Scents and sensibility Turtles love a smell that humans loathe. For them, it means “dinner”

 



JELLYFISH may not be most people’s idea of a tasty snack, but if you are a loggerhead turtle, they are top of the menu. Though jellyfish can swim, they are not exactly the greyhounds of the ocean, so they are easily caught. And since munching a large jellyfish can keep a turtle going for days, loggerheads love them when they can find them.

The best place to do so is in an upwelling zone. This is an area where the wind’s action draws cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. That encourages the growth of planktonic algae, and thus of everything that feeds on such plankton, or feeds on what feeds on them—including jellyfish, and also various molluscs and crustacea that loggerheads enjoy as an appetiser. And upwelling zones do, indeed, attract turtles. But nobody knows how, for such zones are scattered, local and often temporary phenomena, and locating them in the wide expanse of the sea is hard.

Courtney Endres, a biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, however, thought the reptiles might be smelling such zones from afar. She knew from an experiment she conducted a few years ago that loggerheads have a good sense of smell. She also knew, because passing sailors frequently comment on the fact, that upwelling zones tend to stink.
Specifically, they stink of cabbages. That is because many planktonic algae, when crunched up during the process of being eaten, release a substance called dimethylsulphoniopropionate. This quickly degrades into another chemical, dimethyl sulphide, which generations of those subjected to unimaginative school lunches will instantly recognise. But to loggerheads it is the smell of a banquet.
Ms Endres and her colleague Kenneth Lohmann showed this by collecting 11 loggerhead hatchlings from local beaches and testing them to see which smells most interested them. The young turtles (which were released back into the wild after their ordeal) were each put in a tank of seawater that had various scents blown across its surface. These included cinnamon, jasmine, lemon—and dimethyl sulphide.

When a turtle came up for air (which, being air-breathing creatures, they have to do regularly), the researchers recorded how long it sniffed around. They found, as they report in Experimental Biology, that the animals spent an average of five seconds breathing air scented with lemon, jasmine or cinnamon, all pleasant odours from a human point of view. That was no different from the amount of time they spent at the surface when no scent was used at all. When the air was scented with dimethyl sulphide, however, they spent an average of ten seconds breathing in the (from a human point of view) stinky scent of cabbages—or upwellings.

That does not prove that loggerheads smell their way to the table, of course. But it makes the hypothesis plausible. For turtles, it seems, the perfumes of Araby hold little charm. The scent of cabbages, by contrast, is as attractive as the odour of roasting chicken is to a hungry human.

Mitt Romney comes out on top as Obama stumbles in first debate

Republican candidate lifts conservative morale with a strong and forceful performance against a passive, lacklustre Obama.

Mitt Romney raised Republican hopes of an election comeback with a spirited and aggressive performance that forced Barack Obama repeatedly on to the defensive in the first presidential debate
Although Romney is still trailing badly in the polls, especially in the crucial swing states, his strong showing lifted conservative morale with more than four weeks left to turn the campaign around.
The two sparred mainly over the economy, in particular tax, jobs and healthcare, during a statistic- and policy-laden, 90-minute debate that was expected to draw an audience of more than 50 million.
Romney was forceful from the start, accusing Obama of repeatedly portraying the Republican's policies as inaccurate, and he maintained that momentum throughout. Obama, looking tired and at times irritated, remained largely calm.
In the spin room afterwards, Romney's campaign team hailed it as a victory. Eric Fehrnstrom, the campaign spokesman, could not contain his glee.
"Governor Romney clearly won," he said. "If this was a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it." He predicted it would be a close race.
David Plouffe, one of the architects of Obama's victory in 2008 and a senior member of his campaign this year, was subdued. "We are going to come out of this debate OK," he said, adding that the Romney team had needed a game-changer and this was not one.
Another of Obama's campaign team, Stephanie Cutter, insisted Obama had won the debate on substance but, unusually for this tough spokeswoman who normally gives little ground, she admitted Romney had won on style and preparation.
A CNN flash poll of registered voters had 67% saying Romney had won it, while just 25% gave it to Obama.
One of Bill Clinton's best-known strategists, James Carville, told CNN he had been left with "one overwhelming impression … It looked like Romney wanted to be there and President Obama didn't want to be there … It gave you the impression that this whole thing was a lot of trouble."
Romney needed a good night after being confronted with setback after setback over the last two months that have left him behind Obama in the polls. While Obama remains favourite to secure re-election on 6 November, Romney may at least have stopped his gradual downward slide.

