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by Ned RozellSome places in this world are just too dirty, dull or dangerous for human pilots to fly. An airspace in the latter category is anywhere near gas flares in Alask’s oil fields.With only a few seconds of warning, flames blast high in the air from a network of pipes, releasing the stress of sucking oil from deep in the ground.Greg Walker recently found himself taking a look these fire-breathing nozzles near Prudhoe Bay, but he was barely close enough to see them from where he stood. He instead watched a “flying king crab” that buzzed around flaming flare heads 50 feet above the ground.An Aeryon Scout flies over the shoreline of Prince William Sound near Valdez during an exercise in summer 2011 to check its usefulness in oil spill cleanup assessment.The 2.5-pound flying machine captured video and five-megapixel images of the flares and their support pipes, some of them jacked by frost and needing repair.Walker’s mission was to help oil-company workers for BP order expensive parts they need to replace during scheduled maintenance next summer. He used one of BP’s Aeryon Scouts, a four-propeller flying machine BP had purchased for use on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.BP collaborated with Walker and his team because they are experts on operating unmanned aerial vehicles.As the manager of Poker Flat Research Range, part of University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute, Walker is assembling a fleet of these tools in an enterprise that makes he and his team very busy.After visiting Prudhoe Bay to inspect BP’s flares, Walker was off to Kodiak to fly the Scout over the shoreline. He wants to use the flyers to see how harbor seals react to launches from a rocket facility on Kodiak Island.This is after a summer in which he and his crew traveled to Prince William Sound to test the Scout’s ability to buzz over beaches to help crews plan oil spill cleanups and out to Dutch Harbor to see how effective a larger, fixed-wing flying machine was for mapping gatherings of Steller sea lions.The unmanned aerial vehicle business is on the rise in Alaska, as more agencies come to UAF to work with Walker and his crew at Poker Flat.The university now owns nine Scan Eagles — 40-pound aircraft the size of California condors that the crew has used to map the boundaries of smoky wildfires and to count seals in the Bering Sea — two of the lunar-lander type Scouts, two similar models with more propellers than the Scouts, and three smaller aircraft launched by catapult.Two summers ago, Walker and Don Hampton spent a month aboard a ship with biologists who were looking for seals that live on and around the northern ice.Walker and Hampton flew missions with a camera they installed in the aircraft’s nose.The camera captured more than 25,000 images, often on days that featured crummy weather, which underscored the Alaska niche for unmanned aerial vehicles.“It’s hazardous to put humans out there,” Walker said. “If you’re out there (in a small airplane or helicopter) hundreds of miles from land, 400 feet altitude, if you have any problems at all, you’re dead.”Walker, who ran his own company that designed and made control systems for unmanned aircraft before coming to Alaska in 1998, said the opportunities keep coming for his team, which includes Hampton, David Giessel, Kathe Rich, Ro Bailey and Jeff Rothman.During the next couple of years they will use unmanned flying machines to help sea-ice researchers, to sample volcanic ash and to monitor endangered Steller sea lions in the western Aleutians.“The more you show the capability of these things, the more people come up with needs for them,” Walker said.Find more on Alaska’s Unmanned Aircraft Research at Frontier ScientistsOriginally published in the Alaska Science Forum November 29, 2011 Flying machines for the dirty, dull and dangerous by Ned Rozell http://www.gi.alaska.edu/node/941"This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute."

Kaleidoscopic vision is the best way to experience the 2012 annual meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology (SID). The meeting celebrated the 75th anniversary of the SID, and the spirits of its founders filled the Raleigh, NC convention center. Many of their pictures were on medallion decals in the entrance hall. These decals celebrated the past, and modern QR codes connected the medallions to articles about these individuals and their times.Another inspirational exhibit was the reproduction of Stephen Rothman‘s notebook documenting his displacement from Hungary and his relocation to the University of Chicago, where he performed and recorded pharmacological studies on his own skin. The oral and poster presentations, many by dermatology residents and fellows from around the world, inspired attendees with new data related to skin biology and skin diseases. The role of new technologies related to genomic sciences was impressive — everything from immunological mechanisms, to tracing hospital epidemics of serious infectious diseases, to determining the etiology of very rare congenital and genetic conditions that had resisted routine genetic testing were discussed. High school students from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, NC added to the youthful energy, and the students used the historical medallions on the floor for hopscotch, reminding us that the young think out of the box – and reminding us of the joy of play.Five days later at the near-by concert Hall, Itzhak Perlman played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra: another kind of inspirational performance, where the performer and audience were rapturously engaged with a challenging concerto. Using a 300 year old Stradivarius, Perlman captivated the audience, demonstrating that (admittedly, depending on the task) technology need not always be the newest. The performance took the complete commitment of a diligent master performer completely integrated with his supporting orchestra — not very different from the lecturers at the SID, whose orchestras of supporting junior and senior scientists allow their ideas to soar. May all performers of science and the arts practice hard and play on for their committed audiences, who turn to them for inspiration.(the image is from Flickr and attributed to Sören ’chucker’ Kuklau)TO COMMENT:Be sure you are signed in to your Nature.com account.(You can sign in using the link at the upper-right of the page; it’s a little hard to see – light blue against the black bar at the top of the page.)Once you are signed in, SCROLL to the bottom of the post, and enter your comment in the box provided. (Be sure to click “submit”.)No box? Click the “Permalink” link, then scroll down again.We look forward to your comments!

