I started out to recommend any science or nature books by Lyall Watson; he wrote quite a few. I have read two of them, "Jacobsen's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell," and "Pigs Pigs Pigs," which is a survey of all the pig species of the world and included his experience of raising and befriending an orphaned warthog in Africa.

But when I searched for his name to find a list of books, I found instead that he died last month! His obituary in The Guardian mentions a "versatile and telegenic life as an anthropologist, biologist, botanist, ethologist and zoologist."

He wrote 25 books, mostly based on nature but also exploring some unproven ideas: ESP and the like. I'd skip those. Lyall Watson apparently came up with the "Hundredth Monkey" theory:

Man has lived beside the Mediterranean since the 4^th Millennium BC. The first mosquito was no doubt sitting in the marshy backwaters waiting for him and her; and the first tourist was already on their way.

Then it was bite, slap, hit.

For six thousand years man has been exerting effective natural selection on Mediterranean mosquitoes with only the fastest and sharpest living to bite another day. This means that today on the beaches of North East Tuscany you can be bitten and never even see your attacker. ARGH!

Bite. Slap. Miss.

Oh my.

A big breakthrough was announced last month by researchers in MIT that may dramatically increase the importance of solar cells as a major source of energy. Up to now, there has been no easy way to store solar energy. The immediate availability of sunlight pretty much dictates how much power you have at any time. As soon as the sun goes down your immersion heater starts to cool down and your solar powered car grinds to a halt.

Meanwhile, nature has been busy mocking us. All around, efficient natural solar factories are at work converting the sun's heat into chemical energy and storing this energy away for use at a later time. These conversion factories are known to the rest of us as leaves.

Anyway, here's my copy of the list:

For some reason, those with MS often run short of Vitamin B12 just as they often experience Vitamin D deficiencies.  This can make their neurological symptoms worse and make life more than a little miserable.

The problems with Vitamin B12 deficiencies are often overlooked because the symptoms caused by MS are the same symptoms that are caused by MS.  In fact, doctors cannot tell the difference between MS symptoms and Vitamin B12 deficiency symptoms without a simple blood test for Vitamin B12 deficiency.  Even so, some doctors neglect to monitor Vitamin B12 levels in their MS patients.

Some experts recommend that Vitamin B12 levels be monitored in all MS patients and warn that Vitamin B12 shortages in MS patients make MS more severe than it would otherwise be.

I was mulling changing up the rotation of my blog for some time now, as I felt that it was becoming stagnant.  However, most people showed support for how it was and I really had no idea what to change the post themes too, so I let it be...until now.  There will only be two changes, before you panic.  Discovery Tuesday will be scratched.  Bioengineering will move to Tuesdays.  Fridays will now be Fieldnote Fridays.  I have recently begun taking fieldnotes when in Binghamton's nature preserve, so every week, I will post my notes.  This came as a result of me wanting to publish some of my own work, instead of just being a news service.  Comments?

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Some Google news

Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project [blogoscoped.com]
Built with WebKit but with added cool features - some UX stuff but more interestingly a new JavaScript virtual machine, multi-threading and sensible security policies. And all Open Sourced.

"Arctic Becomes an Island for the first time in human history"...really???

On Dec 5, 1932, The New York Times reports the "feat, accomplished for the first time" of circumnavigation of Franz Josef Land (actually, an Arctic archipelago). The same expedition (lead by a Professor N.N. Subkov) was also described in March 1933 in the pages of Nature.

Visit Dr Briffa's blog for a report on recent research on the comparable effectiveness of homeopathic Arnica D4 (4X) post-operatively after bunion removal compared to the usual painkiller (diclofenac). It was decided that giving placebo would not be ethical.  Treatment with Arnica also gave fewer side-effects, greater mobility and was less costly.

Homeopathic arnica found to be an effective post-operative aid

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