Young children are at most risk of NTD infection. Credit: CDC/Sonia Pelletreau.

LONDON, United Kingdom — Bill Gates, the world’s leading thirteen pharmaceutical companies, governments and global organisations have announced unprecedented funding and support to eliminate and control ten neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by 2020.

More than US $785 million will be donated to control or eliminate these infections that affect around 1.4 billion people in 149 endemic countries These infections kill or cause disability among the world’s poorest people who live mainly in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia.

Speaking at the Royal College of Physicians in London, where the new private-public initiative was announced, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “Many of the burdens [of NTDs] have come down but in fact they haven’t come down nearly far enough. What is unique about today is about getting everyone on the same page.”

The Gates Foundation will contribute US$363 million to support NTD drug and operational research over five years. Pharmaceutical companies, including, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bayer, Norvatis and Sanofi, will provide 1.4 billion treatments every year. They will also form partnerships for research and development efforts, and all companies will allow access to their compound libraries through the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Intiative (DNDi) that could lead to new and improved treatments.

The new commitments also address the funding gap required to eradicate Guinea worm disease with support from the United Arab Emirates, the Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation

The new initiative has been announced in response to the WHO’s plan to address NTDs. Last week (26 January), the WHO published its strategy called Accelerating work to overcome the global impact of neglected tropical diseases – A roadmap for implementation, where it sets out targets to be achieved by 2020. The WHO roadmap will also enable partners of the initiative to track progress to ensure accountability and transparency and identify remaining gaps.

“These ancient diseases are now being brought to their knees with stunning speed,” said Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO. “With the boost to this momentum being made today, I am confident almost all of these diseases can be eliminated or controlled by the end of this decade.”

Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, said: “Many companies and organisations have worked for decades to fight these horrific diseases. But no one company or organisation can do it alone. Today, we pledge to work hand-in-hand to revolutionize the way we fight these diseases now and in the future.”

The ten diseases to be eliminated or controlled as part of today’s plan include lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma, sleeping sickness and leprosy, helminthes, schistosomiasis, river blindness, chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis.

—
You can watch the video of the London Declaration here.
A good and concise overview of the event can be found on a dedicated live blog here.
More information on neglected tropical diseases can be found on the WHO’s website.

But then I stumbled across a collaboration which challenges that assumption. Baba Brinkman’s Rap Guide to Evolution is interesting, intelligent and funny hip-hop about evolutionary theory. It’s the first peer-reviewed rap, and almost certainly the only hip-hop album that features samples of Richard Dawkins reading from Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” (other examples in the comments section please).

The video below, “Natural Selection”, has its tongue firmly in its cheek, featuring a dance-off between Darwin and some of his best-known opponents, including the perennial favourite, God, and a more modern proponent of creationism, Sarah Palin.

Fellow SciAm blogger Kevin Zelnio wrote about Baba back in November, but this unique rapper warrants a bit more attention – and a few links to his official music videos. Brinkman was previously known for his rap about Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – an immediate indication that he’s not your typical boring, bling-obsessed gangsta-wannabe.

Subtitled “Beats, Rhymes and the Science of Life” in an homage to early Tribe Called Quest, this unusual album originated when Professor Mark Pallen, a microbial geneticist at the University of Birmingham, UK, requested a rap version of the Darwin’s seminal work to celebrate our hero’s 200th birthday in 2009.

With a little financial help from the Wellcome Trust, Baba has written 10 tracks about different aspects of evolutionary theory, and what it can tell us about modern life. There are some great insights hidden here, from the evolutionary explanation for high crime rates in deprived areas in “Survival of the Fittest” (below), and the idea that we are slaves to our genes in the aptly named “DNA” (2nd video down), to a call for disparate human cultures to get along because of the links that bind us all – links made of DNA – in “Worst Comes to Worst” (3rd video down).

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did – a happy new yizzle to you all!

The work of Louis Wain, who lived between 1860 and 1939, is frequently held up as an example of the progression of schizophrenia, and the effects of the disorder on the perceptions of an artist.

However, despite Wain’s art appearing in several psychology text books in chapters covering schizophrenia, it is unclear whether he was suffering from that particular condition. It has been suggested that Wain may instead have been suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, because his skill as a draughtsman remained plain to see throughout his illness. Diagnosis after the fact is always a sketchy business, and this suggestion may well be incorrect – one of the reported symptoms of Asperger’s is a loss of physical co-ordination.

As Wain’s condition worsened, so his pictures of cats became more abstract until, towards the end of his life, they were barely recognisable as cats at all, instead becoming intricately detailed, fractal shapes full of unnaturally (at least for a cat) bright colours. The foreknowledge that they are images of felines allows the viewer to pick up on certain shapes – the pointy triangular ears and some features of the face – but without it, you would be hard-pressed to realise these are cats.

The tale of Wain’s life is a sad one. For a time he was a successful artist, but a series of poor investment decisions left him penniless and he began to develop mental health problems in the early 20^th century. He deteriorated quickly, becoming a suspicious and sometimes violent man, prone to incoherent, rambling speech. In 1924 he was incarcerated in the pauper ward at Springfield Mental Hospital in Tooting, south London, not far from where I live. After intervention by some famous and influential figures, including Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister of the day, and H.G. Wells, Wain was transferred to more pleasant surroundings. He ended his days in Napsbury Hospital, north of London, which had a garden and, happily for Wain, a colony of cats. In this environment he was able to resume drawing, and it was here he produced some of his most spectacular work.

The similarity of Wain’s later paintings to fractals is striking. Fractal patterns exist, of course, in nature, and can be glimpsed in aerial photographs of coastlines and mountain chains, and even in the foliage of trees, but the earliest computer-generated images of idealised fractal patterns that we are familiar with today were not produced until the 1970s. There would appear to have been something about Wain’s condition that allowed him to perceive and represent these invisible natural patterns long before anyone else had seen them.

It would be fascinating to know more about the changes in Wain’s brain that opened up this world of colour and pattern, invisible to the rest of us. The story of Wain’s life may be a sad one, but his artwork has brought joy to countless others over the years, myself included.

Jay Griffiths in her favourite spot near her home. Pic: Christine Ottery

Earlier this year, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien recommended ‘Wild’ on the Radiohead blog; Nicolai Fraiture, the bassist for The Strokes, who interviewed Jay last month; and KT Tunstall has written that ‘Wild’ is her favourite book and has quoted from ‘Wild’ in her album ‘Tiger Suit’. I am guessing that the Uummannaq Song is particularly inspired by ‘Wild’ (though I might be wrong!).

