Almost gone ...

I forgot to mention this. The Neurophilospher posted this list of some of the best science blogging of 2006. If you're at a loss for reading matter over the next couple of days, may I suggest starting at the first entry on the list and working your way down.

No blogging tonight.

Happy New Year to everyone, especially those new friends and acquaintances who* I've met through the series of tubes that is the Internet.

See you in 2007.
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*Or is it 'whom I've met'? Oh well, you know who you are!

Heavens above

One of the good things about having a new pair of binoculars is that I can do a bit of star gazing. They're nowhere near as good as a telescope for observing the night sky, of course, but they do reveal rather more than did the opera glasses.

Heavens Above is a brilliant site for the would-be astronomers. Register and you can generate star charts for your locality for whatever date and time you want (see image below), get predictions for flight paths and times of satellites and other orbiting objects including the space station and a bunch of other wonderful stuff.

Here's the sky chart for my part of the world at 22:25 today.

Never casual about Casuarina

In the very first post on A Snail's Eye View, I mentioned my interest in Casuarinaceae, a largely Australian group of trees often referred to as she-oaks. I have 15 species so far. I'm sure I could have accumulated more were I not so lazy laid back about my interests. On my wanderings through the more interesting nurseries (such as Roraima in Lara and Kuranga at Mt Evelyn), I occasionally spot a species I don't have. But I don't go hunting for them. And I don't collect wild seed.

Casuarinaceae are odd-looking plants. They have the standard tree-ish arrangement of a main stem and branches, but that's were the ordinariness ends. There are leaves but they're reduced to tiny triangles. They no longer have a role in photosynthesis. Instead, that job has been taken up by the branchlets, which grow from the main branches.

Each branchlet is made of sections called articles that lie end to end. (I described this in the first post but didn't have a photo to go with it.) You can see the articles and minute leaves in this branchlet from the Tasmanian short-range endemic Allocasuarina crassa. (By the way, everyone should have one of these marvellously sculptural plants in the garden.)

Each article bears a series of ridges (phyllichina) and furrows. The furrows (covered here by fine white hairs) contain stomata, which are pores for the uptake of carbon dioxide used in photosynthesis. Furrows reduce water loss from stomata. Those in the Wet Tropics endemic Gymnostoma australianum (left) are shallow and open, whereas those in Casuarina and Allocasuarina, which live in drier areas, are deep and narrow.

The shape and number of the phyllichnia and their associated leaves are important in distinguishing between species. Here's a third species, Allocasuarina monilifera (another Tasmanian endemic) to give an idea of how this group can vary.

Of course, there are other key features, such as flower, cone and seed (samara) shape but you have to be there at the right time for these to be of great use. The branchlets are present all year round.

If you want to know more about Australian Casuarinaceae, the relevant section in the Flora of Australia is available on line.

Decision made

A successful day's shopping. I bought binoculars and plants. That's the Christmas money spent.

I went to the nursery with a shopping list and stuck to it. More or less. I wanted an Alyogyne huegelii 'West Coast Gem' for the patch of garden by the gate. As that's a medium-sized shrub with stunning mauve flowers, I thought I'd underplant it with something yellow. Do you know how many yellow-flowered plants are available at nurseries?

In the end, I went for something with attractive foliage as well as the required coloured blooms. It might have been a mistake, though. Homoranthus papillatus is also called the mouse plant because of its smell. Ah, well, the neighbour has three dogs so pongy vegetation can't be too much of a problem.

In the wild, Homoranthus papillatus is restricted to heathland in the Girraween area of southern Queensland. The Queensland Government has listed it as a rare species because of its limited distribution. Several other species of Homoranthus (Myrtaceae) have also been identified as rare or vulnerable in Queensland and New South Wales because of similarly small ranges.

Along with the plants that I planned to buy, I also picked up a couple of Lasiopetalum (Sterculiaceae). I'm not sure why I like this genus—they're neither showy nor brightly-coloured. A few species are well-known in cultivation (e.g. L. macrophyllum, L. ferrugineum, L. floribundum) but it's always exciting (in a low key way) to find others at the nursery. Today, I bought L. quinquenervium and L. maxwelli. Both species are from the Esperance area of Western Australia. They should do well in the garden.
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Top: Homoranthus papillatus
Bottom: Lasiopetalum quinquenervium

Decisions, decisions

Today's plan. Do I head over to Camberwell to buy a new pair of binoculars? (I've been using opera glasses, which I like to think lend a certain distinction to my bird watching but really just make me look like a plonker. They're functional, though, and very light.) Or do I go to Kuranga Nursery to get some plants for the front garden?

Or—and this will require a great deal of organisation—do I buy the binoculars and the plants?

Making an exhibition ...

Here's a poser. Which is the odd one out? Chartres Cathedral, Cuzco, Red Square and the Kremlin, Stonehenge or the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne?



None of them*. They are all listed on the World Heritage register because of their "outstanding universal value".

Australia has 16 World Heritage areas and properties, including sub-Antarctic islands to fossil deposits to tropical reefs and rainforests . Most have been declared significant because of their natural and/or cultural values but only one was declared on the criterion of architecture and technology.

The Royal Exhibition Building was constructed for the international exhibitions of 1880 and 1888. The architect, John Reed, mixed together a range of styles from Byzantine to Renaissance to produce a magnificent and functional display space. (John Reed also designed Trades Hall, the State Library and Rippon Lea, among others. The firm he founded still produces remarkable work, including the Crown Casino and Federation Square.)

Museum Victoria continues to use the building for trade exhibitions**. In 2007, it's hosting the Hot Rod Show, travel and art expos and an organic produce show (in which I had a glimmer of interest until I saw the neologism 'eco-ganic').

(I should point out that the top photo is of the western side of the REB and the bottom photo of the northern side. But that's where the sun was when I was there. The main entrance is to the south.)
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*Yes, it was a trick question. Not much of one, I'll admit, but I have low standards.

**I think they've stopped the rave parties.

Year in review meme

I picked up this meme from Tortoise Trails. It's supposed to be the first sentence of the first post of each month in 2006 but, as I only started blogging in June, I've expanded it to cover the first para.

I collect she oaks (Casuarinaceae). This is a recent obsession and I don't have very many species ... so far. Three species of Casuarina and nine of Allocasuarina sit in pots outside my back door. Only another 80-something more if I want to collect the set. (I don't know what happens then. Maybe I get a free set of steak knives.) More ...

