1

General Science / Re: Do germinating tomatoes kill off competing plants?

« on: 12/06/2024 07:30:23 »

Nice video and an interesting observation.

Yes, this is possible. Some trees - acer family - release toxins that suppress the growth of rival species, ostensibly to give their own offspring a better chance.

I suppose there are two things possibly happening here with the tomato: one is that the dominant plant does release things locally that destroy the competing plants. The other is that the dominant plant hungrily devours all available nutrients, and water, and the smaller plants cannot compete. So once they run out of supplies from their seed, they perish. Or it could be both.

2

Technology / Re: Does regenerative braking have a hazardous complication?

« on: 29/04/2024 10:01:06 »

I completely agree. Definitely safer if the car behind knows you are slowing down.

That said, in my previous car, and in my wife's present (non EV) car, just taking your foot off the accelerator (and hence slowing down) does not trigger a brake light warning, although the rate of deceleration is obviously considerably slower.

Maybe it's a rate thing? Is there a standard set by the industry to address this? ie slow down at more than a specific rate and that's regarded as "braking" and needs a warning light?

3

Technology / Re: Does regenerative braking have a hazardous complication?

« on: 28/04/2024 11:52:05 »

but neither function appears to activate the rear brake lights...

My car (fully EV, Polestar 2) can be set to one pedal or two pedal driving; the former makes maximum use of regenerative breaking and I barely need to use the brakes. It definitely puts the brake lights on in this mode.

So maybe this is a foible of some makes?

4

Technology / Re: What are the best options for webstore Credit Card processing?

« on: 24/05/2023 08:30:32 »

I wonder how long it will be before another poster pops up with a magical solution and a link to their product that directly addresses this user's enquiry? Won't that be a coincidence...

Sorry if I sound cynical and you are a genuine poster, but we see this so often that I'm highly suspicious of posts like yours. If this is the case, I apologies for my glib reply.

5

General Science / Re: How does ChatGPT work?

« on: 18/05/2023 09:13:18 »

In case you did not catch it, we recently published an episode of the Naked Scientists podcast on Artificial Intelligence and chatGPT, which might be helpful.

6

Just Chat! / Re: Latest Forum Updates and Upgrades

« on: 17/05/2023 17:28:54 »

SERVER MIGRATION UPDATE - May 2023

Hello everyone. I wanted to bring you up to speed on what's been happening in the background recently.

After 17 years, the company that had hosted us through most of this site's lifetime were taken over by a new kid on the tech block. The "new broom" decided to make a clean sweep of existing relationships like the one we had and asked us to pay ?25,000 per year for our webservers, or pack up and go. I attempted to negotiate a bit, having pointed out that they'd had 120M+ brand impressions through us just on our podcast, but to no avail. Their best offer was still stupid amounts of money for what amounted to an annual electricity bill (the servers were already set up and running and had cost nothing in maintenance for a decade).

Unsurprisingly, I decided to exit and set up our own hosting from Naked Scientists Towers. This has involved quite a bit of behind the scenes work to migrate everything across and make it work stably; I was especially worried about this forum because it's notoriously fickle and doesn't like to budge from its home.

It looks like it's moved across okay, and I hope the user experience is tolerable. I'm still doing a lot of optimisations behind the scenes now to make things work better. There is always a bedding in phase with new setups where one strives to find the config "sweet spot" for the stack that's running. We're just at the start of this process at the moment, so it will hopefully continue to improve from hereon in.

My plans for this year are to upgrade this forum to newer iterations of the software, which should make it run more slickly, grow our user base more, and upgrade the theme to a more contemporary look. Suggestions, though, for the latter in particular, would be most welcome. And any coders and web gurus out there who would be willing to help, do please drop me a line.

Meanwhile, thanks for your energy and contributions, especially to the moderators!

Chris

7

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Can You Define What a Woman Is ?

« on: 08/06/2022 16:12:25 »

I read an article a while back as to why, when there is no functional need for them, men have nipples, and this was because all you guys started out as females.

Males have nipples because they form during embryonic development following a default developmental pathway that is not linked to sex hormones. A specific body segment is genetically programmed to produce that tissue as the skin forms. When we go into puberty, under the influence of some hormones, the tissue there responds locally to turn the nipple area into a breast.

For this reason, males given the right stimulus (physical and or chemical) can augment their glandular tissue there too and produce milk. Males of some species do this anyway to participate in breast feeding - bats are an example.