The first of the clashes came over the economy, with Obama asking how Romney was simultaneously going to cut the country's burgeoning deficit while at the same time cutting $5tn in taxes for the wealthy, extending Bush-era tax cuts and raising military spending, a total of $8m.
Romney just flat-out denied it. In the tone he maintained most of the night, he said: "I think first of all, let me – let me repeat – let me repeat what I said. I'm not in favour of a $5tn tax cut. That's not my plan … So you may keep referring to it as a $5tn tax cut, but that's not my plan."
Obama, seemingly frustrated with Romney's elusiveness, retorted that it had been his opponent's plan for 18 months. "And now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is: 'Never mind'".
At times, Romney patronised the president, saying that he did not understand business or accountancy. "Mr President, you're entitled to your own airplane and your own house, but not your own facts," he said at one point. In another powerful attack which is at the core of the Romney message, he listed unkept promises and told Obama: "You've been president for four years."
The president, by contrast, was hesitant in his responses. One of the biggest surprises was that he failed to deliver any of the attacks that have been successful on the campaign trail and have been used to devastating effect in television ads in swing states. There was no mention of Romney's disparaging remarks about the 47% of the population being freeloaders, nor of his opponent's tenure at Bain Capital.
The main image of the night will be of Romney, eyes alight, gesticulating from the podium with a rarely seen passion, while Obama, playing into his image as professorial, delivered most of his answers with his head down.
Romney did not raise the killings of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans, which is an emotive issue. Although the debate was meant to be devoted to domestic policy, there had been speculation he might attempt to slip it in.
On healthcare reform, Obama defended his controversial changes to expand coverage, saying it was almost identical to changes introduced by Romney while he was governor of Massachusetts.
Romney denied they were identical, claimed Obama's plan increased costs and reiterated that he would repeal the reform.
"In my opinion, the government is not effective in bringing down the cost of almost anything. The right answer is not to have the federal government take over healthcare,'' Romney said.
Both candidates hit the campaign trail again on Thursday, with Obama holding rallies in Colorado and Wisconsin and Romney in Virginia. It was not a disastrous night for Obama. That calm, measured approach is part of the reason many Democrats like him and it may appeal to independents too.
Most debates have little impact on the eventual outcome but there have been exceptions, such as the one in 1960 and that between Al Gore and George Bush junior in 2000. While this one will not go down as a comparable game-changer, it will at least change the growing perception of Romney as a loser, even if only temporarily.

New school building designs hit by curve ban

 

The rules seem targeted to prevent new schools being designed by award-winning architects, such as Mossbourne Community academy was by Richard Rogers. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

Curves are to be banned in a new generation of no-frills school buildings, according to a government crackdown on what it believes is wasteful extravagance in educational architecture.
Design templates unveiled for 261 replacement school buildings also prohibit folding internal partitions to subdivide classrooms, roof terraces that can be used as play areas, glazed walls and translucent plastic roofs.

The templates were published on Monday to allow architects and builders bidding for £2.5bn of contracts on new school buildings to understand what the government expects from smaller and cheaper schools. The government is planning to replace the primary and secondary schools it has deemed to be in the worst condition as part of a five-year programme.

On Monday the Guardian revealed that the new schools would be 15% smaller than those built under the previous government, squeezing space for corridors, assembly halls and canteens. It is part of a plan by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to cut school building costs by 30% and save up to £6m per school compared to Labour's Building Schools for the Future project.
The templates tell architects new schools should have "no curves or 'faceted' curves", corners should be square, ceilings should be left bare and buildings should be clad in nothing more expensive than render or metal panels above head height. As much repetition as possible should be used to keep costs down.

"A standardised approach should be taken, with the aim of creating simple designs that have the potential to be replicated on a number of sites," the templates state. "This may be achieved by using standardised dimensions for similar types of spaces that are integrated into an efficient planning and structural grid."

The prohibitions and prescriptions seem targeted to prevent the schools being designed by architects such as Lord Foster and Dame Zaha Hadid who have won prizes for school designs that employed irregular curves and shapes and innovative materials, but have been criticised for spending too much.
Gove last year told a conference on free schools: "We won't be getting Richard Rogers to design your school, we won't be getting any award-winning architects to design it, because no one in this room is here to make architects richer."
Peter Clegg, a partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios which has designed more than a dozen schools, said: "It is extraordinarily over-prescriptive and it shows an extreme lack of trust in the architectural and construction professions to deliver schools to budget.