It’s been quiet around here recently. I’ll update on forwhy before too long, hopefully. But for now, I’ll briefly say that changes are afoot.In the meantime, enjoy some of what I can only assume will surely be the future of the music industry.As I like to call it, Geek hop. And that’s a good thing.For more information on the excellent artist, Gripp, aka Marshall Gillson (he’s even got a geek name), start here: Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe

I do not object to value judgements and political beliefs creeping into economic argument: I think they are inevitable. But then I do not claim economics as a science.Much of the furore that greeted the publication of Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist back in 2001 focused on Lomborg’s credentials (or lack of them) to write it. Here was a statistician (and furthermore, one with effectively no academic track record) blithely using questionable statistics to claim that legions of environmental scientists had been getting it badly wrong for years.I have no such concerns over Jonathan Aldred, author of The Skeptical Economist (Earthscan, 2009)1. Aldred is a Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has trained in (and taught) the subject he dissects so well in this book.No, I worry instead about my qualifications as a reader: Am I perhaps too credible? I know that I am favourably inclined towards critiques of mainstream economics, particularly as implemented in public policy; I’m broadly sceptical of the ‘growth above all else’ agenda; and I lack the basic training in economics to separate balanced argument from polemic. But Aldred’s focus on evidence and data (concepts I do understand pretty well), and his careful analysis of numerous case studies, give me some confidence that his central thesis – essentially, that you cannot separate economics from ethics – is worthy of very careful consideration2.The economy dominates contemporary political discourse. Different political tribes might argue either for austerity and deficit reduction or for tax and spend, but all of them have one end in mind: economic growth3. This is such a central tenet of economic orthodoxy that it is never questioned in the practice or reporting of mainstream politics. John Humphries has never, to my knowledge, growled ‘why is growth good?’ to a cowering junior minister. Likewise, ‘economic growth’ has been allowed to become enshrined as a primary goal of all UK research councils4 with not a whimper of dissent. Contrast this with the outcry when the Arts and Humanities Research Council referenced the ‘big society’ in its strategic plan last year – dozens of senior academics threatened to resign over what they thought was an overt political agenda being forced upon them. But as Aldred makes abundantly clear throughout his superb book, the pursuit of economic growth is just as political as the ‘big society’ – it’s just not party political. Yet this orthodoxy “…leaves something crucial out. Economic growth is not an end in itself. We should focus instead on our quality of life, our well-being, or to rehabilitate an embarassing word, our happiness”.Much of the rest of the book is a dissection of economic orthodoxy as applied in different contexts. Although Aldred is careful to differentiate between the academic study of economics and its application in public life by what he terms ‘policy entrepreneurs’ – well, suffice to say that my opinion of mainstream academic economics was not significantly enhanced (with the old ’that’s all very well in practice, but how does it work in theory?’ caricature still to the fore). If you’re into this kind of stuff, some of the content may be familiar (e.g. the breakdown of the relationship between income and self-reported happiness above a – surprisingly low – threshold is in Clive Hamilton’s Growth Fetish; the negative consequences of introducing markets where they don’t belong is the subject of Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy) but it is covered here in more depth than I’ve read before, including why this might be the case (for instance, we adapt very quickly to increasing income, and then want still more). There is also a fascinating chapter dedicated to happiness actually means, whether self-reported or ‘objectively’ measured (and if, indeed, any such measurement is even conceptually possible).Other ideas were completely new to me. If you haven’t heard of Baumol’s cost disease (I hadn’t), it appears to be very important. Simply put, services like healthcare and education will inevitably become more expensive relative to other sectors of the economy, because one of the things we value most in them is their inefficiencies (in economic terms): lots of personal contact with a doctor, small class sizes, and so on. The important thing is that this is the case regardless of whether the service is provided by the state or by a private company. Privatising the NHS won’t make it more ‘efficient’, in other words (or at least, not relative to gains in efficiency elsewhere in the economy).Aldred also suggests some alternative goals for public policy. For example, instead of a constantly growing economy, why not keep it stable but allow all of us to work progressively less? (Sound crazy? Perhaps, but it’s a popular idea in France, and among the first significant acts of the new Socialist President Hollande was to reduce the retirement age for some workers to 60.) But the chapter most relevant to my professional interests is that on ‘Pricing Life and Nature’.Of course, this is a hot topic in ecology and conservation right now. Not just in Rio+20: think also of the Milennium Ecosystem Assessment, or big new UK initiatives on Valuing Nature, Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation… Everyone wants to know, what can nature can do for us? Nobody disputes that the answer is ‘lots’ (from climate regulation to pollination to food provision) but going a step further, and putting a value on these services, is much more controversial – not least for many because it suggests that there is a cost-benefit equation somewhere which could, potentially, be balanced a different way. Suppose we could replace pollinating insects with cheap, effective and safe nanobots. Could we then do away with bees with a clean conscience?The counter to this unease, which I’ve heard expressed at VNN meetings, is to argue that the alternative to putting a value on nature is that its value will be assumed to be £0 in any planning and development decisions. But in that case, what we should be doing as scientists? Should we buy into this system, and spend our time trying to make our dubious numbers somewhat less dubious, supplying more and more refined nutriment to the cost-benefit beast? Maybe, but as Alred notes, unfortunately “dubious numbers are infectious: adding a dubious number to a reliable one yields an equally dubious number”. So we have a lot of work to do if we take that approach, and the numbers we produce may always be too dubious to be useful. Alternatively (and this seems to be Aldred’s preference), we could build better ways of incorporating qualitative pros and cons more transparently into the (overtly political) decision-making process.One of the real strengths of this book is Aldred’s ability to lay out options and consequences without preaching – this is certainly not a zero-growth, Occupy movement manifesto. Rather, it’s a sober analysis of the evidence (or lack of it) behind various policy decisions, and above all a call for us to recognise the politics that are integral to all decisions made (even those dressed up as ‘objective’ following cost-benefit anlayses). This is important stuff, and Aldred has done us all a service by producing an approachable primer on a topic which affects all of us, and the environment we depend upon. 1One assumes that the retention by Aldred, a British author, of the American ‘k’ is a subtle dig at Lomborg’s faith in mainstream economics.2Of course, the ongoing collapse of the world’s financial systems provide a pretty strong supporting case…3Or more specifically, growth in GDP, which seems even more ridiculous in the light of the double figure drop in GDP the UK would suffer if we all paid off our credit cards tomorrow – GDP depends on us spending money we don’t have! (I heard this discussed as if it was perfectly natural and sensible on a serious Radio 4 economics programme, but was listening in the car and don’t recall specific details.)4e.g. From the RCUK homepage: “We support excellent research, as judged by peer review, that has an impact on the growth, prosperity and wellbeing of the UK”

What I thought about science during undergrad…What my friends think about science and what I thought about scientific research before grad school…and how i think I look B-)What I actually did during grad school… Get psyched about experiments and new projects :DAdded 1 kb ladder into PCR products instead of loading buffer.Ran gel in the wrong direction. Forgot to add Taq.Transformed a vector into mutants with the same antibiotic resistance. All transformants can grow on selection media :/Spilled EtOH on 100 labeled eppy tubes with RNA/DNA samples for genotyping/RT-PCR. No labels on samples after a day or 3 days of extraction.Lab subjects get a virus and die or skew results.have not seen significant other in months. etc. etc. Have to write a new project proposal…..What happened while I was writing my thesis… What I thought about thesis writing during writing.