8

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: How do bacterial species compete and evolve side by side?

« on: 17/09/2021 13:34:31 »

This is an interesting read, relevant to the discussion: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/modelling-microbial-public-good

9

Radio Show & Podcast Feedback / Re: Can 2 light rays collide - podcast available 28/08/21

« on: 10/09/2021 12:33:16 »

Thank you.

10

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: What is this lumpy rock found at Lyme Regis?

« on: 15/08/2021 21:48:09 »

Intriguing. No one seems to know what this is! It's a mystery... Twitter was relatively subdued on the subject, and normally that lot get to the answer in a jiffy...

I see. That's where you get your answers these days is it Chris?

We have 50k followers on Twitter. Among them are some highly qualified specialists who know other highly qualified specialists. Twitter is an ideal venue to seek counsel on certain subjects.

11

Just Chat! / Re: Questions pertaining to Notifications on TheNakedScientists.

« on: 31/03/2021 13:10:15 »

Thanks for your observations and feedback on this; but would you mind, in future, conducting these sorts of conversations on the Just Chat board. TY

12

General Science / Re: Does pressure in a thermos flask affect the temperature of the water inside?

« on: 22/03/2021 09:48:56 »

Nice question. I'd say yes, a bit.

The headspace gas above the hot liquid will be under pressure because heat from the fluid and the walls of the flask will heat the gas. When you open the lid, you release the pressure and the gas expands. This will drop the temperature of the gas and hence also rob some energy from the liquid because the gas has surface contact with the interface. But the effect will be very small.

13

COVID-19 / Re: How can vaccines claim to work against the new variations?

« on: 20/01/2021 20:53:38 »

Researchers are tackling this in several ways. The most obvious is that they take samples of the mutant viruses, mix them with antibodies made by people who have been vaccinated and then test if the viruses can still grow in culture. If they can, they've evolved beyond the protective effect of the vaccine. The second approach being used is to engineer the changes detected in the mutants into viruses grown in the laboratory to test individually whether the changes affect the immune recognition of the viruses. The third way is that scientists make models of the virus and alter them to reflect the mutations and look at how this changes the shape of the virus and by how much.

So far, these sorts of experiments are suggesting that the immunity conferred by the vaccine will still be protective against the viral variants.

14

Geek Speak / Re: One less reason for hanging onto windows 7?

« on: 06/01/2021 12:17:43 »

- Time to upgrade, I'm afraid...

@evan_au is absolutely right, and this has never been more critical than now with so much of our lives moving online and such heavy reliance on IT; online crime now massively outpaces traditional "street" crime in value terms, and old, vulnerable software is easy to target at mass scale and low cost / risk for malicious actors.

I would strongly urge you to upgrade - it's still free to do so.

Or switch to linux, which is always free, much safer and actually allows you to control your computer properly when you want to...

15

COVID-19 / Re: Anyone know the details of the new coronavirus variant?

« on: 23/12/2020 09:04:16 »

UPDATE 23/12/20

The mutations identified in the new variant have been documented in this paper: https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563

This is a screenshot of the reported changes:

COVID-MUTATIONS.JPG (59.66 kB . 511x621 - viewed 16648 times)

Current questions surround the suggestion, made by epidemiologist Professor Niall Ferguson, that the agent might be better at infecting children. This is speculation at this time and requires further analysis and biological confirmation. I'll address this question, and the argument that an immunocompromised patient with Covid-19 might have been the origin of this new variant, in my next post.

16

Geek Speak / Re: Windows 7 full version or original?

« on: 10/09/2020 19:09:13 »

Get the proper - trustworthy - impression from MS - use the create install media system:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

You can input your key; it will release the software if the key's valid.

17

Just Chat! / Image copyright infringement claim SCAMS

« on: 07/09/2020 16:42:00 »

Dear all

We've noticed in recent months that we're starting to receive a lot of fake image copyright infringement notices.

Basically, identifying copyright image infringement is making people more money than actually taking photos these days, so a whole industry has sprung up providing services (computer programmes) that prowl the internet looking for potentially unlicensed uses of images and then report back to the owner. While this is the electric image equivalent of ambulance chasing, it is nevertheless a legitimate industry, despite the heavy-handed tactics and exorbitant sums charged by these services for what can sometimes be a genuine error committed in good faith.