"Why are they not just telling us how much they want to pay per square metre? I can understand them wanting to turn the screw on the budget, but why do they not give architects who understand these things the ability to decide."
He said bans on materials such as the ETFE plastic used as a roofing material on the Eden Project did not make sense as it was often a cost-effective way to bring light into a building and was cheaper than glass.

The Department for Education said: "Compared to BSF these designs represent a reduction in wasted space – 15% for secondary and 5% for primary schools – whilst maintaining the same size teaching space, classrooms, staffrooms, sport, and art and design facilities. These new schools will still be bigger than secondary schools built in 2004 and primaries built in 2006."
Guidance in the templates includes: "basic specification solid core doors; no folding partitions; basic stair and balustrading finishes; fair faced concrete soffits ... no internal CCTV other than to the main entrance; reduced lighting specifications".

Mike Green, director of capital at the government's Education Funding Agency, said: "These designs will ensure that new schools can be built to effective designs and specifications, be simple to maintain and energy efficient. And they can be built far faster than many have previously, and for far less money.

"Ultimately they will enable as many schools as possible to receive investment from the funding available and deliver an excellent environment for the children and communities they serve."

Britishisms in American English? Brilliant!

The British are coming! The British are coming! For decades, you British have been kvetching (or as you might say, "whingeing") about the way we Yanks have been spritzing our two cents plain ("sparkling water" to you) American argot into the limpid, lambent loveliness of the Queen's English.
And though I generally try not to be "chippy" about the widely held view that my countrymen and women are bunch of rubes and yahoos – on display most recently in Downton Abbey, where Shirley MacLaine's caricature of a rich American finally drove me out of the room with annoyance – whenever I am asked to assent to the proposition that American influence is driving the English language to hell in a handbasket, my response is: get over it!
Well, that's the polite version. I mean first of all, when did the British need any help from anyone else with being vulgar? Ever heard of Geoffrey Chaucer? And second of all, just as I hope we are properly grateful for the immense linguistic riches bequeathed to us by Shakespeare and the committeemen who wrote the King James Bible (and no, I'm not being ironic. Americans don't do irony – or so my children tell me), so you ought to thank us for the swell examples of colloquial communication found in Hollywood films like His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby. I mean what's not to like?
But are you grateful? No way, Jose! There are exceptions, of course. James Joyce had Molly Bloom schlep around Dublin in 1922 – but Joyce was an Irishman, and without the Irish (and the Jews and African-Americans) the American slanguage would still be stuck on first base.
Only now the shoe (or boot) is on the other foot. At least that's what the BBC tells us, in a recent report by the magnificently monikered Cordelia Hebblethwaite. It seems that more and more British words are entering the American language. Now of course some Americans have always favoured a bit of British to try and raise the tone of their discourse. We call such people "stuffed shirts", though "toffs" is close enough. Indeed the shame of being seen as a linguistic striver is strong enough that despite 17 years in London, I still cringe at the memory of being caught offering to "hold the lift" for my sister last year.
No, what's new is that Mr and Mrs America and all the ships at sea are apparently quite (in the American sense of very, not the British sense of not very much at all) content to be heard referring to the "good bits" in a movie or novel, or a splendid "piece of kit" or even to inquire whether the neighbourhood joint "does food". At least so says Ben Yagoda, a freelance journalist and English professor who runs a website "tracking 'Ginger', 'Bits', 'Whinge', and other UK expressions that have got popular in the US" (nice to see Yagoda has still got a grip on the proper use of "got" as well).
Frankly, I'm relieved. The whole pretence/pretense that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language has got me plum tuckered out. The language police at our house (by which I mean my British-educated wife and kids) are so quick on the draw that I've contemplated taking a vow of silence. Whether it's JK Rowling I have to thank or EL James – whose constant importation of Britishisms into the mouths of characters supposedly sleepless in Seattle prompted one Amazon reviewer to observe: "If I wrote like that, I'd use a pseudonym, too" – I am just deeply grateful that we can all now talk the talk without shame. The British are coming? About bloody time!

