New Triops and National Flour

Late Saturday evening, shining a light into the aquarium revealed a tiny motile organism, still less than 1mm long. Sunday morning found at least three of these small organisms in the tank. At present it is still impossible to establish whether these are truly Triops but my hopes have been raised.

Mrs Thomas has been busy baking oat biscuits today and as we perused the collection of wartime recipes, in "We'll eat again" compiled by Marguerite Patten (ISBN9780600325246), we came across mention of "National Flour". Intrigued, I was tempted into a serious online search to establish the exact nature of the flour.

Basically, National Flour was a less refined flour that still contained wheatgerm. It was promoted on health grounds by the then Ministry of Food in the UK, between the years of 1942 to 1956, when it was discontinued. 

During my search, I also found that the colonial government of Kenya had in turn promoted a National Flour, though this comprised a mixture of 70% wheat flour and 30% maize flour. Apparently this made baking bread much more difficult, until an enterprising baker found that adding some oil to the bread dough dramatically restored the quality of baked loaves. The story is recounted in Madatally Manji, “Memoirs of a biscuit baron”.

The gathered information has now been added under "National Flour" to the Wikipedia page on Wheat Flour.

Triops, Solar activity and where to buy your meteorites

I've taken a break from work over the Christmas period and one of the fascinations that has gripped me is the living fossil Triops longicaudatus.

I set up a hatch of half a commercial packet of dried soil purporting to contain Triops eggs during the day of Christmas Eve. Whilst the suppliers advice is to use water above 20degC, preferably around 25degC, a trawl through Google Scholar found sufficient reference to Triops longicaudatus being able to hatch and grow at lower temperatures. We have a 20degC/18degC Day/night temperature cycle in the house this winter.

Late night on Christmas Day I thought I could see microscopic hatched life, though it was still too small to identify. By Wednesday it was clear that I had some small freshwater shrimps, a couple of daphnia and one possible Triops. By Thursday, the Triops was approximately 1mm long as measured by its carapace and swimming continuously around the tank.

Friday saw a distinct leap in size to about 2mm and a change in behaviour. For the first time the Triops stopped briefly when it encountered food particles and it also spent a much greater proportion of its time at the bottom of the small tank. Today, it had grown to 3mm carapace length, was highly active and continuing to display the stopping to feed for a couple of seconds behaviour that first occurred yesterday. Since Triops, like all arthropods, have a hard shell exterior, they have to moult to grow by expansion. The continued growth of my Triops indicates that so far these critical moults have not been a problem.

Whilst hidden behind rain clouds, the sun has also been demonstrating a more interesting active phase after an extended quiet period. Checking out the SOHO solar observation site revealed several sunspots again at last, so I may be out with the telescope to try a projection if the sky is clear in the coming days.

Solar activity has also been shown in a recent flare that not only interrupted radio signals but also led to the last Aurorae of the year 2011. Whilst hunting for the solar information, I came across a site offering fragments of meteorites from the asteroid Vest, the moon and Mars for sale – something to bear in mind for future Birthday/Christmas lists. (http://www.shopspaceweather.com/asteroid-vesta-meteorite.aspx).

Alternatively, I might try catching micrometeorites for free later in the year.

Planning a Speech

Tuesday, 2nd August: There were two main items to consider today. The first was continuation of writing a final report for a project. I had a long Skype conversation with Ms Schmidt in Berlin regarding advice on a translation she had undertaken; in return, she provided some useful information at short notice on her efforts as part of the project fo which the report is being written.

Second, I have decided to do talk 3 out of the Public Relations manual, the Persuasive Speech. The objective is to give a presentation with at least one visual aid, that will persuade the audience to take an action.

I've decided on the title “Write it down”, with the objective of persuading the audience that there is a real benefit to them in recording their experiences and expertise with a view to sharing it with others.
Writing down bullet points, the rough structure is likely to be:

• Why you should write it down
• What you can write down
• When to write it down

Still mulling over the details in my mind.

Longlist research and the new compulsory pension provision for UK employees.

Mundane internet research for an Icelandic client before and after today's meeting of the Huntingdonshire Business Network (HBN). A slow but steady accumulation of companies for a long list.
Today was the monthly HBN seminar, presented as a workshop by Mr Stockdale of RHG. In his inimitable and humorous style, his main topic was the introduction of the new compulsory pension system being introduced for employees and the impact on businesses and business strategies. I recorded the fascinating talk, with audience questions and comments and Mr Stockdale may be able to use it in conjunction with the slide show. Mr Wishart also kept the wider Twittersphere informed by tweeting choice comments that some of us then retweeted to our contacts.

The wide ranging changes will initially add costs to both employees and companies, each having to make significant contributions, unless the employee opts out of the system. Even then, the employee will be again automatically opted in after three years, so must make a renewed conscious decision to opt out if still so desiring.

