“Many Things Grow in The Garden That Were Never Sown There”

How Many Seals Were There?

Predicting how marine mammal populations respond to habitat changes will be essential for developing conservation management strategies in the 21st century. Responses to previous environmental change may be informative in the development of predictive models. Here we describe the likely effects of the last ice age on grey seal population size and distribution. We use satellite telemetry data to...

How many were there when it mattered

Size matters, particularly in demonstrations. A demonstration is in support of a movement or a cause. The movement has a number of sympathisers. The perceived number of sympathisers is important. If it is seen to be large, then it becomes easier to recruit others to the cause, and to persuade inactive sympathisers to join the demonstrations. Also, if the movement numbers are large then it is mo...

From little things big things grow: . . .

Were Fertile Crescent crop progenitors higher yielding than other wild species that were never domesticated?

During the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, the broad spectrum of wild plant species exploited by hunter-gatherers narrowed dramatically. The mechanisms responsible for this specialization and the associated domestication of plants are intensely debated. We investigated why some species were domesticated rather than others, and which traits they shared. We tested whether the proge...

In the Beginning, Middle, and End There Was a Garden: Bahram Sadeqi’s Malakut

It seems impossible to think of the Persian art without mentioning the significant presence of gardens. They are present in miniature painting, architecture, and literature. One of the modern works of Persian fiction in which gardens play a significant role is Malakut (1961), a novella by the modern Iranian fiction writer Bahram Sadeqi (1936-1984). The story of this novella begins in a “green g...