Pulau Kapas in the South China Sea is full of water monitors (Varanus salvator), which scavenge around the bins and pick off the odd rat. It's also absolutely chockers with snails. The trunks and branches of rainforest trees are covered in Amphidromus inversus, a large plain-coloured species of camaenid. It's a bit of an eye opener for Australian snail hunters. Over on this side of the Java Sea, finding native snails takes a major effort. More ...

Littoraria is a genus of snails living in mangrove forests around the tropical Indo-Pacific. If you're searching for them (and they're worth the hunt), look up rather than down. Unlike many other mangrove molluscs, species of Littoraria spend most of their time among foliage. Mud is not their thing. More ...

Today is the 92nd anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). Once found in such mind-bogglingly large numbers across the eastern United States that they were shot to make agricultural fertilizer, the species became extinct in the wild in 1900. Martha became an ex-pigeon fourteen years later, dropping off the perch at Cincinnati Zoo at the age of 29—the end of a long and lonely life. More ...

The Cape Arid climber, Kennedia beckxiana, has just started to flower. It is restricted to a small area of coastal Western Australia from Condingup to Israelite Bay, where it grows on granite and sand. Despite the need for free-draining soil, it's another Kennedia that does well on the Melbourne clay. More ...

National Novel Writing Month starts today. Just thought I'd mention it. More ...

An unscheduled moment in the Walkley Award ceremony tonight. The Sunday Telegraph's Glenn Milne got up on stage as unsteady as a newt and assaulted Stephen Mayne, who was presenting the Walkley award for the best photographic essay or business something or other. (I wasn't paying that much attention.) More ...

I and the Bird #39

The latest I and the Bird is up at NaturalVisions.

After you've read the anthology of ornithology, be sure to look at the glorious photographs in the NaturalVisions gallery. (And, yes, there are grebes.)

Sea's greetings

I'm back from my few days of indolence. Not much to report, obviously, because indolence doesn't lend itself to exciting anecdotes. Come to think of it, it doesn't even lend itself to boring ones.

So what's been happening elsewhere?

Yesterday, an unlucky New Zealander had an unexpectedly close encounter with a bottle-nosed dolphin. She was sitting in the bow of a small boat when the dolphin leapt out of the water. Unfortunately, it mistimed the jump and crashed into her, causing severe internal injuries.

Whereas most newspapers reported the incident as a freak accident, Glasgow's Daily Record wasn't having any truck with logic and reason.

JACK THE FLIPPER
Crazed dolphin leaves woman seriously hurt after boat attack

(Seems that the subeditor used up all imagination on that headline. This one wasn't half as inventive: FLATULENT TURTLE SETS OFF ALARMS.)

Fish have been doing interesting things as well.

Scientists working in the Red Sea have turned up evidence of co-operative hunting between groupers (Plectropomus pessuliferus) and moray eels (Gymnothorax javanicus). The groupers hunt prey around coral reefs; the eels pick food out of the crevices and crannies within the reef. Prey fleeing from one type of predator swim into the maw of the other. Between them, the two species of fish have the area sewn up.

From the authors' synopsis:

The article offers a description and accompanying videos, such as the one showing a grouper and eel swimming side by side as if they are good friends on a stroll. It also offers quantification, which is truly hard to achieve in the field, of the tendencies involved in this mutually beneficial arrangement. The investigators were able to demonstrate that the two predators seek each other’s company, spending more time together than expected by chance. They also found that groupers actively recruit moray eels through a curious head shake made close to the moray eel’s head to which the eel responds by leaving its crevice and joining the grouper. Groupers showed such recruitment more often when hungry.

But that's not the only recent surprise in the world of marine ichthyology. Sedate and slow-moving batfish have been hiding their lights under large, leaf-shaped bushels. They may be the saviours of the reef.

Increased nutrients and over-fishing of marine herbivores have led to an increase in weed growth on coral reefs. Weed smothers the coral. The coral declines and the weed takes over completely. This shift in dominance is not easy to remedy.

However, marine biologists from James Cook University were surprised to find that it could happen naturally when batfish (Platax pinnatus) moved in. Why were they surprised? Batfish weren't known to be herbivores. Until this study, they were thought to feed only on invertebrates. But not only were they algal grazers, they were voracious enough to tip the balance back in favour of the coral.

But the biggest (ahem) marine biology story of December has to be that of the giant squid caught off Japan. This individual isn't a whopper as far as giant squid go but it's large enough for "calamari rings the size of truck tyres". (Line stolen from cephalopod expert Mark Norman.)

Vale James Brown

Not the twelve days of Christmas

I tried to think of an original and whimsical bird post for Christmas Eve. Of course, I left this until today because, y'know, Christmas was such a surprise. I hadn't seen it coming.

Birds of Christmas Island? Not bad but as I haven't been there, perhaps a little contrived.

Red and green birds? It has potential but I don't have enough photos. When I say enough, I mean any.

So I thought I'd rely on a trusted technique—stealing someone else's idea and giving it enough of a makeover to avoid infringing copyright. (No, that's not contrived at all.)

Mike at 10,000 Birds looked at the species mentioned in the Twelve Days of Christmas. That set me thinking about the Australian equivalents. Which species would fit the bill? (As it were.) What are the closest relatives of the European birds in the song?

A partridge in a pear tree
Australia doesn't have any partridges (Perdix). In fact, we're notably lacking in large numbers of native Phasianidae. So I've chosen one of our three species of quail (Coturnix). Although it's the smallest of the small trio, the king quail (C. chinensis) is the most festive in appearance. It has a black-and-white bib, blue chest and chestnut tum and bum. Sure, you're unlikely to see it in a tree of any sort, but as the same goes for partridges, let's not quibble about the details.

(I initially opted for button quail (Turnix), which are larger and nattier than true quails. But they probably aren't phasianids at all. It seems that they are closely related to rails.)

Two turtle doves
We don't have any native Streptopelia doves either, so I was tempted to propose the bar-shouldered dove (Geopelia humeralis), which looks very similar. But—call me reckless—I'm going to suggested crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes), not least of all because I have a photo.

Three French hens
Bugger. We're back to the game birds. Oh, look, the stubble quail (Coturnix pectoralis) has something vaguely Gallic about it. Zut alors!. That will do.