I was fascinated by ‘Wild’, especially the way that Jay combined science and art to make the book something that informs and also touches the heart. Reading the book, you follow Jay’s journey through the Amazon rainforest, the Arctic, the outback in Australia, West Papua and the ocean off the coast of Indonesia. She observes environmental damage, but social damage as well – to the lives of indigenous people who traditionally live in these places.

To find out more, you can hear to my interview with Jay, below. Jay kindly agreed to include some readings for the recording – which is about 30 mins long. So sit with a cup of tea and listen to this:

Warning: Contains some adult language.

After the morning keynote lecture on the role of epidemic intelligence in international surveillance by Denis Columbier, from the European Disease for Prevention and Control, there will be presentations and discussions of research on how web 2.0 technologies are expected to revolutionise public health, epidemiology and epidemic prediction.

Tomorrow’s research highlights will include a review of social media in epidemiology and surveillance, an overview of the characteristics of Facebook users, an analysis of Twitter messages in the Tohoku earthquake and a study on the use of SMS for tsunami early warnings.

If you are unable to join us in Malaga, fear not, as I will live blog from selected sessions. An online programme of the conference is available here.

The conference is fully interactive so please do take part in the online discussions and submit questions for any of our speakers through the live blog or tweet us @ehealthconf – and don’t forget to add the hashtag #ehealth2011.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions over the next few days!

Views here are not not representative of the organising committee or any speakers taking part in the conference.

Will our meat be grown in the lab in future? And will we be able to tell the difference?

What about if we could call it zombie burger, zombie sausage or zombie ragu – does that sound more appealing? Sociologist Neil Stephens, who is researching the in vitro meat proposition at ESRC Cesagen at Cardiff University, has a really cute turn of phrase about the engineered meat in his introductory paper:

“This is a fascinating technology… characterised as the ‘zombification’ of meat products… While metaphors of zombies usually lead one to think of the ‘living-dead’, in vitro meat is perhaps best categorised as the ‘dead-living’, or perhaps the ‘living-never born’.”

If zombie meat were no longer the stuff of science fiction, but was something you actually chowed down on, there could be benefits both to your health and to the environment. For a start, it is known that eating meat that has been reared on cereal crops is a really inefficient way to get your energy, livestock contribute to global warming with their methane emissions, and the deforestation of valuable forests can be attributed (partly) to livestock farming. So, how would zombie meat compare? Would it be better just to stick to the veg?

New Harvest, a meat substitute advocate group, published a report earlier this year addressing the environmental impact assessment of cultured meat, claiming that there would be important benefits to land use, water use and green house gas emissions, and also energy use to a lesser extent. However, much is still unknown, as in vitro meat is in the early stages of development. This makes it difficult to compare to regular meat or plant-based proteins.

What certainly would be needed for zombie meat to live up to its promise as a ‘green’ product is: economies of scale. This would reduce the environmental impact per unit. Stephens reckons this means producing: “Literary tonnes and tonnes of tissue engineered muscle month after month.” We’re looking at the creation of a whole new industry, if this prediction manifests.

Another possible upside of eating zombie kebab (most in vitro meat is grown from from pig or cow stem cells) rather than one from a farmed animal is the potential healthiness of it. Meat could be engineered to be fat free, for instance, and it probably would not contain traces of vaccines or steroids that meat from live animals sometimes does.

But do in vitro meats taste any good? Scientists have been striving to grow meat that tastes okay since the 1990s. Apparently they are still not particularly successful yet. Stephens writes:

“Oron, Catts and Ionat Zurr – Harvard University tissue engineers – were bringing together laboratory work and art through in vitro meat technology, initially using pre-natal sheep cells to grow a piece of muscle tissue three centimetres in diameter. In 2003, their work became publicised when they staged an art exhibition in Nantes, France: muscle tissue grown from frog cells was served to banquet guests in a gallery under public view. Apparently the dinner guests did not like the taste of the meat.”

Christopher Mims reports in Smart Planet that Mark Post, a biologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, claims he can create a palatable “proof of concept burger” within a year, which will cost about $345,000.

Stephens says that the cost of the meat needs to be driven down with industrial-scale production, but it is also a case of demand. There are alternatives to cultured meat, ie real meat or plant-based meat substitutes. And, as he says: “People are willing to pay significantly more money for that small quantity of tissue engineered muscle that goes into their heart to restore cardiac function than they are for the much larger quantity of tissue engineered muscle that would allow them to invite their friends round for an In Vitro Meat barbeque.”

Emma King, a researcher into regulation and innovation in stem cell therapies at the University of Edinburgh, adds:

“At this stage I think it is more a question of funding rather than regulatory approval around these types of products [in vitro meat]. Getting any stem cell product to market costs a lot of money, and funding is always going to be targeted at the most needed causes. If scientists did want to produce them then they would have to overcome the same hurdles as the therapies. They would have to justify why this product is needed and that it is as safe, or safer, than conventional products. They also have the added problem that we already have very safe meat - from animals.”

Nevertheless, zombie meats are a fascinating proposition that I wouldn’t rule out just yet. And they’re really not that icky – especially in comparison to the idea of living in a home made of synthetic meat. Watch urban architect Michell Joachim explain why he thinks meat houses might be a good innovation:

*Okay, not exactly ‘no’. Stephens says: “If the technology is being developed to improve animal welfare issues then consideration has to be given to the cell donor animal and the culture medium the cells are grown on. Today most cell culturing uses animal products – fetal bovine serum – as a culture medium.” Though these probably don’t compare with the large-scale slaughter of animals for our consumption, it might be a turn off for the most ardent animal lovers.

Will you reach into a wardrobe or chest of drawers and pull out some silvery, streamlined duds? No – that’s so 21^st century. You will reach instead into a vat of festering microbial slime and draw forth a perfectly formed outfit made not from cotton, or even glimmering metallic spandex, but from fibrous sheets of a skin-like material produced as a by-product of bacterial fermentation.

This is the vision (well, the clothing bit anyway) of Biocouture, a project started up by Suzanne Lee, a Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and author of “Fashioning the Future: tomorrowʼs wardrobe”.

In the course of writing her book, Suzanne interviewed biologist and materials scientist Dr David Hepworth, co-director of CelluComp, a Scottish biotech firm. The pair decided to collaborate and develop new materials for clothing by exploiting bacteria which, during fermentation, form a dense layer of cellulose microfibrils that can be harvested and dried. As a result, Biocouture was born.

Biocouture uses a mixed culture of bacterial cellulose, yeasts and other microorganisms, particularly Gluconacetobacter xylinus,which is added to a sugary green tea solution. The bacteria feed on the sugar and spin fine threads of cellulose, forming a skin on the surface of the liquid. When the skin is around 1.5cm thick, after two to three weeks, it is removed from the vat. It can then be moulded or dried flat and cut and sewn into a garment.