British Homeopathy Awareness Week commences today, until the 21st. But, it seems to me, there is little in the way of awareness raising going on. Certainly not on the British Homeopathic Association site, which (in contrast to the WHA’s shameless promotion of World Homeopathy Awareness Week back in April) appears not to be too occupied with it:bq. ‘Every year between 14-21 June we encourage people to raise awareness about homeopathy.’but I can’t see a whole lot of encouragement going on thereawarenessweek.html.The Society of Homeopaths is a bit more excited, however, with some bleating on about sports injuries and arnica, a ‘remedy’ (homeopathic medicines are remedies) I gather is popular in the cult. And, along with a few of the stock trite reminders of how great homeopathy is, a few famous sporting names are dropped, thus resorting to that doubly logical fallacy: not appeal to authority; but appeal to celebrity as authority. These names, including the promiscuous ‘David Beckham’, were apparently cited as ‘evidence’ for homeopathy during the Homeopathy Evidence Check conducted by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee a couple of years back.More up for it too is Heal Through Homeopathy, which also informs that the week exploits this year’s Olympics, with promotion of the claimed homeopathic benefits to the treatment of sporting injuries. So, cue some more shameless celebrity name-dropping, led with an arnica endorsing quote from one Linford Christie. bq. ‘I am a fan of arnica and recommend all the Athletes in my Street Athletics programme have it in their kit bag to help with sprains and strains.’Yeah, cheers, Linford. Arnica also seems to help Jayne Torvill. Well, it seemed to help her in 2009.Another site scrapes the barrel even harder, appealing to a Mail Online article by Sarah Stacey, who informs that she, along with her animals, has long benefited from homeopathy. She follows this by spinning a testimonial anecdote, and then deals her trump card… Gaby Roslin. Way to go, Sarah. I wasn’t aware that Gaby still fits the definition of celebrity. She doesn’t seem to pop up on TV a whole lot anymore (thank goodness). Nevertheless, she’s obviously still considered of sufficient celebrity kudos, such that The Society of Homeopaths is also happy to include her among this stellar list, which tops its promotional bullet-pointed criteria.Plenty more of ‘em here and here, if you need convincing. I mean, how can all these celebrities be wrong? And the most expensive painting ever sold was a portrait of a homeopath. How much more evidence do we need?I don’t know whom I distrust more: those who cheaply, scrabblingly appeal to these celebrities; or the celebrities themselves for lending their names (if they have) to these marketing gimmicks. (Wonder how many of them have signed this.) Because that’s what it is: not evidence, marketing. When celebrity is invoked in endorsement of homeopathy, be doubly wary.

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.”F. Scott Fitzgerald (Taken from the Last Tycoon)Flickr CC kevindooley, photography, memory, mental model I was thesis writing I got a lot of edits/corrections and feedback from my supervisor. Which is nothing out of the ordinary in the process. I was happy to make changes as well (God knows how terrible my first drafts were. Supervisor = God). But it was always rather difficult to break out of the writing molds I’d begin with, and it took more effort to ponder how to reshape structures and sentences than freely write them. After a while of back and forths with corrections & re-writing..I really began to observe how different my supervisor’s style was to mine. So much so that it started creating images in my head. i.e. I could hear him talking in his thick Aussie accent and envision him sitting in his office. Everyone has a different perception on things and different ways of expressing the same things. And it’s not a negative thing, to the contrary, it’s great. It’s as the cliche saying is, two heads are better than one. You end up observing more together at different angles. Like two simultaneously published articles by two very different labs on the same protein and trend. They come to different conclusions and theories, while both can be equally interesting and relevant, they’re oddly not the same. Just depends on how you look at it. Take a reading break!Golden Cage, by The Whitest Boy Alive.“Half of the people can be part right all of the timeSome of the people can be all right part of the timeBut all of the people can’t be all right all of the timeI think Abraham Lincoln said that”I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours"I said that."~ Bob Dylan

What is the difference between those two statements?bq. ‘Demonstrated ability to manage own workload proactively and to work to multiple deadlines’bq. ‘Good at managing own time and workload’Tautology, no? Would you expect both to crop up on the same job application form? Well, when university HR denizens generate these things, nothing surprises me anymore. But it still exasperates, nonetheless. (By the way, the subject of my previous rant along these lines did actually result in an interview. Which was very nice… but they didn’t appoint… anyone.)Never mind that the repetitively sectioned skills descriptions boxes do not tally with the Job Description and Person Specifications. Such that you are not exactly sure which position you are actually applying for. Moreover, all skills being now considered ‘Essential’; merely ‘Desirable’ no longer applies. Baffingly, this latest HR nugget, as well as requiring your CV details to be transposed into all the relevant boxes, also allows you to attach the bloody thing! But, when addressing the ‘statements’, you are informed that stating ‘See attached CV’ is not acceptable as an answer.I guess they want to assess how well you can write. On which, I suppose I am just going to have to accept playing this game. Because there aren’t that many jobs I want to do … being determined not to go back into the lab (which I don’t assume would take me anyhow). Problem is, then, what is there? Having entered the words ‘science’ and ‘writing’ into job search specifications upon registering with agencies and databases and job websites, every day I find my Inbox polluted with lots of this kind of thing:bq. Sales Rep, Sales Manager, Healthcare Advertising Agency, Healthcare PR Company, Healthcare Branding, Healthcare Advertising and Branding, Contracts Specialist, Consumables Sales Rep, Account Director, Client Services Director, Instrument Sales Rep, Bioproduction Sales Rep, Key Accounts Manager, Market Research, Liaison Executive, Sales and Marketing, Sales (Support) Specialist, Pharmaceutical Sales Specialist, Laboratory Business Manager, Account Director, Marketing Manager, Medical Educations and PR Agency… and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseam_._Exhales long discontented “Sighhhhhh”.Oh, didn’t get an interview for the tautological position.If this continues, I might have to scratch that peripatetic itchiness. Except I can ill afford it.

