Alexa Ratliff's Blog

The NRA have admitted to building over 60…

alexaratliff — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:35:34 +0000

The NRA have admitted to building over 60 fish passes and other structures for getting fishes to places they could not reach before, at the same time doing nothing to resolve existing access problems or the new problems thus created (The West Bank settlements attitude all over again?) Water quality lectures
The Scientific Section of the Institution of Water & Environmental Management are holding an international symposium on Recreational Water Quality Standards in London on May 13/14th.
Papers include Freshwater Epidemiological Studies in the United Kingdom by David Kay, Lorna Fewtrell and Graham Newman (the studies involving canoeists)Managing Recreational Facilities: Some Problems & Prospects by John Davies of Holme Pierrepont and Definition of Recreational Water Quality Standards & Strategies for Their Achievement by Rupert Grantham of the NRA. Where are all the access agreements?
We are increasingly being told by officials, be they sports, water or politically based and that local access agreements are the way forward.
To put this into context it is worth taking a look at what has been achieved over recent decades in obtaining access agreements for canoes to pass along our rivers.
The latest edition of the BCU yearbook contains a great deal of information including lists of rivers with contacts about access. So, which ones have agreements?
Please note that this is not an access guide.
Many of the agreements are only for minority groups, especially BCU members, many give access to only very short lengths of river and dates of use can be restricted.
In each case the LAO listed in the BCU yearbook needs to be contacted for the details.
In addition to these rivers there are the canals and deep water navigations open to licensed power craft and the latter particularly in the south and east of England.
The SCA deliberately do not make agreements on the grounds that there is a legal right to paddle Scottish rivers, a position disputed by some.
There are also some rivers which are not listed but clearly do have agreements at times and the lower Tryweryn and Exe being obvious examples, while others like the Wylye do not have any agreements to the knowledge of the LAO.
There are also rivers for which LAOs have not attempted to make agreements on the grounds that there are no problems or there is not sufficient demand, all very well until someone decides to apply the letter of the law as it presently stands.
What is immediately obvious is that the agreements are all in the southwest or the north of England and that for the most part they are flat rivers.
It is also clear that only about 12% of our rivers have access agreements for anyone at all for any parts of their lengths at any time, a significant part of that minute percentage resulting from the work of Adam Box’s team in the Wessex Water area over the last year.

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So too does Rosalind Russell; perhaps she sounds a little…