The biomaterial requires far less dye than other fibres and it doesn’t require pesticides in the way that plants such as cotton do, giving it an environmental edge. It’s also fully biodegradable.

But don’t rush out and buy a vat for your microbial goo-based wardrobe just yet. The Biocouture website warns that the material is super-absorbent. Getting caught in the rain would lead to a soggy mess, so the team is working on new, waterproof materials. The clothes have yet to be made commercially  available – the photo here is an experimental prototype. The similarity to skin also means the current batch of designs looks a bit creepy – they’d make excellent Halloween costumes.

Will we go the way of the woolly mammoth? Or can people from all sides of the political spectrum learn to work together on environmental issues? Pic: Wikimedia

If there is one reason to read Mark Lynas’ book The God Species, it’s because of his exposition of the ‘planetary boundaries’ concept. Lynas writes lucidly and passionately to make the case that there limits that the world’s delicate and complex ecosystem can operate within. This is based on the work of Johan Rockstrom and his group at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which was published in Nature in 2009 (You can see Rockstrom speak at TED). The theory is that it’s not just CO2 we should be worrying about, but also ocean acidification (which some scientists say is global warming’s “equally evil twin“), the nitrogen cycle, biodiversity, land use, freshwater, chemical pollution and aerosols (such as soot).

As it stands, we have already crossed the line on: CO2 emissions, which should be kept to 350 parts per million; biodiversity loss each year is ten times more than the safe limit; and the eutrophication of our rivers lakes and seas is creating biodiversity ‘dead zones’.

Mark Lynas argues that in our god-like dominion over the world and its species, we should take responsibility for keeping within the ‘safe operating-space’ of the planet’s various systems. Lynas writes: “With the primacy of science, there seems to be less and less room for the divine. God’s power is increasingly being exercised by us.” Lynas reasons that we have the power to save ourselves and our the fruitful ecology of our planet as long as we step up to our responsibility. He envisions that this will occur through the use of technology to progress our ability to produce energy and feed the the world’s people.

As you can probably imagine, Lynas’ manifesto therefore considers the most controversial topics for environmentalists today: genetically modified crops and nuclear energy, and to a lesser extent geo-engineering. These techno-fixes cause hot discussion in newspapers and blogs around the world. There has been ongoing debate over whether nuclear is an appropriate stop-gap ping-ponging between George Monbiot and Jonathon Poritt in the Guardian, and there has a spat between Scientific American blogger Christie Wilcox and Earth Island Journal editor John Mark over the pros and cons of organic versus industrial agriculture.

Lynas criticises the green movement for having rejected technological solutions to ecological challenges, and says of anti-GM activists (or which he was one, and has now repented), for example: “Opposing a technology a priori meant that lots of potential benefits were stopped or delayed for no good cause.”

Lynas states that technology is neutral, it is what we do with it that counts. This is something I really do agree with. Lynas uses hard science as the foundation for his polemic, so it is hard not to be infected with his enthusiasm upon reading the book. For instance, it is thought-provoking and a little shocking to read that organic farming is worse for the environment, on balance, because of the amount of land that would needed to feel the billions. I remain slightly sceptical, however, and feel a lingering uncertainty over some of these key environmental issues – mainly because of the complex web of factors to consider. Such as: Will GM really increase yields, asks the New York Times? Just how much power does is the nuclear lobby curry with our government in the UK, and will this cause key investment in renewables to stumble?

Another objection I have is that Lynas’ assertion that capitalism is a fine tool for us to create a new sustainable world appears a bit vague. One of his ideas is that one day we will get to a state in the economy where products are endlessly recycled. “At a conceptual level,” he writes, “what we must surely aim for is a closed-loop economy, where rates of recycling come as close to 100 per cent as practically possible.” Even with the closed-loop economy I don’t see how this can happen without coming up against a brick wall in the future. Surely the growth in the economy has to come from somewhere – does this not mean that the economy will always need feeding with more resources that will some day run out?

Lynas states electronics as one example of progress in using less resources, instead of producing tonnes of plastic of CDs or paper for books. This irks me, because of the ugly side of the electronics industry – the social and environmental downsides of making these devices and getting rid of them when the next new thing comes along (Disclaimer: yes, I am using a laptop to write this, and have a mobile, camera etc). Perhaps our dependence on our gadgets is better than relying on CDs and paper, but the electronics industry isn’t exactly a squeaky-clean closed-loop economy, and could be driving the destructive mining of rare earth minerals.

Robin McKie, reviewing The God Species in the Guardian was also irritated by some parts of the book, which he criticised as being inaccurate – however these appear to be minor flaws that McKie attributes to the rush the book was put together in. I also noticed this, especially when ecology jargon such as ‘albedo’ went unexplained in one chapter. This kind of slip-up made me wonder whether the book was aimed at other environmentalists or the layperson?

But even all these those quibbles weren’t enough to put me off what it an absorbing read. In one of the most fascinating passages in the book, Lynas describes how the Cancun climate agreement was hashed out. As one of the handful of people there as an eyewitness in his role as a sustainability adviser to the President of the Maldives, Lynas imparts an extraordinary shift in political power between the US and China. Lynas shares the frustrations of most environmentalists over the inefficacy of politicians to lead on the matter of curbing out climate change emissions.

For all of my criticisms, I do admire Lynes’ attempt to join the political ideologies of the right and left to work together to keep the planet safe. And – whether you like the analogy of humans to ‘god’ or not – the book is imbued with an intense feeling of our own power to destroy or to innovate and protect. For instance Lynas writes movingly of the megafauna extinctions, which he believes are strongly linked to human hunting. I actually had to call two people to tell them about the horror of this. But The God Delustion also delivers a rousing sense of optimism that we can solve the problems we have caused.

Please let me know what you think of my comments and your own views of the book if you have read it. Thanks!

An example of the latter is Ed Munn, now retired from a career at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, who worked on mitochondria, anaerobic fungi and the structure of serum proteins. In his work Ed used electron microscopy to investigate cellular structure, discovering two new proteins along the way.

He was struck by what he saw within cells, leading him to devise his own artistic style, which he calls “OneLinerImages”.

As the name suggests, each of Ed’s works is based on a single continuous line, inspired by the structure that makes it possible for cells to exist within the environment while remaining separate from it, the plasma membrane.

Ed says the invaginations that fill out the subjects of his drawings represent infoldings in the cell membrane, the complex protein-mediated interactions between the cell and the environment, and the internal membranes found in mitochondria, chloroplasts, the Golgi apparatus and the endoplasmic reticulum.

When his drawings consist of more than one animal, they are linked by the single continuous line. This, says Ed, is to emphasise “the co-ordinated activity of the myriads of individual cells of which multicellular organisms are composed and the beneficial interactions between individuals that are essential for the survival of populations”.