My best bit of historic Britain: historians' and authors' top tips

From a tomb 5,000 years old to a club famous 50 years ago, the UK is so rich in sites it's hard to know where to start. Here historians and authors pick their favourites

 

Avebury in Wiltshire, England … 'a place for introspection and assessment'.

Neolithic: Francis Pryor

The Orkney Islands are one huge archaeological site. There are very few places in Britain where it is possible to view prehistoric monuments in their original settings. If a Neolithic family were somehow magicked into the 21st century, they'd still be able to find their way around their old sites here. Nowhere is more evocative than the great tomb of Maes Howe  by the Loch of Harray. You stoop to pass along the entrance passage to the great chamber, where the echoing acoustic was deliberately engineered by masters of ceremony from 5,000 years ago.
As a student I watched Terence Stamp lust after Julie Christie on the grassy banks of Maiden Castle (maidencastle.com, free) in Dorset, (filming 1967's Far from the Madding Crowd). The scale of this place never ceases to amaze me. Within its ramparts (mostly built around 500BC) are a Neolithic enclosure, bronze age barrows and a late-Roman temple.
Avebury in Wiltshire  is the only place in England that compares to Orkney for connectedness. Here the visitors can see how prehistoric sites linked together in an ever-developing ritual landscape. The scale is vast – far more spectacular, I think, than even Stonehenge. I find it a place for taking stock; for introspection and assessment.





Jarlshof, Shetland Islands. 

Bronze age (2500-800BC): Robert Van de Noort

My favourite bronze age site in the UK is the ancient settlement of Jarlshof, in Sumburgh on the mainland of Shetland . Standing on the edge of the North Sea, the settlement comprises several stone houses with internal buttresses, which are still several metres high. You can enter and explore these houses without restrictions. The site was occupied for many centuries after the bronze age and also includes iron age and Pictish remains. The Old House of Sumburgh, built by Earl Patrick in the 16th century, can be climbed for an overview of the settlement.
For the brave, I recommend a visit to the copper mines of the Great Orme, near Llandudno in north Wales, the largest prehistoric mine in the world, reached by climbing the Great Orme, or taking the Victorian tram to the halfway station. Helmets are provided. Copper – and tin, the key ingredient of bronze – was mined here 3,500 years ago, using tools of bone and stone.
Flag Fen, near Peterborough , is the only place in the UK where you can see bronze age timbers in situ. Flag Fen was a series of wooden trackways constructed between two areas of high ground at a time when the sea level slowly flooded the low-lying embayment. Part of this is on view at the Preservation Hall, where sprinklers keep the timbers wet to stop them deteriorating.
Finally, I would recommend a visit to the National Maritime Museum Cornwall  in Falmouth, where shipwrights and archaeologists are reconstructing a full-scale bronze age sewn-plank boat using bronze tools. This type of boat was made around 2000BC, when seafaring became important for the exchange of objects such as Beaker pottery, gold, amber, and jet. The Nebra sky disc, which was unearthed in Germany but made with tin and gold from Cornwall, is also on display.

Roman (AD43-410): Mary Beard

I have two favourites. One is the Roman town of Wroxeter, or Viriconium , in Shropshire. I went on excavations there when I was younger, so I have happy memories but, more to the point, it has a wonderfully impressive surviving bit of Roman wall, as well as an outdoor swimming pool (a triumph of Mediterranean aspirations over British weather). And then there's Lullingstone Roman villa, in Kent, with its mosaic showing Jupiter, in the form of a bull, carrying poor Europa off over the sea. And underneath there's an epigram in Latin, parodying the beginning of Virgil's Aeneid (words to the effect of: "If Juno had seen this going on, she'd have stirred up the storms even quicker"). It shows that someone living there knew their Virgil well enough to joke about it.

Anglo-Saxon (AD410-1066): Simon Keynes

In roughly chronological order, the following are important sites for Anglo-Saxon England. Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge, Suffolk  is the seventh-century burial ground of the kings of East Anglia. The main finds are on display at the British Museum . Yeavering on the edge of the Cheviots in Northumberland  is the site of a seventh-century Northumbrian royal estate, where beneath Yeavering Bell hill fort, the Anglo-Saxon kings maintained a grand palace. At the hill fort you can see ramparts and platforms for 130 roundhouses. Bede's World in Jarrow, Tyne & Wear , is a heritage site with exhibitions, replica buildings and a farm. It was a monastic centre, where in about 730AD the Venerable Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which first created for the English a sense of their collective identity. Kids can take part in an Anglo-Saxon trial or learn to be a warrior.
Isle of Athelney in Somerset, is where King Alfred the Great hid from the Danes when they invaded Wessex in 878. It's where he burnt the cakes, and later built a fort and a monastery in gratitude to God for his victory. The Museum of London  has a collection of Viking spears, axes and grappling irons found at the north end of London Bridge, site of several battles between the English and the Danes 1,000 years ago, during the reign of King Ethelred the Unready.
The British Library in London  has a large number of manuscripts on display, including the Lindisfarne Gospels, the St Cuthbert Gospel, several manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the manuscript of the Old English poem Beowulf 