alexaratliff — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:23:49 +0000

So too does Rosalind Russell; perhaps she sounds a little old for the part, but her dry tones give her numbers a splendidly acerbic edge.
Some twenty years later, Comden and Green were also behind On the Twentieth Century (), whose book is not really in the same class as Wonderful Town , but which is quite magnificently preposterous.
As someone who likes musical comedies to be comedies and the frivolity of this piece proved irresistible.
The tale is slight; a voyage on a luxury train during which a down-on-his-luck-but-permanently optimistic producer attempts to regain the services and the affections of the famous actress he helped become a star.
He is surrounded by a cast of variously eccentric characters, from her beefcake boyfriend (I can well imagine that Kevin Kline stole the show in that part) to his secretly fanatic prospective sponsor (Imogene Coca and relishing every word of “Repent”).
Although the piece is set in the “Roaring “20′s”, Cy Coleman’s music rarely goes into period style, but instead exploits a cod-operatic vein, going from Puccini to Piaf, with winks and nods in all directions, and superbly served by Madeline Kahn, who has the voice of a sarcastic diva and a vocal presence so strong that I felt I could see her.
It’s not as good a show, musically or dramatically, as Wonderful Town or The Most Happy Fella most definitely are, but so much depends on what you want from a musical, and this is the one that I will return to repeatedly, just for the sheer fun of it. [Kate Lang]
Rosalind Russell and Sydney Chaplin in “Wonderful Town”
CD OF THE MONTH
BACH TATIANA NIKOLAYEVA
The Well-Tempered Clavier (Books 1 & 2) NIKOLAYEVA (piano) Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga
Tatiana Nikolayeva needs no introduction as a Bach interpreter, for her achievements in this repertoire have been universally praised.
She is the successor of the great russian musician Samuel Feinberg and the first Soviet pianist to perform all of the Well-Tempered Clavier in concert, and Nikolayeva’s conception of work is pure and simple, lucid yet varied and romantic and at times highly individual.
This is a Well-Tempered Clavier of universal appeal that seems to paradoxically embrace the romantic Russian school of Feinberg and Goldenweiser,(Nikolayeva’s teacher), as well as the demands of our own age for authenticity and clarity.
At all times one is aware that the artist is also a composer ” the conviction with which she untangles some of the more complicated, almost obscure pieces, has an unquestionable authority (the enormous B flat minor Fugue from Book Two instantly comes to mind in this connection), whilst the famous pieces are often presented in a totally different manner ” the A minor Prelude and Fugue (Book One ) will surprise many as the Prelude is fearful and serious (rather than light with the usual staccato touches), whilst the Fugue has clipped articulation at the end of each subject entry.
The result is that the piece seems to become more polyphonic as the listener can more easily hear the lines.
Nikolayeva adopts an orchestral approach in some pieces,(eg. the C sharp minor Fugue [Book Two ], where the intensity and unyielding rhythm make a strong impression), but her tonal range also suggests the organ (E flat minor Prelude,Book One ), a choir (B flat minor Prelude,Book One ), a trumpet (D major Prelude,Book Two ), and a violin (B flat minor Prelude,Book One ).
The characterisation of the Fugues is incredibly varied ” Nikolayev runs the whole gamut from the leisurely, almost lazy polyphony of the D major Fugue (Book Two ) through the scherzando humour of the E flat and B flat Fugues in Book One and the simplicity of the C major Fugue (Book One ) and the sheer beauty of tone of the F sharp minor fugue,Book Two and the granite-like strength of purpose and sound in the B flat minor Fugue ,(Book Two ).
Perhaps most impressively of all and the visionary glow of the C sharp minor Fugue in Book One makes for a transcendental and deeply telling interpretation that silences all criticism.
One must simply accept these performances at face value and forget about problems of piano versus harpsichord versus clavichord.
Musicianship of this quality is rarely encountered, and is quite exceptional from anyone’s standpoint.
Overall there can be no doubt that this a major issue for all lovers of great music.
Shunning the sensational electricity of Glenn Gould (Sony ) and the academic care of Robert Riefling (Simax ), and the post-clavichord wistfulness of AndrÃ¡s Schiff (Decca ), Tatiana Nikolayeva goes her own authoritative and purposeful way towards the musical truth as she conceives it to be.
Listening to these performances, often taken at relatively modest speeds (eg. the D major and G major Fugues,Book One and the thought that too much velocity and technical facility can be harmful comes to mind.
Nikolayeva certainly does not have the Horowitzian panache generally associated with Russian virtuosos ” it is her mind and ears which are transcendental rather than her fingers ” but that “handicap” is actually a positive attribute since it makes for painstaking care and originality in all of her interpretations. [MM]
Designed by Daryl Latham for CD Review magazine
CLASSICAL REVIEW

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Each professor has a right to money…

