Philip Bethge

Author: Philip Bethge

  • Grow Your Own Skyscraper

    Three young German architects are designing structures made completely out of living trees, including a pavilion for concerts in downtown Stuttgart. But designing the ultimate treehouse turns out to be trickier than one might expect.

    By Philip Bethge

    Ferdinand Ludwig grows trees on trees. That’s what he does. And he has grafted together — trunk to top, top to trunk — seven young willow trees

    At the moment a scaffold supports the young architect’s unusual tree tower. The roots of individual trees protrude sideways and into containers of soil. But soon the roots will be cut off. And “at that point,” the young architect says, “the trees will finally have merged into a single organism.”

    Ludwig calls this technique “plant addition.” To do it, he uses one-year-old willows that are thin and flexible but at least 10 meters (33 feet) long. Once the willows have matured to full strength, the strands will be able to support the eight-meter (26-foot) tower that Ludwig plans to begin building near Lake Constance in southern Germany at the end of July, as though they were steel beams.

    This is probably the biggest project to date within an innovative branch of architecture — no pun intended. Ludwig and fellow architects, Oliver Storz and Hannes Schwertfeger, call their new specialty “building botany.” As part of this the three men are building structures made from plants as well as studying the elasticity of plane trees and examining how effectively willows can grow around steel pipes at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Basics in Modern Architectural Design.

    “In our opinion trees are high-tech material, which is why plant growth is part of our vision,” says Schwertfeger. “We start them off but the tree itself continues the building process,” Ludwig adds. “In architectural terms it’s very risky — but it’s a positive risk.”

    Training trees to grow in all manner of decorative shapes is not new, it has been part of the skilled landscape gardener’s repertoire since the 13th century. And companies like the Israeli firm, Plantware, have perfected these techniques as they have shaped trees into fruit bowls, toilet paper holders and street lamps; they call their work “arborsculpture.” Now Stuttgart’s architectural rebels are taking the concept a step further. They consider the trees to be building materials similar to steel and concrete.

    “The basic rule is this: All forces pass through the wood, from top to bottom,” Schwertfeger explains. And the trio has already built their first structures. For example on Lake Constance where a group of willows surround a metal walkway. And in the Bavarian Forest, trees form a “diagonal support frame” for a bird watching station. And now the pioneers are planning to build a “green room” in downtown Stuttgart. The project, dubbed “Satellite,” will consist of a 120-square-meter (1,290-square-foot) pavilion for exhibitions and concerts.

    Meticulous Maintenance

    The basis of their work is always the same. First, the architects build a conventional support structure. Young, flexible trees are attached to the structure and bent into the desired shape. As the trees grow, they take on more and more of a load-bearing function. After a few years — and what Ludwig calls a “botanical certificate of fitness” inspection by a structural engineer — the support structure can be removed. At which point the roof and floors that have been inserted should be supported entirely by the trees.

    But that’s not quite as easy as it sounds. For instance, there is the “risk of strangulation” if metal fasteners obstruct the flow of sap. The architects have already had to tack on “sap bypasses” made from branches to keep their botanical building material alive. In addition, just like an ornamental garden, a tree structure requires meticulous maintenance. “Or else everything turns back into shrubbery,” Ludwig says.

    The architects are developing these methods on grounds belonging to a cultural association in northern Stuttgart. At the site, Ludwig is trying to figure out how best to “weld together” different trees while Storz tests the strength of basket willows. Two hundred trees are lined up in a straight row inside scaffolding that has concrete weights hanging from it. Four times a day, a system of computer-controlled winches use the weights to rock the trees back and forth in an elaborate pattern.

    ‘A Tree Doesn’t Want to Become a Wall’

    The tree-bending experiment is designed to solve a problem that the botany builders didn’t expect. They noticed that when trees were attached to a frame, they no longer seemed to have any reason to develop their own strength. However, the stresses of being bent this way, with the concrete weights, artificially stimulates growth and improves stability.