NOAA: Launching an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)Laura Nielsen for Frontier ScientistsSpeeding over Arctic sea ice, small remote-controlled aircraft snag video footage and high-definition shots of endangered Steller Sea Lions in their natural habitat. Quiet and unobtrusive, the machines can serve as Special Op.s for researchers. Low-altitude remote sensing using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has vast potential… and we’re only beginning to explore it. Gregory Walker, the manager of the unmanned aircraft applications program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, has been putting UAVs to good use, exploring their potential on the Alaskan Frontier. “The more you show the capability of these things, the more people come up with needs for them,” Walker said. He tests UAVs at the Poker Flat Research Range outside of Fairbanks, in addition to flights in the field.NOAA: Taylor Nobles: Sea Lion hauloutUAVs perform well: surveying marine wildlife, in climate change studies, for pathfinding missions and as aides in emergency response plans, and accessing remote, hard-to-see or dangerous areas like active wildfires, volcano sites or oil spill areas. In January 2012, the Russian tanker Renda moved to deliver more than 1.3 million gallons of gasoline to Nome, Alaska. The Coast Guard Cutter Healy ground a path for both ships through sea ice toward Nome. As the ships approached, a team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks used UAVs to shoot images of the ice cover and engage in ice profiling. Those pictures let personnel gauge ice thickness and plot the safest route toward Nome. (It was yet one more way in which many technologies came together during the voyage to Nome.) UAVs have proven themselves capable of operating in inclement weather, low visibility, and weather with icing potential.NOAA: the McArthur II (from an earlier UAV launch test)In the Arctic, where the possibility of oil spills is increasing with increased offshore oil development, UAVs have promising applications for oil companies. Besides being used to conduct wildlife surveys in threatened areas, they might examine shorelines if a spill occurs. While assessing the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, British Petroleum used propeller-driven flying machines called Aeryon Scouts. For prevention instead of cleanup, UAVs can also serve as inspectors. In November 2011, Gregory Walker flew an Aeryon Scout at a BP oilfield near Prudhoe Bay. There, 50-feet tall machinery and pipes release flames to the atmosphere to relieve pressure in oil wells. The images Walker captured let workers determine what pipes needed repair or replacement, without putting any humans in danger.Similarly, the flying machines can fly in response to natural disasters. They can sample volcanic ash right out of the air over uneasy volcanoes, where fumes and the risk of ash-clogged engines keep manned flights away. UAVs can engage in Aerosol Collection, taking air samples to assist in studying the atmosphere or particle pollution. Scan Eagles, UAVs roughly the size of a California condor, have been used to track the edges of forest fires in smoky conditions, safeguarding firefighters. Alaska has even utilized UAVs in disaster-response exercizes. Responding to a large earthquake, for example, will be easier when responders can swiftly analyze the extent of damage to communities via aerial view. And UAVs can be launched with less prep. work than manned aircraft. They don’t require a runway, cell-phone connection, or large ammounts of fuel, making them ideal in remote Arctic locations.USFWS: Roy W. Lowe: Steller Sea LionsResearchers launched their UAVs in March 2012 off a ship the size of a fishing vessel to research Steller Sea Lion communities. Where traditional flyovers would take pilots and biologists far out over the open waters of the Bering Sea into potentially harsh weather conditions, these test flights sent small UAVs to many seal gathering places in the western Aleutian Islands. The ability to take short flights during pockets of clear weather and keep personnel safe onboard the ship highlights the benefits of UAV use in the dangerous and unpredictable weather of the Arctic. The machines are even able to fly despite weather conditions that would ground manned aircraft. Besides the small copter-like Aeryon Scout, the team used an AreoVironment Puma AE, a small plane with a 10 foot wingspan that can fly for two hours. The two crafts used video, infrared, and photo to capture information from 54 different sea lion sites. Most were locations where sea lions return again and again in order to socialize and rest on land (or ice) called haulout sites. Barely audible at 70 feet, the very quiet UAVs were able to film the sea lions from closer altitudes than a plane without scaring them into the water (as large and loud manned planes generally do). The UAVs are operated via an electronic interface, and the pilot does not need to see them to fly them- he can rely on their camera feeds- making them extremely useful for wildlife surveying.Alaska is investing in the emerging field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, because they can serve many purposes in the Arctic and beyond. Gregory Walker notes that by understanding the potential and the limitations of current UAV technology we can find people the right tools to solve many of their problems. We look forward to more spectacular uses for these agile and impressive machines.Part of Frontier Scientists’ project: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Image showing termini of the glaciers in the Bhutan-Himalaya. Glacial lakes have been rapidly forming on the surface of the debris-covered glaciers in this region during the last few decades. USGS researchers have found a strong correlation between increasing temperatures and glacial retreat in this region. (NASA)_Tweet_____**The reverberating sound of cracking ice and trickling water pervades areas of even once-permanent ice-sheets in the Artic this time of year.* With carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere passing up a proverbial ‘milestone’ of 400 parts per million, or ppm, as measured by local monitoring stations in the Artic, the time for mitigation of and adaptation to climate change impacts is today, if not yesterday. Before the industrial revolution, atmospheric CO2 levels were around 275ppm (The Guardian) M Carter, Ph.D., Associate Director of the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program, or SCIPP, at Louisiana State University, is passionate about climate change communications and the need for adaptation and resiliency planning in the face of all-too-real climate change impacts in Louisiana and beyond. Carter heads to Washington, DC this week for a meeting of the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee, or NCADAC, to help synthesize and summarize the science and information pertaining to current and future impacts of climate for the 2013 NCA Report. The last such report was published in 2009.“We need to do things differently than we’ve been doing them,” Carter said. The associate director of SCIPP often travels around Gulf Coast giving her ‘Planning to Protect’ talk to help residents think about a changing climate and how to be more ready for its impacts. Carter is a PhD educated scientist and serves as an expert advisor on the ICLEI Climate Adaptation Experts Advisory Committee, but she finds her passion in speaking to people about climate change and adaptation, in everyday language. “My goal is to communicate to the public in a way that they can understand,” Carter said. “We are not going to change people’s attitudes on climate change… it’s going to take talking in practical terms. People need the ‘big picture’ of climate change – they need the right mental models.” The follow are some of the key messages that Carter presents in her talks to community members:1. *Climate change is here. We are already observing changes.2. *The future will be different than the past and there will be consequences for the region.3. *Decisions made today can help us to be better prepared for tomorrow.**While many people that Carter speaks to attribute environmental changes to natural cycles vs. human-forced climatic changes, she constantly tells people to “look at the trend.” While short-term temperatures from one season to the next may vary significantly according to natural variation, long-term and underlying trends are quite clear. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased 31% since the industrial area in a trend that does not follow previous natural cycles, accompanied by steady increases in temperature and nearly unprecedented decreases in glacier and ice-sheet thickness worldwide.Gulf Coast states including Louisiana have special concerns when it comes to climate change impacts. Sea level rise due to melting artic ice and warming, expanding waters is aggravated in regions such as the Louisiana coastline, where confining river levees starve wetlands of sediment. Wetlands that could theoretically keep up with sea level rise if they were consistently nourished with sediment from the Mississippi river are gradually being starved and dried. The dependence of the local economy on the oil and gas industry doesn’t help. “The land here was built by the Mississippi river dropping sediment as it encountered salt water and marsh lands,” Carter said. “Oil pumping and squeezing… that is why the land is sinking.” Wetland loss and drilling for oil is causing land subsidence that is in turn causing rates of relative sea level rise in the region to be significant and dangerous to coastal cities and their inhabitants.Image from the LSU Lakes, Baton Rouge.“But we can do things differently and better,” Carter said. As she tells her presentation viewers, we can anticipate, plan ahead, and act … or we can react to inevitable damages and live with the consequences. As temperatures and sea levels rise, as precipitation increases and the likelihood of highly-damaging hurricanes mounts, Carter calls upon the Gulf Coast region to protect, accommodate, and retreat_. While building up levees can actually foster a false sense of security and increase wetland loss, coastal communities could adapt to climate change by accommodating rising waters through elevated roads and facilities, improved flood control, and wetland restoration, while making plans to evaluate and even retreat from the coastline as anthropogenic climate forcing continues to warm the planet.As Carter says, adaptation is “just better planning.” But the consequences are significant. Without efforts to mitigate climate change through emissions reductions and increased efforts to foster energy efficiency and alternative energy sources, the Gulf Coast could be in a cyclone of trouble.Smokestacks in Baton Rouge._____LSU’s Lynne CarterLynne M. Carter is the program manager of SCIPP on the Louisiana State University campus. Dr. Carter is active in climate impacts and adaptation work. Among other things, she was a member of the writing team for the 2009 Climate Impacts on the United States document from the Climate Change Impacts Program (CCSP), was the regional liaison for the US National Assessment of Climate Variability and Change, as the director for a non-profit organization focused on building resilience and adapting to climate changes with communities, and continues to work in education and outreach around climate issues.National Climate AssessmentThe NCA will help evaluate the effectiveness of our mitigation and adaptation activities and identify economic opportunities that arise as the climate changes. It will also serve to integrate scientific information from multiple sources and highlight key findings and significant gaps in our knowledge.