 

The Jorvik Viking Centre, York

Viking (AD793-1066): Stephen Harding

I have to start with the Wirral I'm afraid, simply because that's where I was born and bred. Like much of the north-west coast, the area is crammed with Viking names, including Tranmere – the only football team in England with a Norwegian Viking name – and now host to four spanking new road signs commemorating the site of its former Viking assembly at Thingwall. Must-sees are the magnificent Viking hogback tombstone at the church of St Bridgets at West Kirby and the reconstructed Irish-Norse cross, showing not pillaging but a Viking couple embracing.
Vikings fans can then pop on the ferry from Liverpool and visit the Isle of Man, which, like the Wirral was once a Norse colony, with its Assembly at Tynwald Hill, in the village of St John's. Stand there and imagine you were the Viking law-speaker 1,000 years ago, then visit the superb Braaid Viking farmstead  and the reconstructed longship at the Manx Museum. Then you could hop back over the Irish Sea to the Largs Viking Festival in Ayrshire  before heading to more former Viking colonies in the Shetlands and Orkneys. Next year the largest ever Viking longship reconstruction will sail from Norway, past the islands to Largs, the Isle of Man and Liverpool.
Last but not least, Jorvik in York is an absolute must, and the train tour through the old Viking town is a most educational and entertaining experience.
• Steve Harding, Professor of Applied Biochemistry at Nottingham University is a Viking expert and a Knight of Norway

Tudor (1485-1603): Hilary Mantel

Lewes in East Sussex breathes history from every wall and door. Its castle dominates the town, and just outside are the remains of a great medieval priory . Founded in the 11th century, it was one of the richest monastic houses in England, with a church the size of a cathedral. In 1537 the priory was granted to Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the dissolution. Always a man in a hurry, he brought in an Italian engineer to blow up the buildings he didn't want, and built a house called Lord's Place for his son Gregory. The Victorians almost completed the destruction by putting a railway line through, but the beautiful South Downs setting survives, and it's a lovely place for a walk.
Just a moment from the priory ruins is Anne of Cleves House on Southover High Street. It's doubtful Henry VIII's unwanted fourth wife ever saw this pretty timbered manor, but it was part of her divorce settlement. Its furnished rooms include a splendid bedchamber and a kitchen. The museum displays melancholy stone carvings from the priory, and there is a gallery bristling with weaponry and ironmongery. A house on this scale, unpretentious and domestic, gives a better idea of Tudor life than many more celebrated sites, and there's a calm and pretty garden.
Michelham Priory, near Hailsham in East Sussex , was another Cromwell property. But this one was treated more gently, so the moated ruins are extensive and atmospheric. Set among orchards and vineyards, it was a small house, with just eight canons in residence in 1537. It's mellow and family-friendly, with a working watermill, a herb garden and a splendid Elizabethan barn.
Farleigh Hungerford Castle in a green valley on the Somerset-Wiltshire border, was built in the late 14th century and owned by the Hungerford family for 300 years. It's a ruin, though there is an intact chapel where knights and ladies lie on their tombs. The atmosphere is especially serene, though it's hard to imagine why, because the Hungerfords were a villainous crew. A 16th-century Hungerford had her husband strangled and his remains stuffed in the kitchen furnace. Another tried to starve his poor wife to death, but Henry VIII's headsman put an end to his activities. A 17th-century Hungerford gambled away the manor in a game of bowls. English Heritage has restored the site in an intelligent and sympathetic way.
Just where you don't expect a Tudor house, on Homerton High Street in gritty Hackney, east London stands Sutton House. It was called Bricke Place in 1535, when it was new and gleaming and built amid fields. The National Trust shows off dark panelled rooms that have survived many owners, but it's close to my heart because its builder was one of my favourite Tudors. Trained by Thomas Cromwell, Ralph Sadler attained high favour with Henry VIII, and built Bricke Place for his bride. Ralph was an ambitious young courtier and she was a widow, a servant; it was a love match; the curators will tell you about the bizarre turn that events took when Lady Sadler's first husband rose from the dead. Ralph Sadler was still working at the age of 85, in harness at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. He outlived all his generation, and died the richest commoner in England.