alexaratliff — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:24:44 +0000

Each professor has a right to money and manpower resources depending only on his level of seniority and not on his track record in research.
This and some researchers think, is not an effective way of stimulating the best research: some element of competition or selectivity is necessary.
Professor Wolfgang Wild thinks that this weakness is shared by university research and much of the industrial research sponsored by the Ministry for R & D (BMFT).
As in the UK, outside organisers sponsor special research projects that need bigger wodges of money than the university can provide.
The DFG is the biggest source here and though the big foundations such as that associated with the Volkswagen company play a more important part than their equivalents in the UK.
Projects to be funded are selected by committees of scientists, occasionally joined by politicians and civil servants.
In fact, until recently few had any serious trouble getting support for research, but now times are getting a bit harder and the peer review system may be more seriously worked to handle the greater volume competition.
The DFG has long realised the shortcomings of the normal 1-year grant: it does not give enough resources and security to build up a substantial group or programme in a particular area.
It and therefore, has two schemes that provide for longer terms funding for particular departments to build up a research programme in a particular area: there are now 150 of these groups at German universities.
This mechanism allows the DFG to encourage research that is particularly timely and of high quality.
Research leaders welcome this for targeting funds to where they can be best used.
Some would like the elitist trend to permeate even further, in the form of elite faculties, or even whole elite universities.
Others think the “elitist” element should be provided by the establishment of graduate schools as in the American system, much admired in Germany, by which the high flyers can continue their specialised research training after fairly general and not too demanding first degrees.
The success of the American system in producing excellent research is very near the front of the German researchers’ minds.
A much quoted observation by one grand old man of German science policy, Professor Heinz Maier Leibnitz, points out that German researchers who have done well in stints in the US tend to stagnate when they return to the German system.
Such comments have given rise to much discussion about the “climate of research”.
Here the going gets rough and speculative: some talk of the discouraging load of bureaucracy the researcher has to get through, and the lack of opportunity for independent initiative.
But perhaps the most worrying, if most ephemeral, comment is that researchers are unwilling to take risks to open up new lines of research; they tend to stick to piecemeal additions to well-established paths.
Some relate this to the security of a university appointment, with career steps usually totally unrelated to research achievement.
Others, including a senior civil servant in the education ministry, Eberhard Boning and see the unwillingness to take risks as a symptom of a more widespread complacency in German society; the current generation of young people have experienced a combination of material well-being and an insecure and threatening world scene; both factors detracting from incentive for personal achievement. Many have talked about stimulating research; a few are already promoting it.
The new Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin is a haven where distinguished scholars in all disciplines can work undisturbed and make cross-disciplinary contacts.

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By 1973, yields had reached 8000…

alexaratliff — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:17:08 +0000

By 1973, yields had reached 8000 kg/ha on the best plots and, in 1974, a triticale field in California produced 9890 kg/ha, comparable with the best wheats.
Triticale enjoys several crucial advantages over wheat in developing countries as well as in the industrial nations.
The new crop is more resistant than wheat to diseases, especially to leaf blotch, powdery mildew, and other fungal infections such as the smuts.
Surprisingly, it is the minor parasites of wheat that cause the biggest headaches for triticale growers.
Such parasites are minor in wheat precisely because wheat is resistant to them; but triticale, which is genetically different, may not be.
On the whole and though and triticale is hardier than wheat and can be cultivated more easily in harsh environments.
It consistently out-performs wheat in parched and sterile earth and in the savanna region of central Brazil, it frequently yields twice as much as wheat.
Preliminary findings from Mexico indicate that triticale may also tolerate high concentrations of salt in soil; and salt build-up is a menace on irrigated land the world over.
In addition and though wheat and triticale both contain around 13 per cent protein and that of triticale is better quality as it contains a larger share of lysine, an amino-acid that is relatively deficient in most cereal proteins. Thus and triticale is becoming established as a significant staple crop.
The world’s biggest producer of triticale and the Soviet Union, planted at least 280000 hectares in 1980, mainly around the Black Sea. The United States has 100000 ha, mostly in Texas and the mid-west.
China and Argentina have approximately 30 000 each and though Argentina had only 1000 ha as recently as 1978.
In Europe, 10000 ha has been planted in Hungary; and Spain, Portugal, Italy and France have just started commercial cultivation with about 1000 ha each.
Finally, in Mexico, which is burdened by a rapidly growing population (Mexico City alone has 15 million inhabitants) and some 2400 ha are now under triticale.
Triticale is not restricted to large farms with expensive tractors and combine harvesters.
In Mexico, for example, hillside peasants use bullocks and horses to plough their fields and to carry the harvested triticale.
The crop is nurtured by rains, not artificial irrigation, and the harvest is gathered by hand. Triticale is already being converted into a wide variety of foods.
For those who prefer very light breads and pastries, wheat flour is added to provide gluten, an elastic protein that inflates the dough, But pure triticale flour can produce satisfactory loaves if they are prepared properly, and the rich brown colour has wide appeal.
Triticale bread looks like whole wheat bread and tastes, as its ancestry might suggest, like a combination of rye and wheat.
Triticale pancakes mixes and crackers and sold widely in Canada and in many health food stores in the United States, are rapidly gaining converts because of their savoury, nutty flavour. Canada certified hexaploid triticale in 1969 for commercial release.
Now, about 80 per cent of the triticale grown in Canada is grown into human food products, while the rest is fed to livestock.