Four colly birds
Mike identified the calling birds as blackbirds (Turdus merula). (Turdus is pretty close to the name I call them as they dig up my seedlings.) They're not native, so I suggest the Bassian thrush (Zoothera lunulata). Although they're not black like coal, they do sing.

Five ring-necked pheasants
Again with the game birds. All right. It'll have to be our last true quail, the brown quail (Coturnix ypsilophora). S'okay, we'll paint it with food dye and stick some long feathers on its tail. No one will know the difference. Especially not if five of them are herded together.

Six geese a-laying
Ah, geese. We don't have any Anser but we do have an answer to this conundrum. In the absence of greylags and other typical geese, we'll use Cape Barren geese (Cereopsis novaehollandiae). They're close enough to greylag to pass muster. And they've got pretty bills.

Seven swans a swimming
Swans. Oh yes, we've got swans. Just the one native species but what a bird it is. When Willem de Vlamingh reported the occurrence of black swans in the southern land, scientists back in Europe thought that the sailors must have gone completely mad. After all, it was well known that all swans were white ...

Season's greetings

After the heat ...

... the Bureau of Meteorology is predicting a white Christmas in the high country.

A story for the season

A female Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) at London Zoo has produced a clutch of young without the assistance of a male*. That's right, we're talking virgin birth. Or, more accurately, parthenogenesis.

I'm not sure whether all the media attention is because mum belongs to the world's largest species of lizard or because of the felicitous timing of the event. Something about the dragon's new brood has caught the imagination. It can't all be down to a slow news week—not with the Ipswich serial killings, Shane Warne's retirement and the Victorian bushfires.

The Komodo dragon isn't the first species of monitor lizard (Varanidae) to be identified as reproducing in this way. Parthenogenesis has also been recorded in a captive Varanus panoptes, a large goanna from western and northern Australia. In fact, parthenogenesis isn't that unusual, even among vertebrates. But you never read headlines about parthenogenetic geckos, whiptail lizards, blind snakes, all sorts of fish ... and turkeys.

(Turkeys? How festive can you get? Parthenogenesis is common in the Beltsville small white, apparently.)

Parthenogenesis can take place in different ways—through dodgy cell division, hybridisation between species or under the influence of Wolbachia, a bacterium that lives inside cells. In the case of the dragons, unusual cell division gave rise to the next generation.

So are the offspring exactly the same as the mother? No. For a start, they're male ...

Every developmental biologist, gel jock and their companion animal has blogged on the genetics of the parthenogenetic Komodo dragons, so you can read more about the process at Scienceblogs. Here's what Pharyngula, Evolgen and Discovering Biology in a Digital World have to say on it.

Happy Komodomas.

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*Another Komodo dragon recently did the same thing at Chester Zoo. 'Tis the season.

Moth scams spider

In case you'd forgotten exactly how wonderful nature really is, here's a post by the Neurophilosopher on how a metalmark moth (Brenthia hexaselena) pulls a damned fine con job on a jumping spider. Read the original article at PLoS.

I spy with my little eyes

This huntsman spider (Holconia sp.) lives behind a painting on my kitchen wall. At night, it emerges to hunt insects. As long as it stays on that few square metres of plaster, then it's welcome to remain inside. If it develops an eight-legged wanderlust, it can keep going—straight out through the back door. Why? Because I've been bitten by a huntsman spider that was only half the size of this one and it hurt. I do not want to repeat the experience. To make things worse, not only can these spiders bite but the spines on their legs also inflict injuries. (Not serious ones but that's not the point. Or rather it is the point ...) Luckily, huntsman spiders are generally timid and inoffensive. My bite was the result of a sequence of events that culminated in the poor animal believing it was under attack, even though I had no idea it was there. (And that, your honour, is the case for the defence.)

In the wild, they hide under tree bark during the day, emerging at night to ambush prey. They will eat anything they can subdue, including other spiders and even large centipedes. (That timidity only extends to encounters with animals larger than themselves. They're not stupid.)

If you're arachnophobic, it is not a good idea to wander around a eucalypt forest at night with a torch. See all those green sparkles on the tree trunks? They ain't dew drops. Spiders' eyes reflect light.

But they have multiple eyes, don't they? So if you count the spots and divide by eight it's not so bad.

Sure. If that makes you feel happy. But not all of those eyes are in the same plane. Chances are, you'll only pick up one or two of them as eyeshine ... (If you're an arachnophobe with a masochistic streak, try spotlighting a well-watered lawn. Wolf spiders live among the grass stems in very high densities.)

Often, people who squash most other spiders at the first opportunity will tolerate a huntsman around the house. Even if it's not tolerated, they'll attempt to relocate it. Of course, there are still those who'll smack a huntsman with a rolled up newspaper or douse it in so much pesticide it drowns. How could anyone kill a big, fat, roly-poly cutie like this?

Wandering white-tails

Last night was Melbourne's warmest night on record for 40 years or so. The temperature only dropped to 27C. This explains not only why I had difficulty sleeping but why I spent part of the night dealing with the biggest concentration of white-tailed spiders (Lampona sp.) I've ever encountered. The bloody things were not only wandering all over the house but moving quite rapidly, which made them tricky to trap.

Some of them were whoppers too—as far as white-tailed spiders go. (None of them, of course, was as big as the huntsman in the letter box. You can hear the patter of his eight feet when he scuttles over the mail. Although I like spiders, I don't want to hear them. That's just not right.)

I'm going to keep a few of the peripatetic white-tails for photography, then I'll let them all go in the garden. (After a stern talking to about trespassing.) Here's an earlier post about their undeserved reputation.

School's out!

End of the working year!

I can't help feeling that I've forgotten to do something important. Oh well, it's too late now. Uni is closed until 2 January 2007. 2007! Where did 2006 go? What have I got to show for it?

Another hot day with strong north-westerly winds. Not good news for those fighting fires in Gippsland. But they might get help from a rain band that's crossing the state right now. It's gone straight across this part of Melbourne with only a few drops falling here. I hope someone gets the benefit from it.

Good news, bad news

The bad news is that today's heat seems to have done for my scarlet fuschia (Graptophyllum excelsum) and King Billy pine (Athrotaxis selaginoides). Maybe they'll recover. I dunno.