I’m just emerging from that special juggling act that UK academics perform at this time of year, when a stack of marking is chucked into the air alongside everything else. And given that last time out I provoked a few people (and reinforced a few preconceptions) I thought I’d ease back into things with some nice, non-controversial musings on natural history.Now first-up, I’m not much of a natural historian. Periodically I resolve to learn a relatively manageable group – British trees, say, or dragonflies – but to be honest, I simply don’t have the patience required to work meticulously through a key. Neither do I have that instinctive eye for the salient feature that characterises the great observers. Many’s the time I’ve thought I’ve committed to memory a particular unknown little bird, only to open the fieldguide and find I have no idea of the prominence of its supercilium, or the relative brownness of its legs.Nonetheless, I muddle on. I am quite good at noticing things, and it’s really important for me to see lots of nature, even if I can’t put a name to absolutely everything. In fact I have a theory that there are two routes into ecology. There are those who as kids collected beetles, who cleaned up and displayed roadkill, or who have subsequently crossed continents to extend their life list of birds. And there are those of us who just sort of liked messing around outside – for whom the important thing remains the experience of nature as a whole, rather than the infinite dissection of its parts.Over the last four years or so, my major outlet for this interest has been our back garden. One of the advantages of moving back to Sheffield was that a terraced house with a good sized garden fell within budget. And one of the pleasures of staying in the same place for a few years is that early work starts to bear fruit (sometimes literally).For instance, the other day I trimmed the mixed native hedge that we planted and which is now in its fifth growing season. Originally just a line of sticks, it’s now around 5’ tall, thick and lush. Already populated by sparrows it also shelters blackbirds and starlings, ladybirds and hoverflies. Watching this new habitat flourish gives me as much satisfaction as any paper I might write. Our pond, in progress (2009) and with water soldiers breaking its surface a year later.Likewise, the pond I dug in 2009 is an endlessly fascinating mini-experiment. Perhaps I should have kept meticulous records of colonisation dates, but for me it’s enough to remember that the first pond skaters were skating before I’d turned off the tap from filling it; that the frogs appeared to be waiting for me to dig it (I have no idea where they bred before); that great crested newts found it within a year, as did water boatmen, dragonflies and damselflies. The weather’s been rather peculiar this year – the warmth in March got the algae blooming, but then it was too cold for the grazers to do much, so it’s a bit green at the moment. But fishing out some blanket weed at the weekend, I was excited to net three large dragonfly nymphs which I suspect will be climbing up some of the emergent vegetation any day now, as well as the first water beetle I’ve seen there. The birds use it to bathe in and drink from, as do the grey squirrels (which have far less right to be in a Yorkshire garden than the rats that I can’t keep away from the compost heaps, but which have much better PR).Some of the smaller garden residents: a pioneering pondskater, and its near-mirror image water boatman; frogs in various stages of development; a hoverfly suns itself; and a bee visits a foxglove.Two more things which have got me into the natural history of my garden. First, buying a good macro lens for my camera – if you look closely, there is always something interesting to see. And of course, sharing it with a 1½ year old for whom all of this is fresh and exciting (and who’s new favourite word is ‘bee’).Years ago, I studied Candide for my French A level. I’ve never been sure that I grasped in full the philosophical implications of its final line, “‘Cela est bien dit,’ répondit Candide, ‘mais il faut cultiver notre jardin’”. But I like to take it literally, and whenever the stresses and strains of the life scientific start to bite, I take the role of Candide, heading outside with my own version: That’s all well and good, but this garden won’t look after itself.