Ed’s intention is to highlight the hidden beauty of cellular structure to those with no experience of science. And what better way to do that than by using it as a basis for drawing cats? Everyone loves cats.

It’s hard to appreciate the level of detail in some of Ed’s larger drawings from the small image reproduced here, so I’d recommend visiting his website where some close-up pictures, and a wide selection of images (many of which are not cats) will give you a better idea of the work’s intricacy.

The image reproduced above is OneLinerImage: Kazan cat II, based on an 18th Century Russian satirical woodcut.

As we’re focused on the more creative ways of story telling here at Creatology, I will include a selection of news and feature  articles, blogs, pictures, data visualizations, videos and more. And don’t miss quotes and photos of the week towards the end.

Global health round up: 1 – 15 October 2011

News

- Former U.S President Jimmy Carter and World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan have announced a new funding campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease within the next few years.

- The cholera outbreak in Central and West Africa is ‘one of the worst ever’, says the UN. Meanwhile, the CDC has published a report on the lessons to be learned from the outbreak in Haiti.

- A new laboratory has been set up to track, research and combat infectious diseases, such as yellow fever and dengue, in Kenya, East Africa.

- The second phase of the Millennium Villages Project has been launched but there are concerns about its sustainability in the long run.

- A new law is being passed in France to enhance greater transparency among health experts following the Mediator drug scandal but there are fears that this is a political stunt than an attempt to improve the regulatory system.

- China takes action on its antibiotic problem.

- Unregulated drug trials in South America.

- World Mental Health Day was marked on 10 October.

Research

- The most common method of contraceptive in Africa doubles the risk of HIV infection, finds a study. Another shows that over 100,000 infections of HIV have been prevented thanks to safe-sex campaigns in India.

- Vaccine research and development should be the top priority of AIDS funding, according to a panel of Nobel-laureate economists.

- The number of TB cases is falling for the first time but there are concerns of a short fall in funding, a WHO report shows.

- Indoor air pollution, caused by primitive cooking and heating, kills 2 million people every year yet little is known about whether current interventions actually work and how they can be improved, say researchers.

Feature favourites

- HIV and aids drugs are difficult to access in many developing world countries but it is a particularly dangerous struggle for those from Pakistan‘s tribal regions.

- An inspiring story from Senegal to illustrate the movement across Africa to end female genital mutilation. A colourful slideshow accompanies the story.

- The Bulletin of the World Health Organization has a special theme issue on social determinants of health in the run up the World Conference on 19-21 October in Brazil.

Events

- The BMA hosted a two day conference on global health policy in London, bringing together ministers of health and other big public health figures. Topics of discussion included the need for less bureaucracy in clincal trials.

- Europe’s public health experts are not convincing governments of the importance of continued funding in health promotion and prevention during economically disadvantaged times, the European Health Forum heard.

Quote of the week

“Before you would never even dare to discuss this. It was taboo.
Now you have thousands of people coming to abandon it.”

- Mamadou Dia, governor of the Kolda region in Senegal, where a village has decided to abandon the widespread practice of female genital circumcision.

Picture of the week

Credit: Kate Holt/IRIN

World Sight Day was marked on 13 October. Here I’d like to share a slideshow of river blindness in Nigeria, Africa, produced by IRIN News.

River blindness is caused by the parasetic worm Onchocerca volvulus which is spread by the bite of an infected Simulium blackfly. It is the second leading infectious cause of blindness.

Around 270,000 people are blind because of the parasite and 500,000 have visual impairment. Almost 99% of infected persons live in Africa. Preventive measures and treatments are available but many people still don’t have access to these.

The photograph above, taken from the slideshow, shows a child leading a blind woman who contracted river blindness in Aguna village, Kachia, in Nigeria’s Kaduna State.

Coming up

- World Conference on Social Determinates of Health, 19-21 October, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

- World Health Summit, Berlin, Germany, 23-26 October.

- Science Question Time - future of pharmaceutical drugs, King’s College London, 25 October.

- Expanding the evidence base for HPV Vaccination in developing countries, webinar available, 31 October.

- Global Health Histories seminar on asbestos pollution, webinar available, 2 November.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Christopher Henshilwood from the universities of Bergen and Witwatersrand, believe that the orche was used for body painting or other forms of artwork. The research has been published in Science today.

Below you’ll see a beautiful set of photographs of the artefacts from the archaeological site. The two tool kits include abalone shells, ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones and hammerstones. In the second and third photographs, you can clearly see residue of the red ochre on the abalone shells.

The ochre – made from soft rock with red or yellow pigments - was most likely ground into a fine powder by the use of quartzite cobbles. It would then have been mixed and heated with crushed stones or bones in the abalone shells. Microscopic inspection of the abalone surfaces reveals markings from paint mixing.

To find out more, listen to Scientific American’s 60 second podcast on the discovery here.

Tomorrow I am liveblogging on Storify (and will also publish here) from the mock Ecocide trial, being held at the Supreme Court in London. The idea is to test whether corporations can be held to account under a new International Crime Against Peace.

Please let me know what you think of the timeline, whether it works to express some meaningful information, and whether you can think of more significant events to add in the comments below – it’s a work in progress! Thanks.

“For some time now, I’ve been struggling with what I call “social network emotional anaemia”. The online world – rich with the communities that I once loved and learned from, the connections I forged, the old schoolmates I rediscovered, the relationships that I cultivated and maintained – has become increasingly empty as a space to perform “friendship”. I’m no longer receiving the same degree of closeness I feel I need from the network; well, not from the people who matter most to me, at least.”

Whether my own struggle is especially to do with social media alienation or with anxiety over how to ‘curate’ myself on Twitter or Facebook, I don’t know (see cyborg anthropologist Amber Case’s brilliant TED talk on curating our online identities, below). I have become a lot more aware of being professional online, and that takes the edge of it, just a little. No more drunk tweeting or sweary updates when potential employers are following you. Am I taking this too seriously?

One thing I am not taking seriously is the pinboard site Pinterest. Although a tad controversial from the copyright point of view, it is a corner of the web that is simply fun to hang out in and share stuff in. I’m obsessed. If I don’t check in to Pinterest every day for my fix of smart design ideas, DIY crafty goodness and creative inspiration something is badly awry. It gives me the same kind of thrill as I initially felt with Twitter (and I really only like using fun and easy technology). I have no fear of judgement on Pinterest.