    “We have to subject ourselves to the tree’s own structural rules,” says Storz. For instance, trees are incapable of forming two-dimensional structures. “A tree doesn’t want to become a wall,” Ludwig adds.

    In other words, anyone who expects your everyday residential structure or functional building from these builders of the botanical will be disappointed. But it is precisely this divergence from classic architecture that fascinates the Stuttgart architects.

    The technique creates structures “that change quite considerably, that require one to adapt. Their uses change constantly too,” says Schwertfeger. “Each structure is a blend of fiction and reality,” notes the doctoral candidate, quickly adding that: “In our case, the fiction component is relatively high.”

    Unfortunately, everyday reality keeps catching up with this fascinating, abstract theory. One example: for the past few weeks Ludwig has had a problem that someone embarking on a career in building with trees can certainly do without. He has somehow developed an allergy to plane trees.

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Cloned Meat Soon to Hit European Supermarkets

    Cattle cloning has long been standard practice in the United States. Now EU agriculture ministers have decided that cloned meat and milk should be allowed onto the European market. Not everyone is pleased.

    By Philip Bethge

    Anyone who considers creation sacred should make sure they never talk to a cattle breeder. In-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and embryo transfer are the terms of their trade. And now another word from the lexicon of reproductive medicine has joined the breeder’s jargon: cloning.

    The European Union’s agricultural ministers decided on Monday of last week that in the future, the meat and milk of the offspring of cloned animals should be allowed on the European market. The European Parliament still needs to approve the proposal. However environmental and animal protection organizations responded immediately to the news and condemned the decision. They consider cloning to be unethical and cruel, and warn that the risks of cloned meat for human health have not been adequately researched.

    The ministers’ decision was long overdue. In the US and South America, cloning has long been standard practice among breeders. German experts like Heiner Niemann from the Institute for Animal Breeding at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute also have high expectations of the technique. “In the future, cloning will be one of the standard cattle-breeding techniques,” says Niemann.

    The technology is already widely used in the US. Companies like ViaGen, Cyagra or Trans Ova Genetics offer cattle clones for between $10,000 and $20,000. The benefits are obvious: Multiple copies can be made of a bull with particularly desirable characteristics. And multiple “superbulls” naturally have more offspring than just one — meaning more premium meat for the breeder.

    “With elite animals, cloning can quickly pay for itself,” says Mark Walton of ViaGen. Karen Batra from the Biotechnology Industry Organization estimates there are already about 600 cloned super cattle in the US. The meat of their offspring is already on sale in supermarkets, she says, explaining that it doesn’t need to be specially labeled. “For breeders, cloning is just another reproductive technique, much like in-vitro fertilization,” says Batra.

    But critics see significant differences. Cloning is said to produce deformed animals with short life expectancies. The cloned sheep Dolly is known to have met a painful end. But genetics expert Heiner Niemann claims that “major progress” has been made since then. Far fewer embryos die and “defects” are much more seldom.

    The meat of the cloned animal itself doesn’t end up in supermarkets, however: Both the US and Europe prohibit its sale. What ends up in the store freezers are the steaks from the clone’s offspring. Its quality is indisputable — and these animals are not even clones. Both the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last year that the milk and meat of the offspring of cloned animals pose no health risks.

    So is it only a matter of time before “cloned” meat is to be found on European supermarket shelves too? After all, it can’t be distinguished from normal steaks. The European Parliament needs to decide soon, before American products start landing on the European market unnoticed.

    According to an EFSA report, the technology “is on the verge of widespread commercial use.” The institution’s experts expect the technique will be used around the world “before 2010.”

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Nuclear Renewal: Siemens Seeks to Cash In on Russia’s Atomic Adventure

    Nuclear power is back in vogue in Russia, with 26 new reactors scheduled for construction by 2030. German industrial giant Siemens has grabbed a piece of the pie. But safety and financial concerns threaten to overshadow the country’s atomic ambitions.

    Olga Kurochkina can hardly hide her delight at making her German guests squirm. She has just served them caviar and pirogies and is now triumphantly waving a document in their faces. “Our students recently debated whether Germany needs nuclear energy,” says Kurochkina, a teacher at an elite Moscow high school. “The arguments, of course, favor electricity from nuclear energy.”

