Earlier today, while I took Gee Minor to her regular crumhorn lesson, Mrs Gee and Gee Minima enjoyed the floshpits of North Walsham (which is near Cromer). They patronized a store with this notice in the window

and at which Mrs Gee picked up a local free sheet called The North Norfolk Post – Your Local Monthly Lifestyle Magazine . Later on, while I was perusing this glossy number in the Salon Des Girrafes, the magazine in one hand, a half-eaten watercress sandwich in another, a bone-china cup of Darjeeling in a third,

The Salon Des Girrafes. Saturday Afternoon. About Tea Time

I came across a page headed

ALTERANTIVE HEALTH

(sic). My interest piqued by this novel adjectival construction, I read on. My eyes took in the headline and practically popped out:

Energy Interference Patterning Through DNA

Jibbering Jehovah, I exclaimed to Dagon (my valet), that sounds like one of ours. By then, of course, I was hooked.

I’ve long been fascinated by the question of the origin of the vertebrates, the group of animals that includes ourselves. A reason for my fascination is that the problem always was – and remains – so difficult. A paper in Nature adds another layer of mystery to an already tangled tale. That is, fossils of soft-bodied creatures, many thought to represent early chordates (the larger group to which vertebrates belong), apparently so beautifully preserved, may tell us less about their position in the great scheme of things than the degree to which they’d rotted before they got fossilized. (See this admirable summary of the research by GrrlScientist).

I am at this moment deluged with the free Nature iPhone app, which makes Nature content more easily readable on those irritating liberating devices that some of us seem to have superglued to our hands.

Well, it’s here. JOBS spake unto teh multitude and said ‘keep taking the tablets’. After disinterring myself from the hoopla, I’d like to ask several questions. First, do I want one? Second, what would I do with it once I got one? And, finally, would Mrs Gee throw me out and make me go live in the beach hut Maison Des Girrafes Marine Biology Field Station if I did?

We Nature editors get our Olympian Pleasures where we may, so whereas the research papers I steer to publication don’t often rack up the kinds of citations one associates with papers on the release of calcium from intracellular stores, they make up for it in hoopla and general ‘wow’ factor.

Thus it was that a few weeks back I was able to announce a revolutionary new feminine sanitary product a paper on the extremely ancient footprints of tetrapods I’d been keeping schtum about for months.

It’s not often, though, when two of the papers on my watch get published on the same day, so I thought I’d send this communique to brag about them bring them to your notice.

The first is a paper by Zhang and colleagues on the discovery of melanosomes in the feathers of fossilized dinosaurs from China. Melanosomes are those microscopic bodies found in feathers that add colour to plumage. The research counters views that some of the feather-like structures found in feathered dinosaurs aren’t integumentary at all, but derive from shredded collagen fibrils from deeper skin layers.

However, the message that’s gotten out to the wider world is that back in the age of dinosaurs there were small creatures running around with gingery feathers. News which will come as no surprise to those of us at the Parc Zoologique Des Girrafes.

Feathered Dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of China Cromer, recently

The other paper is from Daniel E. Lieberman and colleagues, and goes into the different styles of running adopted by shod versus habitually barefoot runners. Human beings have been running for almost two million years (though not continually – I expect there were comfort breaks) – indeed, Lieberman has long advocated a view that modern humans show many adaptations for long-distance running . The modern sports shoe, however, has only been around for about forty years. So, how did people run before modern shoes were invented?

Lieberman and colleagues studied people in Kenya who run long distances out of habit, and who have never worn shoes. The research found that habitually barefoot runners tend to land on the middles or front part of their soles, rather than on their heels, which shod runners tend to do more often. Landing on one’s heels generates high impact transients. Landing on the mid- or front parts of the sole produces less of an impact transient, because the force has to get through the compliant tissues of the foot and the ankle joint – the result is a net rotational force.

But hey, quit my yakkin’. My steamed esteemed colleagues Adam Rutherford and Charlotte Stoddart have made this truly terrific video all about it, in which Lieberman himself stars, as The Barefoot Professor. Go look. It’s very nice.

I have been deluged by this link from my colleague Dr R. P. G. of Rotherhithe, who appended his note

I predict a riot expect a dog blog.

‘Your place or mine?’ I continued, to which his reply was it should be mine, as I have pictures of dogs in case things got ugly. Putting aside this rank cowardice concealed as flattery – to which I am of course as susceptible as anybody – I shall get my retaliation in first.

Ahem.

Clears throat.

As a practitioner of long-distance commuting by rail, the first glance of the cover of the latest issue of Nature Reviews Genetics filled me with horror.

August, 1983: Palaeontology Department, Natural History Museum, London – I’m here on a vacation studentship, arranging collections of fossil jawless fishes according to a new thesis, written in French. That’s fine. I can get by in French. The thesis refers several times to papers in Polish, which I get from the library. I can’t read Polish, but that’s OK – Latin names are the same everywhere, and in any case I only need to look at the pictures. The thesis (the one in French) mentions a researcher from the Ukraine whose contributions are not as well known as they should be, perhaps because he only ever wrote in Ukrainian. Is it fair that the researcher languishes in obscurity simply because of the language he spoke?

January, 2010: Nature Orifice, London – I am, much as usual, lying back being fed grapes by flying babies reading through a stack of new submissions. One or two I’ve seen recently are from researchers whose first language is not English. Although they are clearly doing their best, trying not only to communicate science (which is difficult enough) but also attempting to do so in an unfamiliar language, some manuscripts are on the borderline of comprehensibility. Much as we say otherwise, such problems can only ever act against an author. Nature’s guide to authors is available in several different languages – but the journal’s rule on publication only in English is inflexible. Is this rule fair?

January, 2010: Sigma Xi, Research Triangle Park, NC – I am at a session at ScienceOnline2010 all about striking the balance between enforcing civility in blog comments, and fighting off trolls. I make the point that civility can be encouraged by laying out ground rules – as John Wilkins says on his admirable blog, Evolving Thoughts – and I hope he won’t mind my quoting it in extenso :

‘This is my living room, so don’t piss on the floor. I reserve the right to block users and delete any comments that are uncivil, spam or offensive to all. I have a broad tolerance, but don’t test it, please. Try to remain coherent, polite and put forward positive arguments if engaged in debate. There are plenty of places you can accuse people of being pedophilic communist sexist pigs; don’t do it here.’

Much to my amazement I am criticized very sharply for expressing what I thought (and still think) to be a perfectly reasonable view. The counter-argument is that the enforcement of ground rules is an act of white male patriarchy and acts to exclude certain subsets of society from taking part. I think this is tosh, actually, but some otherwise intelligent and articulate people seem to believe it. Are such ground rules inherently discriminatory, or are they fair?

I’m literally just back from ScienceOnline10 , the Heart of Geekdom on Earth.

My thoughts are still very much of a pizzle pither, as is only to be expected from a meeting in which >200 geeks are crammed together in a telephone box Sigma Xi, well within their own Roche Limit. What follows, therefore, is very much a fly-by, as of a distant planet, to give a general impression. In any case, bloggers being – well, bloggy – coverage of the meet will be ample elsewhere.

I’m at Science Online 2010, the annual blogfest at Research Triangle Park. More on that later, both here and at LabLit – but for now, I’ve just been in a session about blogging and books, in which the message was that it’s never too early to publicize your book project.