Friday, February 8 2019

08:00 Lois and I take a shower for the first time in a few days, and feel a little more normal as a result. After breakfast, we drive into the village to post a birthday card to Aiden, Lois's great-nephew in Oxford - it sounds like a simple task, but actually it poses a bit of a challenge after not getting out of the house for a few days because of our colds.

10:00 Last night, we heard an interesting radio programme about recent DNA analyses of the Spanish population in the Iberian Peninsula.

This morning I start to leaf through a similar study carried out a couple of years ago, all about the contribution of Scandinavian DNA to the British population as a result of Scandinavian immigration during the Viking Age: ”Viking DNA: Reexamining the Scandinavian Migration to Great Britain” (February 2, 2017) by Pat Lowinger.

Interestingly, the study refuted many of the old clichés that for many years had dominated ideas about British history in the Viking Age.

The origins of the Scandinavian contribution to British DNA actually came from very diverse roots, and not just from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, but also from Scandinavian immigrants who had spent time in the Baltic region, also Russia and (in particular) Ireland, and perhaps had interbred with native partners along the way. It is clear that many Scandinavian settlers did not stay in the first area they settled in, but often moved on to other countries where there were already Scandinavian colonies.

Scandinavian immigrants to eastern England, the so-called Danelaw areas, were made up of both men and women (the women constituted 33-40% of the immigrants). The old idea that immigrants were mostly men who killed the local Anglo-Saxon men and took their women was just a myth – there is no doubt about this.

It seems that the Scandinavian immigrants lived in separate villages, and mostly lived at peace with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours in mutually adjacent villages. But the genetic results suggest that there was rarely any interbreeding between the two groups, at least until the end of the 10th century, which is interesting.

In fact, there were at least two Danish jurisdictions in the Danelaw area: the immigrants in the northern jurisdiction (Northumbria) resisted the Christian religion for a longer time than did those in the southern jurisdictions, where integration with Anglo-Saxons was all the faster as a result of the immigrants' Christianisation.

It’s interesting that the Scandinavian contribution to English DNA in the Danelaw area was not a dominant one, to put it mildly, so we must come to the conclusion that the immigrants' prestigious position in the local community was based primarily on their political and military control, rather than on the volumes of Danish and other Scandinavian immigrants per se.

The situation was very different, however, in the Shetland Islands and the Orkney Islands, where the Scandinavian contribution to local dna was 44% (Shetland Islands) and 30% (Orkneys Islands).

How interesting! Isn’t genetics totally fascinating! Who would want to study anything else ??

11:00 I jump on my fitness bike for the first time for over a week. I ride 4 miles, not specially far, but it's a start without doubt.

12:30 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap. I get up at 3pm and Lois and I relax with a cup of tea and a few mince pies on the couch.

We listen a little to the radio, an interesting programme in the series "The Last Word". Lois and I have got into the habit of hearing this programme every week because we want to find out if anyone over the last 1-2 weeks has died or not (I have noticed that most weeks exactly 5 deaths occur).

The chemist Dr. Stewart Adams recently died, at the age of 95 years. He worked as a researcher for Boots, the UK's largest pharmacy chain whose headquarters were  (and still are) in the city of Nottingham. During World War II, he worked on the drug penicillin, on projects that were then top secret: the authorities were determined to hide the chain's latest results from the Germans.

For fear that Boot's laboratories would be bombed by the Germans, the chain's researchers worked in a small townhouse in the city - Adams's laboratory was the living room, as well as a small part of the kitchen. His chief colleague worked in the larder. My god, what madness !!!!

After the war, Adams continued with one of his favourite projects, looking for a pill that would alleviate the pain of rheumatoid arthritis, and it was during this project that he developed the world-famous non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen / Neurofen, which he worked on for 16 years before it came on the market.

The chemist Dr. Stewart Adams, who died recently, at 95 years of age

During one phase of the development, he used himself as a guinea pig. One evening he went into the city with a bunch of foreign colleagues. The next morning he had a hangover, but also on the day’s agenda was an international conference where he was the first speaker of the day. In his ibuprofen experiments, he normally used 400 mg doses at that time, but on this occasion he decided to take a risk and dose himself with 600 mg, which did the job as far as his conference speech was concerned, he later reported.