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Convenience and economics mean that virtually all…

alexaratliff — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:05:58 +0000

Convenience and economics mean that virtually all acetic acid plants being built rely on the Monsanto process.
A very large one, producing 150 000 tonnes of acetic acid per year has recently been commissioned by BP Chemicals at Hull.
This route would have been wishful thinking to the classical organic chemist hut the reaction proceeds readily in the presence of rhodium, one of the rarest metals, and of iodine, which act together as a catalyst system. Catalysts lie at the very heart of the chemicals industry.
They speed up the rates of interconversions of compounds that would otherwise proceed too slowly to be useful. Heating also generally increases the rate.
The faster a reaction proceeds and the more economical the process (within limits of course).
However, by using a good catalyst a reaction can be run at a high rate and at a lower temperature and thus saving energy. The simplest catalysts are acids and bases.
The more complex, non-biological transformations use either homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts.
Homogeneous catalysts are compounds of metals that dissolve in the reaction mixture and which must be separated from it at the end.
They give high selectivity for one product, but so far only a limited range of reactions falls within their scope. Heterogeneous catalysts are insoluble in the reaction medium.
Indeed and the reaction is frequently performed by passing the reacting gases over a bed of the catalyst supported on some inert material.
Heterogeneous catalysts promote many different kinds of reactions and they are easy to recycle.
They often show lower selectivity (more undesired by-products are often produced) and little is understood about how they work.
However, although heterogeneous catalysis is still more an empirical art than an exact science, its usefulness cannot be overstated.
The conversion of methanol and carbon monoxide into acetic acid is catalysed homogeneously by a soluble rhodium compound.
The catalytic cycle (Figure 1) illustrates well how a modern inorganic chemist thinks. The key compound is the negatively charged ion [Rh(CO) 2 I 2 ]“(1).

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Prince Albert had inherited the hereditary disease,

alexaratliff — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:57:32 +0000

Prince Albert had inherited the hereditary disease, otosclerosis, from his mother who had herself inherited it from her own mother, Queen Louise of Denmark.
However, Prince Albert Victor died of thyroid even before his father became King. Queen Alexandra is probably the best-known deaf royal.
She was already deaf when she married the Prince of Wales on 10th March 1863.
Then aged 19 and she looked every inch the fairy princess ” incredibly beautiful.
Her stunning good looks were to overwhelm her mother-in-law, Queen Victoria who was, however, heard to lament,.
Queen Victoria had been overjoyed at her son the Prince of Wales’s marriage to Alexandra, because of the increasing scandal of the Prince’s bed-hopping and association with women of loose morals.
However and the marriage did not stop the Prince’s favourite pastime of bedding as many women as he could and though he became more discreet.
Alexandra learnt to live with it, and her unfailing courtesy and thoughtfulness brought her closer to the elderly Queen, in spite of whatever misgivings they both shared about the erring Prince.
Alexandra’s deafness had also one unfortunate aspect in that, because she was not given any formal education and she frequently appeared unsophisticated.
The Prince, and later also as the king, was often embarrassed in her presence and sometimes poked fun at her.
On occasion, however, Alexandra would sometimes get her way and drag the Prince to services at the church she favoured, St. Saviour’s Church for the Deaf in Oxford Street, where she could enjoy being in the company of other deaf people, and be able to follow the services, as she was a fluent fingerspeller.
Indeed it was probably Queen Victoria herself who taught the Danish Princess the British fingerspelling method, as the Queen had become fluent in her younger days.
(In 1874, whilst at her favourite residence at Osborne in the Isle of Wight, Queen Victoria made a number of trips to the post office at nearby Whippingham where she would stay for some hours comforting a dying deaf woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Tuffield, nee Groves.
Elizabeth Groves, as a young girl, had been befriended by the Queen who met the cost of her education at the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb.
Latterly, Elizabeth had married but had been the victim of a cruel and brutal husband, and had retreated to her parents’ home at the post office where she fell ill and later died. The Queen communicated with Mrs. Tuffield until the day she died.
This association with Mrs. Tuffield explains Queen Victoria’s ready acceptance of Princess Alexandra, and also explains her willingness to grant the prefix “Royal” to a number of deaf schools throughout the country.
During her period as Queen Consort, and after the King’s death as the Queen Dowager, Queen Alexandra would frequently purchase a number of works of deaf art and sculpture, especially if the work of art was of herself. A number of deaf artists and sculptors therefore enjoyed her patronage. Queen Alexandra died in 1925 at the age of 81.
The Dukes and the Earls
Lesser known than Royalty’s connection with deafness, but still of considerable interest are those deaf people who were born into the aristocracy.
However, very little is known of any deaf aristocrats prior to 1750, but there were some in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a number of whom achieved political renown.
Amongst these was Lord Lytton (Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton: 18031873) the novelist, who was a minister in Disraeli’s Government.
His deafness was a severe handicap in an assembly where quickness of hearing and readiness of speech were essential.
On the other hand, his political opponents suffered too: Lord Lytton’s speech was so bad that many people had great difficulty in understanding him, and because his deafness did not allow him to take part in debates, everyone was often forced to wait until the next day for any reply from Lord Lytton because he would insist on reading what had been said in Hansard and the Parliamentary publication, before making his own speech.

