Rechargeable liquid battery-one of the best news stories for a long time

One of the great pleasures of writing this blog is the opportunity to riff on really good news stories. Especially when they come from trustworthy and erudite sources like Nature Briefing. Even more when they fit so clearly with our own ideas on how humanity might survive this interminable polycrisis. Let’s begin with the story, New Liquid acts like rechargeable battery which they are basing on Science and Chem (their links below)

A new type of liquid can harvest and store energy from light to act as a rechargeable power source. The liquid contains a molecule that absorbs electrons from light, which prompts a restructure into a jelly-like substance. This gel remains stable for months at a time and can release the stored electrons upon contact with oxygen to power chemical reactions. The research is still in very early stages, but such a metal-free energy storage system could one day be useful to power small devices such as smartwatches. Science | 4 min read
Reference: Chem paper

And our thoughts? They are both particular and general, gentle readers. In particular; it’s early days yet but if it works, we are looking at a metal free battery replacement. Think of how much dirty, energy intensive mining that could save. No more batteries to throw away. Even the complex panels and wires of modern panels suddenly look a tad passé, don’t they? Putting the new technology firmly on the same road as other new imaginative third-generation systems such as organic solar cells and self-charging polymers. The portfolio of ever more imaginative and ever more ecologically sound generation systems just grows and grows. Which leads us to our general points. Firstly: to preserve such archaic technologies as oil and gas is as mistaken as wanting to go back to typewriters in offices or using huge stone circles such as the one at Stonehenge to tell the time. Any nation that chooses fossil fuels will soon be at a hopeless technological disadvantage. But secondly: get this from the Science article, because we think it’s a killer point about everything we do here

The new material draws inspiration from the behaviour of the cytoskeleton, the constantly self-assembling and disassembling network of protein filaments within a cell that enables it to move and divide.

Yes, you guessed it, That same oft-repeated truism we’re always trotting out “basic research in one area will produce unexpected dividends elsewhere” has been proved again. That’s something our readers all around the world will agree with.

#energy #technology #sustainability #solar power #batteries carbon emissions #renewables

Brexit: how two Rights made a wrong

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Brexit could have worked. Read those words slowly, from an honest Remainer. Because as some of us always knew, there were pragmatic arguments from the other side, which we feared greatly, because they were exceedingly strong. So how is that most successful political project in recent British History now seems to have fallen so flat? Why, ten years on, do the memories of Brexit feel far from triumphant? We repeat, so that no one gets us wrong: Brexit could have worked. And this is why we think it didn’t.

The overarching problem was that the Leave coalition was built from two groups who wanted entirely different futures. Both were impeccably Right Wing. Both were possessed a vision of a future that could well have worked. But both pressed the same “Brexit “ button for opposite reasons. Because they belonged to two quite different right-wing tribes. One tribe, The Free‑marketeers dreamed of a Britain unshackled from Brussels, a nimble “Singapore‑on‑Thames”: low taxes, light regulation, capital flowing freely, goods moving frictionlessly, and a labour market kept competitive by high mobility. Their model required openness — to investment, to trade, and, crucially, to people. What can be more red tape than Immigration controls? But it might have been very, very prosperous.

The other half of the coalition wanted the exact reverse. The Nationalists imagined their Brexit as a chance to pull up the drawbridge: to instigate tighter immigration rules, more insulation from global competition, to achieve a more interventionist state protecting industries and communities. Some were driven by economic insecurity, some by cultural anxiety, and yes — some by outright hostility to outsiders, seeing Brexit as a way to begin a purge of “foreigners” from public life. Their model required barriers, buffers, and a powerful State willing to police identity as much as borders. It was a vision of national retreat, not global acceleration. But it might have been very, very stable.

These two projects could not coexist beyond Brexit day. You cannot believe in the free movement of capital and goods while fleeing, like a child at bathtime, from the free movement of labour. Markets do not work that way. Block labour and capital simply moves instead; block people and goods compensate; block both and you get the stagnation we now inhabit. Brexit tried to fuse two rights — the right to globalise and the right to barricade — and produced a wrong. A decade later, the contradiction still sits at the heart of British politics, unresolved and unresolvable, because the country cannot be both fortress and freeport at the same time. Deep, deep down, the question is not about Europe, nor taxes nor even immigration rules: all are details It is What do you want to be going forwards?