    Kurochkina insists that there are “significant disadvantages” to all other energy sources. Wind turbines? “They produce infrasound, which causes depression.” Solar cells? “They cause local cooling of the air.”

    It is hard to believe, but … More

  • Who Needs Berlitz? British Savant Learns German in a Week

    Is it possible to learn German in just days? Linguistic savant Daniel Tammet managed to do so in the course of a week. Using his own special technique, the 30-year-old, who has a mild form of autism, has learned to speak more than 10 languages.

    Daniel Tammet likes the German language. It’s “like a clean room with good sharp corners, tidy and straightforward,” he says, yet at the same time it’s “poetic, transparent and elegant.”

    “Take, for example, words like bisschen (a little bit) or Löffelchen (a small spoon),” he adds. “I like this diminutive chen ending.”

    Or the word Gras, for grass: “I like that the first letter fits — for me words with ‘G’ are green,” says the young British man, before offering his signature thin smile. It’s a Thursday in Hamburg’s Hotel Wedina, and 30-year-old Tammet has four more days. By Monday, he plans to have learned enough German — after only a week’s training — to appear on the German television talk show “Beckmann” and speak fluently about brain research, autism and his new book.

    Tammet is a savant. As a child he had epileptic seizures. Doctors later diagnosed him with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism. He mastered the world of emotions only through hard training.

    Numbers and foreign words, on the other hand, come to him naturally. He sees colors and shapes where most people see only plain words and numbers. He’s memorized the number pi to 22,514 digits. He knows instantly that January 10, 2017, will be a Tuesday. And he’s a fleet-footed traveler in the rocky terrain of languages.

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

    Tammet can speak Romanian, Gaelic, Welsh and seven other languages. He learned Icelandic in a week for a TV documentary, at the end of which he gave a live interview on television. He felt somewhat nervous, but was able to speak quite fluently with the show’s host. He even dared to make a joke in Icelandic, which is generally dreaded for its complexity. He still speaks the language today.

    And last week, Tammet took a linguistic stroll through German’s convoluted sentences, had picnics in the genitive case and roamed through the language’s myriad plural forms. He did bring some rudimentary school German along for the journey. Nonetheless, his coaches were stunned.

    “It’s fascinating how he learns, especially because it’s almost impossible to comprehend,” said language coach Christiane Spies, who assisted Tammet the entire week. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

    Tammet first begins learning a language by reading for hours, especially children’s books. He murmurs the words quietly to himself, appearing calm and highly concentrated. At 1 p.m. on the dot he gets edgy — that’s lunchtime.

    In the afternoon, Tammet and Spies stroll through Hamburg, chatting about the history of the Hanseatic League, visiting museums and galleries. “He needs an incredible amount of fodder,” says Spies, “otherwise he gets bored quickly.” Tammet immediately links new words with ones he already knows: What is that called in other languages? Which expressions are similar?

    “Wolle” (wool), “Baumwolle” (cotton) and “Wolle spinnen” (to spin wool), he notes them all down in his small handwriting. That’s how it goes the whole time. Occasionally he pauses, apparently listening to his thoughts. “It doesn’t seem as though the learning process is an effort for him,” Spies says. But how is that possible?

    Tammet tries to explain it himself: “I learn new languages intuitively, like a child.” Grammar doesn’t interest him. Instead, he lets himself be carried along by the language, looking for patterns in the mess of sentences he hears, tying words together into related groups. “Small, round things often start with ‘Kn’ in German,” he says, pointing out Knoblauch (garlic), Knopf (button) and Knospe (bud). Then there are the long, thin things that often begin with “Str,” like Strand (beach), Strasse (street) and Strahlen (rays).

    “I try to develop a feeling of how each particular language works,” he says, adding that he’s helped in this pursuit by the fact that regions in his brain are connected in unusual ways. Most humans think in isolated categories, but for Tammet everything is networked. “When I think about words,” he says, “I take information from everywhere in my brain.” Emotions, colors and shapes all connect themselves with the words, allowing him to learn with incredible speed.