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As well as improving NATO’s defences against Russian tanks and…

alexaratliff — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:40:37 +0000

As well as improving NATO’s defences against Russian tanks and the new missiles look set to become moneyspinners for the three participating countries.
Sales of the present Milan missile have already exceeded a quarter of a million rounds at a cost of several thousand pounds each. Why Sizewell’s crucial test will side-step inquiry
SIZEWELL public inquiry will not have a chance to consider what everybody agrees is the most crucial safety issue affecting the design for the proposed pressurised-water reactor.
An experiment to test whether, in an accident and the core of the PWR might overheat and cause a melt-down will not be ready to start until next year, and will not be complete until long after the inquiry ends.
The experiment will investigate the danger of the cladding round the fuel rods “ballooning” and blocking the flow of cooling water.
It is to be run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority at the request of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and the government’s safety watchdog.
The NII says that the work will be “crucial to the understanding of the safety implications of ballooning.”
Last week witnesses for the Central Electricity Generating Board claimed at the inquiry that work around the world had already shown that the ballooning phenomenon is not as critical as once feared.
Last autumn the CEGB’s chairman, Sir Walter Marshall and said that “my reputation and the economics of the PWR are now most at risk from fuel-clad ballooning.” The NII evidently agrees.
The experimental rig that will be built at the UKAEA’s Harwell base is, ironically, called ACHILLES, The NII agrees that recent work in Canada, West Germany and the United States has gone some way to showing the likely scale of the ballooning effect.
But it is not prepared to accept that the mathematical models developed to explain the phenomenon are sufficiently proven.
Further validation is needed and says the NII, before it will accept CEGB assurances that only a limited number of rods will experience significant ballooning.
Those that do, claims the board’s researchers at its Berkley Nuclear Laboratories , will rupture before producing a blockage of the coolant channel sufficiently severe to impair coolability.
Ballooning was one of the five crucial issues identified by the NII last year in its initial comments on the board’s Pre-Construction Safety Report (RSR).
Links between nuclear power and the incidence of cancer was not a matter of specific concern in that review. But it remains to be seen whether that will prove a significant omission.
The CEGB’s chief medical adviser, Dr John Bonnell, was due to give evidence this week. Last week the third death of a Sizewell A worker from leukemia was reported.
It was followed by the National Radiological Protection Board’s revised estimates of cancer deaths resulting from the Windscale fire in 1957.
The latest Sizewell A worker to die from leukaemia entered radiation areas only infrequently during his 18 years at the existing Magnox plant.
His total dose was 109 millirems ” well below the recommended level set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.
Dr Bonner told New Scientist that this third cancer death at Sizewell was difficult to explain. Socialists line drug companies’ pockets