‘I feel entirely vindicated’: three Guardian columnists debate Brexit and its legacy | Aditya Chakrabortty, Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins | The Guardian The Economic Impact of Brexit | NBER

#brexit #united kingdom #european union #economics #history #nationalism #free markets

Should we blame Alan Greenspan for everything that’s gone wrong?

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As historians of the future pick through the rubble of America’s decline and fall after its supreme triumph in 1991, they will ask one plaintive question: “How was such a winning position thrown away so decisively — and so quickly?” There will be plenty of blame to go around, plenty of suspects against whom fingers will be pointed. But one name keeps coming up again and again: Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006.

Today, the case for the prosecution against “ol’ Al” is made loudly, cogently, and with devastating clarity by Robert Reich, US Secretary of Labor under Clinton and now a professor at Berkeley.

We really think you should read this [1] — especially if you have a home, a family, a community, and, most pertinently of all, a job where the salary has not risen significantly in twenty years or so. But for those pressed for time, Reich summarises what he sees as Greenspan’s masterpiece of misjudgement thus:

“If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan… the worst collapse since 1929… resulted from the deregulation of Wall Street that Greenspan advocated.”

“He pushed Clinton and Congress to repeal the Glass–Steagall Act, which since the 1930s had separated investment banking from commercial banking, thereby preventing banks from gambling with personal savings. He also argued vigorously against regulating derivatives — essentially financial bets on financial bets — that later proved to be weapons of mass financial destruction.”

Yet we ask: is the culprit really Greenspan? Or is it actually ourselves?

Greenspan was widely regarded by critics as an enthusiastic advocate of the ultra‑rich and the values they espouse: hierarchy, conspicuous consumption, obsessive individualism. Whether these are virtues or vices is a matter of debate — but they were adopted enthusiastically by wide sections of the population for decades, making the task of Greenspan and his Wall Street fellow‑travellers infinitely easier.

For the ultimate illusion they peddled was Common Sense: it makes sense to reduce the deficit, for what is a nation but a giant household? Well, it is a bit — but mostly it isn’t. So things like infrastructure, research, and health go into the “nice‑but‑we‑can’t‑afford‑it” ledger too many times, and slowly but surely decline acquires a momentous, unstoppable hegemony of its own.

So don’t just blame Greenspan — blame ourselves for buying into a system that puts that sort of man into that sort of job. And hope that future societies develop much more judicious HR policies.

[1] RIP Alan Greenspan: you were charming, powerful and wrong | Robert Reich | The Guardian

#business #economics #united states of America #alan greenspan #robert reich #finance #markets

Vaccines: it’s a question of Anthropology not Biology: Gillian Tett knows why

Why doesn’t evidence cut through? Why do reason and learning so often fail? They’re themes that have haunted this blog since its inception way back in the COVID‑19 days of 2020. Aren’t we supposed to be the heirs of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and all that? Maybe part of the answer lies in this story about the UK and Japan, and their startlingly different experiences with their respective HPV vaccination programmes, as detailed in this excellent Conversation article by Professor Justin Stebbing of Anglia Ruskin University [1].

On the face of it, vaccines are a winner: the biology is clearly understood, they save lives, and they have eliminated numerous diseases [2]. Which explains the success of the UK rollout of the HPV vaccine: Justin has a barrage of juicy statistics, but in his words the NHS now feels able to publish a plan to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem in England by 2040. Compare that with Japan, where following a reasonable start, the HPV vaccine campaign collapsed into desuetude. There were media stories, the government lost its nerve: the result is” that among girls born in certain years, coverage fell from around 70% to below 1%, and it remained at that level for years“. And Justin explains the dreary consequences at some length.

So why can’t we understand the difference between the two countries? In the end, vaccine hesitancy has very little to do with the science and everything to do with the stories people swim in. The biology stays constant; what shifts is the cultural weather around it. A rumour here, a misframed headline there, a neighbour’s anecdote, a politician’s stumble — tiny changes in narrative that can tilt whole communities from confidence to doubt. Vaccination succeeds or fails not in the laboratory but in the social world: in trust networks, identity cues, and the fragile ways humans decide whom to believe. It is anthropology, not virology, that explains why one hospital bed stays empty and another does not.

