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You look like a tramp, advised Jan as she headed off to work the other morning. Being not quite sure what a tramp is supposed to look like, I went in search of an ancient full-length mirror lurking in the loft, the type that never stays vertical without assistance. Dusted off and brought downstairs, I was just about to adjust my image in the glass when young Mick wandered into the reflection. Crikey, I can’t look as scruffy as that I thought, and Jan gives him a thorough grooming every weekend. True, my hair is perhaps a little longer and wispier than Queen’s Regulations would permit, but as the years tick by I like to hang on to what little I have left. Freshly shaven, surely she couldn’t be complaining about my visage. My shirt and pullover were freshly laundered, and so what could be the problem? Aha! My ageing gilet and threadbare cords!
Years ago when I was motoring regularly backwards and forwards to Scotland to promote snail farming and other livestock rearing ideas for Food From Britain, I would always stop off at Gretna Green to buy myself a sleeveless padded jacket. They were tremendous value, £8 I think and even less if you purchased three at a time. I must have had at least ten, in every colour of the rainbow, but as the years have passed they have been reluctantly thrown away except a more costly and enduring olive Barbour gilet. I must have had it almost twenty-five years and I seriously doubt that it has ever seen the inside of a washing machine, because I am of the perhaps misguided view that such garments should look very old and thoroughly lived in. I recollect that the uncle of a friend asked his brother-in-law to wear-in his newly acquired Barbour jacket for fear of being considered “new to the countryside”. The eminent fellow did a splendid job, burning holes in the pockets with his smouldering pipe and inducing an indelible ‘doggy’ smell by using it as a towel to rub down his water-loving Lagotto Romagnolo truffle hound. Apparently, the owner of this distinctive waxed jacket was delighted. All the same, perhaps I will give my old friend a wash whilst Micky waits for his come-uppance at the weekend!
As far as my threadbare cords are concerned, I fear that Jan has only herself to blame. Several years ago, I splurged out on several pairs of custom-tailored trousers. Justifiably outraged, she joked they’ll be the last trousers you buy before you die! After a quick actuarial calculation, and not wishing to chance my luck so far again, I concluded that I would have to wear these extravagant trousers very sparingly indeed and, thus, my workaday corduroys and moleskins would have to take the strain for as long as possible. Having finally put my knee through the moleskins, I had pulled out the old cords as a gesture of economy!
A cynical view.
Increased demand for budget shampoos, deodorants, shower gels and detergents among recession-hit Europeans has helped drive up sales and profits at the likes of McBride, Europe’s leading provider of private-label household and personal goods. Hopefully it will do the same for our base products. Nevertheless, financial journalists tend to take a cynical view of such consumer trends.
Lombard of the Financial Times explains: “Own brands save money for retailers as well as consumers: margins tend to be bigger and just as importantly promote brand loyalty. Once consumers are addicted to Nonsuch-brand pomegranate-scented detergent, they will keep heading back to Nonsuch store to buy it. Recessions kick more own-brand product into shopping baskets. Today, 47 per cent of Switzerland’s overall spend on groceries goes to own brands, according to McBride, and about 44 per cent in the UK. Consumers in developing markets, too, are zigzagging from cheap to expensive and back to cheap before you can say “hobbled aspirations”.
Where does it all end? McBride likes to believe - with some justification - that habits formed in tough times stay. But once you have traded down there isn’t a lot left to do when the next downturn hits. Unless, of course, you ditch the deodorant altogether and bung a few bits of pomegranate peel into the washing machine.”
Fair enough, but I would suggest that you save the money on the fruit and add a few drops of out-of-date essential oils to the wash instead.
Sleight of hand.
As tales of financial scandals reverberate around the globe and the hunt for the missing billions continues, many ask how such a thing could have happened. I haven’t a clue, but think about this.