But the good news is that there's rain and cooler weather on the way, it's only one more day to the end of the working year and someone gave me a bottle of champagne.

Things are looking up.

Carol singers beware!

This might keep the god-botherers away as well. I wonder where I can get one.

All in a row

While I was coughing and spluttering in Williamstown, I did a quick scan of the bay to see what wildlife was hanging around. Silver and Pacific gulls, two types of cormorants (pied and little black), black swans, pelicans, chestnut teal and a white-faced heron. Once again, nothing spectacular but as this was nothing more than a march from the car to the water's edge, a rapid survey and then back again, I'd have been enormously surprised (and disbelieving) if I'd scored a lifer. (See, folks, I'm picking up the lingo.)

A couple of notable things, though. One was the pelican that spotted me from a long way out and motored in like HMS Britannia. When it got close enough to realise I wasn't laden with pigeons, it veered away. Still maintaining a great deal of dignity and more than a touch of haughtiness, of course. Pelicans have reputations to uphold.

The other notable thing was a Pacific gull, black swan and little black cormorants all lined up to fit in a single photo. This is one for Trevor's lazy birder, I reckon. And when a white-faced heron wandered in front of the camera to make four species in a row, I thought I'd hit the jackpot. Unfortunately, my little digital camera couldn't quite accommodate everything from the heron to the gull without reducing the birds to monochrome smears.

I like white-faced herons*. This one was esploring the crevices between the boulders and seemed to be doing very well for itself. (When I drive home from work, a solitary heron is a permanent fixture in a block of kangaroo grass next to the traffic lights. I've tried to get photos of it but it's always too far away, dammit.)

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*Hell, I like most species of birds. Even gannets.

Remember that running gag from Flying High*? Lloyd Bridges facing each new calamity with the line 'I picked the wrong day to ...'. In his case, it was the wrong day to give up coffee/smoking/sniffing glue. In my case, I picked the wrong day to stay at home marking exams.

Not that it was an unproductive day. I marked the exams and had coffee with a writer friend who I hadn't seen for the whole semester. (That was great. We talked about books and writing.) It was the wrong day because Melbourne was shrouded in smoke from the Gippsland fires.

I had to nip down to Williamstown, so I stopped on the way to look at the Westgate Bridge. These photos give an idea of the pall over the city.

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*Yes, I know. There were a few of them.

It's been a rotten day so I'm going to bed early.

Hooks, lines and sinking feelings

Miss Snark is working her way through the Happy Hooker* entries. Some are good, some are bad but most are indifferent—a normal distribution. This one caught my attention. Now here's a book I'd like to read.
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Nothing to do with Xaviera Hollander. These are hooks for querying agents.

Thud and blunder

Thud

Thud

Thud

Hear that? It's the sound of my head as I batter it against a brick wall. Lordy! What a day!

Just when you think you've encountered everything that can possibly go wrong at work, someone bowls a wrong 'un. Had the stumps knocked clean out of the ground. I'm thinking that I might hammer them back in, replace the bails and pretend it never happened. (I might also pretend that extended metaphor never happened.)

One of our admin people remarked that today was more like the start of first semester than then end of the working year.

Only four more days ... Well, three. I don't think I'll be paying much attention on Friday.

Am planning a blog-free day so I can catch up on all the other stuff on the 'to do' list. By blog-free, I mean I won't be adding more posts to A Snail's Eye View. (After this one, obviously.) I've already done one round of my favourite blogs and will probably do another round later today. But I won't be writing anything for this one.

The house is a shambles. (Not literally, you understand. And I'm not sure if it's a bigger mess than the back yard but one thing at a time.) I haven't seen the mouse for a while, so I imagine it's given up and moved to somewhere more House & Garden. Possibly the empty property across the road.

I've still got a stack of books to read, including Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which I bought ages ago and is sitting in the pile. It's easy to lose momentum with reading, so I'm going to set aside a couple of hours for that today. Probably the same couple of hours I planned to spend cleaning the bathroom, laundry and kitchen. Yes, that sounds reasonable.

And then there's an article on the effect of habitat fragmentation on invertebrates that I promised to write this weekend. I'd forgotten all about it.

So, if I'm going to achieve all this, I'd better start now.

After breakfast. (Yes, I got up very late.)

Killer bivalves

Popular fiction has it that a giant clam (Tridacna gigas) can close its shells so quickly that it can trap a diver. Bad news indeed for the unfortunate with a foot in the clam. The bivalve won't let go while a big wedge of rubber fin is irritating it. And sooner or later the air will run out. Or a tiger shark will spot the easy meal.

It's a dramatic image—but not an accurate one. Tridacna clams, like most other bivalves, feed by filtering suspended material from the water. They supplement their diet with nutrients supplied directly by symbiotic micro-organisms (zooxanthellae) in the tissue of the mantle. (It's a similar relationship to that between reef-building corals and zooxanthellae.)

But not all bivalves are filter-feeders. Some vacuum up detritus from the mud or sand. And a few prey on other animals.

Most filter-feeding infaunal bivalves (those that live in sediments) extend muscular siphons up into the water so they can draw in fresh water and suspended food and eject waste material. Water entering through the inhalant siphon passes over the gills, which do double duty as respiratory organs and as particle sorters. Any food particles that are too big are chucked out, as are those that are too small. But particles that are just right are sent to the mouth.

Carnivorous bivalves feed by either sucking in prey or scooping them up with the inhalant siphon. Parilimyidae and Cuspidariidae have long, tubular, flexible siphons that can be moved around to hoover up passing crustaceans. More sinister are the Poromyidae and Verticordiidae, in which the siphon is expanded into a 'cowl' that encloses prey.

Once inside the siphon, muscular structures called labial palps direct the hapless victim into the mouth. Although carnivorous bivalves lack teeth, the oesophagus and stomach are heavily muscled and can easily crush small crustaceans. Digestive enzymes do the rest.

None of these carnivorous bivalves is large. Most species don't reach 3 cm. But wouldn't it be fantastic if they were the size of Tridacna? Then we might have something to worry about.

Great Britain = Little Britain

A study by Lancaster University linguistics professor Tony McEnery suggests that British teenagers have a vocabulary of just over 12,600 words. That doesn't sound too bad until the figure is compared to that of 25- to 34-year olds, who have vocabularies of about 21,000 words.