Vast factories… Teeming lifeGoes up in smoke,Toxic rivers, red as blood,Sweat and tears.One man’s wasteIs another’s chore. Oil drilled until no more.A smog that never lifts,Assembly-line calloused fingers.Beautiful boxes of trash,Toxic fumes, workers abashYet unheeding of deathly concerns.Black black piles, among the ruinsOne lone woman knits asUrbanization sprawls.Decrepit oil tankers, Crude, up to their knees, Dangerous work.My leisure, gone global.Dam, oil sucks.TweetThese are my thoughts after watching Manufactured Landscapes, a stunning documentary film and Winner of Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival based on the work of artist Edward Burtynsky. “…”manufactured landscapes"—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris."bq. “If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. I believe that as a fundamental philosophical position…” – BurtynskyIn Manufactured Landscapes, environmental destruction is turned abnormally beautiful, leaving viewers like myself aghast at my own wasteful society and disturbed landscapes. From urbanization, to peak oil, to downright ghastly working conditions, Burtynsky lays bare our troubled energy monger society in beautiful ‘as is’ fashion.As Burtynsky says near the end of the film:“I think many people sit in that uncomfortable spot where we don’t necessarily want to give up what we have, but we realize that what we are doing is creating problems that run deep. It’s not a simple right or wrong… it needs a whole new way of thinking.”I highly recommend the film, available via iTunes. “Maybe the new landscape of our time… is the landscape that we change… the one that we disrupt in the pursuit of progress.” – Burtynsky Image: Shipbreaking # 4", Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000Photo: Edward Burtynsky

I’ve previously presented The Twelve Rs of the e-Research Record: repeatable, reproducible, reusable, repurposable, reliable, referenceable, re-interpretable, respectful, respectable, retrievable, replayable, refreshable and recoverable. This exercise started with an August 2009 piece, and listening to discussions at meetings last week I note a few more are being r-raised…But first, let me set the scene with something that’s been causing confusion. Traditionally I might conduct an experiment in my lab, repeat it, share it in the research record and you can come along and reproduce it in your lab. But let’s be clear about an important issue in our increasingly in silico world. If I publish an algorithm and you write new software to implement it then you might be reproducing my algorithm. However, if I publish my software (or virtual machine) into the research record and you just run it as-is then that’s a bit more like me giving you a bit of equipment from my lab! Some might then debate whether that’s a repeat or reproduce or somewhere in between – but whichever, it’s useful. It means you know exactly how the results are produced and therefore how to interpret them. It helps find out if my results were somehow peculiar to my environment and hardware (the same programs don’t always produce the same numbers, this is well known). And anyway your goal might simply be to achieve a capability in your lab and check it works so that you can use it. We’re getting better at installing software artefacts into the research record, for example with the new journals of Open Research Computation and Open Research Software.It’s not easy though! Like a piece of equipment, the software needs maintenance, testing and calibration. Worse, software decays thanks to all its external dependencies one way or another (libraries, services, operating systems, …) – it’s not rust or (bit-)rot, it’s the world in flux, but it has a similar effect. We can preserve software in archive aspic for retrospective examination, but keeping that equipment running for all time is a tall order. I note in passing that one of the things that helps provide some stability is standards (or should I say recommendations). I also note there’s a role for machines in helping us with all of this.Anyway, I’m inclined to propose a new R-word to meet my three usefulness criteria above, which is reconstruct, and perhaps then our new journals are Journals of Reconstructable Research. Reconstruction is what we actually do, so it helps if our research is reconstructable. We might have a goal to repeat, reproduce, replicate, re-use, repurpose or whatever, but the reconstruction is a necessary and useful step. We should acknowledge that there’s machinery involved, and see software, scripts and workflows as equipment in the research record to provide the reconstruction kit. In fact the software world is rather good at reconstruct and we can learn from that thinking and tooling for the research record.A related word that came up last week was restore, as Carole Goble talked about restoration (returning to a former condition), further developing the notions of preservation and conservation introduced in Accelerating Scientists’ Knowledge Turns. Similarly our decay experts (research dentistry anyone?) were talking about repair. Provenance information is set to play a big part in all of this.Another R-word lurking for some time has been review, but interestingly what we’ve been hearing recently is re-review – which also accommodates our evolving peer-review models, like post-publication peer review (is that publication, or release like software?) That’s not all. In the Wf4Ever project we now have roification, which means to convert something into a Research Object(!) And my music colleagues are now talking about remixing research as well as music. ☺

India’s constitution explicitly protects free speech, but is apparently failing Sanal Edamaruku right to it.Please follow the link for information and sign the petition

Just for fun…Can you tell what’s “fake”?