In other words, public health is really about anthropology, not biology. One person who understands this well is Gillian Tett, whose formidable book Anthro‑Vision [3] argues that the real drivers of human behaviour are rarely the numbers on the page but the cultural currents beneath them — the stories people trust, the tribes they belong to, the risks they feel rather than calculate. Public health often talks in data, but people decide in narrative. A stray rumour, a clumsy headline, a shift in group mood can undo months of scientific clarity, while a well‑placed story or trusted voice can restore confidence just as fast. And suddenly this becomes true of many of the things that preoccupy us here — climate change, economics, even the long arc of female emancipation. For all our “LSS are the heirs‑of‑the‑Age‑of‑Reason,” for all our Whiggish rhetoric, we’ve missed one important truth. People are not how we would like them to be. And this book tells us a lot about why.

[1]https://theconversation.com/the-hpv-vaccine-works-but-only-if-we-keep-trusting-it-285618?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20fo

[2] Why vaccination is important and the safest way to protect yourself – NHS

[3]Tett, Gillian. Anthro‑Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life. London: Random House Business, 2021.

#vaccination #public health # HPV #anthropology #biology #culture #history

Friday Night: Côtes de Provence Rosé for summer evenings

We know of no happier place to visit than the sun-drenched French region of Provence. To descend on final approach into Nice is gain privileged witness to all of its charms in a single five minute panorama as the plane crosses lavender covered mountains, vineyards, opulent settlements like Antibes and Juan‑les‑Pins, busy crowded beaches and les aménagements of every conceivable period of history. For Provence (originally Provincia Romana, the Republics’ first holding outside of Italy) has been at the crossroads of human development for hundreds of thousands of years. The Romans found a thriving Greek colony that was already big on wines, olives and all the other appurtenances of Classical Civilisation. Many asseverate that the traditions of that Civilisation were never entirely lost here while the rest of Europe collapsed into the Dark Ages. And under the Counts of Provence a thriving new culture, a medieval “cool” of artists and poets re emerged into the sunlight of a growing prosperity which has somehow survived invasions, religious wars, papal exiles, revolutions, world wars and even competition from fast food empires.

But fans of this column will want to know “What do they drink, and where can we get some?” Old Provençal hands will recognise names like Bandol , Cassis (the appellation, not the liqueur) and pastis almost from their subconscious. And every good bar will run a line in beers like Kronenbourg 1664 for hot days in hilltop villages. But today we are going to go with one of our all-time favourites : Côtes de Provence Rosé: the big, sunlit workhorse of the region: pale, saline, herbal, carrying the taste of every fine holiday spent, and memory generated, in this glorious region. As usual we shall offer three types, thus suiting every pocket. And although based on the English market, which is sadly all we know, les connaisseurs of all lands will find enough to adapt to their own circumstances

Sensible and sure

ASDA Château de Gairoird Côtes de Provence Rosé ~£12–£14 Dry, fresh, strawberry‑and‑citrus, clean finish. A proper Provence rosé without the lifestyle‑inflation tax.

Polished mid‑range

Sainsburys M de Minuty Rosé ~£17–£20 Peach, watermelon, a touch of herbs, very Côte d’Azur. The one people bring to dinner parties when they want to look tasteful but not ostentatious.

Premium, but not insane

Waitrose Whispering Angel (single bottle) ~£18–£25 Ultra‑pale, refined, citrus blossom, mineral finish. As often with Waitrose, you’ll be paying a bit more-but we think you’ll notice the difference.

That’s three fine choices by which anyone can enjoy a taste of Provence without actually selling a kidney. À la vôtre !, or as they say in Old Provence :Santat!

#wine #provence #france #summer drinks #travel

Round up for this week: What’s the biggest living thing. how many quantums in an atom, lupus progress-and international relations

Fungal internet Its not whales or trees:Some of the largest living things on our planet are actually vast networks of microscope white fungi growing beneath the ground on which we unthinkingly tread as The Conversation explains;

https://theconversation.com/fungal-highways-are-vast-yet-hidden-underground-new-study-285166?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversa

Don’t expect Putin to go quietly if he loses in Ukraine If you think current developments in the Russian Ukraine war might lead to a status quo ante bellum, think again ,as this prescient article from the Guardian makes clear

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/14/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-borders-russian-president

Plant a tree in ‘73, plant some more in ‘74 was a Government slogan from our long distant youth But maybe trees won’t save us from climate change as well as we thought they might as this piece from The Guardian explains

Trees may store less planet-heating carbon than hoped, study suggests | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardian

A bestiary of bosons Nothing so defeats us as the vast and baffling variety of particles ,waves and other strange things that make up the modern atom .So we welcomed this article from Nature Briefing which tries to make sense of the matter

How many elementary particles are there?

