Keeping Up With British Summer Time
by Rosalind Jones
BST (British Summer Time) is when clocks go forward one hour from GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) as marked by the famous clock at London's Greenwich Observatory. Britain loses one hour in spring but gains it back in autumn. Here is an assortment of "Timely News" from forward-leaping Britain.
Time Waster
A survey by British firm MessageLabs found that in January 2003 an average of one in four emails was junk mail. That figure increased for the following two months and the firm warned the ratio was likely to have broken the 50% mark last month (July).
Time Savers
British Telecom is promoting computers as "virtual libraries," advertising BT Broadband so that millions of Brits will have "education brought to life" with connections ten times faster than before. Faster still, millions of human genes can now be deciphered at speed, saving decades of laborious work in the human genonome project thanks to a prototype software analysis system project being developed at Manchester University. MyGrid, the new software system, allows biologists to analyze information in hundreds of databases by translating and standardizing conflicting formats.
Winning Time? Or Time Bomb!
Prometea, the Italian cloned Halflinger foal (the only one of 328 equine
embryos to survive full term) could offer champion race horse geldings the
formerly unforeseen chance of identical winning progeny; however, scientists
at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh warn that just like Dolly the sheep,
Prometea (named after the Greek God Prometheus who allowed mankind to make
a "giant leap" by giving man fire) may suffer premature ageing
defects. They also warn that human IVF offspring could also suffer unforeseen
abnormalities later in life. Nevertheless a new embryo-screening technique
that examines chromosomes of cells from potential embryos, boosting the
chances of
older women to have healthy babies, has resulted in ten healthy births after
being used for the first time in Britain. Win or lose, time will tell.
Time's Up
Scotland's wild cats and Australia's dingos are no longer officially "wild." Oxford University and Darwin Environmental Agency experts claim that conservationists are barking up the wrong tree when trying to save these animals as they have interbred with domestic cats and dogs over time. To the anger of conservationists who insist wild populations exist in isolation, the experts maintain that finding a purebred wild cat or dingo would be as likely as finding a needle in a haystack.
The Passage Of Time
Marine archaeologists from St Andrew's University, on the other hand, are hunting bits of another type of dog altogether -- an old "sea-dog" -- HMS Beagle to be precise. They hope to find surviving timbers from this old naval warship ship that famously took Charles Darwin on his voyage of discovery, and onboard which he developed his theory of evolution. But the archaeologists are fighting a huge passage of time, for the ship was broken up over a century ago. A recent "May Day" call on BBC Radio asked listeners for any clues that might lead to the whereabouts of artefacts or timbers. The archaeologists will be happy even if they are able to trace some of the ship's mahogany to a Thames-side pub where perhaps a polished, but anonymous, "Beagle" bar top may resound to the call "Time, gentlemen, please!" Now, that's evolution for you.
Changeable Times
If raining "cats and dogs" usually sums up the weather of the great British bank holiday (a public holiday marked by the closing of banks), then this British summer time has changed. It has been uncharacteristically hot and dry. Records prove that in the twelve past years nine have been successively hotter. Even in the northerly Orkney Isles (where incidentally they boast their minute lasts 90 seconds, not 60) they have just broken their summer record with 77 degrees Fahrenheit! London has sweltered at 99 degrees and meteorologists have been glued to their thermometers watching to see records broken if 100 degrees is reached. Experts at the Meteorological Office, who claim that global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions is to blame, gloomily predict heavier winter rainfall and worse summer and winter storms. Meantime icecaps are melting and sea levels slowly rising. Will it be, as the song goes -- "We'll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changing…"
Time To See Clearly
Britain's Opticians are worried by the current trend of teenagers to wear and share non-prescription, fashion contact lenses. It's not the lurid colours, animal eyes, or fantasy designs, nor the fact that sold from fashion outlets they are not fitted by opticians. It is the spread of eye disease that worries them. Contagious eye diseases are increasing alarmingly in Britain's normal-sighted young, through lack of user hygiene and the risky practise of swapping lenses between friends. A neat fix for ageing eyes, however, the replacement of the contents of the lens in the eye with a polymer gel, could be available next year, allowing millions of "old timers" to eventually throw away their reading glasses.
Time Is Monet
Record numbers of art-lovers queued for hours for the opening of the "Monet: The Seine and the Sea 1878-1883" three month long exhibition in the Royal Scottish Academy this month. No doubt after the heat of Edinburgh's Princes Street they were keen to view cooling scenes of water lilies, river and seascapes. In future they could choose to stay at home and pay to have an old master to view in privacy. All they will need to do is telephone London's National Gallery, select the picture of their choice, and in the space of five minutes a six colour printer in the galleries shop will print out a high-quality copy. (Eat your hearts out, Impressionists!) The National Gallery has been working for the past eight years with Hewlett-Packard on a scheme to digitize all of its 2300 paintings. Captured on a digital camera that steps back and forth over the masterpiece the technique improves the resolution of the image to 100 megapixels, 20 times better than the best consumer cameras. The gallery hopes to generate money by allowing accredited print shops around the world to sell copies. But time has already shown that digital piracy is rife, and the National Gallery seems resigned to a similar fate.
Time To Get Going -- Again
Eighteen years ago Sir Clive Sinclair launched his C5, a low-slung, covered, motorised tricycle invented to provide cheap environmentally-friendly transport. Meant to grab the imagination of the British traveling public, whom Sinclair hoped would buy thousands of C5s, it did grab them -- one look at the vulnerable vehicle and their imaginations took fright. Many realised they might be crushed by a truck! Now the redoubtable Sir Clive has announced a successor to the C5. Called the C6, it will be, he promises, "a new product for getting people around town." Will the unpromising sounding C6 be destined, like its forerunner, to become a thing of the past, or will this new invention be ahead of its time?
Time To Let It All Hang Out
And finally in Britain the time of the official "silly season"
is with us and guess what's making the news? An ex-Royal Marine is attempting
Britain's longest walk from Land's End in Cornwall to John O'Groats in Scotland,
a distance approaching a thousand miles. He left Land's End on July 7th
and should have arrived at John O'Groats by now, only he has had to take
circuitous routes to avoid the police who keep arresting him . . . for wearing
just a hat, rucksack, and boots. Nothing else. Perhaps he's undertaking
a time and motion study?
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