My goodness, what a crazy world we live in !!!!

He never became a rich man as a result of his research - Boots had the patent. But there must be few people who can boast that they helped more people around the world than he did. And that was what gave him the satisfaction he needed, he said. What a man !!!!

18:00 We have dinner and spend the rest of the evening listening to radio, an interesting programme about Aristotle (384-322 BC), but not focusing on his earlier role as a philosopher, but on his later role as a biologist. The programme’s  host is the charming Melvyn Bragg, who has assembled a group of experts to help him separate the truth from the myths.

Aristotle's role as a biologist was undoubtedly a groundbreaking one. People had studied biology before, but it was Aristotle who was the first to spend a lot of time observing a wide variety of animals, plants, etc., and gathering information, so he could speculate on the possible causes of what he observed. "Nature does nothing in vain" - that was his motto, so he never stopped asking the question "why", which was very modern way of proceeding, to put it mildly. His ultimate goal was to discover the purpose of life - so not particularly challenging then ha ha ha!

He certainly didn't believe in the equality of the sexes, I have to say. He believed that the father of a child contributed the child's active potential and the mother contributed the child’s passive potential - big deal!!! 

Also the weather at the moment of a child's conception was important, he believed: the hotter it was increased the chances of the child being a boy. Hot is good, cold is not so good, it seems! Good grief, what madness !!!!

He was not helped by the lack of scientific instruments, microscopes, etc. He believed, for example, that flies could generate themselves spontaneously - he did not have the microscopes that would have shown him them actually hatching out from tiny eggs. He developed his spontaneous generation theory, influential for centuries afterwards,  mostly in the context of oysters and other animals in shells. He believed that the simplest animals could arise simply from the heat in the air, for some reason.

When he could not actually see the animals copulate and lay eggs, he tended to come to the quick conclusion that they arose spontaneously. What madness !!! This kind of thought process was a bit odd, to say the least, because it was so radically different from the rest of his biology.

He had a good idea of the anatomy of a snail, for example, because he had dissected one, so he knew very well that a snail has organs. He even commented that snails had been observed in copulation, but he nevertheless maintained his belief that baby snails arose spontaneously, just like that, out of the mud - yuck, creepy !!!

Bragg's experts come to the conclusion that Aristotle must have thought snail copulation was an early example of so-called "recreational sex" - some unjoined-up thinking here – my god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!

He had the same idea about eels, even though he knew very well that an eel is as complicated as any other fish. But of course he did not have the faintest idea that they actually mate in the Sargasso Sea, far away from Aristotle's laboratories ha ha!

In many ways, Aristotle could be called the world's first true biologist, but he exhibited many attributes that would disqualify him from the title from the modern vantage point. He did not separate his biology from his philosophy or from ethics, for example. 

His most valuable contribution to biology was the fact that he observed, gathered information and wrote down the patterns he had observed. This was radically different from all the studies that had gone on before.

22:00 We go to bed - separate beds again to be on the safe side. Tomorrow brings us a new challenge, that going food shopping for the first time in several days. And we don't have a fully-functioning freezer yet, so it all feels a bit like we are living from hand to mouth.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz !!!!!!

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg tager et brusebad for 1. gang i nogle dage, og føler os lidt mere normale som resultat. Efter morgenmad kører vi ind i landsbyen for at lægge et fødselsdagskort i postkassen til Aidan, Lois’ grandnevø i Oxford – det lyder som en simpel opgave, men faktisk udgør det lidt af en udfordring efter ikke at komme ud af huset i nogle dage på grund af vores forkølelser.

10:00 I går aftes hørte vi et interessant radioprogram, der handlede om dna-analyser af den spanske befolkningen i den iberiske halvø.

I formiddagen går jeg i gang med at blade igennem en lignende undersøgelse udført for et par år siden, der handlede om bidraget af skandinavsk dna til den britiske befolkning som resultat af de indvandringer, der daterer til vikingetiden: ”Viking DNA: Reexamining the Scandinavian Migration to Great Britain” (February 2, 2017) af Pat Lowinger.

