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The Sigma has a much wider range of focal lengths and I’m sure I won’t miss that 1mm at the wide angle. It also means that for the most part I can avoid carrying my much bulkier Canon 75-300mm lens.

This male mute swan was shot on the river Alde on a recent visit to Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The image was snapped at full zoom with the Sigma lens (i.e. 200mm), 1/500s shutter speed, aperture f 8.0, and “film speed” ISO 100, the image fairly tightly cropped around the swan.

What made the Sigma lens particularly attractive aside from its compact size is that it was half list price on Amazon UK and was a less expensive investment than paying to have the Canon lens it replaced fixed.

It was never a tenable idea, as if the almost 400,000 km hop to the moon would somehow make the trip to Mars (anywhere between 55 million and 400 million km), despite the claims for energy savings in constructing equipment in reduced gravity…

Anyway, a waning, gibbous moon was low in the sky at 07h52 today when I snapped this view from my home office window. A crisp and very frosty morning, light from the rising sun succumbs to the Tyndall effect and gives the moon an almost copper tone.

Meanwhile, quite bizarrely, California has named a new site a state historical resource even though the site isn’t even on Earth, let alone in the US state. According to the BBC, the Apollo 11 moon landing site is now included on the state’s register. I wonder whether they were hoping to boost their ailing finances by charging space tourists a visitor’s fee.

By the way, do you know the moon’s name? I’ve got a copy of Moon 3D for the tenth commenter to post the correct answer. Judges’ decision is final.

In vitro tests have suggested garlic has antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal activity. However, studies in humans are less than conclusive. It’s alleged to help prevent heart disease, atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and cancer and animal studies lend some support to such claims. Either way it’s delicious and essential to so many dishes that it would be a nice side-benefit if those health effects are proven valid one day.

Garlic and health

Narcissus is also the botanical name for a genus of hardy, spring-flowering Amaryllis plants native to Europe, North Africa, and Asia. There are many species variants and wild hybrids, most familiar is the daffodil, which itself comes in many varieties. There are two possibly etymologies for the plant name narcissus. The first is that they are named for the character of Greek tragedy who turned into the flower where he died. The second explanation is that the plant for its narcotic properties (narkao meaning to numb in Greek). That word, of course, also presumably having a direct connection with Narcissus.

Unfortunately, I cannot recall the name of the village where I snapped this photo in a place called Bolgheri. Scanning through my albums it set me thinking about what measures those of us in currently cooler climes might take as the effects of global warming become manifest. Of course, the recent “big freeze” in the UK and elsewhere probably has probably brought a few climate skeptics out of the closest this last week. But, even if we enter another ice age rather than ending up scorchio, shutters could be a good idea…

The researchers found 10 alkaloids in G. nivalis, a bulbous plant that flowers in the snows of midwinter, and seven from the G. elwesii species, which originates in the Caucasus. Two obtained from G. nivalis are haemantamines, the third from G. elwesii is a licorine. Details were published in the scientific journal Planta Medica. More…

Sepia-toned fishing boats, Dunwich Beach

The term ’sepia’ comes from the name of an artists’ pigment made from the sepia cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis found in the English Channel. Although sepia toning is done chemically to convert the metallic silver in the photographic print to a sulfide compound, which gives it that “old-fashioned” hue but protects the photograph from environmental pollutants such as atmospheric sulfur compounds.

There are three types of sepia toner in modern use: Sodium sulfide toners, the traditional ‘rotten egg’ toner; thiourea (or ‘thiocarbamide’) toners, these are odourless and the tone can be varied according to the chemical mixture; Polysulfide or ‘direct’ toners, which avoid a bleaching stage.

A print is first soaked in potassium ferricyanide bleach to re-convert the metallic silver to silver halide. It is then washed to remove excess potassium ferricyanide then finally immersed in a bath of toner, which converts the silver halides to silver sulfide. Incomplete bleaching creates a multi-toned image with sepia highlights and grey midtones and shadows. This is called split toning. The untoned silver in the print can be treated with a different toner, such as gold or selenium.

Sepia-toned images are associated with period photography of the 1800s. Modern photographers and cinematographers exploit the “old-time-feel” of sepia toning to good, if not a little cliched, effect to evoke nostalgia.

Today, sepia toning is more of an aesthetic choice than an environmental protection racket and with a little action in Photoshop or almost any other image editor you save a cuttlefish from the inky writing on the seawall.

So, what on earth is this CO₂ gas tap, I snapped on a visit to the Cambridge University labs all about? Are chemists finding ways to pump yet more of the stuff into the atmosphere, or is it simply a supply to provide a non-reactive atmosphere for a whole range of chemical reactions? Or, more feasible is it a permanent anaesthetic for experimental fruit flies?

Carbon dioxide is used by the food industry, the oil industry, and the chemical industry. It is used in many consumer products that require pressurized gas because it is inexpensive and nonflammable, and because it undergoes a phase transition from gas to liquid at room temperature at a relatively low pressure, just 59 times atmospheric pressure. It can also be converted into a supercritical fluid (SCFs) on which I’ve written at length in the past.

Indeed, SCFs could see the greening of the chemical industry as they provide a non-toxic alternative to volatile organic solvents, can be used to carry out a vast range of reactions and are then recyclable with essentially no losses; unlike VOCs. A feature article I wrote about Nottingham University’s Martyn Poliakoff and his work on SCFs back in the mid-1990s led to a major industrial collaboration for him soon after, which is one of the most gratifying results of any article I’ve written. Apart from getting the cover in The Guardian science section with a story about snake venom painkillers on the day my son was born!

Anyway, that CO₂ tap? I’ve casually asked dozens of researcher friends and am yet to get a definitive answer…so if anyone knows, do tell me.