Even if you know your fermions from your bosons, the actual number of fundamental particles — the electrons, quarks and other building blocks of physics — is still uncertain. From the 17 that feature on posters on classroom walls, “where you stop depends on your taste for complexity and mystery”, explains science writer Natalie Wolchover. “Plausible answers range from 17 to — in all seriousness — 995.5.”

Quanta | 13 min read

Lupus in remission Just before we pressed the “SEND” button, our researchers insisted that this encouraging story about a new immunological technique which seems to be turning the tide on the debilitating disease of Lupus went in, Good for them. here’s the BBC

‘I’ve never been this good’ – revolutionary immune reset puts lupus in remission – BBC News

Quote of the week

He that hasteth with his feet sinneth.” (Proverbs 19:2)

#lupus #immunology #fungi #Russia #physics #quantum physics #vladimir putin #trees

Roman Emperors and Iranian disasters: Julian revisited

In a little blog called The Emperor Julian’s Strategic disaster: are there any modern parallels? (LSS 25 3 26) we drew attention to the case of the Roman Emperor Julian . Whose great mistake was to enter into an unnecessary war of choice with Persia (then as now synonymous with Iran ) in order to boost his own flagging domestic popularity with what looked to be an easy victory.

Generally we try not to blow our own trumpet, as the vulgar phrase would have it. But we did at least draw a comparison which suggested that meddling with Iran/Persia , however disagreeable their regime, was a pretty bad idea unless you knew exactly what you were doing. We also noted that the end result of Julian’s blundering was a strategic backstep for his Empire of incalculable proportions by fatally weakening its offensive capabilities at a time when enemies assailed it on all frontiers. And we challenged readers to think of possible contemporary parallels to our little tale.

No historical parallel is ever perfect: no situation repeats exactly. But Julian was clearly out thought and out fought by an adversary who realised it had only to survive in order to emerge triumphant. So, once again-are there any modern parallels now that June has come?

#persia #iran #history #roman empire #united states #emperor julian

Should nicotine be included the war on drugs?

When that paragon of unimpeachable virtue Richard Milhous Nixon announced the War on Drugs back in 1971, we counted ourselves among his most fervid supporters. It chimed with our most basic principle: people must be stopped from enjoying themselves wherever and when that is possible. And when some of those people are pot-smoking hippies or degenerate cocaine fiends, how much more satisfying still was that act of repression! But yet, as always, the Devil Whispered in Our Ear: If we were banning all that weed and charlie and smack and billy whizz because they altered minds and caused social problems, then what about nicotine and alcohol? Didn’t Jesus seem to take a relaxed view of the matter, both in the famous wedding at Cana (John 2 10 ), and in the Last Supper (Matthew 26:27–29) At least the company didn’t light up cigars at the end of the meal-but boy, did these passages pose us some problems!

Since when things have slipped still further. As if they didn’t have enough problems with fossil fuels and rising sea levels already, the nation of Palau has dropped another logic bomb upon the Comfortable nations of the world Read this Should Nicotine be regulated like drugs? from Nature Briefings

A call by the Pacific island nation of Palau for nicotine to be regulated like narcotics by the United Nations will trigger an assessment and a vote by member states. If nicotine were to be added to the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, it would effectively make it illegal to sell nicotine products that aren’t considered medicinal, says nicotine-treatment specialist Renee Bittoun. But tobacco-company lobbying makes it unlikely that nicotine will be added to the list, says Bittoun. Nature | 4 min read

Whatever next, gentle readers? Will they free up restrictions and red tape on the sale of tea and coffee? Will they start alleging the thrill people get from driving fast cars is like that from cocaine-and bring in speed restrictions? Or will some sect of uber – Free Market Liberals, followers of Adam Smith or something, seize power and then abolish all restrictions on all neurologically active substances? We can’t decide whether we are going to be oppressed by Communists or Capitalists: but we await our fate in trepidation.

[1] War on drugs – Wikipedia

#tobacco #nicotine #palau #pollution #free market #war on drugs #cannabis #cocaine #heroin #alcohol

Has Global Warming happened to you yet?

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Everyone can choose how they learn about global warming. For some it is to read the science by consulting sites such as the Royal Society[1] , NOAA,[2] the Met Office [3] and other adults in the room. The second is to wait until it happens to you. Increasingly, people are choosing the second option because the climate is now delivering personal tutorials: a fire that shouldn’t have burned, a flood that shouldn’t have reached that high, a heatwave that shouldn’t have been possible at this latitude. We’ve got three examples for you today, which we present with due apologies and sympathy to the victims( it really isn’t their fault).

