She Sells Seashells By The Seashore,

is the start of a tongue twister,

it goes like this, 

She sells seashells by the seashore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

crikey I can barely write it never mind say it! but back to seashells, millennia of natural forces have robbed ancient seashells of their various pigments, but in a new study titled, 'Diversity of Fossilised Colouration Patterns on Coral Reef-Associated Cone Snail (Gastropoda: Conidae) Shells from the Neogene of the Dominican Republic', published today, well 6 hours ago as I write this, researchers discovered that by putting the shells of fossilised cone snails under an ultraviolet light, they could see what the shells may have looked like millions of years ago, looking at the picture above,
 the top row: seashells in natural light, 

middle row: seashells in UV light, 

bottom row: what the seashells would have looked like in their prime, 

in the paper the authors write, 'clearly much more work needs to be done to better understand the compounds responsible for shell colouration, that said, it seems that oxidation--caused either naturally by exposure of shells to sunlight over prolonged periods of time, or artificially by soaking in bleach for several days--plays a role in causing formerly pigmented regions of fossil shells to fluoresce under UV light, though the reason is not currently understood', under the light, areas of organic matter, where the pigment was most pronounced, light up, the researchers are still trying to figure out what compound inside the shell causes it to fluoresce, but they speculate in the paper that it might have to do with oxidation, when oxygen molecules interact with other substances, all of this from some fossilised seashells.

What Am I Watching?

was my first thought, 

 but it soon became apparent, reading the Sandford News, 

a trio of researchers at Stanford recently published an article in Nature that explains the curious attraction found in droplets of everyday food colouring, the paper is the culmination of hundreds of experiments that began in 2009 when Nate Circa was working on an unrelated experiment as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Circa noticed that when drops of food colouring were placed on a slide they exhibited bizarre behaviours: identical colours would find matches while different colours would seemingly hunt each other, Circa soon teamed up with Manu Prakash and Adrien Benusiglio who began working on a series of increasingly refined studies to understand why these single droplets appeared to mimic biological processes, resulting in behaviours that looked like chasing, dancing, or avoidance, one of the keys was the interaction of two different compounds found in food colouring: water and propylene glycol, 

Tom Abate writing for Stanford explains, 'the critical fact was that food colouring is a two-component fluid, in such fluids, two different chemical compounds coexist while retaining separate molecular identities, the droplets in this experiment consisted of two molecular compounds found naturally in food colouring: water and propylene glycol, the researchers discovered how the dynamic interactions of these two molecular components enabled inanimate droplets to mimic some of the behaviours of living cells', this complex behaviour is something called artificial chemotaxis which Manu Prakash explains in layman’s terms in this video,

the physical properties of these fluids give rise to this immense complexity of behaviour, for example, chasing and sensing each other, and very much what we call artificial chemotaxis, which is the idea in biology that one single cell can sense where its enemy is, and it brings up all its machinery, and it chases that enemy to try to eat it, all in a couple of drops of food colouring, amazing!

I Have Never Really Thought About This Much,

but I guess this is a true statement,

'tanks rarely live to see the next war', is the statement and I guess it is true, the first of the armoured lumbering war machines were obsolete as soon as World War I’s armistice was signed, after World War II, the United States tried to reuse Sherman tanks in Korea, and found them horribly outmatched by new Russian designs, on to today Russia is about to start using a brand-new tank, here’s how the country’s new 'Armata' will work, according to a translation by the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, the Armata’s stats are roughly comparable to the U.S. Army’s M1 Abrams main battle tank, though the Armata is slightly faster and slightly lighter, more interesting than the raw numbers of the vehicle are the defencive systems installed on the tank, one, the 'Afganit active protection complex' is, in theory, 'capable of intercepting shaped-charged grenades, anti-tank missiles, and sub-calibre projectiles,' which it will likely do by shooting rockets at incoming projectiles, which is a tad in the future, however it could be using a force field type of defence, like this shockwave attenuation system, the patents that Boeing have filed seem to be pretty much up to the job, it basically uses an electric arc, a laser-induced arc and a microwave-induced arc, 

in the patent illustration, the force field protects a military HMMWV, but the design is written broadly enough that it can potentially protect everything from ships to submarines, offshore platforms, ground vehicles, buildings, and even humans, we have come a long way from a sling shot and a bow and arrow.