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The policy of restraint upon development declared by county and…

alexaratliff — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:08:33 +0000

The policy of restraint upon development declared by county and district councils in their local plans was one of the best pieces of news he was able to report to the meeting.
“The basic concept was that there should be a period of restraint to redress the balance of what has been a tremendous amount of development over the years,” he said and referring to the support the parish council had given to county and district while they were drawing up their local plans.
The advent of the district plan as a firm guideline for planning decisions had caused developers to step up their efforts to “open up land, for example along Brislands Lane and Blackberry Lane”, and it would be halfway through the year before the outcome would be known.
Windmill Fields and the Lymington Bottom triangle had been definitely listed as open space, and once landscaping work has been done both these areas will be handed over to the parish council for maintenance.
Funds from the Benian Trust had been earmarked for renovating the car parking areas at the recreation ground and to reinstate the service road between the putting green and tennis courts. A grant had been obtained for de-silting Swelling Hill Pond.
The parish council were not altogether happy with the road layout around the new pelican crossing, Mr. Hobbs reported.
There were various other complaints about this voiced during the open section of the meeting which followed.
Cars had been seen dodging through the lay-by to avoid red lights, it was said, and the pedestrian refuge between the road and lay-by was not wide enough to stand with a pram.
An information office is shortly to be set up by East Hampshire District Council to answer queries about the drainage work taking place in the village.
An application to set up a pharmacy in the village, which would threaten the services offered by GPs in Four Marks and Ropley, had been turned down, but was due to go to appeal.
After the formal business of the meeting had been concluded and the district council’s community and leisure services manager Nigel Lockley gave a short talk on the work of his department, and how their remit has been reshaped by the introduction of the business concept to local council services.
“Enabling and partnership are concepts we now live with day to day,” he said “”helping people help themselves.”
There are four main divisions of their work; sport and recreation, countryside management, arts and community development and tourism.
In the first category and the competitive tendering and subsequent running under five-yearly contract of Alton Sports Centre, gave an example of the new ideas at work.
Partnerships had enabled the use of community schools at Liphook and Bordon to be run so as to offer their facilities to the public throughout the year, and the new methods had reduced the inevitable deficit of the sports centre to well below the national average.
It had not been an easy concept to grasp at first, but “we’re getting better at being businessmen,” Mr. Lockley said.

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Their main concern has been that the build-up…