17th century: Lucy Worsley

I'm amazed that Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire doesn't cause crashes on the M1. It's perched on a hilltop near Junction 29a south of Sheffield, and you can't help but stare as you pass. It looks like a fairytale castle, with dinky battlements and turrets. Although it appears older, it is a Gothic, chivalric, romantic recreation of a medieval castle begun in the 1610s. It incorporates up-to-the-minute details from Italy, such as naked classical gods and goddesses having an orgy, and "lascivious beasts" decorating the fountain of Venus in its garden.
The Banqueting House in Whitehall, London , designed by Inigo Jones, represents the future of British architecture. Built in the 1620s, and the only surviving bit of the great, lost palace of Whitehall, the Banqueting House prefigures all those later, classical, Georgian museums and terraces and government buildings. It's easy to miss it as you walk along Whitehall, because it looks so familiar, but it really was the first of its kind. Inside, Rubens painted ceilings immortalising the Stuart dynasty. This is why, in a moment of delicious irony, the Parliamentarians chose to execute King Charles I directly outside.
Go to Ham House  in Richmond, west London, for life after the Restoration, including tiny, richly decorated 17th-century closets used as repositories for jewels, secrets and silence. Charles II, his dissolute courtier buddies and his merry mistresses enjoyed themselves in interiors like these. Nearly a century from where we started, Hampton Court Palace  heralds the arrival of the baroque and the influence of France rather than Italy. Built from 1689 by William and Mary, after they deposed the despotic and Catholic James II, this is a palace for a pair of constitutional monarchs. It's the British version of Versailles: Louis XIV was an absolute monarch, and his grandiloquent palace reflects his absolute power. William and Mary had given some royal power away to Parliament, so their palace is a cut-price version: beautiful, yet also warm and friendly, with cheap red brick as well as expensive white stone.
• Dr Lucy Worsley is the chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces and a TV presenter


Stourhead House, Wiltshire. Photograph: Alamy

Victorian (1837-1901): Ann Heilmann

A favourite place of mine to take visitors – but not before they've read a novel in preparation – is the Brontë Parsonage Museum  in Haworth. The picturesque West Yorkshire village near Bradford is surrounded by the moorland the Brontës described in their work and which was the setting for Emily's Wuthering Heights. In spring and summer Haworth can be reached by steam train from Keighley. The Brontë Museum, next to a rather Gothic cemetery, gives a good sense of the constrained circumstances of many parsons' families at the time, and its exhibition includes some of the tiny manuscript books with which the siblings honed their creative skills.

Tristram Hunt

The People's History Museum in Manchester brilliantly depicts the industrial revolution in "Cottonopolis", while in a 19th-century factory in Stoke-on-Trent, ceramicist Emma Bridgewater fires and paints her designs. A visit there is a hands-on entry into the world of industrial production.
The Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery  has one of the great collections of pre-Raphaelite art in a monument to Birmingham's mid-Victorian ambition to be the Venice of the Midlands. Glasgow is a fine Victorian city, retaining much of the architecture and civic fabric lost in Liverpool and Newcastle. The Merchant Quarter gives a sense of the imperial reach and commercial riches of the Second City of Empire.


Castle Drago, Dartmoor. Photograph: Alamy

Edwardian (1901-1910): Roy Hattersley

The Edwardian age – not "the long sunlit afternoon" but an era of dynamic social progress – is best represented by the cottage in Llanystumdwy  on Wales's Llyn peninsula where David Lloyd George, who carried the pensions, health and unemployment bills through parliament, was raised by his shoemaker uncle. Great British architect Edwin Lutyens built Castle Drogo  on Dartmoor, the "last castle to be built in England" in the 1910s, but his masterpiece, and the high-water mark of Edwardian grand design, is in India – the government buildings in New Delhi.