Well, that's not so horrible, is it? You'd expect vocabs to increase with time as individuals are exposed to more words. (Mine, on the other hand, is decreasing as I'm exposed to more first year essays.) But McEnery found that a third of teenage conversation was composed of only twenty words, including yeah, no and but. Hmmm ... Sounds familiar.

McEnery argues that whereas schools are partly to blame, technology is the main source of the problem. Use of iPods, PCs and other personal devices discourages teenagers from verbal communication.

"This trend, known as technology isolation syndrome, could lead to problems in the classroom and then later in life.

Technophile sites, such as Ars Technica, defend the iPods and identify the curriculum as faulty.

The debate is really one about the place of rhetoric in education and public life. Though a core part of the Renaissance curriculum, debate and public speaking have gradually faded from prominence at most schools, replaced with an approach better suited to stuffing large amounts of information into large numbers of students as though they are Christmas turkeys. McEnery's report suggests bringing speech, rhetoric, and debate back into schoolrooms, but having all the students talk takes time, and time is money, and money is scarce.

(I deal with older teenagers, of course, and I like the idea of stuffing large amounts of information into them. But I'm afraid we're dribbling smaller and smaller amounts into them. I digress.)

British hypermarket chain Tesco funded the research.

According to a BBC article:

Tesco, which commissioned the report, said it was responding by launching a scheme which allows all UK comprehensive schools to interact and communicate with other schools around the country using its internet phone technology.

Jolly decent of them too. But Wikipedia tells us that Tesco has a bit of a history ...

The stores' signage displays non-standard grammar. Each store advertises (among other items) "mens magazines", "girls toys", "kids books", "womens shoes" and "Chart DVD's". The author Bill Bryson lambasts Tesco for apostrophe misuse in his book Troublesome Words, stating, "The mistake is inexcusable and those who make it are linguistic Neanderthals." In August 2006 Tesco released a television advertising campaign to persuade people to use fewer non-recyclable plastic carrier bags, which included the non-standard grammar "use less bags".

But that's another story ...

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Thanks to Duncan for the link.

More kangaroo apple

Although the original plant has toppled over and will soon end up as mulch, its seedlings are taking over the neighbourhood. This one will have to join its parent as fragments on the garden but its nice to see that the local plants can hold their own in an urban landscape.

I wonder whether such a fast growing species as Solanum laciniatum would make a good bonsai specimen? I might give it a go.

Swamp lily

Look what's flowering in my garden—the swamp lily (Crinum pedunculatum). The inflorescence on this plant contains about 30 buds, which will open in succession over the next couple of weeks.

The swamp lily is found naturally along the warmer parts of the east coast as far south as Wollongong or thereabouts. (Warmer being a subjective term, you understand.) It was among those species painted by First Fleet midshipman and artist George Raper.

Despite the common name, it is resistant to drought. My plant only gets watered when the temperature reaches 30C. For the rest of the time it fends for itself. That could explain why it was a slow starter but it's now doing very well.

Bedlam comes to you

Which historical lunatic are you?

I'm King Ludwig. Ah, so that must explain the large number of outrageously expensive homes that I ... no, wait, I really am mad.


Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

(From Pharyngula)

I and the Bird #38

The latest I and the Bird is up at Ben Cruachan Blog. See, they're battling foul weather and serious bush fires over in the east and still have time to put together a bumper edition. And a very personal and personable one it is too.

Enrolments and re-enrolments for much of the day followed by bursts of chaos interspersed with confusion. Not that the student paperwork was chaos- and confusion-free. Re-enrolment and havoc are practically synonymous.

And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 're-enrolment,' and let slip the dogs of war.

But what came after was pandemonium.

Only another seven working days before I can stop being head of school and return to level B obscurity.

And then it's Christmas.

... wits

Photographed at traffic lights on my way home, this number plate sums up my day.

Teapots to the rescue

There's a touch of the Douglas Adams about this story reported on BBC Scotland.

Concern after Nimrod 'teapot fix'

New claims about the safety of Nimrod aircraft based at RAF Kinloss are to be raised in the House of Commons.

It has emerged that the crew of a Nimrod used a teapot to block a hatch gap in their plane after a mid-air mechanical fault.

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokeswoman said safety had not been compromised.

...

The spokeswoman said: "There was a minor malfunction with the hatch cover and the teapot would have been used to make it more comfortable for the crew.

Thanks to darky for pointing this one out.

Physicists sing the blues

Physicists have found a way to replicate the microscopic structures that produce structural colours in a Morpho butterfly. They coat a wing with aluminium and then burn away the original.

"We can never come close to the richness of the structures that nature can make," said Zhong Lin Wang, Regents' Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. "We want to utilize biology as a template for making new material and new structures. This process gives us a new way to fabricate photonic structures such as waveguides."

Read the whole story at Science Daily.

The diet of worms

We're not up to our knees in carcases. You may have already noticed this but I thought I'd mention it anyway. When one animal dies, it doesn't take long before others dispose of it. And in most cases, they don't care whether it's a fish, bird or human. It's all food.

Although large scavengers* can make a mess of a corpse, the small ones are the most efficient at waste disposal. Within moments of death, the first wave of flies moves in. From then on invertebrate carrion-feeders arrive in a predictable sequence (succession). An entomologist familiar with this sequence and with knowledge of insect development rates can estimate with accuracy the time since death.

Flies are eager arrivals. Calliphorids materialise from nowhere**. These are the same dull blue and metallic green species that make a nuisance of themselves at summer barbecues. What they're looking for in a corpse is a suitable site for a nursery. They lay their eggs in the dampest spots. When the maggots hatch, the food is already there.

The second group of flies includes the sarcophagids. These grey-striped and chequered insects don't lay eggs but produce lively larvae. Because the maggots don't hang around in eggs, they can soon catch up with the calliphorids that arrived earlier.

Among the flies that turn up much later are the tiny Phoridae and Piophilidae. Both have larvae that feed on seriously decayed material. Several species of phorid are known as coffin-flies—for obvious reasons. It's slightly less obvious why piophilids are called cheese-skippers. You need to see the maggots at work before the common name makes sense. When disturbed, they curl up, grabbing their ... ahem ...anal papillae with their mouthparts. And then they let go, springing several centimetres into the air. Boo!

