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A bearded Trump is what haunts the Democrats' nightmares.

Putting together a list of Van Halen’s Best Song On Each Of Their Studio Albums created some controversy here at the site as many of the writers have very different opinions on the best material on each Van Halen album. The reason is very simple: every song on every Van Halen album is like the best song on the record. It doesn’t matter if you are on the David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar side; there is just so much great material to choose from. In our 10 Abums That Changed My Life Series, the first Van Halen album is The post Van Halen’s Best Song On Each Of Their Studio Albums appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Books Reading the Weird Weird and Unusual Security System Issues: Nnedi Okorafor’s “Dark Home” On the streets of Nigeria you might meet just about anyone—or anything… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on May 29, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Nnedi Okorafor’s “Dark Home,” first published 2023 in Jordan Peele’s Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Spoilers ahead! Summary “I couldn’t let go.” Nwokolo has returned to Isiekenesi, Nigeria, transporting her father’s corpse. He was well-loved by the African diaspora in Phoenix, Arizona, where he owned the Chief Jollof restaurant. In Isiekenesi, he was a Big Man. His relations have made him a worthy homegoing with dancers, music, food, and drink. All Isiekenesi has turned out for the occasion. The display of respect doesn’t comfort Nwokolo. Her mother died in a freak car accident when she was nine, leaving her father her confidant and best friend; kneeling beside his flower-strewn coffin, she mourns him with tears that taste of blood and salt. Her eyes fall on the bronze ring he always wore, cast with an eagle’s face. An auntie draws her into the house where people mutter about the unseasonably gray sky. Surely it’s a strange omen. Nwokolo’s auntie tells her she must see her father home, then keep the legacy of his restaurant alive. Meanwhile a Simon and Garfunkel song plays in her head, as it’s been doing for days: “Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.” That night, the wake is a party her father would’ve loved, but Nwokolo stands alone, thinking of his body outside in the night. Undistracted by the Igbo conversations she understands only partially, Nwokolo is first to hear the approach of clacking sticks, drums and a flute. The men move to the door and windows, while the women retreat deeper into the room. Only Nwokolo goes outside, ignoring her uncle’s shout to come back. No one follows her to the coffin, beside which she kneels. A candle-lit procession of thirty identically dressed men fills the family compound. One stabs the dirt before the coffin with a black staff tipped by clanging cowbells. The drummer and flutist station themselves nearby. When they cease playing, Nwokolo sees why: A figure ten feet high, wide as a van, is shimmying towards her. It’s a “great mound of black palm tree raffia,” belted with rotting animal hides, hung with cowrie shells and crowned with eagle feathers. Ajofia has arrived, the flutist announces. Nwokolo knows it for a “big spirit,” part of “deep Igbo culture,” come to see her father off. Great honor though its presence is, she can’t let Ajofia take him. She shouts “He’s my father! This is his land!” and pulls the brass ring from his finger. A harsh voice comes at her from all directions, demanding in Igbo that she give back the ring – it’s not hers! The words “slapped her soul,” and she flees indoors. When Nwokolo finally flies home, her boyfriend Tony picks her up. Though they’ve only been together two months, he’s been supportive. Unfortunately he’s got a business trip the next day. Her corgi Biko-nu (her father’s gift) welcomes her enthusiastically. Her house is equipped with many security and surveillance devices, including a household management robot. Despite her defensive tech, Nwokolo always checks the front door camera before bed. Tonight she’s too exhausted – but ends up checking the camera later, after she wakes up freezing – somehow the AC has reset itself to sixty. The security light reveals nothing. She checks the front door and thinks she sees a shadow on the entrance path. Morning brings a call from an unfamiliar Nigerian number. She’s too late picking up. The security system announces a visitor at the front door; the cam shows nothing. This “glitch” will continue to plague her, as do memories of her father and the Ajofia masquerade. The Nigerian number calls again. She ignores it. Getting back to work cheers Nwokolo up, but the sympathy of restaurant staff wears on her. She retreats to her father’s office. Her manager Okigbo finds her there. When she shows him her father’s ring, he’s alarmed. It’s the emblem of the secret society he belonged to! She must return it at once, and in person! Nwokolo rejects his “traditional Igbo man crap.” Leaving, Okigbo says she’s “very American – selfish and individualistic.” He’s telling her: “Take. It. Back.” Buy the Book Out There Screaming Jordan Peele An Anthology of New Black Horror Buy Book Out There Screaming Jordan Peele An Anthology of New Black Horror An Anthology of New Black Horror Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget A ten minute drive home