We Did Not Go Out Today, So No Pictures,

but I did 'surf' the net and found this new plant,

as many of you know we grow some tomatoes, in fact we have become self sufficient in them and will be for the next few weeks, so I was excited when I saw this new plant, a TomTato, an extraordinary plant that produces both tomatoes and potatoes has been developed in the UK, just one of these can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes above the ground, and a decent crop of white potatoes below, all we will need now are some grape vines to make wine to complement the food!

after our evening meal Steve called round to give me some help on our blog, the counter has not been working for a week or more, and reinstalling it was beyond my limited capabilities, so in no time flat it was fixed, we watched a few from Top Gear whilst making a sizeable withdrawal from the vodka bottle, after saying our thanks and farewells we watched a couple of quiz shows and rounded off the evening with ¡ThreeAmigos! great fun, then towards the midnight hour we were off to bed.

We Have Been Watching The Curse Of Oak Island,

the story of treasure hunters,

who have yet to find any treasure, but how about this hoard to look for, one of the largest treasures the ancient world had ever known: half a million pounds of gold and a million pounds of silver, but unlike Oak Island some of it has already been found, in Romania at Sarmizegetusa, high in the central mountains, was once the capital and sacred centre of the Dacians, a civilisation crushed by the Roman Emperor Trajan in two bloody wars more than 1,900 years ago, the city levelled and forgotten except by a few who still to this day dig in the steep valleys, the full extent of the looting became clear some years ago, when some of the illegal excavators were arrested and confessed to police, lot 26 as it was known of bracelets, they told police, was found in 1998, on top of a hoard of a thousand gold coins, a small team of treasure hunters hit the mother lode in May 2000, according to Romanian police, their metal detector pinged over a stone slab about two feet wide, embedded in a steep hillside, underneath, in a small chamber made of flat stones propped against each other,they found ten spiralling, elaborately decorated Dacian bracelets, all solid gold, one weighed a hefty two and a half pounds (1.2 kilogrammes), now this if it were legal is a treasure hunt I would really like to go on!

What To Do,

with those small pencil stubs left over when they become to small to use?

 use them to create micro art, Benjamin Kreze is a talented artist and inventor working in the fields of painting, photography and new media installation,

 some of his most striking artworks are his amazing micro carvings made from the graphite of small pencil stubs held in small glass scientific jars and tubes,

Kreze uses special x-acto knives to sculpt his creations which can be measured in millimetres, this painstaking process requires a gentle touch and lots of patience, speaking about his work he says "I always found the micro world appealing, that is why I started making these little things." for more images of his work have a look here, absolutely amazing, there is no way I could even think of making something so small.

The Last Post Of The Day,

hopefully you did not get 'April Fooled!',

going back to the ‘TomTato' what you thought it was a April Fools gag? shame on you, as if I would do such a thing! the plant is actually 100 percent natural, and not genetically modified as one would expect, TomTato, a.k.a ‘veg plot in a pot’, was developed through high-tech grafting by Thompson and Morgan, a horticultural firm based in the town of Ipswich, in Suffolk, England, although similar plants have been created in the UK before, this is the first time someone has managed to produce a commercially viable version, according to Guy Barter of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), taste was a real problem with past varieties, but the TomTato seems to have hit the jackpot, “We’re looking at it with real interest because Thompson and Morgan are a really reputable firm with a lot to lose, but I wouldn’t rule out that it could be a very valuable plant to them,” he explained, “In the past we’ve never had any faith in the plants – they’ve not been very good – but grafting has come on leaps and bounds in recent years.”

and as if to prove it is real, here is the video, Thompson and Morgan director Paul Hansord said that TomTato is a result of a decade’s worth of hard work, He first got the idea for the plant 15 years ago, when he visited a garden in the US where someone had planted a potato under a tomato as a joke, that’s when he realised that the two could be grafted together because they belong to the same family, He has been working on the tomato ever since, and seems to have finally perfected it, “It has been very difficult to achieve because the tomato stem and the potato stem have to be the same thickness for the graft to work,” he said, but after much trial and error, and with the help of grafting specialists, he managed to hit upon a method of producing a variety of potato with just the right-sized shoot, the TomTato was unveiled in September, and is available to gardeners across UK at £14.99 ($24) per 3.5-inch plant, it is expected to appeal to people who don’t have much space in their gardens to grow a large variety of plants, it can be grown inside or outside, in a large patio or a 40-litre bag, I wonder when they will become available in Thailand?