Jonah Lehrer recently moved his blog to The New Yorker and one of the first entries was Why We Don’t Believe In Science, a discussion of how counter-intuitive facts need a little “unlearning” to occur before we can accept them.I made a comment on the post, but it’s unclear whether they have the Comments section turned on over there, so I figured I’d go ahead and post that comment here, in an attempt to update this blog after nearly two years of dormancy! Enjoy.__________________________________________________________________In the spirit of improving scientific literacy and buying into the, at times, counter-intuitive notions that inevitably arise during the pursuit of “believing science,” I propose we all unlearn the over-simplified, naive intuitions about what fMRI data really mean.The A.C.C. has indeed been implicated by several groups during the process of error perception and other such “Oh Shit!” moments. But other studies involving patients who have unfortunately experienced damage and lesions to their “Oh Shit!” circuits still experience “Oh shit!” moments. Of course, just like the data supporting the A.C.C.‘s role in error detection, such clinical observations are far from perfect since not all lesions are of the same size or are strictly limited to the A.C.C. Like most fMRI data, lesion studies are suggestive at best. In addition, a simple search of the neuroscience literature will reveal that the A.C.C. also receives a squirt of blood during reward anticipation, decision-making, when viewing “emotional” videos, when experiencing pain, during the control of blood pressure and heart rate, when conflict monitoring, when we focus attention, when experiencing empathy and to signal motivation. So was the “Oh Shit!” circuit being activated in Dunbar’s study, or was the subject experiencing a very strong autonomic response to being placed inside a loud, confined space while having to sit perfectly still (thus, raising heart rate and blood pressure)? Who knows!! But it makes a nice story to explore the CORRELATION between the A.C.C. fMRI signals and the task being explored.The sooner the public learns that scientists have really no clue how the “Oh Shit!” circuit fully works, the more receptive and open they may be to digging deeper into citizen science projects and performing their own fact checking. The latter is a must if the public and scientists are ever going to maintain fruitful, collaborative relationships based on trust. The motivation to learn for oneself is diminished when science writers, scientists and communicators consistently feed the public “facts” that are presented as unequivocal, but are anything but. I fully understand that to present an interesting story, a communicator cannot discuss all caveats, but one can also give the audience a bit more credit, challenge them to do their own digging and provide them with at least part of the two (or more) sides of the story for further reflection. Science is constantly evolving and so should the way and style with which it is communicated to an audience with an ever-increasing intelligence, savvy and willingness to be challenged.

Two ‘scientific’ failures this week: one fact, one fiction, but both real. First off, I got up around 0500 on Wednesday (no mean feat for me), and trudged out with white paper pad, binoculars and camera to hand, hoping to catch the transit of Venus. I decided to walk down the hill – not as daft as it seems: there is no solar vantage that time of the morning where I live, plus it was overcast and so didn’t bode well anyhow; but I reasoned there would be improved vistas down in the more spacious ‘valley’. Once down, however, rather than continue ‘flat’, I decided to turn right, and walk up the incline towards the golf clubhouse (which is the high vantage point in the valley, if that makes sense). This was (or would have been) inspired. After a short walk, I was forced to squint as I turned my head to the right, the low bright sun evident through the hedge gap access to one of the tees. I walked through and made a quick assessment. And thence made my mistake. With three items to handle, it was going to be tricky to keep a steady hand; and propping up the pad could only be done on dew-wet ground/hedge. It was around 0530. About twenty-five minutes left. So I decided, rather than sodden the pad, to continue on up towards the clubhouse, where there is apparatus upon which to prop things up at stable angles, so freeing up my focusing and capturing hands, and wherefrom I ‘calculated’ taking advantage of an improved vista. Except it was vistaless. Although still bright, further, but taller trees intervened. So, I about-turned and yomped back down to my original site, returning less than five minutes after leaving it to find the sun now obscured by clouds. I’d got my angles and my timings wrong. And so it remained, as I stood there looking up and cursing at the wind-blown inverted grey carpet smothering my opportunity. But in actuality, I was cursing myself: I’d managed the difficult part in hauling myself out of bed, then failed to get on with it during that brief bright window, when (as it turns out, although I’d set off unconvinced) my basic equipment would have done the job just fine – and I could have self-satisfyingly posted my own shot here. And my self-annoyance lingers, unquelled by reminders that there will be other transits (Mercury in a few years?). After all, there are no guarantees of being around for future eventualities. And I’ll for certain never get the opportunity to see a transiting Venus again. But I was alive last Wednesday.I was still alive yesterday, when I saw something that, it turns out, I would not have been sorry to miss – I went to the cinema to see (in 2D. Please ) a hyperridiculous titanic turkey. I’d rather be tied to a rock.

I love Adele’s music and voice. It’s not any wonder she’s a reigning queen of pop/rock/what-have-you. And usually with any hit singers, you get a collection of Youtubers who cover their music. Generally, it’s so-so, but occasionally there’s real gems. This one’s a cover is by a med student/Masters of Biotech grad from the ANU (here in Oz). Who says you can’t have a side job as a singer during a science or med degree? He’s even better live with back up singers and a band of science/med students. Something different is the awesome ukelele catching skills and real team work in action below. Wish I was that coordinated and great at multi-tasking. by Walk off the Earth. the cover’s garnered about 12 million views. which is still just a fraction of the original song that now has 180 million hits.