Three brothers engaged in a barter transaction. Each brother gave 15 bags of salt, totalling 45 bags, in exchange for an old sofa. Later, the sofa owner realised he had overcharged them by 5 bags and chose to return them to the brothers. However, it was inconvenient to divide 5 bags among the three brothers so he decided to keep 2 for himself and return 3 bags. Each brother then would receive 1 bag. Therefore, each brother paid only 14 bags, or a total of 42 bags, for the sofa. Now, if we add 2 to 42 the total is 44, 1 bag less than 45. Where is the missing 1 bag of salt?
The three brothers paid 14 bags of salt each, totalling 42. The sofa owner pocketed two, but rather than add these two to 42, you subtract to get 40 bags, which was the total that should have been paid in the first place and, thus, no missing bag of salt after all!
Forever living rosettes.
The other week one of my cars developed an annoying electrical fault which necessitated taking it to a marque specialist in Newport in South Wales, but I did not relish the prospect of the return journey by train on a Friday evening. However, as luck would have it, Jan decided to take a very rare day out of the office to attend an Open Day at Jekka’s Herbs near Brist ol and would bring me home. Problem solved!
Few cannot of heard of Jekka McVicar, crowned ‘queen of herbs’ by Jamie Oliver and one of Rick Stein’s food heroes. Her passion for herbs started in early childhood when her mother taught her to make fresh mint sauce. In 1985 she established her herb farm in Alveston, which holds the largest collection of culinary and medicinal herbs in the UK.
When Jan picked me up from the garage I could barely wait to look inside her box of goodies. Amongst the variety of exotic types of rosemarys and mints there were some less familiar shapes, houseleeks (Sempervivum spp.).
The Houseleek was dedicated in ancient times to Jupiter or Thor, and bore the names of Jupiter’s Eye, Thor’s Beard, Jupiter’s Beard, Barba Jovis, from its massive clusters of flowers, which were supposed to resemble Jupiter’s beard. It was highly regarded by the Romans, who grew it in vases in front of their houses.
It is not really indigenous to this country, being a native of the mountain ranges of central and southern Europe and of the Greek islands, but it was introduced here many centuries ago and was abundant throughout the country, its large rosettes of fleshy leaves being a familiar sight on many an old cottage roof (Sempervivum tectorum L.). The generic name Sempervivum, from the Latin semper (always) and vivo (I live), refers to its retention of vitality under almost all conditions, and the specific name tectorum bears witness to its usual place of growth - a roof. Supposed to guard what it grows on against fire and lightning and ward off evil, in the 8th century Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards and the first European king to be recognised as Holy Roman Emperor, ordered that all his buildings should have them planted on their roofs.
Whatever, in later times, sempervivums fell from favour amongst the gardening fraternity, as they were too often thought to be nothing more than the ‘poor man’s alpine’ and were often excluded from rock gardens because among the great wealth of colourful alpine plants available they were considered dull and unexciting.
Nonetheless, in recent years, interest in them has burgeoned and now an ever-increasing number of new hybrids have appeared. One factor that led to this surge was the founding of the Sempervivum Society in 1970, which disseminated knowledge through its journals and newsletters and, though it foundered in the mid-1990s, enthusiasm was maintained by devotees around the world. By the turn of the century nearly 4,000 named cultivars had been catalogued. The current RHS Plant Finder lists no fewer than 698, to which must be added all species, subspecies and forms.
The genus contains forty-two species that are patch-forming, evergreen, succulent perrenials which produce rosettes that increase by copious production of short runners, each forming a new rosette at its tip, rather like a strawberry. When mature, the rosettes form a thick, stiff, scaly stem bearing a cluster of flowers at the top. These are star-shaped, with narrow, pointed petals, often in pink, red or purple, but sometimes white or yellow. After seeding, the mother rosette dies leaving its offsets to continue. The flowers have no aroma whatsoever.
The thick succulent leaves can be glabrous or downy, the tips blunt or pointed, self-coloured or with a paler or darker tip, or gradually suffused with colour from the base. They enable the plant to survive in the driest weather, acting as reservoirs of moisture.