stretches to eternity when a dust storm forces Nwokolo to pull over. She checks her house. Power’s still on. All’s normal upstairs. In the storm-darkened downstairs, however, Biko-Nu cowers from something she can’t see. Home, she charges inside with a baseball bat to find the dog unhurt. A whole-house search turns up no sign of an intruder beyond a cowrie shell on the living room rug. But Nwokolo keeps cowries everywhere, her “own ritual.” She crushes this one. Tony calls; they talk into the night. At 3:48 am, security announces another front-door visitor. This time something is visible, a tree-high presence that shimmies and sheds dust clouds as the house speakers blast “Hello, darkness, my old friend.” Fury drives Nwokolo to confront the “visitor.” She also realizes that when you hang on to things, “sometimes things hang on to you.” Her parents stand between her and Ajofia. Deliberately, they walk to the big spirit and vanish. This time Nwokolo lets them go, even though it leaves her alone. Outraged neighbors emerge. They can see the hulking Ajofia but think it’s some ill-timed “performance art.” When Ajofia bounces and puffs out smoke, they run in terror. Nwokolo faces down the spirit but finally throws her father’s ring at it. Ajofia catches the ring in one extruded tendril. Another it shoots at Nwokolo, leaving a penny-sized wound in her arm. Then it bounces off, disintegrating until all that’s left are eagle feathers. Nwokolo is about to take one feather indoors, then thinks better: What am I doing? She casts it away, shuts the door, and activates all her alarms and security lights. What’s Cyclopean: Ajofia smells “sweet and camphoraceous like cedar.” The Degenerate Dutch: Kolo’s uncle likes to complain about “stupid, stupid women,” usually for stupid reasons. Kolo’s neighbors assume that the only Black woman in their subdivision must be deliberately responsible for anything weird that shows up. Anne’s Commentary Nwokolo prefaces her story with a confession in which the determination to be brutally self-honest tussles with the urge to find excuses for what she did on “that day.” She couldn’t let go (of her recently deceased father, as we’ll learn in the next scene.) Wait, no, she didn’t want to let go. She wasn’t thinking straight. Wait, how could she have been thinking straight? She did something foolish. Wait, something deeply selfish. Simply foolish or deeply selfish. The moral remains the same: Hang on like that, sometimes things hang on to you. Later her boyfriend Tony drops a variation on this idea: He advises Nwokolo to rest on her first day back from Nigeria, because “like my grandma would say, ‘Who knows what you brought home with you. That needs to settle in, too.’” Later still, Nwokolo will realize there “never had been a time when I went to Nigeria, to my parents’ ancestral lands, and returned the same person as I had been when I left.” This time she returns having violated a core cultural and psychological ritual: That of letting one’s dead go home. Holding on too long has consequences. For Nwokolo, the consequence is that she doesn’t go home alone. Maybe Nwokolo is being honest both when she claims she couldn’t let go and when she claims she didn’t want to let go. Maybe the two states of mind, of volition, aren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe they lie on a spectrum where the more one doesn’t want, the closer one approaches can’t. What would lie at the point of perfect balance? In Nwokolo’s case, it could be when she still longs to cling to her father but has accepted the harsh/hopeful reality that he must pass on, for everyone’s good. We know from our weird studies that no good can come from defying death, whether you’re trying for personal immortality or attempting to bring back your beloved dead – or simply the useful dead, say a zombie army or choice informants (as in Joseph Curwen’s case.) Nwokolo’s Igbo heritage has taught her that death isn’t the end of life but passage into a spirit world or “ancestry,” from which the deceased retain a connection with the material world and their descendants. Reincarnation is possible, even into the deceased’s immediate or extended family, if the proper funeral traditions are followed. One does not interfere with the dead person’s “homegoing.” One must “step away… let go.” One must relinquish control. That’s Nwokolo’s problem. The defining event of her childhood was her mother’s death in an accident so freakish that the “microburst” flipping her car—hers, out of all the cars caught in that thunderstorm—could seem like supernatural intervention, the descending fist of some god or demon. With one thunderclap, Nwokolo’s comfortable worldview was splintered, letting in uncertainty, insecurity. Nwokolo’s a born fighter, however. To fight uncertainty, you have to be prepared, guarded. Let that make you “all wrong” to most Nigerians: unmarried at forty, childless, with your own business, your own home. No ordinary home, either, but a technological stronghold, equipped with security cams, spotlights, alarms, and even a robot with a touchscreen “head” to receive all your commands. Add strategically placed baseball bats, and intruders be damned. Darkness be damned, too, via remotely controlled lights. All that tech only gives an illusion of control. After her father’s unexpected death, Nwokolo’s haunted by Paul Simon’s lyrics – lyrics which shouldn’t apply to her, a keeper