    Do his talents make Tammet unapproachably eccentric? His shyness is noticeable. And yet, in an almost uncanny way, he’s very likeable. He speaks in a soft, warm voice and, unexpectedly, maintains constant eye contact.

    Tammet wants to explain and make understandable to others the way that he sees the world. He wants to impart fun in learning, joy in numbers, words and thoughts. “I hope my experiences can help people to discover and develop their own talents,” he says. He adds, “Love is an accurate description of what I feel for languages.”

    “His nature is really touching,” says Spies, the language coach, “both his way of learning and the person as a whole.”

    “How small does a spoon have to be in order to be a ‘Löffelchen‘,” Tammet wants to know. How small must it be to receive that German diminutive “-chen“? A teaspoon isn’t small enough. Instead his eye lights on a tiny spoon in a salt shaker.

    So small. It’s certainly worth a -chen.

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

  • Urban Pop right from the Kitchen: “Alltagshelden ohne Ruhm”

    Urban Pop right from the Kitchen: “Alltagshelden ohne Ruhm”

    The German Pop Band Kitchen Cowboys present their new CD “Alltagshelden ohne Ruhm”, a tribute to the working hero of everyday life and the perpetual struggle for fame and fortune.

    There are two types of heroes: those who are famous for spectacular acts, and those who struggle to maintain through everyday life. Of these “working heroes without fame” is the new album of the Hamburg pop band Kitchen Cowboys.

    Political and poetic are the songs of the new Kitchen Cowboys CD “Alltagshelden ohne Ruhm”. “Nein Danke” is a protest song about the current financial crisis and a dark call for resistance: “Nur Schafe wandern in der Herde und lassen sich zum Schlachthof führen”, it says in the song, because “wer nicht selbst denkt, denkt das Verkehrte” . “Unterm Pflaster” in turn, is a tribute to the ’68 slogan “Under the pavement is the beach: “Es liegt bei dir, du hast die Wahl, du schuftest billig oder nimmst Hartz IV”, it says in the song. But the band has also something more sunny in the program: The Kitchen Cowboy summer hit „Ans Meer“ for example celebrates the eternal summer, love and the easy life on the beach.

    The songs were (more…)

  • Germany’s Mystery Cow Disease: ‘Holy Mary, Help Us in Our Hour of Need!’

    A mysterious illness is causing calves to bleed to death on German farms. Veterinarians are stumped over what is causing the deaths: vaccines, genetically modified feed or perhaps even the first mother’s milk?

    What can a cattle farmer do when he sees blood running from his calves like water, when they become lethargic and febrile and, by the next morning, are lying dead on the floor, their coats covered in blood?

    “Our calves from last summer looked like they had been beaten,” says farmer Robert Meyboom, who is still shocked and perplexed today. “The animals’ bodies were covered with drops of blood, and their eyes were bloodshot.”

    The veterinarian tried everything, he says, including administering vitamins and blood-clotting agents. But nothing worked, and “within two or three days, they were all dead.” … More

  • The Healing Power of Death

    Were Europeans once cannibals? Research shows that up until the end of the 18th century, medicine routinely included stomach-churning ingredients like human flesh and blood.

    By Philip Bethge

    According to the recipe, the meat was to be cut into small pieces or slices, sprinkled with “myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe” and then soaked in spirits of wine for a few days.

    Finally, it was to be hung up “in a very dry and shady place.” In the end, the recipe notes, it would be “similar to smoke-cured meat” and would be without “any stench.”

    Johann Schröder, a German pharmacologist, wrote these words in the 17th century. But the meat to which he was referring was not cured ham or beef tenderloin. The instructions specifically called for the “cadaver of a reddish man … of around 24 years old,” who had been “dead of a violent death but not an illness” and then laid out “exposed to the moon rays for one day and one night” with, he noted, “a clear sky.”