Rosettes come in almost any colour from rich reds and purples to jade, violet or lilac, blue to yellow-greens, to some that are almost black. The colours are brightest in summer, enhanced by high light levels and even spells of drought, but generally dulling in winter. They are very attractive and I am delighted that Jan bought some. However there was an aspect of these fascinating plants of which I was not aware until I read the label more carefully - Medicinal, leaves used for insect bites.
Apparently, houseleek leaves, which contain tannins and mucilage, and their juice are used for their cooling and astringent effect, being applied externally to soothe many skin conditions, including burns, wounds, boils and corns. Houseleek simultaneously tightens and softens the skin. It is said also to remove warts, the leaves being sliced in two and the inner surface applied to the wart.
Traditionally, the leaves have been chewed to relieve toothache, and the juice has been sniffed to stop nosebleeds. Culpeper advised it for all manner of ailments and Galen recommended it specifically for erysipelas and shingles, and Dioscorides as a remedy for weak and inflamed eyes. The famous Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave, who is regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital, found 300ml of the juice beneficial in dysentery, but it was not admitted into modern practice because in large doses the juice induces vomiting. In fact, it should never be taken internally.
Easy to grow and available in a wide range of exciting colours, these forever living rosettes are a valued addition to the medicine cupboard. I only wish that they could cure electrical faults as well!
A treat in store.
I have written an article for the newsletter and would love to participate in some of your workshops in the future, e-mailed Val Edwards-Jones, whom some may remember from a past Open Day. Dr. Edwards-Jones, a senior researcher at the School of Biology, Chemistry and Health Science, Manchester Metropolitan University, was an early pioneer of research into the use of essential oils against antibiotic sensitive and resistant bacteria including MRSA. I can hardly wait to receive her article and somes dates for next year’s diary!
Meanwhile Val and her colleagues, A.L. Doran, Bill Morden and K. Dunn, have authored a paper which was published recently in Letters in Applied Microbiology 48 (2009) 387-392.
They aimed to determine whether essential oil (EO) vapours could reduce surface and airborne levels of bacteria including MRSA. The antibacterial activity of geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L’Her.) and lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus (Nees ex Steud.) J.F. Watson) EO individually and blended were evaluated over a range of concentrations by direct contact and vapour diffusion. [Incidentally, I note the report records that the essential oils were supplied by Essentially Oils!]
The EO were tested in vitro against a selection of antibiotic-sensitive and -resistant bacteria, including MRSA, vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE), Acinetobacter baumanii and Clostridium difficile. An EO blend containing lemongrass and geranium was used to formulate BioScent™
that was dispersed into the environment using the ST Pro machine, made by Scent Technologies Ltd. of Wigan, UK, which is routinely used in the healthcare environment as a fragrance generator that disperses aromas into the atmosphere without heat or vibration.
The output of the ST Pro machine can be selected (0-100%) and by altering the volume, the fan speed alters accordingly. Maximum will treat 575 cubic metres of air per hour, which in turn can inrease to 800 when in the environment, dependent upon the external conditions (i.e. people traffic, air conditioning, etc.).
The effects were variable depending on the methods used. In a sealed box environment, MRSA growth on seeded plates was reduced by 38% after 20 hours exposure to BioScent vapour. In an office environment, the ST Pro machine dispersing BioScent effected an 89% reduction in airborne bacteria in 15 hours, when operated at a constant output of 100%.
Thus it was concluded that EO vapours inhibited growth of antibiotic- sensitive and -resistant bacteria in vitro and reduced surface and airborne levels of bacteria. These results suggest that EO vapours, particularly BioScent, could be used as a method of air disinfection.
Getting what they want.
I’ve just been reading in Natural Products that many clinical trials in medicine produce false results and mistaken conclusions. These can be very useful for people and organisations with a particular vested interest. By knowingly studying the wrong thing - an unsuitable supplement for example - you can arrive at a ‘finding’ that successfully undermines an earlier piece of valid research.