Although I started my Pinterest account with the idea of making virtual moodboards for my wedding next year, I am getting hooked on the whole idea of geek crafters and design freaks taking different spins on objects and lifestyles. Beautiful images sell ideas or stories in an attention-grabbing way. I’m inspired by pictures of infinity tattoos instead of wedding rings, ways to recycle rubbish into plant growers, and I appear to have a design fetish for clouds. The same ability to enthrall is true for gorgeous Tumblr blogs that showcase stunning images of nature, space, or biology.

Your visual cortex is located at the back of the brain

Of course it makes total sense that the visual should fascinate us so. The visual cortex is the largest part of the human brain. The best way to let this piece of information really sink in, and put it in perspective is to see it. Check out the below TEd talk of David McCandless at 9.19:

Sci-fi is celebrated in an exhibition at The British Library at the moment, “Out of this world – science fiction but not as you know it”, and it’s one that’s well worth a visit if you have the chance, assuming that you, like me, are a colossal geek. It’s free and runs until 25 September, so there is still plenty of time for London-based nerds to get along.

Being at the British Library, the exhibition is, of course, focused on books, although a few sci-fi classics from television and film make an appearance too. A life-sized replica Tardis in the middle of the exhibition space should clue you up as to “Who” I mean (profound apologies).

K-1889, the steampunk K-9 by James Richardson-Brown

This tour of the most distant reaches of the human imagination begins with what is widely regarded as the oldest known science fiction book, and it’s a lot older than you might think. Lucian of Samosata wrote his True History, a satire on travellers’ tales that includes a story about a trip to the moon, in the second century AD. In it, he imagines armies of the sun and moon at war and includes some colourful sounding aliens – horse-ants, dog-faced men and moon dwellers with retractable eyes and tails like cabbage leaves anyone?

Other aged works of early sci-fi on show include John Mandeville’s Travels from the 14th-century, long thought to be a factual account but now widely regarded as a fiction, and Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and the Sun, written in 1687, which includes space travel.

As was the case in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which is also on display, many authors used science fiction to satirise and poke fun at the politics and social mores of the time. Voltaire’s Micromégas of 1753, for example, includes a pair of extraordinarily tall aliens, one from Saturn and another from a planet that orbits Sirius, who laugh at human wars. Unable to distinguish between the sides, they describe the folly as “100,000 madmen wearing hats”.

Also of historical note are Jane Webb’s The Mummy (1827), thought to be the first science fiction book in the modern sense, and Philip Wylie’s Gladiator (1930), which was perhaps the inspiration behind the creation of Superman in 1932. Of course, all the old favourites such as Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, John Wyndham, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke are represented too, among many others.

Science fiction magazines also feature, including Amazing Stories, which coined the term “science fiction” in 1929, and Interzone, the longest running UK sci-fi magazine – founded in 1982 and still going strong today.

The exhibition doesn’t just concentrate on historical sci-fi and there is much to see that is more modern in origin. Authors such as William Gibson, Iain M. Banks, Alan Moore, Margaret Atwood, John Brunner and Kurt Vonnegut all get a look-in, and there’s space for some Manga too in the form of Ikigami (2008) by Motoro Mase.

There’s also some fantastic dated sci-fi artwork to have a giggle at, a selection of audio and video snippets, and Clay 9,000, a robot that recounts stories of automatons from literature, including such favourites as Marvin the paranoid android and Clay’s namesake, Hal 9,000.

It’s a great exhibition that covers the history of science fiction comprehensively and will satisfy your inner (or indeed outer) geek, whether you’re a fan of V for Vendetta, The War of the Worlds or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

I am also really interested to see how you like stories told in Storify. Like it or loathe it?

The topic was also the subject of a recent TED talk, in which Marcel Dicke proclaimed that insects can hold their own against meat in terms of flavour. Well, perhaps we were eating the wrong insects, but I would have to disagree with Marcel on that one, based on my own recent experience.

I was “lucky” enough to have the opportunity to try these rather undesirable delicacies at London’s Natural History Museum on Friday night (that’s right, I spend my Friday nights chomping on insects with strangers – what of it?) at an event called “Edible insects – food for the future?”.

You eat with your eyes first: fried giant crickets, toasted weaver ants and bamboo worms

On the menu were meal worm larvettes (think larvae) and giant mole crickets as a starter, followed by a main of toasted weaver ants, bamboo worms and fried giant crickets, all topped off with a dessert consisting of toasted silkworm pupae and chocolate covered ant wafers.

With the exception of the meal worm larvettes (crunchy and slightly salty – a bit like puffed rice), everything on offer was less than delicious. “Musty” was probably the flavour that came to mind most often, and the bamboo worms and silkworm pupae had a worryingly cheesy or fishy taste.

“Something tells me these are never going to catch on,” I though to myself as I picked a giant cricket’s leg from between my teeth. The main contribution of the ants in the chocolate ant wafers was to spoil some otherwise perfectly good chocolate with an unpleasant bitter aftertaste. All in all, it was not a culinary experience I will be rushing to replicate.

Interest in eating insects has arisen again recently because of the ongoing human population boom. If there are nine billion people by 2050 as predicted, so the thinking goes, perhaps eating insects will help stave off the inevitable food shortages that will follow. And they are rich in protein, ubiquitous and cheap – it’s just a shame they are so unappealing as foodstuffs.

Of course, the lack of food in some parts of the world isn’t down to there not being enough of the stuff anyway. It’s more a question of how the food we do have is distributed. You could also argue that in the west, where we are more concerned about obesity than starvation, the last thing we need is more food (although I am reliably informed they are very low in fat).

The somewhat unsavoury feast was accompanied by some interesting facts from host Jo Kessler, Stuart Hine, an entomologist at the museum, and Daniel Creedon, head chef at Archipelago, a London restaurant that counts various insects among the items on its menu.

According to the panel, insects are starting to catch on as a luxury foodstuff and can be bought in some of London’s most well-heeled grocers. Archipelago is also a success story, and doesn’t seem to have any problem attracting adventurous diners. The most popular item on the menu, says Daniel, is the “Love Bug Salad” which includes wok-fried locusts and crickets. And insects have apparently become popular enough to warrant attention from the UK’s Food Standards Agency.

Back in 1855, Holt felt the working man should supplement his diet with various creepy-crawlies, dreaming up such delights as wireworm sauce and slug soup. We were, at least, spared those.

A mosquito on human skin. Credit: USDA

Every year, 50-100 million people are infected with the dengue fever virus, which is transmitted to humans through the bites of female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, mainly in South East Asia and South America. With no vaccine and no specific treatment, serious complications arise in around 500, 000 cases and 22, 000 deaths. It is a leading cause of hospitalisation and death among young children and it can place a considerable financial strain on middle to low income families.

So the development of a new control to stop the virus comes as welcome news. Two studies published in Nature show that the spread of dengue fever through a wild mosquito population could be prevented by infecting mosquitoes with a common bacterium called Wolbachia pipientis.