of clean, well-lighted places: “Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.” The darkness she talks to, first in Isiekenesi, then at her house, is Ajofia. He’s one of the Mmuo, spirits who inhabit all nature. His name means “evil forest,” so it’s not surprising he’s considered the most terrifying Mmuo; at the same time, he’s an agent of justice who protects the living community, a bringer of good fortune, and an intermediary between the ancestors and the living. Women aren’t permitted to see him. So what does Nwokolo do? She not only looks at Ajofia, she screams defiance: This is her father, this is his land! For all Ajofia wears eagle feathers and an eagle’s head medallion, she claims her father’s eagle-faced ring. Proving Ajofia is no man in Mmuo masquerade, his voice sounds all around her, and she understands his Igbo perfectly. In her suburban cul-de-sac, Ajofia stands tree-high and extrudes tendrils from his coverings. Nwokolo lets her parents return to him; she saves defiance for the “Fuck you!” with which she throws the ring at his bulk. Does Ajofia shoot a tendril into Nwokolo’s arm as punishment for her disrespect? Does he mean to mark her as one of his chastened? One of his worthies? Nwokolo has gained a sadder but wiser view of the worlds. She resists her impulse to hang on to one of Ajofia’s feathers, but she remains Nwokolo. She locks her front door, then activates all her alarms and security lights. That way she’ll be prepared if her neighbors have called the police on her disturbing-the-peace self. Ruthanna’s Commentary I fell in love with Nnedi Okorafor’s work when Lagoon’s tale of alien invasion kicked off from the perspective of a shark. “Dark Home” is a slightly more straightforward story of grief and mystery and assimilation, but brings that same sense that modernity is no protection from the numinous, and that on the streets of Nigeria you might meet just about anyone—or anything. I’ve mentioned previously my college gamemaster’s multi-year conviction that cell phones were inimical to scariness. Kolo’s obsession with smart-home security gadgets tests this idea to the breaking point. If said gamemaster hadn’t already changed his mind, I would give him this story to point out the error of his ways. The technology both embodies Kolo’s anxiety and gives it room to play. You can always worry about what’s happening at your house – but how much worse to have the supposedly reassuring check-in provide conflicting information, to be able to see (but not protect) a dog terrified of an invisible menace, to have batteries go dead at just the wrong time and robots play ominous Simon and Garfunkel ditties? Humans are natural cyborgs, our tools extensions of our bodies. When they misbehave, it can feel like a violation of the laws of physics, or having one of your limbs possessed by an alien force. For Kolo, tools are not only self but home. They’re a nest of safety amid the demands of family and restaurant, in a neighborhood where she can’t expect safety or welcome from her neighbors. It seems meaningful that she turns on lights and music from outside, before even disabling the alarm—not for her the creepy in-between minute of fumbling with your keys in the dark, or wandering around physically resetting thermostats after a trip. Predictability and control are what she’s after, and not having to see the familiar looking strange. Death is the most disorienting thing. The death of a parent breaks time, breaks predictability and control and safety. Kolo thinks she stood up to Ajofia because of a moment of selfishness, and wanting a token of her father. Those all make sense, but I wonder if she wasn’t also pushing into the chaos and disorientation of his death, putting herself where she could see something strange and unfamiliar enough to overwhelm even the strangeness of her father’s death. The rest of her mourning family respects both the mystery of death and the mystery of Ajofia. Sometimes in the wake of death, following the rules can be a comfort. But following the rules seems to be what Kolo does most of the time; it’s no surprise that she chooses this moment to break them—even if she doesn’t understand the full import of what she’s doing. How could she? And she never does get that understanding, either. She learns that her father balanced his life as an American restauranteur with membership in an old Nigerian tradition, but this isn’t an opportunity to add more than a tidbit to the close understanding she already had. It tells her more about how much she doesn’t know, and the mystery abides. She’s not going to find out the meaning of the ring or the details of any Ajofian rituals or the role her father played in them. She’s just going to know that there’s something she doesn’t understand. “Who knows what you brought home with you,” her boyfriend says, quoting a grandmother he’s never talked about before. “That needs to settle in, too.” The ring doesn’t get to settle in—but the unsettling mystery of it, that’s going to stick around. The trappings of Kolo’s smarthouse are always going to carry the reminder of their possession. And grief… that’s come home to stay as well. Next week, join us for Chapters 11-15 of Pet Sematary, in which we suspect that “everyone gets therapy and calms down” is not the next step.[end-mark] The post Weird and Unusual Security System Issues: Nnedi Okorafor’s “Dark Home” appeared first on Reactor.