However, alongside the legitimate operators, there has emerged the usual pond-scum line up of rogues and deceitful operators. Some of them steal public domain images, post them to a fake flickr account, claim ownership, and then approach people who have used them quite appropriately and demand a settlement. Enough people fall for this to make it worth their while.

The other tactic we've noticed is to use this for SEO (search engine optimisation). Basically they find an image relevant to a particular industry / topic, contact sites that have used it, claim to be representing a client who owns it, and then require that it needs to be appropriately "credited".

Apparently, what that client wants is a link to their website in return for your usage.

What's a bit surprising, however, is that the "clients" seem to have all manner of strange websites like "ridyourgardenofweeds.com" and "Iwanttorentavanforday.com" [these are contrived names I made up as examples and which are not active urls, so apologies to anyone who really owns them, if they subsequently are registered]

What's actually going on is that the scammers are trying to build a link network to a site that their either own themselves, or someone is paying them to promote, to raise its search rankings. The more incoming links from external sites with content relevant to the site you're trying to promote, the more highly Google regards the site and the higher it ranks. This can be good for online revenues, or to sell the site as a going concern (also big business these days). Naturally, people will have put relevant pictures alongside relevant content, so if you get a link from that page, it's gold dust. In some cases, the owners of the promoted site may be completely unaware that this is going on and are paying for what they think is a legitimate SEO operation.

The latest scoundrel trying to rip everyone off is "Jason Perales" of "legal media check". Here's his missive:

"On Thursday, August 27, 2020 at 4:34 AM, Jason Perales <jason@legalmediacheck.com> wrote:

Hi Chris,

You are using my client's image in an article on https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/science-features/science-sunday-lunch-question-taste. We're glad that it's of use to you

You can find the image at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunday_roast_-_roast_beef_1.jpg

It’s not an issue at all but we would greatly appreciate it if you can give credit to our client as they have produced this image that you are using. 

You can simply add an image credit (by adding a clickable link) on your article to our client’s website. Since you have been using this image for quite some time now as per the date of your article’s publication, we feel that it’s the right thing to do.

Feel free to ask any questions that you may have.

Jason Perales
Content Head
Legal Media Check

Silly boy. If it's "not an issue at all", then I don't need to do anything about it, do I? (They just put this so that, legally, they are limiting what they are actually alleging, and can then claim they made a mistake, if challenged, later).

Anyway, what Jason's bot also hasn't picked up is that our usage of the image is already appropriately credited to the creator, who made his image publicly available in 2005 on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/10098413/

Meanwhile, a quick look at Jason's website (legalmediacheck.com) also reveals a shabby rush job containing hastily filled templates and bits of irrelevant content intended to look sharp and hide the reality. Don't be fooled: this is a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Consequently, I ignored "Jason's" communication, but he's a persistent fellow and had the cheek to spam me again today:

On Sunday, 30 August 2020, 10:43:27 BST, Jason Perales <jason@legalmediacheck.com> wrote:

Can you please connect me to the right person if this isn't part of your department?

So I replied to Jason because you'll see that, craftily, in his initial salvo he's not revealed who the original owner of the image is. This way, the people who reply are probably more gullible and have already fallen for the ruse, so are less likely to waste Jason's precious time when he could be off spamming and defrauding other people of links.

This is what Jason told me today:

Thank you for replying, Chris.

Can you please give image credit to Carnivore Style?

Link: https:https://carnivorestyle.com/
Credit Name: Carnivore Style

It can be anywhere in the article. Just make sure that it's a clickable link.

You'll see the key is there in that last line - got to make sure it's a clickable link so we can drive as much juicy traffic to the site he's trying to promote as possible.

Now isn't it interesting that the owner of the image we've used (on a page authored in 2005) is according to Jason a new venture that seems to have sprung to life only in 2019; it's called "carnivore lifestyle". What a coincidence that a picture used on our site - within a high-ranking article about cooking and food - has got Jason's attention...

Jason's clearly a bit of a slapdash jerk though, because he's messed up the URL there (duplicated "https://") so I can now have a bit of fun now; silly me has not realised how the web works, so of course that link won't work on my site, and I don't really understand what I'm supposed to link to, so I've had to write to the owner of the website, listed on the site as "Timothy Woods" to ask for his advice on how to place the link and to where...