    In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, recipes for remedies like this, which provided instructions on how to process human bodies, were almost as common as the use of herbs, roots and bark. Medical historian Richard Sugg of Britain’s Durham University, who is currently writing a book on the subject says that cadaver parts and blood were standard fare, available in every pharmacy. He even describes supply bottlenecks from the glory days of “medicinal cannibalism.” Sugg is convinced that avid cannibalism was not only found within the New World, but also in Europe.

    In fact, there are countless sources that describe the morbid practices of early European healers. The Romans drank the blood of gladiators as a remedy against epilepsy. But it was not until the Renaissance that the use of cadaver parts in medicine became more commonplace. At first, powders made from shredded Egyptian mummies were sold as an “elixir of life,” says Sugg. In the early 17th century, healers turned their attention to the mortal remains of people who had been executed or even the corpses of beggars and lepers.

    Paracelsus, the German-Swiss physician, was one of the most vehement proponents of body-stripping, which eventually gained popularity at even the highest levels of society. British King Charles II paid 6,000 pounds for a recipe to distill human skull. The regent applied the resulting distillate, which entered the history of medicine as “the king’s drops,” almost daily.

    Scholars and noblemen, as well as ordinary people, swore by the healing powers of death. US anthropologist Beth Conklin, for example, quoting a 19th-century source, writes that in Denmark epileptics were reported to stand around the scaffold in crowds, cup in hand, ready to drink the red blood as it flows from the still quavering body. Skulls were used as medicine, as was the moss that tended to sprout from them. It was believed to staunch bleeding.

    Human fat was supposed to alleviate rheumatism and arthritis, while a paste made from corpses was believed to help against contusions. Sugg even attributes religious significance to human flesh. For some Protestants, he writes, it served as a sort of substitute for the Eucharist, or the tasting of the body of Christ in Holy Communion. Some monks even cooked “a marmalade of sorts” from the blood of the dead.

    “It was about the intrinsic vitality of the human organism,” says the historian. The assumption was that all organisms have a predetermined life span. If a body died in an unnatural way, the remainder of that person’s life could be harvested, as it were — hence the preference for the executed.

    The practice was not always a success. In 1492, when Pope Innocent VIII was on his deathbed, his doctors bled three boys and had the pope drink their blood. The boys died, and so did the pope.

    Was all of this cannibalism? Sugg has no doubt that it was. Like the cannibals of the New World, the Europeans were fundamentally interested in the consumption of vital energy. For anthropologist Conklin, the European form of cannibalism is especially remarkable. Outside Europe, she notes, the person who was eating almost always had a relationship with the person who was eaten. Europe’s cannibalism, on the other hand, was “distinctly asocial,” Conklin writes, adding that human body parts were treated as merchandise: bought and sold for a profit.

    By the end of the 18th century, however, the appeal had worn off. “With the Enlightenment, physicians sought to shed their superstitious past,” says Sugg. In 1782, for example, William Black, a physician, wrote that he welcomed the demise of “loathsome and insignificant” medicines, like “dead men’s skulls pulverized.” These, and “a farrago of such feculence,” had fortunately disappeared from the pharmacies, Black remarked.

    An era had come to an end, and with it the interest in recipes like those of Briton John Keogh. The preacher, who died in 1754, recommended pulverized human heart for “dizziness.” Keogh even provided a dose and instructions for use: “A dram in the morning — on an empty stomach.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

     

  • An Undersea Kama Sutra: The Disturbing Sex Lives of Deep Sea Squid

    A Dutch biologist has extensively studied the reproductive techniques of deep-ocean squid. During sex, they are brutal and ruthless — and sometimes clumsy.

    By Philip Bethge

    Sex in the deep sea is a difficult proposition. The problems already begin with the partner search: How do you find someone to mate with in the pitch-black depths of the ocean? And for any creature that does manage to have a rendezvous beneath the waves, failure is simply not an option.

    “Seize the moment,” is how Dutch researcher Hendrik Jan Ties Hoving describes the most basic rule of undersea reproduction. “Chances are low of finding a partner a second time.”