Gaza Pier Is Biden Presidency in a Nutshell

The world record for the largest number of electrodes placed onto a human brain was just broken by brain-computer interface developers Precision Neuroscience. They successfully placed four arrays, each containing 1,024 tiny electrodes, onto the surface of a living patient’s brain, doubling the previous total record of 2,048.Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) combine implanted electrodes that record brain activity in specific regions with a computerized device that can generate some kind of output, with the aim of replacing or enhancing particular functions. There are BCIs that help people communicate, operate robotic limbs, and – perhaps made most famous recently by Elon Musk’s Neuralink – control a computer with their mind. Co-founded in 2021 by Ben Rapoport, who also co-founded Neuralink but departed the following year, Precision has been developing its investigational system, the Layer 7 Cortical Interface, as a way to maximize electrode density. The aim is for more electrodes – generating more precise data – to be added to the brain’s surface without damaging it. “It is easy to see the impact that high resolution cortical mapping could have in the operating room,” explained Dr Joshua Bederson, who led the record-breaking surgery, in a statement. “It could be used to guide more precise and efficient procedures, which could potentially lead to better outcomes for patients.”  Bederson’s team carried out the procedure at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York in April 2024, as part of a larger clinical study of the Layer 7 Cortical Interface. Each electrode array measures only 1.6 square centimeters (0.2 square inches), meaning that once all four were in place, the surgeons had managed to pack a whopping 4,096 electrodes into an area of just over 8 square centimeters (1.2 square inches), as first reported by CNBC.The procedure was a planned operation to remove a benign tumor that also happened to provide a great opportunity to test the device for the 14th time in a living person. Bederson described to CNBC, who attended the surgery, that placing four electrode arrays was “a little bit awkward”, but the efforts paid off when they began successfully collecting data.Key to Precision’s ethos is the minimally invasive nature of their device. The Layer 7 Cortical Interface is designed to reversibly attach to any part of the brain’s surface during a simple and speedy surgical procedure. If the arrays need to be removed at a later date, it should not cause any tissue damage.Neuralink’s N1 device, which was recently implanted into its first human recipient, takes a slightly different approach by relying on 64 super-fine wires containing a total of 1,024 electrodes that are threaded a few millimeters deep into the brain tissue. This process caused some issues shortly afterward when a number of the threads retracted, putting many of the electrodes out of action. This is not a two-horse race between Precision and Neuralink, however. There are a number of other private companies, academic researchers, and government bodies working in this area. At the same time, politicians and lawmakers are beginning to grapple with the legal and ethical implications of BCIs becoming more commonplace. For now, though, this kind of technology is still considered experimental. Tests of the Layer 7 Cortical Interface are continuing, and Precision hopes to bring a commercial product to market sometime in 2025. Commenting on the record-breaking achievement, Rapoport said, “This record is a significant step towards a new era. The ability to capture cortical information of this magnitude and scale could allow us to understand the brain in a much deeper way.”

