home for itself from fragments of materials it finds when it hatches from its egg – wool and fur – for instance, which it can also eat, although it does dine on feathers in bird’s nests too. The unrelated Psychids might also use bark, wood, sand, and lichen. The case-bearer wraps itself up in its case for protection and camouflage. It’s perhaps the ultimate in mini-beast home-building. There may well be some larval silk spinning involved in building these cases and bags.
It’s a not dissimilar strategy to that used by the leafroller moths (the Totricids, from the same root as torque), which roll themselves up in a leaf of their larval foodplant. But, it’s a stark contrast to the silken larval nests made by the likes of the Brown-tail, and the Oak Processionary Moth, and very, very different from the strategy adopted by others that make themselves look threatening using lurid colour schemes, thorns, hairs, and spines, or false eyes to ward off predators, and make them seem unpalatable.
One more thing…best not to encourage this species to live in your home, its larvae do have a penchant for fabrics.
TL:DR – I prompted ChatGPT to write me a personal brand pitch.
—
I haven’t mentioned ChatGPT for a while. There has been something of a backlash against the hype and the scaremongering. But, I have still been using it for various small jobs, such as quick website tweaks and summarising documents that are TL:DR (too long, didn’t read). Latest prompt I gave it was to act as my personal brand manager and write me a pitch based on the Sciencebase homepage. This is an edited version of what it came up with:
David Bradley Science Writer
As a multi-award-winning freelance science writer with over three decades of experience, David Bradley has a unique talent for making complex scientific concepts accessible and engaging. He has written for a diverse range of outlets, including countless newspapers, magazines, research, industrial, educational, and academic organizations, and websites, covering a wide range of topics from astronomy to zoology and almost everything in between.
As a wannabe polymath, he is also an accomplished musician with an enormous passion for photography. He combines his science, snaps, and songs to create a website and blog that offers a fresh perspective on the natural world, showcasing his stunning wildlife photography, and sharing the latest cutting-edge research as well as occasionally offering incidental music. With his wife, Mrs Sciencebase, he is a keen allotmenteer, wildlife garden pond manager, and garden rewilding enthusiast.
David’s writing style is approachable and engaging, and he loves to sprinkle a little Geordie wit and charm into his work. He has bylines in New Scientist, Science, Nature, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Popular Science, American Scientist, and many others. In 1995, he set up the first-ever chemistry webzine, which morphed into the Sciencebase site in 1999.
If you’re looking for an experienced freelance science writer with a passion for making complex concepts accessible, look no further than David Bradley. Connect with him on social media, or shoot him an email at [email protected] to start a conversation…
TL:DR – I prompted ChatGPT to redesign and recode the Sciencebase homepage.
You can get some interesting responses from everyone’s favourite language model, ChatGPT, if you give it a special prompt that tells it to act in a certain way. I have been testing this for months, but recently, I have also been toying with the idea of creating a minimalist homepage for the Sciencebase site and needed some HTML inspiration. I hand coded my first website in December 1995, so I thought it was about time something else did the heavy lifting for me…so…here’s the initial prompt I gave to the chat bot.
You are to act as a genius web designer. I would like a very simple, minimalist landing page to include a link to my main website from my root domain name and to describe briefly how I am an an award-winning and experienced science writer. I enjoy wildlife photography in my spare time and performing music with two different bands and a choir. You should provide me with the complete minimal html code.
You can see how the new minimalist homepage this generated code produces looks right here.
I later asked ChatGPT to once again act as an expert in web design and html and to give me a rationale for designing a minimalist and fast-loading web landing page for the site. This is what it had to say:
TL:DR – Updating Sciencebase systems and using MidJourney to generate some intriguing artwork to illustrate a blog post.
As regular readers will know, I’ve been running the Sciencebase site since July 1999. Its precursor, Elemental Discoveries, had various homes on the web from December 1995 until that fateful summer. There are almost 4000 articles in the archives, so it’s quite a hefty site for a one-man show.
Anyway, having played around with various website options in the last couple of weeks, I’ve finally done a proper spring clean, got rid of some very out-of-date articles and updated others that were worth keeping. I’ve upgraded security and performance stuff so the site should load much faster than ever before but also present no security problems to visitors (I don’t think it ever did, to be honest).
I’ve also now added a new and improved search box. I’ve also made search easier for mobile users who can now access the search box from the menu rather than guessing where it might be and having to scroll to the bottom of the page. The new search box also anticipates what it is you might be searching for. So, if you start typing “avian” it might assume you’re after information on “avian influenza” of which there is quite a lot in the Sciencebase archives.
All in, I hope the site is now offering an improved experience for the 3000 or so unique visitors the site gets every day!
I also wanted an illustration for this blog post about all the updates and so prompted MidJourney with the spider web emoji to allude to the world wide web and websites. It came back with four images, as it does. Two were odd superhero, Spider Man type images, one was rather eclectic and showed a girl staring through the window of a house at raging fire in the middle of the room.