    Hoving, a biologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is in a position to know what he’s talking about, too. He recently completed his doctoral thesis on the reproduction of deep-sea squid. He studied 10 different species, from mini-squid measuring just 25 millimeters (one inch) in length to 12-meter (40-foot) giant squid. Among Hoving’s striking findings: Squid bite during sex, males drive sperm packets directly into the skin of females and brutal wrestling is part of their mating ritual.

    The array of techniques is impressive, Hoving says, but also takes some getting used to. His conclusion: “Reproduction is no fun if you’re a squid.”

    Most of the squid behaviors that have come to light so far are striking and bizarre. For example, researchers in California photographed one species, Gonatus onyx, caring for its brood. This squid, which measures just under half a meter (one and a half feet) long and lives in water around 2,500 meters (8,000 feet) deep, stretched its arms into a kind of web, holding a gelatinous matrix containing 2,000 to 3,000 eggs. It regularly flushed fresh water through this egg mass, presumably to aerate the embryos.

    Meanwhile, American researchers Clyde Roper and Michael Vecchione caught another species, Brachioteuthis beanii, in the act off the coast of North Carolina. One squid grabbed another from behind, and the one being grabbed “bent its body and vigorously moved its arms around the head and mantle opening of the grasping squid” — one pulling the other, the second sinking toward the first. The experts’ opinion: “Probably mating.”

    Now Hoving has unveiled what seems like an entire Kama Sutra of the squid world. The subjects of his study were all already dead at the time he observed them, but what the biologist found in museums, obtained from fishermen and collected from the ocean on scientific expeditions off the coast of Namibia and the Falkland Islands is nonetheless sensational:

    • Using their sharp beaks or the hooks on their tentacles, males of the species Taningia danae make cuts more than five centimeters (two inches) deep into the females’ flesh. They then deposit sperm packets, called spermatophores, into the wounds.
    • Females of a mini-squid species, Heteroteuthis dispar, store sperm within their bodies in a special pouch. The precious cargo can account for up to 3 percent of the squid’s total body weight.
    • Some males of the species Ancistrocheirus lesueurii appear outwardly almost like females. “Possibly an adaptation for getting closer to the females,” Hoving suggests.
    • For another species, Moroteuthis ingens, the males simply release their sperm packets and don’t need to do anything more. The spermatophores penetrate the female’s skin independently, using a substance that dissolves tissue.

    Hoving has an explanation for this strange avoidance of bodily contact: “Mating is probably quite risky for the male,” he says. “In most species they’re smaller, and could get eaten.”

    He has a similar explanation for the males’ rough behavior: “More than anything, it’s about being fast.” It seems the males are quite literally under great pressure. A few years ago, Australian biologists discovered sperm packets under the skin of a freshly caught 15-meter (50-foot) female giant squid. Covered with a “gelatinous” substance, they had presumably been “injected” by a male, the researchers reported, “under hydraulic pressure,” with a penis “up to 92 centimeters (three feet) long.”

    Small wonder that things sometimes go wrong. Hoving discovered sperm packets, among other places, in the eyes of animals he studied. And one giant squid found off the coast of Norway seems to be a not atypical case: a male, it also had spermatophores under its skin. The science journal Nature offered the interpretation that the squid may have “literally shot itself in the foot.”

    In the end, however, it seems fertilization does manage to take place in most cases. Squid are certainly numerous enough — according to Hoving, there are around 200 species in the deep ocean. Not even overfishing does harm to them, he says. Quite the opposite, in fact: “The squid have more to eat, since they don’t have to share their food with the fish that are caught for consumption.”

    A female squid releases millions of tiny eggs into the water, but generally only once in her lifetime. When she does, the sperm stored under her skin are discharged simultaneously. The father for this legion of embryos is often the single male who got his beak or hooks on the female first.

    Thus the brutal attacks by some male squid have another purpose, Hoving believes. “The females have downright negative experiences with mating, meaning that afterwards they won’t let any other male near them.”

    It’s a forced fidelity for the squid, and Hoving even has a technical term ready for it: “traumatic insemination.”

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International