“The presence of the Wolbachia in the mosquito completely blocks the ability of the dengue virus to be able to grow. If it can’t grow in the mosquito, then it can’t be transmitted between people,” said Scott O’Neill, a co-author of the studies, from the University of Queensland, Australia.

In the first study, the researchers transferred a strain of the Wolbachia bacteria from fruit flies to mosquitoes. They discovered that the bacteria inhibited the growth of the dengue fever virus and had very little effect on the mosquito otherwise in terms of health and lifespan.

The next stage of the research involved the release of 300, 000 mosquitoes infected with the bacteria into the wild in two remote towns in Australia. After five weeks, the researchers found that almost all of the wild mosquitoes were infected with the bacteria.

“There has been intense interest in developing and disseminating  mosquitoes that cannot transmit dengue, but the roadblock to this approach has been that mosquitoes modified to resist dengue tend to have lower fitness than wild type mosquitoes and to die out when mixed with wild type mosquito,” said Kathryn Hanley, an associate professor of biology, who was not involved in either study, from the New Mexico State University, USA.

“In this context, the development of a Wolbachia strain that both limits dengue transmission and spreads through a natural population is extremely significant,” she said.

It is uncertain how the Wolbachia is able to suppress the virus but the researchers believe that the bacteria might boost the immune system of the mosquito to help it to fight off the virus or that the bacteria competes for key molecules, such as fatty acids, that the virus needs to replicate. “The jury is still out on which of those two mechanism is critical, or it might be a combination of both,” said O’Neill.

Scott O'Neill inspects Wolbachia Aedes aegypti. Credit: Eliminate Dengue Program

“These studies mark the first time that a deliberate Wolbachia-mediated population- replacement strategy has been attempted in nature, and herald the beginning of a new era in the control of mosquito-borne diseases,” said Jason Rasgon, who is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA, in an commentary published in Nature.

He wrote that the “groundbreaking” approach could be applied to other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, such as malaria, and has the advantage of not having any negative effects on the ecosystem because the mosquito population is changed rather than eliminated.

Whether the spread of Wolbachia in “the highly variable world-wide range of dengue virus” is possible and able to “provide consistent protection against viral strains of different genetic make up” remains to be seen, he said. To determine these, the researchers will need to test the Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in endemic areas, he added.

But Hanley does not believe that this approach alone will be enough to eliminate dengue fever. “The best efforts of the public health community in vector control have never been sufficient to globally eradicate a microbial pathogen, though they have been sufficient to eliminate pathogens regionally,” she said.

Her belief is that eradication of dengue fever will only be possible with the development of a vaccine. “The Wolbachia strain would have to be combined with an efficacious dengue vaccine, something that I’m hopeful will become available in the next ten to twenty years,” she said. (There is a promising vaccine development in progress, read my article published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization).

She also highlighted the inability of the Wolbachia to entirely prevent the replication of the virus in the mosquito as a potential problem: ”It is equivalent, in some ways, to vaccinating the mosquitoes with what is known as an ‘imperfect vaccine’ – one that limits but does not eliminate pathogen replication. This approach, if used broadly, may impose selection for higher replication and therefore higher virulence in dengue virus.  The Wolbachia itself is a living organism and may evolve in unexpected way.”

The researchers acknowledge that more work needs to be carried out to determine whether this method can work to eliminate the virus on a global scale. ”There are a number of hurdles we still need to overcome before we get to the stage where Wolbachia can control dengue,” said Ary Hoffman, a co-author of the studies, based at the University of Melbourne, Australia. “These are early days. But at the moment, we are very hopeful.”

The researchers plan to test the new approach in endemic countries, such as, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil over the next year.

This is a longer version of my article published on the COSMOS magazine website.

Haeckel's Actiniae

We like to keep things topical here at Creatology and, with that in mind, I’d like to talk about a book published in Germany at the turn of the 20^th-century. Okay, so topical it ain’t, but no blog focused on the interaction between the worlds of art and science would be complete without reference to biologist, philosopher, artist and all round overachiever, Ernst Haeckel.

Not content with coining such enduring terms as “Darwinism”, “ecology” and “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (admittedly, the latter turned out to be inaccurate but it’s impressively snappy nonetheless), Haeckel was the first to postulate the existence of a missing link between apes and humans, even going as far as to describe and name his theoretical proto-man. And last, but by no means least, he was also something of a genius when it came to art and design.

Haeckel's Ascidiae

Despite some dubious views on race, Haeckel was very well travelled and wherever he took his microscope it was accompanied by a sketchbook and a set of watercolours. His sketches were later turned into more than 1,000 engravings, 100 of which were brought together in Kunstformen der Natur, or Art Forms in Nature, published in full in 1904.

It’s this wonderful work that I’d like to introduce to the uninitiated in this blog post. It’s a book that has provided inspiration to generations of artists and scientists, and looking at the images here, I am sure you’ll understand why.

Looking at his work, it seems Haeckel either saw the natural world as very ordered, perhaps unsurprising as Darwin’s theories had only recently suggested the existence of concrete patterns of relatedness running through nature, or chose to impose the strict order of the graphic designer on what he saw in the field and through the microscope.

Haeckel's Lacertilia

He seems to have applied the symmetry and perfection of form often seen in the microscopic world to the macroscopic, with the result that his drawings of larger animals are somewhat idealised, and lack the imperfection and asymmetry we see around us in the real world.

In terms of identifying patterns in seeming chaos, there is something of the psychedelic about Haeckel’s artwork, an almost fractal quality, long before 1960s drug culture or Mandelbrot sets existed, and his style is considered to be a forerunner of the Art Nouveau movement that included such luminaries as Klimt, Gaudí and Rennie Mackintosh, among others.

I’m sure you’ll agree that his works are extraordinary. Ernst Haeckel straddled the worlds of art and science like few others.

Thanks to Prestel Publishing for a review copy of Art Forms in Nature.

To find out the answer to all this, and more, read on. But first a quick guide to making your own (probably not suitable for small children on account of the stuck-on sequins).

The joys of making a felt bacterium

You’ll need: Some felt, some wool or thick thread, some craft glue, some sequins, some newspaper to stuff your bacterium with, and some imagination. Let’s go!

1. Cut out your bacterium shape from felt. Round for staphylococcus, rod-shaped like salmonella or waved for the spiral-shaped Treponema pallidum that causes syphilis. I opted to make a squeezy staphylococcus.

Put two sheets of felt together to cut them identically for the front and back

2. Sew or stick on some wool string or cut up felt for the DNA. For DNA, bacteria tend to have one circular chromosome all ruched up and squiggly [there's quite a good illustration of bacterial DNA here]. Bacteria don’t have a nucleus so go wild with that DNA and put those squiggles everywhere.