Succession gives a rough idea of the time since death. But entomologists can make much more accurate estimations by looking at maggot growth rates. The growth rate of maggots (and other insect larvae) depends on temperature—the higher the temperature, the faster the growth. If an entomologist knows the site temperature and the species of fly, it's a relatively simple matter to measure the maggot and calculate its age. That gives the minimum post mortem interval. (Growth rate at different temperatures is represented in a graph called a isomegalendiagram.)

What's not so simple is identifying the species in the first place. Young maggots are particularly tricky to identify, so entomologists often rear them through to adulthood. (A friend did a lovely small-scale study on arthropod succession in North Queensland. Deidre*** set up thirty samples and collected all the insects from one sample each day for a month. To make sure she could put the right name on the flies, Deidre reared the maggots in the insect room. All of them. Towards the end of the study, the insect room became quite unnerving ...)

That's not the end of the necessary entomological expertise. Other factors to be considered are the geographic locality, habitat, weather and time of day. Some flies are fussy about shade or rain. Most don't fly at night. And so it goes on. Unfortunately relatively little is known about Australian fly ecology and behaviour, especially in areas away from the major cities. And there just aren't enough dipterologists to go around.

________

*By large, I don't just mean vultures, hyenas and wild dogs. Anything with a maximum of four legs is large by the standards of this blog.

**Not literally. We're no fans of spontaneous generation.

***A nom-de-cay


Read more

Some favourites from my library:

Erzinçlioğlu, Z. (2002) Maggots, murder, and men. Thomas Dunne.

Goff, M.L. (2000). A fly for the prosecution. Harvard University Press.

Smith, K.G.V. (1986). A manual of forensic entomology. British Museum (Natural History.)

Eine kleine schadenfreude

Remember, it's only schadenfreude if you're ashamed.

Here's a cautionary tale I tell my students when they start applying for jobs in their chosen field. (I've changed names to protect innocent and guilty alike. Well, as I can't actually remember the names of the people involved perhaps I haven't. Disna matter.)

I received a phone call from an about-to-graduate BSc student. He wanted me to be a referee. I was a bit surprised because he was a dedicated slacker and had only just managed to scrape through with a degree.

'Send me your CV and your application,' I said.

'I can't,' he said. 'I had the interview this morning and they'll be calling you soon.'

Okay. I explained to him that he'd done everything the wrong way but ... well ... at least he'd got as far as an interview, so he must have written a good application. Then he told me exactly what he'd put in his CV.

According to this student---let's call him Alphonse---he had been working on one of my projects during the summer as a paid research assistant.

'But you haven't.'

'Yeah but no but yeah but ... Dr Schneckenkopf said we should pad out our CVs.'

'Not with lies he didn't.' (Knowing Schneckenkopf, he probably had. But one issue at a time.)

Alphonse then ran off a list of his purported achievements, a record that have would have made him the country's greatest polymath. (Or polymorph as the Townsville Bulletin once put it.)

'I'm not going to fib on your behalf,' I said. 'If they ask a direct question, I'm going to give a direct answer.'

'Yeah, yeah. Whatever.'

And the interviewer rang. And she asked a direct question about his work as my research assistant. And I gave her a direct answer.

'I see. So what about this prize for the best student?' she said.

'There is no prize.'

'And yet he appears to have won it. You know, I think he needs to come in for a second interview.'

For the non-terminally disorganised

Ten useful tips on time management from the Brazen Careerist via Media Bistro. Yes, that's right. I've been reading blogs instead of taking note of the list. (Unless the daily blog check comes under tips 3 and 5.)

Freeway fauna

Rural roads are good sites for spotting parrots and raptors (and brolgas in SW Victoria) but city freeways have their share of birds. Of course, it's easier to keep a look out if you’re the passenger but even the most careful and attentive driver can spot a range of species without looking away from the road.

Here's this morning's haul from my drive into work in Melbourne.

• Pelicans
• White-faced heron
• White ibis
• Masked lapwings
• Silver gulls
• Crested pigeons
• Spotted turtle-doves
• Feral pigeons
• Galahs
• Starlings
• Common mynahs
• Magpie-larks
• Magpies
• Ravens

Over the past few weeks, I've also seen straw-necked ibis, Nankeen kestrels, black-shouldered kites, wedge-tailed eagles and sulphur-crested cockatoos. Not to mention plenty of little brown birds that were probably house sparrows but I'd like to think were something more interesting.

Sharpened Claus

For anyone already fed up with the festive season, here's a short short story (100 words) from Neil Gaiman.

I made a promise to myself this morning that I would leave work each evening at 5.30pm and not bring any paperwork home with me. So far, I've managed to keep pretty much to that schedule. I don't expect it will last.

Not a bad day. A bit frantic because I'm me and the Head of School until Christmas—but not as horrible as last week. (I refer you to earlier throwaway lines about famous last words.) We've got endless committee meetings (endless both in number and duration), unsatisfactory progress meetings, special and supplementary exams ... And, if we keep it very quiet, we might even be able to sneak out for an end of semester lunch. But no one's banking on it.

Bah! Humbug!

Tracking Santa

Here's something that's flown under my radar for a long time. NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) tracks Santa's around the world flight on Christmas Eve. As NORAD's motto is Deter. Detect. Defend, let's hope there's a functioning transponder on the sleigh otherwise there might be some explaining to do on Christmas Day.

don t cuss the climate
it probably doesn t like you
any better
than you like it

archy

It's hot. So hot that not only have the birds headed off for somewhere cooler (like Darwin or Alice Springs) but now the honey bees have given away pollen collecting. They were going about their business earlier with their usual efficiency. Maybe they were a little crotchety. A couple of them buzzed around me in a menacing fashion when I pruned the fan flowers, so I decided to let them get on with it. And the flies have settled into somnolence.

Not so the gate man, who turned up to apply the second and final coat of wood oil to the Gates of Nineveh on the side path.

'It's almost 40C,' I said. 'Are you mad?'

'Yes,' he said.

So that settled that. He's slapping on the oil at arm's length from the sliver of shade offered by the eaves. Still, the gate does look good.

Why blue birds are blue

Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue … Beautiful plumage!

What's even more remarkable than a Scandinavian parrot is that the blue colour of birds isn't produced by blue pigments but by the interaction of light with microscopic structures in the feathers. And not just blues. White, some greens and all iridescent hues are also structural colours.