The other seemed much more apt. It purportedly showed a young boy in a red hoodie with his back to us presumably staring at a large, old-fashioned television screen. A child dreaming of a future, perhaps? It also struck me as being rather of the style of artist Hugh Syme who worked on album covers for the Canadian rock band Rush for decades.
Indeed, this generated boy watching TV image might almost have been an outtake from the designs for the band’s Power Windows album which also features a boy and television screens. I might use it for some of my music output at some point, but have annotated it for now with my name and the word SCIENCEBASE.
TL:DR – The correct pronunciation of Kyiv.
The capital city of Ukraine, written in English, is Kyiv. But there still seems to be so much inconsistency in how English-speaking newsreaders and reporters pronounce the place name.
It’s definitely not Keeeev and definitely, definitely not Kee-eff or Kee-ev.
Watch and listen…and learn…
That’s it. No ifs, no buts.
K(r)-yee-iv – but rolled tightly together into two short syllables. That bracketed r is like a Northumbrian or French “r” sound, but much shorter.
That said, English speakers do not pronounce Paris like the French, so perhaps they could be consistent with an Anglicised version of Kyiv – Kyeev.
To pronounce “Kyiv” correctly, follow these steps:
Start with the “K” sound, which is a voiceless velar plosive. This is the same sound as in the English word “kite” or “cat”. But, the K sound is closely associated with a soft “r” sound, which is pronounced by touching the tip of the tongue to the roof of the mouth, just behind the front teeth, and making a soft hissing sound (like a shorter version of the “r” in Paris spoken in French).
Next, move on to the “yi” sound, which is a diphthong in Ukrainian. It is pronounced as a combination of the vowel sounds “i” and “y”. The sound is similar to the “ee” sound in the English word “beet” but with a slightly rounded lip shape.
Finally, end with the “v” sound, which is a voiced labiodental fricative. This sound is similar to the “v” sound in the English word “vase” or “vine”.
So the correct pronunciation of Kyiv is “K(r)eev” with the emphasis on the first syllable.
” Hoist with one’s own petard” – to fall victim to one’s scheming.
As with so many phrases its origins lie with Shakespeare, and specifically the play Hamlet, wherein Hamlet tells his mother, Gertrude, how he hopes to outwit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who have been ordered to take him England and have him killed.
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard; and ’t shall go hard
So, the word engineer, etymologically related to ingenious was in Shakespearean times not a maker or controller of machines, but a bomb-maker, a petard being a small bomb. To be hoist would imply being thrown skyward by the explosion of the bomb one had made.
However, things are a little more subtle, as often they are with Shakespeare. The word petard also means a firework or firecracker and there is an implication of not only a flash and an explosion in the use of this word but a release of something malodorous. This brings us to yet another double entendre. Shakespeare spells petard as petar in some folios and this may well be deliberate is relates to a French term for flatus, pet, in other words, a fart; the French for breaking wind is pétarade.
So, being hoist by one’s own petard could, in Shakespearean lingo, imply that someone has released noxious gas and been caught out. In a more detailed article on this topic (here), the conclusion is that “hoist by one’s petard” is actually synonymous flippantly with “he who smelled it, dealt it”.
TL:DR – There are 8 billion people alive on the planet, right now. Eight thousand million humans. That’s 8,000,000,000. It’s a big number.
Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that “Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” There have been at least 100 billion humans since the first of our ancestors made that one giant step down from the trees for mankind. However, look to the future now, we’ve only just begun…there will come a point, where total membership of the human race, living and dead, may well be numbered in the trillions.
So…
How special are you? Are you a member of the elite or just one of the great unwashed? If you’re reading this blog, it’s most likely that you’re just like me in many ways, nothing like one in a million, just one of several billion. An average Joe or Joanna Bloggs, as it were.
But, we feel special inside, don’t we? We feel that we’re important, at least to that inner self. We don’t want to be just a number and so we try to fill our lives with activity and stuff – family, friends, jobs, cars, houses, holidays, hobbies…we also grasp at the very few people we perceive as being a little bit more special than us, celebrities, perhaps, great musicians, sportspeople, medal winners, Nobel laureates, world leaders, religious leaders, monarchs even. Achievers.
We grasp at them and feel that we know them through their presence in our world, their place at the top of some great pile. We queue to buy tickets to watch their performances on the pitch and their pitch-perfect playing. We follow their every move and hang on their every word through the lens of media, both social and unsocial…antisocial. We study them and watch in awe as they do their thing, whether that’s shaking it or sharing it.
When they die we mourn them like close friends, like relatives. We feel the loss, we are bereft. Another one of us gone. One of the special ones. When once we queued to see them incarnate, in the living flesh, we might now queue in our thousands to seem them lying in state. We want to feel connected, we want some of their special to magically be infused into our being. We don’t want to be ordinary, we want to be extraordinary, like them.
Just a short note to end an even tougher year. My family, photography, and music have kept me going, and an occasional splash of science…