Am I late?

You know I have a thing about dandelions. I find these plants fascinating in many senses, although this does not really seem to be a popular opinion among lawn-owners.

One of the fascinating facts about dandelions is the way they reproduce. Many dandelion species do it by apomixis, which means they do not reproduce sexually, which means there are no two individual "parents" that produce offspring, but a single individual that produces exact genetic copies of itself.

This kind of reproduction, based on an exact duplication of genetic material, is not very different from the cellular division that happens in our bodies all the time, say when our hair or nails grow or when new red blood cells are created in our bone marrow. In a sense, dandelions or other species that reproduce asexually, challenge our conception of what an organism is.

In his book The Extended Phenotype Richard Dawkins makes a mind-blowing point about dandelions and organisms (emphasis is mine):

"Janzen (1977) faces up to the same difficulty, suggesting that a clone of dandelions should be regarded as one 'evolutionary individual' [...], equivalent to a single tree although spread out along the ground rather than raised up in the air on a trunk, and although divided up into separate physical 'plants' [...]. According to this view, there may be as few as four individual dandelions competing with each other for the territory of the whole of North America. [...]"
Dawkins, R.: The Extended Phenotype, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982, p.254

It is mid-August now and the peak of dandelion flowering season is long gone. Long gone? If you pay attention, you still might see some late-comers, those poor lazy ones that are always too late.



And if you come down close enough, you almost can hear them asking themselves: What is going on here??? Where is everybody???

Little Things (ii)

(continued from Little Things (i))

Very little and insignificant things have indeed the ability to change our lives. But there is still another quite little thing that, in fact, keeps us alive.

Everyone knows H₂O as the chemical formula of water. A chemical formula is a convenient way to count how many atoms of each element are present in a given chemical compound. H₂O means that a single water molecule is composed by two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Now oxygen has two free bonds (valence 2) and hydrogen has one free bond (valence 1). An oxygen atom with its two bonds taken each by a hydrogen atom forms a water molecule.

We can imagine each one of the atoms as a tiny ball, and a chemical bond as an even tinier stick that keeps two of the balls together. Now the oxygen atom is a slightly bigger ball in the middle with two sticks to the sides, each one connected to a hydrogen atom. These two bonds at the sides of the oxygen atom are not perfectly aligned, which would mean a 180° angle, but instead they form a slightly obtuse angle (exactly at 104.45°). Apparently an insignificant fact. But only apparently.



Oxygen has a higher electronegativity (3.44) than hydrogen (2.20), meaning that an oxygen atom attracts electrons much stronger than a hydrogen atom does.

The 104.45° angle between the two oxygen bonds means that one side of the water molecule (the oxygen's side) attracts electrons stronger than the other side (hydrogen atoms' side). We say water molecule has a dipolar nature. A water molecule is, in a way, like a tiny magnet, which has a positive and a negative pole.


(Image taken from Wikimedia Commons)

What happens is that the oxygen side (the negative pole) attracts all electrons in the vicinity, including those electrons in the hydrogen atoms of neighbouring water molecules. That means water molecules are bonded together through its dipolar nature. This kind of bonding is called a hydrogen bond, and it is weaker than a normal (covalent) bond, like the one that keeps a single molecule together. Still, hydrogen bonding among water molecules is responsible for the fact that water is liquid at room temperature, because more heat energy is required to break the hydrogen bonds between molecules.

Now take a moment to think about it. If oxygen had its two free bonds at a 180° angle, there would be no positive and negative side in the water molecule, because the two hydrogen atoms would cancel out the higher electron affinity of oxygen. The boiling point would be much much lower than 100°C. In fact, without hydrogen bonding, water would be a gas at room temperature.

Now imagine all oxygen atoms aligned its bonds at once. That means almost all liquid water on our planet would simply evaporate. Life as we know it would simply cease to exist. At once...



Thank goodness there is that 104.45° angle!

Favonius at work

Yesterday morning, as I went out home at 6:45AM, with a scarf around my neck, I was welcomed by an incredibly warm November morning. Even though the Sun had not still risen, we might have had 18ºC! How was that possible? Is it because now, with Obama, it won't be cold in November anymore? ;)

No. It is the Alpenföhn, a unique wind effect that happens near the Alps. When an air mass has to rise to spring over a mountain range, water condenses and falls as rain on the windward side. Past the maximum elevation, the dry air "falls down" the slopes and raises temperatures by as much as 30ºC on the leeward valley.