This is the grey area of medical research reported on this month by Drs. Steve Hickey and Robert Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health (www.anhcampaign.org/news/new-study-scientific-fraud-in-medicine).
Hickey and Verkerk openly challenge the assumption that, while many clinical results are biased, or simply wrong, the studies themselves are honestly conducted. They write: “The assumption of honesty is the default approach for a scientist. You assume that the results represent the true experimental findings. However, recent findings suggest that medicine has a particular problem with scientific honesty.”
Hickey and Verkerk pick up on a new study by Dr. Daniele Fanelli from the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Fanelli’s special interest is objectivity, which, among scientists, is in shorter supply than you would expect. When asked if they had ever fabricated, or falsified results, up to 5% of scientists admitted outright cheating. One third of scientists admitted questionable practices (meaning they manipulated their data to give a false impression). The scientists modified the outcome to “improve” results. A similar one-third of scientists admitted observing misconduct in others.
Hickey and Verkerk say that the published figures on scientific fraud are “clearly underestimates”. They write: “Expecting all fraudsters to admit their offence when asked for your study is naive, even if you agree not
to tell.” Fanelli reminds us too that the “conventional response by the orthodoxy to fraud, in which blame is deflected on a ‘few bad apples’ is short of the mark. It seems the problem is somewhat more endemic.” Can this really be the case?
Whatever, I do think that some scientific studies can produce a false, or mistaken, conclusion.
Stickleback savvy.
As a small boy I would while away many happy hours during the summer catching sticklebacks, which I would carry home triumphantly in a jam jar for transfer into an old glass battery case in my bedroom that acted as an aquarium, where I would study them more carefully, albeit in an unscientific way, whilst lying in bed, having been sent there at seven in the evening despite three hours of daylight still remaining. Why so early, I have often wondered. Even Professor Steve Jones, the distinguished biologist and world’s leading expert on snails, when asked the same question of his own childhood on BBC Radio 4 the other morning, could only reply that sixty years ago children simply did as they were told!
Still, hours watching these members of the Gasterosteidae go about their business gave me a pretty good insight into their behaviour. Therefore I was more than a little interested to read recently in Behavioural Ecology that sticklebacks have shown a particular type of “social learning” by observing others, which scientists had never seen before in non-human creatures.
Researchers from St. Andrews and Durham universities caught 270 nine-spined sticklebacks (Pungitius pungitius) from Melton Brook in Leicestershire and put them into an aquarium with feeders at each end - one supplying more worms than the other. [By the way, I am delighted that there are so many sticklebacks still around, as I thought that they were becoming quite scarce.]
The fish quickly learned to eat from the rich feeder. Then they were moved to a position where they could watch other sticklebacks eating
but not eat themselves. At the same time the researchers swapped the feeders around and put a secong group of fish in the tank. When the original fish were allowed to feed again, three-quarters of the group swam straight for the feeder that had been giving fewer worms but was now supplying more. In other words, they learned from watching the other fish to disregard their own previous experience.
“These fish are obviously not at all closely related to humans, yet they have this human ability to only copy when the pay-off is better than their own,” said Jeremy Kendal of Durham. “Nine-spined sticklebacks may be the geniuses of the fish world,” added Kevin Laland of St. Andrews.
Because they never struck me as geniuses, I was about to put pen to paper when Mr. M.J. Rosenberg of La Croix-Valmer in France expressed similar thoughts to my own in a letter to the Financial Times.
“As a non-scientist I am often astonished at the conclusions scientists
so readily draw from their experiments. On two simple and seemingly reasonable assumptions, the results of “researchers” from St. Andrews and Durham universities can be fully accounted for without any appeal to learning, still less humanlike learning.
The only assumptions needed to account for the sticklebacks’ behaviour are: first, that sticklebacks, as well perhaps as many species of fish, recognise, possibly instinctively, that where other fish congregate there is likely to be food, and that the more numerous and active the congregation the more food there is likely to be; and, second, that the fishes’ memory is strongest for what is most recent, superseding earlier memories associated with similar events.