For the self employed and one man companies, this is likely to swell their ranks as larger companies might feel reluctant to commit to additional costs and instead contract out work. The new system may also create new business opportunities as small or medium sized companies with few employees look for cost effective solutions to manage the complexities of their now compulsory pension provision.

Booked flight tickets for a visit to NRW Germany after Cambridge Open Studios in the evening and then also continued research for writing a simple guide to creating an e-book.

HBN blogging seminar and setting up a marine hay infusion.

This morning, I was able to devote several hours to editing and selecting the best images from Mr Eberts visit and our travels In London at the end of March (see Monday 28th March entry). The images were uploaded for public perusal at https://picasaweb.google.com/miltoncontact/FeinkaesereiInTheUK.

The images of the Tate Modern reminded me of Mr Weiwei' exhibition of millions for porcelain sunflower seeds therin and his arrest a week later on Monday 4th April in China. Since his arrest, the whereabouts of Mr Weiwei is still unknown. He is not alone in this as several of his staff are also missing..

A clear run up the A14 to huntingdon took me to the HBN seminar and buffet. Mr Howell gave an educational talk on his experience of blogging on the internet, with many useful tips. With his permission, I recorded his presentation. I did so at radio quality (44khz) but with a higher data collection (24bit) to permit a larger dynamic range.

After the seminar, a small nucleaus of MR Williamson, Mr Wishart, Ms Ekblom and myself remained to look at different issues relating to the use of Twitter and Wordpress blogs. Mr McInroy arrived at the close, with the vexing news that the A14 was yet again seized up with regards to traffic.

I therefore took the long route to Over, via St Ives, Earith and Willingham, to reach the Tutorcloud meeting with Mr Beal and Mrs Farndale.

That evening, my concern about my marine aquarium spurred me into action. The water is remarkably clear due to the filtration by the two barnacles and rapidly growing bivalves, the latter now several millimetres in size. Despite a twice daily manual turbulence of the water to suspend potential food debris for the filter feeders into the water, I was not convinced that there were sufficient nutrients for continued fast growth.

Whilst a few drops of milk might provide an interim solution, I prepared an infusion of hay with some of the thawed sea water, collected and stored frozen a couple of weeks ago. The culture was seeded with a few millilitres of water plus sediment from the tank itself and the hay infusion jar placed on a window ledge to mature.

I had also picked a horse chestnut flower and used this as a still life example for painting practice. I look forward to seeing the result in daylight tomorrow.

A late check of the local council election results returned the gratifying news that Ms Hazel Smith, who resides in ou close, was successfully re-elected as out liberal councillor. Sadly, the national referendum on whether to adopt the alternative vote system was answered with a resounding no!

Shocking red hair and toastmaster's tabletopics

The first action of the day was to send confirmation to the printers that we could proceed with the production of Mr McArthurs's book Ka Sefofane.

A drive to Soham, taking the more circuitous yet faster route via Newmarket, to Mr Coleman's residence. We were meeting with Ms Gilmore to discuss the continued development of the Cambridge Open Studio Website that she was coordinating on behalf of the COS management team.

Progress reviewed and priorities established for the next phase of development, I returned via Wicken Fen over the minor roads. All the farmers were out in their tractors, making the most of the continuing fine weather to plough their fields.

After a quick lunch I spent half an hour attempting to photograph myself at the desk or in the armchair with a metal measuring tape. The aim was to measure the distance from eyes to book, desk or computer screen, to assist the optician in re-evaluating the prescription for my spectacles.

Starting from the Grafton centre, I wandered into town and was suddenly confronted by the sight of a shockingly-red coiffured young black woman. She had passed me by ten yards before I recovered, reacted, turned around and pursued her and her group of friends.

She was slightly bemused when I requested permission to photograph her (with apologies to the others for not demanding the same of them). They were a group of fashion students from Anglia Ruskin University, who had themselves been holding a photoshoot around Cambridge. The young lady consented and struck a pose and you can see the results in my Portraits Collection; the cropped version working particularly well.

My time at the opticians was a bit of an anticlimax thereafter!

Passing some flowering chestnut trees, I quickly took some photographs of the tree's habit, then a series of close studies of two or three flower spikes and leaves, with a view to use these as the basis for a new composition painting in the xie yi Chinese brush painting freehand style.

I barely had time to return home before departing again, for the meeting of Toastmasters International at the Club at Hemingford Grey. This was a different meeting to the usual agenda as we were looking to the future. However, there was an amusing interlude with the impromptu 2 minute "Tabletopics".

Mr Slezak had generated a series of questions on lots to be drawn from the table and the volunteers had to expound for up to two minutes on the subject drawn. For my attempt, I had to argue the case that watching the television was beneficial! I struggled through and for once did not extend beyond the permitted 30 second overrun, as I am usually prone to.

This was another opportunity to test out the audio recorder. Remembering Mr Smiths comments on the benefits of a fast sampling rate and high bit level, I recorded my tabletopic at 96kHZ and 24bit.
The meeting was otherwise well attended, constructive and it was good to be in the company of like-minded friends.