If there's one thing we can say for Moon landing conspiracy theorists, it's that they've really got some stamina. Even 55 years after the first Moon landing, and with all the evidence we have that they happened, people are still clinging to the belief that they were faked.Though conspiracy theorists tend to focus on the first landing, some appear to believe they have proof that subsequent landings were faked. One reason given is that they cannot figure out how the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) – aka the "Moon buggy" – managed to fit inside the Apollo lander. This conspiracy has resurfaced recently, for fairly unfathomable reasons.         IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.So how do we know NASA was able to get the LRV to the Moon? For a start, there is plenty of awesome footage available of the buggies racing around on the lunar surface.       Then of course, there's the fact that it would be weird for NASA to launch the most successful conspiracy in Earth's history, manage to conceal the truth despite the 400,000 people who worked on the program, and then forget to check whether the car could fit in the lander.The real answer is that NASA, given all the weight and space restrictions involved in leaving the Earth, is quite good at packing.                "The frame was made of aluminum alloy 2219 tubing welded assemblies and consisted of a 3 part chassis which was hinged in the center so it could be folded up and hung in the Lunar Module quad 1 bay," NASA explains. "It had two side-by-side foldable seats made of tubular aluminum with nylon webbing and aluminum floor panels."So that clears that up. The Moon landings happened, and if you think you've found an image that disproved it, Google is your friend. And whatever you do, don't go near Buzz Aldrin with your ideas.

The planet confusingly known as 40 Eridani Ab has been confirmed not to exist. After previous studies had raised questions about whether activity on the star 40 Eridani A had been misinterpreted as the influence of a planet, a new paper provides proof. Under ordinary circumstances, this might be of interest only to specialists, but this faint star system has a towering role in fiction as the home system of the Vulcans, including Dr Spock. On the plus side, the methods used take us closer to finding real planets, including those in habitable zones.The star 40 Eridani A is visible to the naked eye away from city lights, but only barely. The first sign it was special came with the discovery of two companions, Eridani B and C, which orbit each other every 230 years, while both being in an 8,000-year orbit around Eridani A. In 1910, Eridani B was the first star to be identified as a white dwarf. Although not the closest star of this type, it remains the easiest to see.These intriguing aspects, and the fact the system is only 16 light years away, led to the system being designated as the location of planet Vulcan in the Star Trek Universe. Although life would almost certainly be impossible for a planet orbiting Eridani B or C, Eridani A looks like a good candidate for a host star. It’s quite old and fainter than the Sun, but not so faint as to make its habitable zone dangerously exposed to stellar flares as occurs for red dwarfs. The companion stars are distant enough not to pose much danger, both would be fainter than our Moon, for example.All this background meant that reports in 2018 of a suspected planet orbiting 40 Eridani A caused unusual excitement. It was promptly named Vulcan. However, even the initial study admitted to doubts – and these were reinforced last year. Now, the final nail has been put in Vulcan’s coffin, with a paper literally titled “The Death of Vulcan.”Initial reports of Vulcan didn’t use the method by which we have found the majority of planets so far – dips in their light as the planet obscures part of the star. Instead, astronomers were using the radial velocity method, by which most of the early planetary discoveries were made, and still favored for nearby systems. In these cases, the gravity of the planet pulls the star towards Earth and then away from us, creating blue and red shift.When a planet’s gravity is small, the change in radial velocity can be tiny, and easily mimicked by the behavior of the star itself.Dartmouth College graduate student Abigail Burrows and colleagues tested the movement of specific emission lines in 40 Eridani A’s spectrum, comparing these with the overall average. If the variation astronomers had detected was coming from a planet these should all be changing in sync. The team found they weren’t, with some lines moving on different timescales from others.40 Eridani A has a 39-45-day rotation period – about 60 percent longer than our Sun’s. The similarity of this period to the length of the proposed planet’s 42.4-day orbit was one of the things that raised doubts initially, and Burrow’s technique suggests the variations are almost certainly rotation-related. Most likely a combination of starspots and convection within the star is causing the apparent signal.Don’t be too sad for planet Vulcan, however. Like the proposed planet in our own system, it orbited far too close to its star to be habitable by microbes, let alone intelligent beings, logical or otherwise. It’s still possible there is a planet orbiting 40 Eridani A further out, including within the system’s habitable zone. The more distant a planet’s orbit, the harder it is to detect through the radial velocity method, particularly if it has a gravity more like Earth’s than Jupiter’s. A five to 10-fold increase in precision is needed if we want to use this method to find planets like the Earth in nearby stars’ habitable zones.The greater capacity to distinguish between planetary effects and internal stellar behavior Burrows demonstrated means that if there is a planet in 40 Eridani A’s habitable zone we’re now closer to being able to detect it.If that happens, however, we might need a new name – surely two failed Vulcans are enough.(Note: Stars in multiple systems are designated with capital letters, starting with A for the brightest. Planets have small letters, and start with b. If a planet only orbits one star, rather than having a Tatooine-like orbit around both, it uses the capital of the star it orbits, followed by its order of discovery – thus 40 Eridani Ab. You can see why nicknames like Vulcan are popular).The study is open access in The Astronomical Journal.

