this tuesday, i got a chance to peek at what some of innsbruck’s chemists are doing:

right now, there’s an ongoing experiment based on the miller-urey-experiment [wikipedia: de, en] at the university of innsbruck.
stanley miller and harold clayton urey proved in 1953(!), that aminoacids (the base of all life-forms that we know of) could develop naturally under early atmosphere conditions of the earth.
this process is called “chemical evolution”.

nowadays, the composition of the early earth’s atmosphere is believed to be different than what miller and urey assumed, but the outcome is similar: organic molecules can (and will) form naturally, using very basic molecules (mainly water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen) and energy in the form of lightning.

here in innsbruck, scientists made a small modification to this setup: clay minerals (silicates) were added, because they have proven to influence the chemical evolution (and they were there, a few billion years ago).
after one month, they’re going to analyze what looks like green goo, and see what molecules are formed in this different setup…

when data about the atmosphere of titan was collected in january 2005, they also tried a similar experiment for titan conditions (different atmosphere, temperatures below freezing, …), to see if life (in very simple forms) could have evolved there.
after all, it’s still unknown where all the methane comes from and why it’s still there.
from what we know now, it IS possible.

[view photos: miller-urey-experiment - chemical evolution]

just found this in my inbox:
…”Aus den immer wieder einlangenden Meldungen der bestellten Präventivkräfte muss entnommen werden, dass die Freihaltung von gesicherten Fluchbereichen* nach wie vor mangelhaft erfolgt”…
* should be fluchTbereichen – emergency escape areas

in english, it that would be:
…”there are frequent notifications that swearing areas are still not kept sufficiently clear”…

new photos are online!

first of all, some more bat photos: it’s the first time i’ve …”hosted” a noctule bat (nyctalus noctula)- a good opportunity to take photos of the second largest bat species in austria…
apart from that, albuin (a well-travelled parti-coloured bat, vespertilio murinus) is a photogenic bat, too.

[view photos: noctule and parti-coloured bats]

 

and then, there’s a whole bunch of photos of people, that didn’t really fit anywhere else…
includes photos of our ensemble on good friday, my little brother in action, artist friends and their work, bear hunters, and today’s and yesterday’s ulfissimo choir rehearsals in baumkirchen.
i also made a short video when we rehearsed an arrangement of “mercy” by joe zawinul, which i think doesn’t sound too bad…

[view photos: random people photos]

i decided to integrate youtube’s service into the gallery, so now if you see this icon…

…in a gallery, there’s a video hiding behind it (as you may have guessed).

i just thought it would be nice to mix some videos in between photos…

stuff on my cat
catboys

real post coming soon, i promise.

sing-along songs for children with short attention spans
by ze frank

i’m not sure if it actually made it to international news, but there’s a brown bear (ursus arctos arctos) called bruno [wiki] roaming through tirol and bavaria.
the first wave of enthusiasm* vanished when bruno started killing sheep etc., and now they’re trying to catch him and …deport him, basically.
* after all, this species hasn’t been seen in austria & germany in …some time!

a team of finnish hunters that specialize in bears have arrived two weeks (?) ago, and have been trying to track him down with dogs.
i was asked to pick up the reinforcement team last sunday: matti myllynen and his dog raiku (newspapers called the dog a “finnish superstar”) and i gave him a lift to the “mission base” in bavaria.

when we drove past a ” germany – world cup country 2006″-sign, matti asked
matti: now we’re coming near the border?
me: that was it, welcome to germany!
matti: wow, i expected at least two hours of waiting and inspections.

 
while i was out there, i made a short trip to the natural reserve in hinterriss and eng. it’s located in the austrian risstal valley, which can only be reached (by car) by going through germany.

 
bear-hunter-photos will be added later on, as i was asked to not make them publicly available yet… (see thumbnail-link)
other photos will be uploaded …sometime soon.