The forest is on fire and we are all the trees. The sparks jump from tree to tree. And the stronger the wind, the faster the forest is on fire. One of the articles that the linguist Elena Semino evaluated for her analysis describes the spread of the corona pandemic. The wind force stands for the number of reproductions, the sparks are the viruses that are transmitted from person to person.
Semino is an expert on metaphors, she has analyzed their power in relation to cancer, among other things. According to the results of their new study, fire pictures are the best way to illustrate the threat posed by the pandemic - they work in many languages. Fire metaphors are "undoubtedly one of the most useful linguistic tools available to us," writes the scientist. Everyone can imagine something under a forest fire, even without having experienced one themselves.
The frequently used marine metaphor is similarly catchy, but quickly reaches its limits. Fire is more diverse: like a fire, the epidemic runs in phases, sometimes it flares up, sometimes it just blazes, sometimes it reappears in small embers, believed to have been defeated. Distance and quarantine, in turn, deprive the fire of nourishment, masks slow down the viruses that humans exhale and, like sparks, kindle new fires. And just as a wooden hut can fall victim to flames faster than a solidly built house, the pandemic also hits the poor harder than the rich.
There is something else, I think, that makes the fire pictures superior: While waves are constantly lapping against the coast, every fire is extinguished at some point. Until then, it is important to keep the many small fires in check. Stay healthy.
Heartily
Yours Julia Koch
( Feedback & suggestions? )
Abstract
What was on the science agenda this week:
Apple addiction and pear decay - that sounds gruesome enough. All the more unfavorable that this fruit tree ailment can only be recognized in the initial stage by laborious inspection of the individual trees and laboratory analyzes. The disease leads to measly fruits on the apple tree, with the second bacteria let the leaves on the pear tree wither. Fraunhofer researchers have now developed a method to diagnose diseases early on from the air - using drones and machine learning.
Handshakes, greetings, hugs - all of this must be avoided for a long time. This is good for containing the pandemic, but bad for the soul. Some scientists consider occasional hugs to be acceptable - if you don't breathe in each other's faces. When the need for closeness outweighs the risk of infection, everyone has to decide for themselves.
What was as long as a coach and had teeth the size of bananas? Sure, the terror crocodile! At least that's what American paleontologists report about the mysterious Deinosuchus, who died out millions of years ago and liked to eat dinosaurs.
The disk galaxy, which scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics discovered with the help of a gravitational lens, is so far away and yet so close to our Milky Way in terms of its structure. It took their light 12 billion years to reach us.
Those who research hepatitis viruses can only laugh at the mutation rate of Sars-Cov2, says the Frankfurt virologist Sandra Ciesek. In an interview, she explains to my colleague Nina Weber how everyone can try to prevent serious illnesses through a healthy lifestyle and why she is optimistic about vaccines.
Sardines contain the highest concentration of microplastics, squid the lowest - and none of the samples of seafood intended for human consumption that Australian researchers examined were free of plastic. So instead of Frutti di Mare, Frutti is plastic?
Quiz*
Who once wrote: "The power of fire is beneficial if man tames and guards it"?
What is the flash point and what is the focus in fire?
How did the Australian fire jewel beetle get its name?
* You can find the answers at the bottom of the newsletter.
Picture of the week
The ash column of the Sinabung in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra extends up to seven and a half kilometers. The volcano erupted earlier this week; there have been minor eruptions before. Until an eruption in 2010, the Sinabung had been quiet for more than a thousand years. In the meantime, many people had to give up their houses in the vicinity of the fire mountain.
footnote
600 times more wheat than today could be produced if the plants were not grown in fields but in high-rise buildings. In such vertical farms, the grain could thrive on around ten floors, and harvests would be possible several times a year. The agriculture of the future requires less land, water and pesticides - on the other hand, a lot of energy for artificial light, as US researchers report in the journal "PNAS".
SPIEGEL + recommendations from science
Is nuclear power the salvation from climate collapse? Paul Dorfman and Staffan Qvist are both climate protectors. But one wants to abolish nuclear power plants, the other build new ones. Here they meet for a dispute.
The woman who sees through Tinder: Kenza Ait Si Abbou has had bad experiences with artificial intelligence. Now she is developing algorithms that can do better.
What the bridge lizard reveals about the secret of aging: Researchers have deciphered the genome of New Zealand reptiles. The primeval animals once emerged from a catastrophe. Now they could help to better understand the course of life.
* Quiz answers
1. Friedrich Schiller was it. In "Song of the Bell".
2. The flash point is the temperature at which a certain material can be ignited by a spark at normal air pressure. The focus is a few degrees above the flash point. When it is reached, the fire begins to spread.
3. The larvae of this beetle can only develop in freshly burned wood. This is why the crawling animals can detect fires up to 50 kilometers away using special sensors.