These colours are generated when light passes through a material of one refractive index into another. Things happen at the interface between the materials. Some light is scattered back to the observer whereas the rest continues on its path—more or less. If there are several layers, the process is repeated at each junction. The type and number of layers (single- vs multi-layer) and the way in which the light is scattered (coherent vs incoherent) creates a range of colours. Whether a colour is iridescent depends on the part of the feather that generates it: barbs produce non-iridescent colours, barbules iridescent ones.

Although all blues are structural, their production is often governed by other factors. The startling blue of male fairy wrens (Malurus spp), for example, is under hormonal control—the more testosterone a bird has, the earlier he undergoes the moult into his bright new suit.

Some greens are also structural colours, produced in the same way as are blues. The wattles above the eyes of the velvet asity (Philepitta castanea, a fruit-eating bird from Madagascar, contain tightly-packed arrays of collagen that scatter light. (Unlike blues, not all greens are structural—the plumage of African turacos is coloured by turacoverdin.)

Iridescent colours change with the angle of light. They may either be a single hue, which seems to shimmer and shine when the light strikes it, or vary through all or part of the spectrum. In some animals, iridescence is a result of fine incised lines on a surface but in birds (and many insects), they result from the same multi-layer refraction that gives rise to blue and green. The plumage of a male satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhymchus violaceus) is iridescent in a range of hues from deep blue to ultraviolet. That of the brush bronzewing (Phaps elegans) covers most of the visible spectrum.

White results when pockets of air inside the feathers scatter all wavelengths of light. The brightness of the white depends on the number and distribution of those pockets. Compare an egret with a barnyard chook to see the difference. Or this stoic silver gull, still a just-washed white despite the surroundings.

Cricket is that serious, dammit!

Reports of Fiji gunfire a 'game of cricket'

Residents around Fiji's main military barracks in Suva have denied hearing gunfire, despite media reports to the contrary.

According to an AFP correspondent, the barracks are quiet and soldiers are playing a game of cricket.

A local resident and a guard on the gate say there have been no shots or unusual activity at the camp this morning.

Their comments came in response to an international media report which said gunfire had erupted in the Queen Elizabeth barracks earlier today.

An ABC correspondent says another foreign correspondent had mistaken noise from the game of cricket at the barracks for gunfire.

- AFP

That was a mistake—going out into the back yard to water the plants. (Using a watering can, of course.) It's hot, still and very smoky. I'm not sure of the visibility in the city but a friend in the Hurstbridge – Diamond Creek area estimated it was down to about 400m there. And we're about 150km from the closest of the Goulburn – Ovens – Heyfield fires. I can't imagine what it must be like for those of you in that part of the state.

Here's part of the latest high-resolution image from NASA. (I've chopped it down to 152 KB, so it's safe for dial-up.) The original is over 8 MB. Dial-up users can check out the thumbnails at this site.

No blogging today. Apologies. I've been off on sick leave and haven't been back long from the hospital. That's not actually true. I've been back for about five hours but I've been napping on the sofa.

This is the last day of the crap week, so things should be looking up from now on. Not looking straight up, you understand. More along a gentle incline. But definitely up.

Apart from the special and supplementary exams. And the student progress meetings. And ... oh, you get the gist.

Circus of the Spineless #15

Circus of the Spineless #15 is up and running at Words and Pictures. It features all your favourite invertebrates ... and more. Where else could you read about tardigrades? Or paralysis ticks? Or ant-eating fungi?

Do you read crime fiction? Do you write crime fiction? Well, how's your self-esteem?

Ohio State University academic, Dr Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, has looked at the personalities of crime readers and discovered that those with low self-esteem didn't enjoy tales with surprise endings.

“People with low self-esteem like to feel they knew all along who committed the crime, probably because it makes them feel smarter.”

Seems harsh. But fair.

I'm hopeless at working out whodunit in a well-plotted story. I just go along for the ride. The story-telling is more important to me than the twists and turns—especially if they're signposted. (You know, the clumsy scenes where the murderer is onstage but the author carefully avoids using third person pronouns. That'd be a female murderer, then. Ooh, what a devious twist.)

But crime and mystery fiction is more than whodunits. The genre is ripping its stitches with subgenres and cross-overs and all sorts of subtle variations. I wonder whether there's any difference in personality between readers of specific types of stories? Sorry, I'm getting away from the topic.

I'm thinking the good doctor's right on this bit:

Overall, Knobloch-Westerwick said mysteries probably appeal more to people who enjoy thinking more than average.

You can read the whole article at the Ohio State University research news page.

Icon, I saw, I voted

A: What do David Attenborough, Paul McCartney and Morrissey have in common?

Q: They're living icons.

Okay, let's get it out of the way now. If ever a word has been devalued by inappropriate use, it's icon. The BBC haven't helped with this poll. And I'm not helping by mentioning it. But, y'know ...

The Beeb asked for nominations for living icons. According to their web site, the criteria for nomination were fairly slack (which reflects their use of the term icon, I suppose).

The nominee must:

• be alive
• have been born in the UK or is now living there
• have made an impact on 'British cultural life'. (Note that the impact doesn't necessarily have to be positive.)

The individuals were ranked by the number of nominations with the top three going through to a vote.

So, who got close but no cigar? The runners up are:

4. David Bowie
5. Michael Caine
6. Stephen Fry
7. Kate Bush
8. Alan Bennett
9. Kate Moss
10. Vivienne Westwood

Now the fight is one between the top three—Sir David, Sir Paul and plain old Morrissey.

Voting closes on 11 December and the winner will be announced on 16 December

Bushfire season

A satellite view of the fires in eastern Victoria. NASA's Terra satellite took this photo on 5th December. The red marks represent some of the larger fires that have contributed to what NASA refers to as 'a river of smoke'. According to the Department of Sustainability and Environment's web site, twelve fires of over 1000 hectares are burning out of control in the Goulburn – Ovens – Heyfield region of the highlands and Gippsland. Another 23 are burning in the same area. Firefighters have a huge number either contained or under control, including one close to Ben Cruachan.

This is the fire situation around 2.30 pm today. It's not promising.

