Latest Posts

The Origin of Life: A Selfish Act or a Cooperative Effort?

Science

Around 1620 the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont, often considered the father of pneumatic chemistry (the chemistry of gases), wrote the following:

“If you press a piece of underwear soiled with sweat together with some wheat in an open mouth jar, after about 21 days the odor changes and the ferment coming out of the underwear and penetrating through the husks of the wheat, changes the wheat into mice.”

This reflected the commonly held belief at that time, even among many scientists, of spontaneous generation. Life was assumed to arise spontaneously and continuously: mice from wheat, maggots from meat, frogs from mud, and so on.

Read the full story on TVOL.

An Unconventional Place for Unconventional Science

Science

Earlier this year, the inaugural workshop of the EES Project was held at the Konrad Lorenz Institute (KLI) in Austria. The KLI is a private and independent research institute with a focus on the development and evolution of biological and cultural complexity. Housed in a beautiful baroque building in the medieval town of Klosterneuburg, it offers a place to think outside the box, escape the usual academic constraints, and work on unconventional ideas.

Read the full story on the EES blog…

Citizen Science: The Statistics of Language

Science

Our ability to learn, use, and process language is something that sets us apart from other animals. Language is used for effective communication, but also allows us to express our creativity through literature, poetry, and song. However, our use of language follows strict mathematical principles as well. One of the best known of these is Zipf’s law.

Read the full story in Plus magazine…

Cause and Process in Evolution

Science

“Most scientific explanations are causal. This is also the case in evolutionary biology, where the primary goals are to explain the diversity of life and the adaptive fit between organisms and their surroundings. Yet, the nature of causation in evolutionary biology is contentious.” So starts the description of a workshop on Cause and Process in Evolution, organized by Kevin Laland and Tobias Uller. It brought together an eclectic mix of evolutionary biologists, developmental biologists, and philosophers of biology, with the aim of addressing this contention. I sat in on this workshop, like a fly on the wall, in the hope of learning a bit about the latest research and debates in evolutionary biology.

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Marvellous Mallorca: Hiking the Ruta de Pedra en Sec

Travel

I just spent two weeks in Mallorca (Spain), with as main goal hiking the Ruta de Pedra en Sec (GR221), a long-distance trail that crosses the entire Serra de Tramuntana, Mallorca’s beautiful mountain range. Eight days on the trail (plus one rest day in between), and sleeping most nights in “refugis” (mountain huts). But I also had some extra days to explore in and around Palma de Mallorca, including a visit to some amazing limestone caves and a bike ride along the bay of Palma. All-in-all a fantastic trip that was well worth it. Here are some brief impressions. Click any of the pics for a full-size view, or any of the links throughout the story for more images.

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Citizen Science: Facts or Fake News?

Science

In this day and age of the internet, where anyone can post anything, it is often difficult to know what is true and what is not. One person claims one thing, while another states the exact opposite. Who to believe among all this (sometimes deliberate) confusion? The upside, also thanks to the internet, is that you don’t need to be a professional scientist to find out at least some of the truth for yourself. With the increasing availability of public online databases and easy-to-use software, “citizen science” can go a long way at countering unsubstantiated claims.

Read the full story on Plus magazine…

Can Computers Help Us Conserve Biodiversity?

Science

We’ve heard it all too many times: animal and plant species are currently going extinct at a rate that is higher than ever before. Climate change, over-pollution, and urban and agricultural encroachment all contribute to the rapid decline of our planet’s biodiversity. So much so, that there is a real danger that even within the next few decades, several major ecosystems worldwide (such as mangrove, alpine, and polar regions) will be seriously disrupted, with major consequences for us humans as well.

Thankfully, efforts are underway to try and curb some of these negative influences. But without knowing better what exactly their consequences are, it is almost like driving in the dark without the headlights on. Is there a way to estimate more accurately what the biodiversity consequences are of, e.g., a two-degree increase in global temperature? It turns out the answer is yes (at least to some extent), thanks to mathematics and computers.

Read the full story on The Naked Scientists…

A Perfect View from Mount Le Grammont

Travel

Le Grammont is a mountain in the Chablais Alps in Western Switzerland situated at the south-east end of Lake Geneva, close to the Swiss-French border where the Rhône River flows into the lake. With a height of 2,172 m (7,126 ft), Le Grammont is not the highest mountain in the Chablais Alps (highest point Dents du Midi 3,257m/10,686 ft), but because of its prominent location right next to Lake Geneva at the lower end of the Rhône valley in the Canton Valais, it is a popular hiking destination that offers wonderful all-round views from the top.

Read the full story on Swiss Vistas…

Vienna by Night

Travel

Last night I took advantage of a temporary break in the extreme cold weather we’re experiencing this month, and went for a walk along the Ringstrasse in Vienna to take some shots of the various beautiful buildings located along it. This was a bit of a spontaneous experiment, but I’m actually quite pleased with how some shots came out. So here’s a nice impression of Vienna by night. Click any pic for a full-size view.

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Update on Earth Activity Data

Science

In a post just over a year ago, I presented data on earth activity (in particular earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tropical storms). Given all the buzz on the internet about an increased earth activity over the past several years, I was curious to see this for myself, so I downloaded and analyzed some publicly available data. Surprisingly, though, the data showed no such increase at all. In the current post, I present the updated data for up until the end of 2016, which still shows no sign of any unusual behavior. Judge the plots below for yourself…

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Castles, Canyons, and Caves

Travel

The historic city of Graz, in south-eastern Austria, was designated a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 1999 for having “the best preserved city center of Central Europe”. It combines renaissance, gothic, baroque, and also modern architecture, and has some wonderful natural beauty nearby as well. I recently spent four days exploring this fascinating city and its surroundings, combining culture and nature with a lot of walking.

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Spontaneous Spirals

Science

Spirals are common in nature. We’ve all admired the beautiful spirals that occur on sea shells, we can find spirals in plants, and even in the arms of galaxies or weather patterns. There are also situations in which spirals aren’t a result of slow growth, but occur spontaneously in biological or chemical systems. A famous example from chemistry is the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction: when several chemicals are mixed together in a petri dish, the resulting solution forms changing spiral patterns. In biology a particular slime mould, called dictyostelium discoideum, gives rise to similar patterns. Spontaneous spiral wave formation in such systems can be reproduced and studied with simple mathematical models known as cellular automata.

Read the full story on Plus magazine…