Among the countless cicadas emerging across the eastern US this spring as part of a rare double-brood emergence, a kid from Illinois stumbled across one extraordinary individual: a blue-eyed mutant.Experts consider the special cicada to be “one in a million” as these cicadas' eyes are usually red, and it’s already been snapped up by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago where it will be on display until the end of June.The blue-eyed cicada, a female belonging to the species Magicicada cassini, was first spotted by Jack Bailey in his family’s yard in Wheaton, Illinois, during this year’s double-brood cicadapocalypse event. “My 4-year-old son, Jack, has been in heaven since they started emerging and has taken to collecting a lot of them. My daughter, Caroline, looked into his collection bucket and saw the blue-eyed one. She brought it inside and showed it to me,” Greta Bailey, the children’s mother, said in a statement.“I thought it was cool and unique and had not heard that blue-eyed cicadas even existed. I took a few pictures and Caroline let it go. Well, after telling my family about it, we came to find out how rare they are and were kicking ourselves for not keeping it,” she added.Upon realizing its rarity, the family searched the yard with flashlights and, remarkably, managed to find it again.Greta, Jack, and Field Museum collections assistant Jim Louderman with the rare cicada.Image credit: Daniel Le/Field Museum“One of our neighbors told us that the Field Museum is interested in the blue-eyed cicadas so I emailed the research and collections department last night in hopes that they would want it,” said Bailey.The blue-eyed cicada has since died as these insects have very short lifespans once they emerge (RIP).Almost all cicadas of this species have vibrant orange-red eyes, but an extremely small number have blue eyes, likely due to a rare genetic mutation. Little is known about the underlying cause of the blue eyes, but scientists at the Field Museum hope to sequence the DNA of the recently found bug to discover the genes responsible for its blue eyes.Another view of the blue-eyed Magicicada cassini,Image credit: Daniel Le/Field MuseumIt could be argued that 2024 is offering the best chance to find a blue-eyed cicada because this year is witnessing a rare double-brood event.Cicadas spend most of their life underground, with groups known as broods only emerging once every 13 or 17 years. This year will be particularly dramatic as two broods of cicadas are about to synchronize their awakening for the first time in 221 years: Brood XIX, which has a 13-year life cycle, and Brood XIII, which has a 17-year life cycle.The two broods are set to emerge across parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Virginia. The emergence began earlier in May, but it might persist in some areas until late June – so keep your eyes peeled.“I have been in Chicago for five periodical Cicada emergences of our BroodXIII, and this is the first blue-eyed cicada I have seen,” explained Jim Louderman, a collections assistant at the Field Museum. “I have also seen two emergences of Brood X in Indiana and two emergences of Brood XIX in Central Illinois. These rare insect emergences are always infertile and can not have offspring, which is why they remain so rare."If you are determined to find a blue-eyed bug, David Attenborough himself has a top tip on how to seduce a cicada that might be worth trying...