Mr Woods (assuming he actually exists, but I have my doubts) and the website itself might be totally innocent in all this, but the content is pretty thin on the ground, and they don't have a huge amount of content yet despite having a significant team going by the mugshots on the "About us" section of the site; the business is apparently based in Florida. They do have a phone number though, so I thought I'd ring them up.

What I got was someone's voicemail: "Cecil Lee", by the sound of it. No mention of Carnivore Style, or the team of content creators or the editor himself. Very ominous. I declined to leave a message. We'll see what Mr Woods has got to say in the meantime.

Update a day later...

How odd, no reply from Mr Woods at Carnivore Style, but, hang on, what's this in my inbox.

Well if it isn't Jason back, and he's getting a bit impatient by the look of it:

Jason Perales <jason@legalmediacheck.com>
To: Chris Smith
Wed 2 Sep at 12:36

Hey, feel free to let me know if you have any concerns regarding my previous email.

What do you think will work best for you?

Now isn't that wording a bit strange? Why's he asking me what would work for me? Or could it be that when I wrote to "Mr Woods" and asked him what I should be doing with regard to linking to his site, it actually went to Jason and now forgetful Jason's slipped up and answered on behalf of "Mr Woods".

Anyway, I've written back asking "Jason" for his client's proof of ownership of the image in question. My guess is we won't be hearing back from him again because he'll know the game's up.

UPDATE - 4 days later...

Well, the weekend has come and gone, and Jason has gone with it. Despite a couple of email prods from me "reaching out" to him and asking him for the confirmation that his website - sorry - the website he's "representing" own the rights to the image so we can put in place this link for him - sorry, old habits die hard - his "clients", I've not heard a thing. I wonder why...

Meanwhile, should I also be referring to Jason as "Alice Felix", who's also a "Content Head" at legalmediacheck? (Gosh, they must be a busy company to have so many content heads.)

The reason I ask this is because it looks like others have heard from legalmediacheck too, specifically "Alice" that time:

https://www.phoenixfm.com/2020/07/07/legal-media-check-scam/

We blog a lot here on phoenixfm.com but there’s always a worry that we accidentally use an image we’re not allowed to use. You can’t just lift something off Google image search – that person may have paid for the privilege, and we’re an impoverished community radio station with a zero budget for virtually everything. So we need to be careful.

If I need various stock images, I go to one of the free stock image websites. It can be hard finding them, because the ones that Google tell you are free aren’t necessarily free. You have to read a lot of small print.

This morning at 11am I had an email from Alice Felix, Content Head at Legal Media Check. She said:

Hi Paul,

You are using my client’s image (attached below) in one of your articles (URL given). We’re glad that it’s of use to you 🙂

There’s no issue if you’ve bought this from our market partners such as Shutterstock, iStock, Getty Image, Pexels, Adobe, Pixabay, Unsplash etc.,

However, if you don’t have the proper license for the image then we request you to provide image credits (clickable link) on your article. Or else this will be against the copyright policy.

Unfortunately, removing the image isn’t the solution since you have been using our image on your website for a while now.

Feel free to ask any questions that you may have.

Alice Felix
Content Head
Legal Media Check

This just seemed a bit weird. I Googled Alice, and it appeared that she lives in Texas, so why is she sending out messages at 5am? Also, some of the English on it just didn’t seem quite right either (“Or else this will be against the copyright policy”, etc). Also, for a legal letter it wasn’t very aggressive, which I was grateful for, but it set a few alarm bells ringing. Also, this part at the end of her email really surprised me:

Unsubscribe (link) if you don’t want me to followup with you.

So I’m being asked not to violate your client’s legal rights but I can unsubscribe? I went back to her and said:

I have spoken to the author who tells me the image was found from a free website. However I am happy to give you a credit, can you please give me the information required?

She replied very quickly (so she’s probably not in Texas unless she’s a really early starter).

Hi Paul,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Can you please give image credit to (Van Hire Company)?

Link: Van Hire Company’s link
Credit Name: Van Hire Company

It can be anywhere in the article. Just make sure that it’s a clickable link 🙂

Thank you.

Beginning to think that with all the smiley faces, this is not a proper legal firm.

I clicked on the link. It’s a van hire company. Not a photographer trying to make a living.

Obviously I’m not mentioning the name of the company, because that’s what they want. We get a lot of people asking us to link to them, because our website has a good standing with Google. Sometimes they offer to pay, which is great as the money goes in the pot to help run the station. (If you’re interested, the going rate is about £50). Sometimes they try to get it for free. But I’ve never had an SEO company pretend to be a legal firm and threaten me (very politely) with action just so they can get a free link for one of their clients.