Det er interessant, at undersøgelsen modbeviste mange af de gamle klichére, der i mange år havde domineret idéer om britiske historie i vikingetiden. 

Oprindelsen af den skandinavske bidrag til britiske dna har faktisk meget diverse rødder, og stammer ikke bare fra Danmark, Norge, og Sverige, men også fra skandinavske  indvandrer , der havde tilbragt tid i den baltiske region, også Rusland og (i særdeleshed) Irland, og måske havde skaffet indfødte partnere på vejen. Det er klart, at mange skandinavske bosættere ikke forblev i det 1. område, de slog sig ned i, men flyttede ofte videre til andre lande, hvor der allerede var skandinavske kolonier.

Skandinavske indvandrerne til det østlige England, det såkaldte Danelaw-omåder, bestod for det meste af både mænd og kvinder (kvinderne dannede 33-40% af indvandrerne). Den gamle idé, at indvandrerne var for det meste mænd, der dræbte de lokale angelsaksiske mænd tog deres kvinder som koner, var uden tvivl bare en myte.

Det lader til, at de skandinavske indvandrer boede i adskilte landsbyer, og levede for det meste i fred med deres angelsaksiske naboer i de nærliggende landsbyer. Men de genetiske resultater antyder, at der sjældent skete nogen krydsning mellem de to grupper, mindst indtil slutningen af det 10. århundrede, hvilket er interessant.

Der var faktisk to danske jurisdiktioner i Danelaw-området:  indvandringerne i det nordlige jurisdiktion (Northumbria) modstod i længere tid det kristne religion, end dem i det sydlige område, hvor integration var hurtigere som resultat af de tilflytternes konvertering.

Det skandinavske bidrag til engelsk dna i Danelaw-området var ikke et fremherskende for at sige mildt, så vi må komme til den konklusion, at invandrernes  prestigiøse position i det lokale samfund var baseret først og fremmest på deres politiske og militære kontrol, snarere end på antallet af indvandrerne i sig selv.

Situation var meget anderledes imidlertid i Shetlandsøerne og  Orkneyøerne, hvor det skandinavske bidrag blev til 44% (Shetlandsøerner) og 30% (Orkneysøerne).

Hvor interessant! Er genetik ikke helt fascinerende! Hvem ville have lyst til at studere noget andet??

11:00 Jeg hopper op på mind kondicykel for først gang i over en uge. Jeg cykler 4 miles, ikke ret langt, men det er en start uden tvivl.

12:30 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. Jeg står op kl 15 og Lois og jeg slapper af med en kop te og et par mince pies i sofaen.

Vi lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program i serien ”Det sidste ord”. Lois og jeg er kommet i vane med at høre dette program hver uge, fordi vi ønsker at finde ud af, om nogen i de seneste 1-2 uger døde eller ej (jeg har bemærket, at der i de fleste uger sker nøjagtig 5 dødsfald).

Kemikeren Dr Stewart Adams døde desværre for nylig, på 95 år. Han arbejdede som forsker for Boots, Storbritanniens største apotekkæde, hvis hovedkontor havde (og har stadig) til huse i byen Nottingham. Under den 2. verdenskrig, arbejdede han på stoffet penicillin, på projekter der dengang var tophemmelige: myndighederne var fast besluttet på at skjule kædens seneste resultater fra tyskerne.

Af frygt for, at Boots laboratorier ville blive bomberet af tyskerne, arbejdede kædens forskere i et lille rækkehus i byen – Adams laboratorium var stuen, samt en lille del af køkkenet. Hans arbejdskollega arbejdede i husets spisekammer. Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!!

Efter endt krigen fortsatte Adams med et af sine yndlingsprojekter, dét af at lede efter en pille, der ville mildne smerterne af ledegigt, og det var under dette projekt, at han udviklede det verdensberømte non-steroidt antiinflammatoriske lægemiddel Ibuprofen / Neurofen, som han arbejdede på i 16 år, inden det kom på markedet.

Dr Stewart Adams, der døde for nylig, på 95 år

Under en fase af udviklingsprovessen, brugte han sig selv som forsøgskanin. En aften gik han ud på druk i byen med en flok udenlandske kollegaer. Næste morgen havde han en tømmermand, men også på dagsordenen var en international konference, hvor han var dagens første taler. I sine ibuprofen-eksperimenter plejede han dengang at bruge 400 mg doser, men på denne anledning besluttede han at tage en risiko – 600mg, hvilket virkede fint, rapporterede han senere.