You go walking in a glorious field of flowers, you take in a deep breath... and immediately the idyllic peace and tranquility is ruined by a sneeze attack. You, my friend, are allergic to plant sperm – also known as pollen. Plant scientists across the globe are continuously researching all aspects of our pretty floral friends and we had some questions. Who else should we ask but Dr James Walker?Dr Walker is a postdoctoral fellow and undergraduate mentor from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, but he previously hailed from the United Kingdom where he did his PhD at the John Innes Centre, Norwich.Dr James "Jimmy" Walker.Image courtesy of Dr James WalkerYou used to work with plant sperm… can you explain like I am 5 what sperm cells in flowering plants are?JW: It’s the classic story of the birds and the bees. Imagine flowers and bees playing a game where bees help flowers to share tiny packets called pollen. These pollen packets contain daddy’s tiny instructions inside sperm cells that mix with a mummy’s instructions in another flower. This mix makes seeds, which are baby plants waiting to grow. How do you get plants in the mood to collect sperm samples? JW: Some plants make swimming sperm like humans do (except they have two tails!), which corkscrew through water when it rains to fertilise the female eggs. The plants sense light quality during the day to know when to make sperm, so I use a far-red light bulb to mimic these conditions and create the right mood lighting. Then, I simply apply drops of water to the male sex organs to cause sperm release and then I collect the water in a tube, which takes up a single Wednesday afternoon.In simple terms, what is methylation and why is it important in plants and eukaryotes? JW: DNA methylation is a chemical tag that is sometimes added to the Cs in DNA. It is often called the fifth letter: methyl-cytosine (mC). These tags can block certain parts of DNA and this stops RNA and proteins being produced. It’s vital because it helps determine which parts of the plant DNA are active or inactive during different growth stages, affecting how the plant develops and functions.What is single-cell genomics and how does it contribute to plant science research? JW: When we crush up the leaf cells of a plant, we can look at the DNA methylation and see how it relates to RNA and protein. The problem is, it’s a mix of all the cells we crushed up – like blending fruit into a smoothie and seeing the pink of the strawberries and yet tasting banana! Single-cell genomics is a great new technique that lets us go directly to each cell and look at their methylation and RNA so that we know the direct effect of DNA methylation in each cell type, such as photosynthetic cells and leaf vein cells, so we can now see red and taste strawberry and see yellow and taste banana. It’s shown us that the DNA methylation patterns are much more dynamic than we used to think!What are you currently researching? JW: I’m exploring new, unique patterns of DNA methylation across various stages of plant development. This research is uncovering surprising differences in how DNA methylation occurs, not only in well-studied plants but also in less familiar species, offering fresh insights into plant genetics.Understanding how plant DNA is turned on and off brings us closer to controlling these genetic mechanisms ourselves. Techniques like CRISPR-Cas9 now allow us to direct DNA methylation to specific genes, enabling us to influence plant development for improved crop yields and adaptation to changing climates.I aim [in the future] to characterise DNA methylation across a broader range of plants, including ferns and algae, to understand their evolutionary significance. From this I’m hoping to establish a set of rules that explain the role of methylation in plant biology and how methylation patterns are made.How did you get into this career? JW: In school I loved puzzles – especially secret messages sent between me and my friends that I solved using a cypher. I was fascinated by Biology when I learned about the As, Gs, Cs, and Ts of DNA and how combinations of these letters also "code" for proteins that make all living things work. The many puzzles that this branched into have kept me busy ever since! I coupled this interest to plants after a brilliant teacher showed us how plants have adaptations to thrive in their environment, like curling their leaves to trap moisture in dry conditions. This teacher ran a gardening club after school and I was shocked how just some water, dirt, and tiny seeds could produce entire cucumbers, carrots, and cabbages, which we could then eat!What has been your biggest achievement in your scientific career (so far)?JW: I discovered a plant that uses a rare form of DNA methylation (4mC instead of the typical 5mC). It has previously only been seen in bacteria, but I found that the plant has adopted the bacterial gene, which then goes into overdrive in the sperm to methylate DNA more than has ever been seen before. We think this methylation helps to package the genetic material for sperm function, an exciting development that we’re preparing for publication!Have you got any crazy lab stories? JW: During my undergraduate degree at university in my first lab, a colleague’s glass bottle containing alcohol that was being used for sterilisation smashed and caught fire from a nearby Bunsen burner! We succeeded in putting out the fire but it had melted some plastic on the bench and set off the fire alarm, so the whole building was temporarily evacuated. It was a cold English November evening and all the scientists huddled together outside kept asking what had happened. The lab switched to plastic bottles after that and there haven’t been any problems since!What is your favorite plant? JW: My favourite plant is Ipheion uniflorum, the first plant I ever worked on when I was a student at Kew Gardens in London. Close-up of the Ipheion uniflorum flower.Image credit: James Goldfinch/Shutterstock.comIt’s admired for its beautiful flowers that come in different colours, but it strangely smells like onion! I spent a year sequencing DNA from the different varieties to look at plant evolution, as its DNA often breaks apart and rearranges itself into new combinations. I still smile every time I see the flowers in someone’s garden.