Sewing on the chromosome

My attempt at a squiggly bacterial chromosome

Add some plasmids if you want. They are little circular bits of DNA that aren’t as important as the main chromosome. Otherwise known as more wool or felt.

3. Go crazy and stick some sequin ribosomes on your bacteria. In case you didn’t know, ribosomes translate genetic code from DNA into amino acids, which make up proteins.

Gluing the sequins on. It's better to sew them if you're really handy with a needle and thread or if you want a more kiddy-friendly toy

4. Sew the felty bacterium together at its edges and stuff it with some ripped up newspaper before you sew it up the whole way.

Stuffing the staphylococcus

5. Add some whip-like tails called flagella, or hair-like fimbrae or pili.

A couple of flagellums on my bacterium

6. Add any other decorations? A face maybe? It’s your bacterium after all.

Mustashioed bacterium

That’s it. And now for the moment of truth. I can reveal that Joseph won with his handcrafted Clostridium. Creatology FTW! “They are straight rods – purple under a Gram stain and are peritrichous – i.e. they have flagella uniformly distributed over the surface of the cell,” explains Creatology’s Joseph. Gram staining is a method for identifying and classifying bacteria, turning bacteria with a thick peptidoglaycan layer in their cell walls violet – those with only a thin layer don’t stain. Note that Joe’s bacterium (below) has purple edges and flagella to show that the Clostridium is Gram positive. I feel sure that it was Joseph’s craft-skillery and knowledge-geekery that resulted in his triumph.

Joe with "Charles the Clostridium" in one hand and his prize in the other

So… it was fun. But did we learn anything?

Joseph says: “It was a great way of learning about bacteria – I will now never forget what Clostridia are like, because I spent several hours stitching one together.”

As well as an instruction sheet with facts there was also a bacteria general knowledge quiz. I think that the quiz served to highlight what I didn’t know about bacteria as much as what I did. Which is useful because it teaches you not to assume you know anything when you haven’t studied biology since the age of 16. Overall, I think you would have to be at least mildly interested in science (and not just the cocktails at the bar) to want to attend an event like this. But even those that have graduated in microbiology can just have fun creating their own cuddly bacterium.

What do you think: Are these kinds of events useful for getting lay people engaged in science?

While editing an outdoors adventure magazine a few years back, I interviewed many famous British sailors including Dame Ellen MacArthur, Dee Caffari, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, but I was immediately struck by 31-year-old London-born Lia because she is uniquely an artist and sailor mingled in equal parts. She has the practicality and physicality of someone who has sailed and rowed across the Atlantic, but the inner calling to create. She tells me it runs in the family. “My grandfather was a portrait artist… [and] all the Dittons sailed.” But the seeds of Lia’s own future were sown in an escape to Asia:

“I studied fine art in the era where Charles Saatchi was God and being nominated for the Turner Prize was the highest accolade. The BritPop 90s left me entirely disillusioned with the materialistic turn that modern art was taking,” Lia writes to me to explain, “In the final term of my first year at London’s Chelsea College of Art, I orchestrated a stone-carving trip to India to rediscover quintessential sculpture.” A six-month trip around India became a year-long trip taking in Asia, the Maldives, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt. She returned transformed, and with a taste for the adventure ocean expeditions could offer. She tells me:

“Much to the chagrin of my family, I attempted to become a professional sailor. As a fit 60kg, I was a welcome addition to the 18 plus male teams as the spinnaker packer and spent a lot of time below decks as the boat thumped upwind to the next mark. But as we hurtled downwind (hopefully with the spinnaker seamlessly flying), the boat resonating like a polished flute blown by quivering lips, I knew that single-handed was the only way to ever drive. Caught up in the beauty of the moment, I wasn’t really interested in winning or being the first. I just wanted to know what it was like to take hold of the wheel that drove the juggernaut, surfing waves in succession, etching musical notes from carbon fibre as it went.”

I ask Lia how her experiences on the seas have inspired her art? She replies:

'My think tank', pic: Lia Ditton

“Being surrounded by water and water only, out of sight of land, alone, in the throes of an ocean is something that very few people can comprehend and in any case everytime it’s different. My feeling about art is that it’s one person’s take on the world. Art is my way of communicating those experiences or elements of those experiences in a way that may, on some level, be understood.”

In some small way, I identified with Lia’s attraction to the ocean. I spent two long summers as a dinghy sailing and windsurfing instructor. This was before I really knew I loved science. But I was teaching it: The physics of the way that sails work and windsurfing boards or skiffs plane, how to counteract the forces in the sail, how it is possible to sail upwind; the biology of sunburn, jellyfish sting and mosquito bite infection; as for chemistry, too much pomada (a lemonade and gin drink) gets you drunk as an old sea dog.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive, more visceral, then I did on the water. I can virtually smell the sea just looking at Lia’s pictures on Flickr. On a good day’s sailing or windsurfing, I felt ‘in the zone’. In Jeff Warren’s fantastic book The Head Trip, his verdict is that ’the zone’ is: “absolute integration of body and mind, spiritual experience for the practised Everyman.” It’s the kind of feeling when everything is going right (most of the time it doesn’t – then it’s chalked down to ‘practise’), everything is in perfect harmony, you are quietly confident.

Lia Ditton, self-portrait

Lia reveals: “Sailing puts me ‘in the zone’ for art! I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in Mother Nature. I feel very much at peace at sea, even piloting a ship through a storm. This is my think tank. The place of my inspiration. As William Turner reputedly had himself tied to the rail of a fishing trawler in rough weather, in order to experience the subject of his paintings, so I set off across the Atlantic to explore the nature of absolute solitude and the question, ‘what is it like to be completely and utterly alone?!’ ”

Lia has managed to successfully combine a life of solo adventure and racing on the ocean with a degree in fine art and popular acclaim for her work. “I set out to marry my two passions; to strike out in all my duality, as an artist whose medium was sailing,” Lia tells me, “I began that journey by returning to Chelsea to finish my degree, as an entrant in the Faraday-Mill OSTAR single-handed transatlantic race from England to America.”

In 2005 Lia was the youngest competitor and the only woman to complete the transatlantic race, which took 28 days in a 40ft-long trimaran. After this, Lia went back to art school to finish off her degree, and in June 2006 spent 28 days living onboard her trimaran re-living the experience of her transatlantic race, even down to the details of what she ate and how she slept.  This feat of confinement in the courtyard of the Chelsea College of Art won Lia the tag “David Blaine meets EllenMcArthur” from BBC radio DJ Simon Mayo.