Du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!

Han blev aldrig en rig mand som resultat af sine forskninger – Boots havde patentet. Men der må være få mennesker, der kan prale af, at de hjalp flere mennesker verden over, end han gjorde. Og det var det, der gav ham den tilfreddstillelse, han trængte til, sagde han. Sikke en mand!!!! 

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at lytte til radio, et interessant program, der handler om Aristoteles (384-322 før Chr.), men som fokuserer ikke på sin tidligere rolle som filosof, men på sin senere rolle som biolog. Programmets vært er den charmerende Melvyn Bragg, der har samlet en gruppe eksperter til at hjælpe ham med at adskille sandheden fra myterne.

Aristoteles’ rolle som biolog var uden tvivl en banebrydende. Folk havde studeret biologi før, men det var Aristoteles, der var den første til at bruge en masse tid på at observere en bred vifte af dyr, planter osv, og på at samle information, så han dermed kunne spekulere på de mulige årsager til det, han observerede.  ”Naturen gør ikke noget forgæves” – det var hans motto, så han aldrig holdt op med at stille spørgsmålet ’hvorfor’, hvilket var meget moderne, for at sige mildt. Hans ultimative mål var det, at opdage livets formål – så ikke særligt udfordrende  ha ha ha!

Han troede ikke på ligeligheden af kønnerne, det må jeg nok sige. Han troede, at faderen af et barn bidrog med barnets aktive potentiel og moderen dets passive potentiel. Vejret på undfangelsesøjeblik er vigtigt: jo varmere det er er der øgede chancerne for, at barnet bliver dreng. Hede er god, kulde er ikke så godt, lader det til ! Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!!

Han blev ikke hjulpet af manglen på videnskabelige instrumenter, mikroskoper osv. Han troede for eksempel, at fluer kunne opstå spontant – han havde ikke de mikroskoper, der ville have vist ham at de faktisk klekkede ud fra småbitte æg. Han udviklede hans teori for det meste i konteksten af østers og andre dyr i skaller. Han troede, at de simpleste dyre kunne opstå blot fra heden i luften, af en eller anden grund.

Når han ikke kunne se dyrene kopulere, lægge æg, havde han tendens til at komme til den hurtige konklusion, at de opstod spontant. Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!! Denne slags tankeproces var lidt underligt, for at sige mildt, fordi der adskilte sig så radikalt fra resten af hans biologi.

Han kendte godt anatomiet af en snegl, for eksempel, fordi han havde dissekeret en, så han vidste godt, at sneglen har organer. Han bemærkede for eksempel, at snegle var blevet observeret i færd med at kopulere, men han fastholdte ikke desto mindre sit tro på, at snegle opstod spontant ud af mudder – yuck, uhyggeligt!!!

Braggs eksperter kommer til den konklusion, at denne slags kopulation blandt verdens snegle bare må have været et tidligt tilfælde af såkaldt ”rekreativ sex”, ifølge Aristoteles’ optik – du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!

Det samme med ål, og Aristoteles vidste godt at en ål er så kompliceret som alle andre fisk. Men selvfølgelig havde han ikke den fjerneste idé om, at de parrer sig i Sargassohavet, langt væk fra Aristoteles’ laboratorier ha ha!

På mange måder kunne Aristoteles blive kaldet verdens første ægte biolog, men han udviste mange egenskaber, der ville diskvalificere ham set ud fra det moderne udsigtspunkt. Han adskillede ikke sin biologi fra sin filosofi, fra etiker. Men det, at han observerede, samlede information og kom med mønstrer, han havde observeret: det var hans mest værdifulde bidrag til biologi.

22:00 Vi går i seng – adskilte senge igen for en sikkerheds skyld. Morgendagen bringer os en ny udfordring, dét, at gå madindkøb for første gang i flere dage. Og vi har ikke en fuldt-fungerende fryser endnu, hvilket føles lidt som om vi lever fra hånd til mund.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!