The results from the TREAD study (TREAtment of Depression with physical activity) came out today in the British Medical Journal – you can check it out here. TREAD was a long term randomised controlled trial (considered the ‘gold standard’ in clinical testing) which aimed to figure out whether giving people who were suffering from depression a bit of help with their exercise regime (in other words, having a facilitator provide advice and encouragement to the patient) actually improved their mood or not over time. It would be great if it did – it would mean that we’d have an alternative to drug-based therapies that would be simple for doctors to prescribe, and desirable for patients who were worried about the side effects of antidepressants. The trouble with the results from TREAD, though, is that they didn’t show any benefits for those who received the intervention, when compared to those who didn’t – either in terms of improved mood or reduced antidepressant use. In fact, the only thing that did improve was the intervention group’s amount of physical activity during the follow-up period. If his article in the Guardian today is anything to go by, this seems to be a huge irritation for Simon Hattenstone. The article, in fact, provides a masterclass in what you should look out for in a poor piece of science journalism. Let’s have a look what the problems are.“So all of you who thought you were learning how to cope with your out-of-kilter brain, who had worked so hard to release endorphins and get a serotonin surge, who had made life manageable by running, going to the gym, dancing, or whatever, were WRONG.”Making out that the the study is telling people who are depressed that if they’ve been exercising, it’s a waste of time, is a good way to get readers on side. It tends to rile people up, and make them amenable to the point that the writer wants to make.“According to this report, carried out by the universities of Bristol and Exeter, and funded by the Department of Health, you exercise-tastic depression-battlers are simply deluding yourself. The study is, apparently, the first large-scale, randomised controlled trial to establish whether exercise should be used in primary health care to help treat adults with depression.”Or, y’know, just spell it out in no uncertain terms – ‘this report is telling you that you’re stupid if you’re trying to make yourself feel better with exercise.’ It’s got good shock value. Also, note the use of the word ‘apparently’ in the second sentence – it makes it sound like the research is trying to make itself sound more important than it actually is. For reference, the actual words from the BMJ article are ‘the trial is one of the largest trials of physical activity and depression to have taken place in primary care.’"As a depressed manic exerciser, who has found running hugely helpful, I would like to blow a great big Panglossian fart in the face of this churlish research. Writers who have a drum to beat tend to identify themselves as authorities-from-experience on some subject or another. It lends weight to any points they make because they can say “I’ve been through that, and I know that X actually does work for me”. And actually, that’s a perfectly valid opinion to have – I don’t wish to belittle anyone in this way at all. The trouble is, it’s not particularly scientific. For example, I’ve suffered from moderate-to-severe depression over the past fourteen years, and I’ve often taken to the gym in the hopes that it would help my mood. It’s never worked. Actually, at times, it’s made me feel worse about myself, because I could never stick to it. Does that mean that exercise doesn’t work for depressed individuals? Not at all, it just meant that it didn’t work for me. It’s in this way that arguments from experience are extremely compelling; the ones it works the best on are those that make the arguments in the first place. As we’ll see later on, it’s also why they’re potentially the most dangerous sort of evidence.First of all, slightly less depressed, even if not statistically valid, has to be better than the same or more depressed.“And here we get to the crux of the problem. The results from TREAD found that those in the intervention group were very slightly less depressed at the end of it all, when compared to the control group, but this difference wasn’t statistically significant (or, in the article, ‘valid’). ‘Significant’ (and ‘valid’, but for different reasons) is one of those words that means different things for scientists and the public. In everyday terms, if something is significant, it means that it’s really important – for example, the European Championships is a significant tournament in the footballing calendar; it’s a huge honour if you even get picked to play in it, let alone win it. So when you say that something’s not significant, like a result from a study in which some people become slightly less depressed, the impression you get is that of a cold and heartless scientist; someone who doesn’t care that a patient got a bit better, because it ’didn’t fit with the rest of the results’. Significance in the scientific or statistical sense, though, doesn’t mean this. If something is statistically significant, it means that it is unlikely to have occurred because of random, chance factors. What that means for the TREAD study is that, yes, some people did get a bit better, but we can’t be sure whether that’s because of the intervention they were given, or because of something else that happened to them. In this way, it’s a form of caution. It’s great that some people got better – it would be great if even more did – but if they didn’t get better because of the treatment, then there’s no point in rolling that treatment out (at great expense) across the NHS. ”Second, it is unclear, to me at least, what stage of depression the participants were at. Yes, if somebody was so depressed that they can’t face getting out of bed, ordering them to go for a 10km run probably wouldn’t do the trick. Indeed, it might make them feel considerably worse.This is actually a fair point – it’s really good practice to critique studies in this sort of way. We have to be sure that the people being tested are appropriate for the study. Moreover, it’s difficult – as the article states – to compare how the intervention might affect someone who is diagnosed with dysthymia to someone with severe depression. You need to try and keep your patient population as similar as possible to each other in lots of different ways, so you can be more sure that the results you get are because of the intervention you’re providing, rather than because of individual differences in the patients. From reading the BMJ article, it looks like the researchers performed a pretty comprehensive baseline screening session, and had quite detailed exclusion criteria. That doesn’t mean that it’s perfect; scientific studies never are. But the right sorts of protocols seem to have been followed.However, we depressives don’t “use” exercise like this – it’s not a panacea, it’s a means of managing depression once we’re beginning to feel better or when it is in remission; a way of keeping it at bay."So just when you think the article’s getting better, your hopes get completely undermined by this sort of statement; lumping ‘depressives’ together into a characterless group, defined only by the fact that they’re all depressed. Making a point about how it’s important to consider individual differences, and then completely ignoring your own advice straight away is an automatic fail and renders the rest of the argument redundant.I’ll finish by going back to the points about arguments from experience, summed up nicely in the final sentence of the article:Perhaps we should rely on self-knowledge rather than research when it comes to depression. After all, nobody knows your own body and mind quite like you do. So sod the academics, I’m off for a run.No. No no no no no. No. The absolute last thing that we should be doing is relying on self-knowledge. If you rely on anecdotal evidence, then health policies (any sorts of policies, actually) just become a shouting match where whoever yells the loudest gets their way. Sometimes, when I get depressed, I eat loads of chocolate. Sometimes it makes me feel better. If we were to appeal to self-knowledge, then on the basis of my ‘evidence’, the NHS would be sponsored by Cadbury’s and we’d be paying £7.40 for a bar of Dairy Milk at the pharmacy. And weirdly, it might actually work for some people. The thing is, other treatments would work better and for more people. So for the vast majority of people, eating chocolate would not only be a monumental waste of time and money for everyone involved, it would also have the more threatening implication that people would not be having the proper treatment that they should be getting – the one that actually works. The only way that we can figure out what those treatments are is through randomised controlled trials and solid, objective research. So, what we need to take home from the TREAD study is that, while having someone support you and provide advice on your exercise regime might help some people with depression, it doesn’t seem to work for most – so at this point in time, it’s probably a good idea not to spend loads of money rolling it out across the country. We need to look at it again, and think about why it’s not working (and who knows? That sort of research might find something that does work for everyone). What we shouldn’t be doing is writing sensationalist articles that misrepresent both the study in particular, and science in general. It doesn’t do anyone any favours.

After seeing Paige‘s post about witnessing the transit of Venus, I thought I’d share my pictures from my slightly less glamorous location!When the planet Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun, this is known as a transit. Rather than an eclipse where the moon can completely obscure the sun, you can see Venus as a small dot passing over the sun (in the above photo Venus is on the edge of the sun at 1 o’clock, if the sun were a clockface). Venus transits occur in regular repeating patterns of 243 years, with gaps of 121.5 years, 8 years, 105.5 years and 8 years. It was 8 years since the last transit, so we’re in for a long wait until the next one!I awoke from a vivid dream about watching the transit at 4.45am, fell out of bed and into some clothes, and wandered bleary eyed to St Werburghs hill in North Bristol.The moon was visible, but there was a lot of cloud cover in the direction of the sun!Gradually it cleared, and my boyfriend revealed he’d brought a thermos of tea up the hill – things were looking up!Finally, the cloud cleared enough to catch these images! The telescope belonged to one of the 3 other people who’d ventured out at that early hour!