Lia wrote on her blog at the time: “With 120 litres of drinking water, 74 packets of instant add-water meals and a sleeping bag, I am entirely self-sufficient. As the breeze gusts, funnelled between the Tate Britain and the Chelsea College of Art and Design buildings, I am subjected to the same rigours – sails up and down, trimmed this way and that in a performance artwork that streams 24/7 to my website and big screens at Galerie Emourlot in New York. I have exchanged the Atlantic Ocean for a sea of people – visitors from near and faraway shores.”

The trimaran lands, pic: Lia Dutton

Her installation, Absolute Solitude: One Woman, One Boat, was about revealing what solo sailing involves and a re-enactment of loneliness. Although, with 1,000 visitors to the ‘interactive’ exhibit, Lia had plenty of people to speak with.

Getting the trimaran to the space near Tate Britain was a feat in itself. It took seven months of meticulous planning and input from a team of 36 people so the trimaran could be sailed up the Thames and hauled into the courtyard. Permission was needed from 15 different government bodies, including the permission to close four lanes of traffic on Vauxhall Bridge for 12 minutes.

Following this, Lia’s next big project was creating an artwork out of a yacht by penning her thoughts and feelings on the walls, during a solo race, the Route de Rhum 2006. The boat was then going to be sliced in half to display the guts of both the vessel and Lia’s eviscerated thoughts. A bit of a departure from the satellite phone or at-sea blog, then.

I asked Lia why she wrote this on-board diary on her walls and what has happened to the yacht now? The whole story as Lia related it is fascinating, so I’ve included all of it:

Lia on the yacht she sailed for the Route de Rhum, pic: Mark Lloyd

“I entered the race with the sole intention of writing my journal of the experience on the inside skin of the vessel. At the time I was fascinated by Bachelard’s ideas on the “Poetics of Space” – our relationship with the buildings we live in. Finance took a miraculous four days to procure, thanks to a group of entrepreneurial individuals who bought into the idea of the boat being cut in half in order to present the diary as two life-sized half hulls. The half hulls – complete with mast and keel halves would then go on tour to a series of galleries including MOMA Rio.

I could not have predicted what actually transpired. By day 19 (of the 23 day crossing) I stopped writing on the cabin interior. I realized that I was choosing to sleep cold and damp outside, rather than live in the vestibule of yesterday’s mind, sharing the same space with the day before yesterday’s nightmares and fears: The penned euphoric highs and abysmal lows of single-handed sailing.

Meanwhile… outside of my microcosm, my company of investors were being bought up by the dominant shareholder and regretfully by arrival in Guadeloupe any right to the boat (or the diary) was no longer mine.  The boat was still going to be sliced in half and still destined to be a travelling exhibit… only without me. In a strange twist of fate, the skipper who endeavoured to sail the boat from the Caribbean to the shipyard in North America became deliriously seasick and abandoned the vessel, when a cruise ship came to his mayday. Unfortunately the boat was dismasted (and probably holed) in the process and has not been seen since.”

This just shows you what precarious worlds sailing and art are. And indeed, it hints at the precariousness of our mental stability, as well as the courage it takes to face the elements alone. So what’s next for the intrepid sailor-artist?

Lia dismantling a generator. Pic: Lia Ditton

Lia is currently working as an engineer on a boat out in Rhode Island in the US, with the aim to garner the necessary sea time to become a qualified MCA Y4 licensed marine engineer. I ask about how it feels to be a woman in such a male-dominated industry? Lia says: “The crew agency, which put me forward for my current position as an engineer on a 100ft jet boat, said that they only know of five female engineers working professionally on superyachts around the world. When I first started studying marine engineering three years ago, everyone in my class managed to get an apprenticeship except me. Having since rowed the Atlantic, whatever barrier stood in my way then seems to have dissolved.” Her advice for young women is: “If you’re driven to do it, ignore the naysayers; follow your gut and stick to your own path!”

Lia is also working on a remarkable project to create music from sailing boats. You can hear her talk about her conception of the project on YouTube. The experimental digital music is synthesised and modulated from the movements of marine electronic equipment, which are hooked up to an Open Boat Orchestra box. Lia has worked to make her idea come to life with ex-Duran Duran sound engineer, Mark Ty-Wharton. See them test the principle in the this video.

Lia writes that: “The Open Boat Orchestra is about celebrating our experience of the sea, through the universal language of music.” – and it seems to work well, in “in concert” trials. The project is on hold, waiting for development money.

But engineering and inventing ways to make music from sailing aren’t all. Lia is also due to start a Masters in Professional Writing starting in October at Falmouth University, UK. She says: “It’s time to tell my story”. I, for one, can’t wait to read it.

The inevitable evolutionary effects of global warming no.1: Homo sapiens

The science/art overlap creates some interesting memes. Take science tattoos, for example, or anatomically-inspired baking or pretty much anything made in the likeness of the DNA double-helix. We will be flagging up trends in cool science-themed art, and even attempting to make some ourselves.

We also want to explore how the marriage of science and art can propagate emotional impacts beyond the bald facts – and perhaps even change society. We want to answer questions such as: How can art help us engage with scientific issues? And how can it turn us on to living sustainably and healthily? Whether the challenge is climate change, biodiversity at breaking point or global health, how can art communicate complex issues?

We also want to celebrate the sheer aesthetic beauty of science. Petri dish art, anyone?

But we would like to do this in a way which is creative itself, and fun and quirky. We’re going to play with different formats, different styles of presentation, multimedia, cartoons, poetry, origami, recipes – anything goes.

Some things might work brilliantly. Some things might fail to hit the mark. But hopefully it will be an interesting ride over the course of the year.

Feed it back

Some people think that doing what you love actually makes you less likely to succeed as you are too close to your work, and less likely to accept constructive criticism. We all love science journalism, so the most important thing for us is your feedback on how we can improve our posts and what you enjoy.

Please also contact us and confess what fires you up with inspiration so we can address your artistic passions in future posts.

Introducing…

Who are we? We are three graduates from City University London’s science journalism masters programme, which we joined in its inaugural year (2009-2010). Between us, we’ve worked at some of the finest media institutions in the UK, including Nature, New Scientist, the Guardian, and the Financial Times.

We are: Joseph Milton, Christine Ottery and Gozde Zorlu.

- Joseph Milton is an evolutionary biologist who gradually mutated into a journalist over time.

- Christine Ottery a science and environment journalist who likes to make things.

- Gozde Zorlu is a science journalist who has worked on an award-winning investigation, and has a special interest in global health.

To find out more about us, please read our profiles.

We will occasionally be joined by other friends and collaborators from the course or anyone we can rope in to help.

We hope you enjoy our blog posts. If you want to be super connected you can also find us on Twitter @creatologyblog or Facebook.

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