A. The 2022 UK 40°C heatwave

Most people who lived in Southern England that year can share memories like driving around the M25 through clouds of smoke from the burning heaths of Surrey, or seeing our beloved green South Downs turn the colour of chamois leather. Attribution studies conclude climate change made it at least 10 times more likely.[4]

B. The 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave

You’d think the cool, rainy Pacific Coast would be the last place to expect a catastrophic climate change event. But this one was described by scientists as “virtually impossible” without global warming. [5]

C. The 2023–24 Canadian wildfires

The largest in Canadian history; attribution work shows climate change made the conditions significantly more likely and more severe.[6]

We could go on- but at this point there pops up the usual man from the Dog and Duck who yells “these are only (expletive deleted) probabilities! Just models! No one has PROVED these were caused by climate change!” To which we reply:

If you refuse to act until science gives you 100% certainty, you’ll never act on anything. Climate attribution uses the same probability standards we rely on for medicine, insurance, and engineering — the ones we trust every day without complaint. When scientists say “an event was made ten times more likely by climate change”, that’s not vague. That’s the same level of evidence we use to approve drugs, design bridges, and set insurance premiums. If you accept probability‑based evidence when it keeps planes in the sky and hospitals running, but reject it only when it concerns climate change, that’s not a scientific position — it’s a political one. It’s also disingenuous. But above all, it is very short term.

[1] Evidence & Causes of Climate Change | Royal Society

[2] Climate Change | NOAA Climate.gov

[3] Climate – Met Office

[4] UK heat scientific report

[5]Philip et al. (2022), “Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada in June 2021.” Earth System Dynamics, 13, 1689–1713.

#global warming #climate change #fossil fuels #fires #floods #droughts

No more plants, no more antibiotics

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Losing plants and fungi to climate change is a quiet catastrophe for antibiotics and medical research in general because these organisms are our undiscovered pharmacy. A huge share of existing drugs — from penicillin to paclitaxel — came from obscure species that someone happened to find before they vanished. As habitats heat, dry, burn, or shift faster than species can move, we’re not just losing biodiversity; we’re losing chemical ingenuity that evolution spent millions of years perfecting. Every extinct fungus is a potential new antibiotic gone forever, every vanished plant a missed anti‑cancer compound, every collapsed ecosystem a library burned before we even opened the first book. The tragedy is not only what we lose now, but what we will never get the chance to discover.

Fortunately, the Royal Botanic gardens at Kew in London (one of the world’s most enlightened and learned places) is on the case as the erudite Damien Carrington makes clear for this article in the Guardian. The vital, almost neuralgic need, is to identify new plants before they are destroyed forever under a concrete miasma of shopping malls, motorway interchanges and cheap hotels. To say nothing of climate change: if you want proof of that, the flowering time for plants has been changing by 2.5 days a decade for the last hundred years or so, according to this article But the RBG are at last deploying the wonders of AI to speed up identification and classification, so the task of exploring the pharmaceutical cornucopia can be made much easier

Digitisation and online access to millions of specimens that were until now only accessible in archives is also producing new insights, especially in the global south, reports Damian They are even getting genomic data from 180 year old fungi, potentially opening a completely new line of research But read the lot for yourselves gentle readers, by clicking on Damian’s lucid article

Now we could tell you much about how the foregoing cheers us on behalf of our pet project, antibiotic research or even for medical science in general; for we know some of you have wider concerns and interests. But we won’t. Instead we shall close with a naked, unashamed plug for that self-same Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.[2] Easily reached by bus , train or licenced London Taxi, it contains a formidable treasure of plants from the entire globe cunningly arranged in some spectacular displays Plus some delightful lakes full of fish and water fowl, pleasant lawns and excellent cafes and souvenir shops. If in London, visit it we say. Personal note: we remember from more than 30 years ago an excellent bar on Kew Gardens station where they sold excellent cold lager to compensate for the hard slog around the tropical greenhouses Does anyone know if it is still there?

[1] AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists | Plants | The Guardian

[2] https://www.bing.com/alink/link?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.kew.org%2f&source=serp-local&h=9bhqK4eCioVZh7YfDibjFqdXtmBATJUp73lhpA8kti0%3d&p=lw_magsmlt&ig=

#botany #pharmacology #medical research #royal botanic gardens kew #ecology #plants #fungi