(Picture taken from Wikimedia Commons)

The name Föhn comes from the Roman God Favonius, who personified the west wind. Later on, it went through Rhaeto-Romance favuogn and fuogn until it reached modern German as Föhn. Interestingly enough, a hair dryer is called Fön, without "h". I read that the name was registered as trademark by AEG on the 20s.

The Föhn is often associated with migraines and psychoses. A study by the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich claims that suicide and accidents increase by 10 percent during föhn winds in Central Europe. In fact, there is a Föhnkrankheit (Föhn sickness), which might be the perfect excuse to justify low performance on the job, excessive appetite or, simply, general apathy.

Other föhn wind examples around the world include the Chinook in the Rocky Mountains, North America, the Halny in the Carpathian Mountains, Eastern Europe, fogony and cierzo in the Pyrenees and viento del sur (southern wind) in Cantabria, northern Spain.

And I think I'm going to let it go for today, because, you know, there is Föhn today...

Strange(r)

A couple of months ago there was a burglary in a jewellery store in Salzburg. It happened during the night, and the only images of the perpetrator (from a video surveillance camera nearby) showed a masked person breaking through the shop window and taking goods worth around 10.000€. There was no way to find out the identity of the masked robber (it looked like a man, though).

Interestingly enough, the jeweller seemed to have a really extraordinary sixth sense to know, in spite of the mask, in spite of the darkness, in spite of the blurry images, the nationality of the one who robbed him. Or, at least, the geographical location of the robber's home town: to the East of Austria. He (the jeweller) wanted to share his feelings about European Union politics with everyone passing by, and thus displayed a sarcastic "EU-Osterweiterung lässt grüßen!!!" ("Here comes the EU enlargement to the East!!!") on his broken window.



Austria has always been among the countries most opposing accession of any other country to the EU. In fact, Austria is more against the accession of any country (with the sole exception of Croatia) than any other European country. According to Eurobarometer 2006, 62% of Austrians are against the accession of Macedonia, 59% Bosnia-Herzegovina, 73% Albania and 65% Serbia. Only 5% of Austrian people favours the accession of Turkey to the EU. Just to compare, 24% of Greeks are in favour of a Turkish accession.

In an Eurobarometer poll in 2005, 73% of Austrians thought that cultural differences were too significant to allow a Turkish accession. The EU25-average was 54%. Interestingly enough, 60% of Austrians told Eurosearch 2006 that "religion is irrelevant to the question of whether a country should be permitted to join the EU".

What's striking, though, is that other debates on EU enlargement have been masterly lead by Austrian politicians. Eurobarometer polls in 2002 showed 34% of Austrians in favour of a Croatian accession and 51% opposed, whereas 2005 55% favoured it and only 40% opposed. On the contrary, in the case of Turkey, 2002 had 32% of Austrians in favour of an accession and 53% opponents. In 2005 the ratio was 10% (in favour) to 80% (against). There has been little or no effort from politicians to favour a Turkish accession in the past few decades, and now, with support at an extraordinary low level of 5%, no one is willing to address the issue for fear of making themselves easy targets for their political opponents.

Of a population of 8.3 million people, 9.4% are foreigners. Of these, almost 88% are from outside the EU, especially the Balkans and Turkey. A Turkish embassy survey showed that 52% Austrians blame migrants in Austria for problems of integrations. That means, the root of the problems is the refusal by immigrants to integrate. 45% do not believe there is any solution to the integration problem of the Turkish community.

I think that, when it comes to integration, there is some homework to do for both parties. First of all, knowing each other and accepting each other. Me learning your language is not enough. You have to get to know my rituals and, even though you may not share them, at least understand that they are important for me, and respect them. Accepting, and not just tolerating, because to tolerate means an implicit censorship. When it comes to integration, though, I think Austrians are more or less willing to do their part depending on what my passport says.

There is an Italian restaurant in Salzburg, where we are not able to speak German at all, because they don't understand us. They only speak Italian, but this does not seem to bother any of the numerous Austrian guests. They are even celebrated: "Oh, how funny! They can't speak a single word German! They are soo lovely..."

Can you imagine the same comments on a Turkish kebab?