Plastic debris reaches Southern Ocean, previously thought to be pristine

 

 

The Southern Ocean. Researchers found plastic fragments there at a rate comparable to the global average. Photograph: Peter Barritt/Alamy

The first traces of plastic debris have been found in what was thought to be the pristine environment of the Southern Ocean, according to a study released in London by the French scientific research vessel Tara.
The finding comes following a two-and-a-half-year, 70,000-mile voyage by the schooner across the Atlantic, Pacific, Antarctic and Indian Oceans, to investigate marine ecosystems and biodiversity under climate change.
"We had always assumed that this was a pristine environment, very little touched by human beings," said Chris Bowler, scientific co-ordinator of Tara Oceans. "The fact that we found these plastics is a sign that the reach of human beings is truly planetary in scale."

Samples taken from four different stations at locations in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica revealed traces of plastic at a measure of approximately 50,000 fragments per square kilometre — a rate comparable to the global average. While traces of plastic pollutants are customary in many of the world's oceans, with the highest levels found in the North Atlantic and North Sea, researchers had anticipated rates in the Southern Ocean to be some 10 times lower than the global average.
"Discovering plastic at these very high levels was completely unexpected because the Southern Ocean is relatively separated from the world's other oceans and does not normally mix with them," Bowler explained before unveiling Tara's findings at an event at the Science Museum in London on Wednesday. The microscopic fragments, invisible until accumulated in trawling nets, are the result of waste products such as plastic bags and bottles, degraded over years or decades by UV light and sea water. Tara researchers, whose work was recently hailed by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, were also surprised to find that synthetic fibres, largely constituted by clothing from washing-machine residue, made up a significant portion of the plastic fragments.

Identifying the regional source of such general waste, which has made its way to the Southern Ocean over some half a century, remains more problematic. However, it is believed to originate from Africa, South America or Australia.

The fatal impact of plastic pollutants on the marine environment has been widely observed, as birds and fish regularly consume waste products, which can be easily mistaken for jellyfish or other prey but cannot be degraded in the stomach. Plastics also slowly release toxins and other chemical substances that work their way up the marine food chain.
"It's too late to do much about what's already out there at this stage, as this stuff is going to hang around for thousands of years," said Bowler. However, he says the best way to mitigate future pollution is to advocate the use of biodegradable technologies while emphasising a shift in consumer practices.

Tara will continue its marine research activities in 2013 with a groundbreaking mission to the Arctic circle to investigate the ocean environment following the melting of Arctic ice as a result of climate change.

iPhone 5: Apple sells 5m in first three days

Apple sets new sales record and runs out of initial production run – but figures may not be enough to please Wall Street analyste

 

 

Apple iPhone 5: customers wait in line for the new device. Analysts suggested almost twice as many would be sold on the opening weekend. Photo: Susanna Bates/EPA

Apple sold five million iPhone 5s in the first three days after the product's launch, the company announced Monday. But the figures may not be enough to please analysts' sky-high expectations and Apple's shares fell over $10 in early trading.

The sales set a new record for Apple. More than two million people pre-ordered the device, twice the number that pre-ordered its predecessor, the iPhone 4S, and the company sold out of its initial production run.

But the figures still came below the predictions of some Wall Street analysts, a number of whom forecast that almost twice as many would be sold.

"Demand for iPhone 5 has been incredible, and we are working hard to get an iPhone 5 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible," said Apple chief executive Tim Cook. "While we have sold out of our initial supply, stores continue to receive iPhone 5 shipments regularly and customers can continue to order online and receive an estimated delivery date."

Apple sold four million iPhone 4S in its opening weekend last year. That device was seen as a smaller technological step forward compared to the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 also had a bigger launch, going on sale in two more countries than its predecessor.

Apple has aggressive rollout plans for the newest iPhone. Nine countries are now selling the iPhone 5, and that will grow to more than 100 by the end of the year.

Colin Gillis, a technology analyst at BTIG in New York, said: "On any metric, this is a success. It's one million more units than last time. But this is Apple, and given the expectations on this company, they have to not just set records – they have to smash them."

Gillis said smartphone sales in general were slowing and that Apple had already conceded that sales of iPhone 4Ss had been hit as customers put off buying them in anticipation of the next release.

Apple had been expected to sell 25m iPhones in the September quarter and Gillis said the company could now miss that. "Quite frankly, a lot of people have smartphones already. The market is slowing down," he said.

By mid-morning, Apple's shares had fallen $10 to $690.09. The shares closed the day down $9.30 at $690.79.