It is difficult not to suspect that the researchers’ experiment was designed with the hope of reaching the conclusion drawn for it. But, unless it is argued that no distinction is to be drawn between remembering and learning, by Occam’s razor [the principle that the fewest possible assumptions are to be made in explaining a thing] there can be no occasion for invoking any other than the above assumptions to explain the findings, certainly none of humanlike learning.”
I couldn’t agree more!
Regarding repellents.
I’ve been banging on about the danger of DEET (diethyl-meta-toluamide) for years, but DEET-based insect repellents continue to be widely used. I don’t doubt that they can be very effective against mosquitoes, and if used sparingly, infrequently and by itself, DEET may not have negative effects, “but frequent and heavy use especially in combination with other chemicals or medications could cause brain deficits in vulnerable people.” [www.dukehealth.org/Health Library/News/5500].
For example a number of chemicals, including other pesticides such as malathion and permethrin, have been found to work in combination with DEET to produce even greater adverse effects than DEET alone [J. Toxicol. Environ. Health A, 2004; 67: 331-56]. Particularly worrying is the sun-screen chemical oxybenzone, which is commonly combined with DEET to make an all-in-one sun-protection and insect-repellent product. Research shows that oxybenzone is a penetration enhancer and, when mixed with DEET, it dramatically increases the amount of DEET absorbed by the skin into the blood, thereby further increasing the risk of adverse effects. [Toxicol. Appl. Pharmacol., 2007; 223: 187-94] Check labels!
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have come up with natural compounds that could lead to a new generation of safe mosquito repellents. The chemicals knock out the ability to sense carbon dioxide, which some mosquitoes use to detect humans.
The study, published in the journal Nature, started with fruit flies, which have CO2-detecting neurons in their antennae. Flies normally avoid CO2, but ripening fruits produce both CO2 and chemicals - hexanol and 2,3-butanedione - that deactivate the flies’ detection system.
The researchers then found the same chemicals inhibit CO2-sensitive neurons in Culex mosquitoes, which track people via the CO2 in their breath. The discovery could help in the control of tropical diseases, as Culex mosquitoes transmit West Nile virus and the parasites that cause filariasis. Fair enough, but I’m not sure that it is only Culex mosquitoes that transmit these diseases. All the same, “these compounds can now be used to guide research in developing novel repellents and masking agents that are economical and environmentally safe methods to block mosquitoes’ ability to detect CO2 in our breath,” said Andandasanker Ray, the project leader.
Whilst we hold our breath awaiting the benefits of this research, it is as well to remember that citronella (Citronella nardus (L.) Rendle) can be surprisingly effective against mosquitoes [Entomol. Res., 2005; 35: 117-20], although it appears to provide a shorter protection time than DEET. Its repellency is probably greatest in the first 40 minutes after application, although frequent reapplications should make up for the short-term effect [Ann. Intern Med., 1998; 128: 931-40]. Also, oils of Eucalyptus globulus and citriodora are reported to be able to protect for up to nearly eight hours. In fact, research shows that some components of the oils are as effective as DEET [J. Am. Mosq. Control Assoc., 1996; 12: 243-6] and, in the same edition of the journal [pp. 329-30], it is reported that a eucalyptus-based repellent was 99.5 per cent effective against the Scottish biting midge (Culicoides impunctatus) even eight to ten hours after application, whilst DEET could only manage 97 per cent!
And don’t forget my favourite Bog Myrtle (Myrica gale L.).
Of course citronella and eucalyptus are not the only effective repellent essential oils, neem (Azadirachta indica A. Juss), turmeric (Curcuma longa L.), tulsi (Ocimum sanctum L.) and kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix DC.) are also commended [Indian J. Malariol., 1995; 32: 47-53; J. Vector Ecol., 2001; 26: 76-82].
Finally.....
I’m off to research into the potential longevity of a pair of trousers!