I'm stuck at home today and will be most of tomorrow too. I had a wander around the back garden (more accurately, I picked my way between the weeds). It's all happening out there. The Hakea (I'm not sure what species) is smothered in little white blossoms, which are attracting every bee in the neighbourhood (native and introduced) as well as most of the flies and hoverflies. I've tried to take close up photos but the Hakea's rolled up leaves are very effective at keeping large vertebrates at bay. It's an absolute bastard of a shrub. But every time I think I might chop it out, it puts on a glorious display and the insects swarm in.

A gap in nature

I've just received the latest catalogue from Andrew Isles natural history bookshop in Melbourne. (Yes, they do mail order and they're very efficient.) Among the goodies on offer over Christmas are the original paintings from the book A Gap in Nature.

Written by Tim Flannery and illustrated by Peter Schouten, A gap in nature tells the sad tales of over a hundred species of mammals, birds and reptiles that have become extinct in historical times. The paintings, which were exhibited at several museums, depict their subjects at life size. At one end of the scale are tiny mice and hummingbirds. At the other, the giant Steller's sea cow, which is depicted on five panels. That's the one for you, if you've got plenty of dosh and enough wall space to accommodate the 2 m x 8.75 m artwork. Chuck out the dogs playing poker. This is a talking point.

There's even a grebe on this list. The Atitlan grebe (Podilymbus gigas) was described in 1929 and disappeared less than 60 years later. Restricted to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, the small population declined as a result of competition with both introduced fish and the more widespread pied-billed grebe (P. podiceps). If I had the money, I'd buy the painting. It'd be the only decent grebe picture in this place!

Look, ma! No hands!

A few weeks ago, I caught a geometrid moth inside the house and released it into the garden that night. In the meantime, the moth laid a clutch of bright green eggs in the jar. When they hatched, I made an educated guess about a suitable food plant and let the tiny, cotton-thin caterpillars crawl onto a firewheel tree (Stenocarpus sinuatus).

This morning, I spotted a geometrid caterpillar, hale and hearty and chewing its way through my once beautiful but now increasingly tatty plant. I'm not sure that it's one of the specimen jar cohort because all geometrids look the same to me. If any geometrid fancier can identify mother moth and/or caterpillar, let me know.

On being surprised by a camera-wielding lepidopterazzi, the caterpillar adopted a characteristic geometrid pose. Moments before, it has been nibbling its way through a leaf. Then it extended its body to resemble a twig, letting go with its true legs, holding on with its ventral and anal prolegs and winding out a silk thread from its mouth as it straightened up. Had it not been rather too bold with its daytime feeding and the sloppy disposal of its poo, I would never have seen it. As long as it doesn't destroy the Stenocarpus, I wish it luck.

Finally dealt with the supplementary exam today, despite numerous interruptions. Although, now I come to think about it, I can't remember the details of any of the interruptions, other than a visit from a student around lunchtime and a 5 pm meeting that finished an hour and a half later. But they were pretty much constant. That much I do recall.

I didn't even get a chance to listen to the cricket until close to the end, with Australia needing 27 runs to win off nine overs with six wickets left. And who'd have thought that at the start of the day?

Talking about the start of the day, there was more than a hint of just desserts about this morning. Last night, I lost my tolerance for the latest squatter—a half-grown house mouse—and set a couple of traps for it. I'd prefer to put down a live trap but I didn't have one. Only the other sort.

So I placed them along the mouse's usual run and baited them with tasty morsels. When I checked this morning, the mouse had managed to extract the bait without setting off either trap. (As they do.)

Unfortunately, I forgot that the mouse's usual run also coincides with where I make breakfast. Luckily, I was wearing sandals.

Serves me right.

I've been neglecting the blog recently and I apologise to everyone, especially the regulars (you know who you are!) There'll be more neglect until work settles down. With any luck (certainly not with planning), this will happen next week.

All sorts of things have been occurring at work. Of course, I can't blog about any of it, which is unfortunate because much of it is very bloggable—in that Victor Meldrew 'I don't believe it' sort of way. Anybody who's spent time back-of-house at an academic institution will know what I'm talking about. Ivory towers, my arse.

The students have been providing a few of those Meldrew moments. They've received their results and are now elated, appalled, bamboozled or all three. One of them sent me an e-mail today (which I had to fish out of the junk e-mail folder because the subject line was completely uninformative) demanding to know why he had got less than 40% when he'd done so well in his laboratory classes and exam. I'm rather surprised by this myself. Not by his final mark but how he'd determined that he'd done so well in the exam when I haven't released the exam mark. (I triple checked his results and, quite frankly, he was lucky to get that high a score. Now, how to put that diplomatically ...)

Still, no one did anything quite as silly as one of last year's students who marked his own exam, worked out what he'd scored for each question and added them up for me. He was, as you might expect, not very accurate. (He did pass with a respectable mark.)

Back soon with stuff.

Yellow Wiggle woo woo

I'm a bit late with this but you might like to hear a developing conspiracy theory about the Yellow Wiggle from the ABC's Self-service Science Forum (aka SSSF or Sisyphus, for reasons that will become clear if you spend more than five minutes reading the posts there.)

They were on to it almost instantaneously. As yellow is the colour of the flag flown when a ship has sickness aboard, is Captain Feathersword behind it all?

I did say it was developing.

Apologies. I didn't blog yesterday because I didn't switch on the computer all day. 'Twas bliss.

Got up late again. Pottered around the garden. Listened to the cricket. Had coffee with a friend in Brunswick Street. Did some more stuff in the garden. Was amazed when a mouse decided to mosey around the house while I was watching telly. Bloody thing sauntered past me as if it owned the place. Remembered that I had to go to work on Monday. Thought about the crap waiting for me on the desk. Started to feel uncomfortable because this week is going to be very, very difficult. Went to sleep after 1 a.m. Woke up a couple of times. Went back to sleep. Woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. Have a meeting at 9.30 this morning. You can imagine how well I'm going to perform today.

On the other hand, a flock of galahs just flew past from west to east. Not sure where they're headed but they could be off to feed on the river bank. (Which reminds me, I must finish off my journey to the source of the Maribyrnong River. Not as dramatic as Burton and Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile but there you have it.) The resident red wattlebird landed on the fence earlier and peered in at me. He's quite a magnificent individual with his gold belly and sealing-wax wattles. Unfortunately, he's been cleaning up all the larger spiders in the garden. He held one in his beak, the legs dangling down either side so he looked like Dr Fu Manchu.

I'd better get in to work. I'm not looking forward to this week.