The Van Hire Company stinks too. The website gives an address of London N7 and a phone number starting with 020, but it’s written in broken English and the prices are all in Euros.

I decided to email her back.

Can you please send me proof that Van Hire Company is the photographer who holds the copyright?

They seem to be the magic words, as the correspondence ended very abruptly.

So if you’re reading this, host your own website and you get any emails from Alice Felix, Content Head at Legal Media Check, save yourself some time and put them straight in the bin …

Meanwhile, browsing the web a bit, turns out that "Audrey Griffin" and "Nancy Diaz" are also in the frame as "Content Heads" at legalmediacheck.

So, my conclusion is that Alice and Jason clearly don't exist, at least as real people; but hat's off to the scammer who is obviously an equal opportunities impersonator.

And if anyone else has run-ins with this or a similar bunch of crooks, please document your experience here so that others may discover these notes and be spared the same deceit. Naturally, if any of the above-named scammers would like the right to reply, this is the perfect venue.

"Jason", the floor's yours...

18

COVID-19 / Re: Could the infection rate be significantly underestimated?

« on: 17/04/2020 16:19:00 »

It's highly likely that infection rates are higher than we thought or think. Partick Vallance (UK chief scientific officer) suggested at one point that the ratio of deaths to actual infections might be close to 1:1000; so with 10,000 plus deaths there may well have been 10 million cases in the UK already.

What will solve this is widescale serological testing. Once we can test the UK at scale for antibody to infection and discover how many people have really had it, we can refine and reinforce our models and control measures accordingly. Personally, I suspect that there has been considerable widescale spread in the community already.

19

COVID-19 / Re: Is there modelling of the consequences of wards cleared for Covid-19?

« on: 17/04/2020 16:15:58 »

This is Chris Whitty's "secondary deaths" which are health consequences not directly caused by Covid-19 but instead indirectly linked to it. For instance, people having a heart attack who cannot get to hospital because all the ambulances are tied up being decontaminated after ferrying Covid patients to A&E. Also, people with planned treatments judged too risky under the circumstances may find their therapy deferred and they are forced to accept less than gold-standard treatments.

Is this happening? Yes. Do we have evidence? Not yet, but I suspect it will be accruing. For instance, a cardiologist friend reported that his presentations and case load for heart failure and stroke had plummeted. But this does not mean people have suddenly stopped having heart failure, they are instead deteriorating in the community, too fearful to come to hospital. The result may be people who go beyond the point of no return and cannot be rescued back because they present too late when they eventually are seen.

20

COVID-19 / Re: Why ventilate covid patients in a prone position?

« on: 13/04/2020 22:20:03 »

I'm very grateful to my friend and colleague Dr Ari Ercole, from Cambridge University / Addenbrooke's Hospital, who provided this extremely clear explanation:

As far as proning is concerned this has gone back years with nobody finding a survival benefit (although it improves oxygenation) until the attached study¹ which changed things suggesting it was a good idea if you do it early in ARDS and combine it with modern ventilation strategies which try to protect the lungs from mechanical trauma.

The way it works is through improving V/Q [Ventilation / perfusion] mismatch. Under normal circumstances, gravity means that the lowest (or back if you’re lying down) bits of the lungs tend to get a little more blood flow because the blood pressure decreases with height above the heart. At the same time, the low bits tend to be mechanically collapsed (think holding a damp sponge by a corner- the top is stretched and the bottom squashed). This means we tend to see collapse, pulmonary oedema and consolidation mostly on the lower (/back) bits of the lung. So we have an unfortunate situation where the blood is preferentially going to bits of lung that aren’t aerated very well (although hypoxic vasoconstriction may partially offset this).

Proning reverses that and sends blood to the aerated bits / re-expands collapsed lung. Unfortunately it’s not easy- very hard and dangerous to flip someone critically ill on a ventilator over (risk of accidentally pulling out the endotracheal tube, lines etc). Also there’s a risk of pressure sores and the facial oedema you see is marked. So we usually prone for 16 hours out of 24 or so. A lot of hospitals are putting together ‘proning teams’ because it needs a lot of skilled manpower.

1. Prone Positioning in Severe Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, Claude Guérin et al., NEJM 368 p.2159