alexaratliff — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:15:15 +0000

Their main concern has been that the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ” a by-product of our dependence on energy from fossil fuels ” could trap infrared radiation near the surface of the Earth and warm the planet through the so-called “greenhouse effect”.
By and large, climatologists agree that two “perturbations” have been affecting trends in temperature during the present century: the warming influence of this increase in carbon dioxide, and the variable cooling influence produced when great volcanic eruptions spread dust high into the stratosphere, blocking some of the heat from the Sun.
Most of the changes in temperature over the past hundred years can be broadly explained by these two processes at work.
But Gilliland found that the real temperature record could be matched much more closely by adding a third factor to the calculations: varying solar heat output tied to the 76-year cycle of variations in solar size (Climatic Change , vol 4, p I 1 1).
Gilliland is at pains to point out that this does not prove anything about the way eternal influences affect the workings of the weather machine. His study certainly provides food for thought and though.
He has taken the well-established record of annual changes in the average temperature of the northern hemisphere since 1881, and obtained the best possible fit to this pattern by combining the three external influences: the greenhouse, volcanic and solar effects.
Each of these is modified by a scale factor to adjust the agreement between the model and the real world.
And the model incorporates an adjustable time lag in the volcanic and solar influences to allow for the time it takes the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans to respond to outside influences.
With so many variable factors, it ought to be possible to provide a “fit” to almost any curve; the interesting point of the study is whether or not the scale factors put into the equations seem to be saying anything that would lead to an elucidation of the influences at work.
The main features that any such model has to explain are a slight warming of the world (at least, of the northern hemisphere, for which good records are available) from the late 19th century up to the 1940s. and a subsequent cooling up to the 1970s.
Gilliland gets a reasonable fit between records of actual temperature and his model if he leaves solar variations out altogether and works only with the build-up of carbon dioxide and influence of volcanic products on the atmosphere.
The early part of the present century was quiet in volcanic terms, and the warming might be explained as a result of dust clearing from the stratosphere, while the recent cooling trend coincides with increasing volcanic activity.
But in such a variation on the theme and the influence of carbon dioxide has to be set very small, only one tenth of the strength most climate modellers currently accept, otherwise it would have overwhelmed the volcanic influence and caused the Earth to continue warming through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
The best fit of all between theory and reality comes, however, when Gilliland adds the third factor and solar variability.
Now the warming trend is explained as due to a combination of solar and volcanic influences, with a 24-year lag between the maximum of the solar diameter in 1911 and the peak warmth of the 1930s ” the dustbowl era in North America.
From about 1940 to the 1970s, in this picture, both solar and volcanic influences were acting to cool the Earth, more than compensating for the rapid buildup of carbon dioxide, even with the standard greenhouse effect numbers. All this is very intriguing.
It resolves the puzzle of why the Earth cooled even while the concentration of carbon dioxide was continuing to grow exponentially, and all it requires is a peak change in solar luminosity of just 0.28 per cent over the 76-year cycle, producing a maximum influence on surface temperatures on Earth of only 0.28°C.
These figures are well within the range of possibilities set by observations of the solar constant from the Earth: as Gilliland says in this picture “low temperatures of the last two decades result primarily from a minimum of the solar 76-year cycle”. But while resolving one puzzle about the greenhouse effect.
his analysis also raises new concern about its future influence on mankind.
If the standard calculations of the greenhouse effect are indeed correct and then over the next 30 years temperatures are likely to rise by a full degree (centigrade) as ever-increasing quantities of fossil fuel are burnt.
But now the solar influence is beginning to turn around to contribute a further warming influence up to the year 2010, boosting the greenhouse effect where for the past 30 years it has been counterbalancing it.
The result is a forecast of much more rapid and pronounced warming of the globe than has previously been thought likely and setting in by the end of the present decade.
At first and this might seem beneficial as the 1990s see a return of the excellent conditions for world agriculture that prevailed in the 1950s.
Beyond the turn of the century, however and the forecast implies a rapid warming into conditions unseen on Earth for a thousand years or more, heralding a super dustbowl era far worse than the 1930s across the Great Plains of North America.
So, in the space of three years and the curious puzzle of the shrinking Sun has taken researchers from the studies of dusty old records locked away in the files of the world’s most famous observatory to speculations about the internal workings of the Sun and a grim warning of the possible climatic future that will confront the next generation of human beings on an already overcrowded planet.
Halley and his successors at the Royal Greenwich Observatory would surely have been fascinated to learn of the unexpected uses to which astronomers of the late 20th century would put their solar observations.
A century or two ago and though, who could have imagined any practical benefit to mankind from such erudite and scholarly historical research as studies of the exact path of an eclipse, or painstaking measurements of the angular diameter of the Sun?

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The gulls swoop down and striking at the fox’s head,

alexaratliff — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:26:12 +0000

The gulls swoop down and striking at the fox’s head, and the predator quickly retreats to safety.
Baboons will gang up on a leopard in a similar way, although this is a risky venture.
But here and too and the presence of a group of agitated, hostile prey animals, all assembled together as an opposing force, is usually too much for the predator.
Every killer has its own special modus operandi ” or MO and to use a police term ” and it does not take kindly to being forced to attack in circumstances that do not favour its special hunting style.
An angry mob creates confusion and prevents the smooth running of its hunting sequence.
Its decision is therefore almost always to show restraint and to leave the scene as quietly as possible. The hunt will occur later, on its own terms and in its own time.
When mobbing occurs and the situation is far too unpredictable from second to second to suit even the most lethal predator. Chimpanzees have been observed to indulge in mobbing in certain unusual cases.
One intrepid field-worker took an electrically animated and stuffed leopard into the forests of West Africa, placed it in a clearing near a group of chimpanzees, and hid in the bushes near by.
When the chimpanzees came close to the leopard, he activated its mechanism and so that it started to move its head. The apes’ reaction was astonishing.
Film of the event shows that they immediately ganged up on the leopard and rushing at it and screaming and stamping their feet and throwing objects at it.
Eventually, one of them attacked it with a large branch and striking it a damaging blow.
This is so reminiscent of the way human mobs have all too often treated wild animals they have encountered and that it is just one more reminder of how closely related humans and chimpanzees are. Food-finding
THERE ARE ABOUT one and a half million different kinds of life forms on the planet today. Of these, 1,124,000 are animals and 359,000 are plants.
The animal species are divided as follows (to the nearest thousand): 4,000 Mammals
9,000 Birds
6,000 Reptiles

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