From correspondence following my earlier blog entry on the lives of the Caesars, I learned that the use of the Latinised name goes back even further than the first Lutheran vicar in the lineage, Johannes Keyser / Caesar (ca. 1480-1543). According to a newspaper piece from 1925 referring to documents in the town archives of Nördlingen, Johannes's grandfather Jacob Keyser used the name Caesar as his scholarly name (Gelehrtenname) when he published a book about herbs. The paper did not approve of the fad of taking Latinised names. After I posted the original "lives of the Caesars" entry, the next street library I visited at Düsseldorf had the matching book ready for me. The background is formed by two copies of my favourite Latin dictionary, Stowasser, in the Hundertwasser edition (it came in four colours but I have only got two of them so far). Own photo. Based on this information, we have another little CV to write: * * * **Jacob Caesar** (14th/15th century) If Jacob really was the grandfather of Johannes (estimated birth year 1480) we have to stack up two rather late fatherhoods, say each at age 45 to arrive at an estimated birth year of 1390, which would fit the first thing we actually know about him: Jacob Keyser came to Nördlingen from Ulm and swore the oath (Bürgereid) to become a citizen of the free city in 1409. The 1925 article claims that the relevant document was still in the city's archives at that point. I understand the archive survived WW2 unscathed so I assume it's still there. At the time, there were an average of 23-24 new citizens coming in per year, with nearly half of them arriving from other cities, like Jacob. Becoming a citizen invoked a fee, and moving away again was also taxed. Later on he received money from the city council for the writing of a book about herbs. We don't know when. And I haven't been able to find the book (yet). Nördlingen had been a Free Imperial City since 1215. Note that in 1409, many of the major historic buildings were yet to be built. With around 6,000-8,000 residents in the 15th century (extrapolated from the number of tax payers, which was 1294 in 1404), the town was smaller than regional cities Augsburg, Nürnberg and Ulm, but it was located at an important crossroads and became a significant location for trade especially for the locally produced fustian fabrics. Construction of the gothic St. Georgskirche began in 1427. Jacob can't have lived to see it completed in 1505. Nördlingen saw a rise in population until 1437, when harvest failure led to a regional famine. At the end of the 1440s, regional wars between cities led to further population losses. It took until 1480 to recover the population strength it had in 1430. In 1494, there was an epidemic (possibly the plague), which again led to a fall back in population. For our grandfather connection to work, Jacob must have had a family in the 1430s and at least one son must have survived the famine. Unfortunately, there were no church records for Nördlingen at that time, as they only started in 1579 (still quite early compared to most places). The only thing one could probably find in the city archives is his tax record and those of his sons and grandsons. Tax records are nearly complete from 1404 onwards. Sources: Ingrid Bátori: Herren, Meister, Habenichtse. Die Bürgerschaft der Reichsstadt Nördlingen um 1500. In: Rieser Kulturtage Bd. VI/1, Nördlingen 1986. S. 252–269 Ingrid Bátori Daily life and culture of an urban Elite: The imperial city of Nördlingen in the 15th and 16th century History of European Ideas 1989, 11, 621-627 * * * My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

New research shows that the mere smell of predators is enough to change deer behavior and limit browsing damage to tree saplings. The findings offer a potential tool for forest recovery and highlight the important role large predators play. The research is published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology.

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Some thoughts on > Children of radium: A buried inheritance > Joe Dunthorne > Hamish Hamilton 2025 Waterstones Carl Auer von Welsbach (1858-1929) was an Austrian chemist who discovered several elements and patented a new kind of gas light using a fabric mantle known as the Welsbach mantle (Auerstrumpf in German). The Auergesellschaft (originally called Deutsche Gasglühlicht AG, DGA or, as if to sound out the letters: Degea) was set up in 1892 to market this innovation in Germany. Osram was a later spinout from it. The mantle in the original Auer gaslight typically contained thorium dioxide, and there are many other aspects of the company history that are a bit radioactive. During the Weimar Republic, it became a leading manufacturer of gas masks, which defined the company's identity to the extent that its in-house magazine was called _Die Gasmaske_. As research into the effectiveness of gas masks required the handling of all of the dangerous substances that the mask was meant to filter out of the air, the company had a good excuse to handle dangerous gases including those that had been used as chemical weapons in World War I and whose use was banned in Germany under the Versailles Treaty. Under Nazi rule, the company was “aryanised” and affiliated with Degussa. Together with Goldschmidt AG, it set up a new company called Orgacid at Ammendorf near Halle in 1934, which produced chemical weapons including mustard gas “just in case”. Although Hitler famously rejected the use of chemical weapons at the front, there were some in the military who wanted to have the option if needed. And the research also fed into the mass murder conducted in the gas chambers of the concentration camps. Meanwhile, at a separate site in Oranienburg, just north of Berlin, the company hoarded uranium for nuclear fission research. We now know that it was insufficient for atomic bombs, but during World War II, its presence earned the town a massive bombardment leaving it one of the most contaminated places to this day. (There's a brand new paper in PNAS Nexus showing the German atomic bomb project couldn't succeed, but I recall others reaching the same conclusion a few years ago when I wrote a feature about nuclear forensics.) As if to put a bright smile on all these dealings with death, the Auergesellschaft also developed a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad, which was sold from 1940 until the end of the war. The news from Hiroshima and Nagasaki presumably along with the emerging fate of the "radium girls" dying horrific deaths from chronic radiation exposure made it sufficiently clear that this product wasn’t such a bright idea. The toothpaste is also where Joe Dunthorne starts his exploration into his Jewish-German family’s involvement in this history. He knew that his grandmother grew up brushing her teeth with Doramad, and that her father had been in charge of developing it. Apparently, the family took stacks of the radioactive material with them as they emigrated to Turkey in time to avoid persecution for being Jewish. At the start, the author seems to have expected to find a romantic story of a lucky escape from the Holocaust, maybe like “When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit.” It turned out to be a very different story. Siegfried Merzbacher (1883 - 1971), the author’s great-grandfather, left a memoir of several thousand pages which nobody had read. Hidden behind endless pages of irrelevant memories and information copied from encyclopaedias, Dunthorne discovered the admission that Merzbacher had taken part in chemical weapons research at Auergesellschaft and was also closely connected to the colleague Karl Quasebart who set up the production facility near Halle. The presumed escape to Turkey, it turned out, was a relocation paid by Auergesellschaft, which also continued to pay part of his salary while he continued to work on chemical weapons in Ankara, and regularly corresponded with Quasebart. The notorious massacre conducted by Turkish authorities against the Kurdish village of Dersim in 1937-38 may well have been the result of this German-Turkish co-operation on chemical weapons, as the author finds out on visiting the location. After the beginning of World War II, the contact was lost (Turkey remained neutral for most of the duration) and the Merzbachers were stripped of their German citizenship for being Jewish. Nevertheless, Siegfried Merzbacher helped out his old friend Quasebart after the war by testifying that he had always supported Jewish colleagues. It was just a bit unfortunate that he also helped to develop Zyklon B, the poison gas used in the Holocaust. Quasebart died before his denazification procedure was completed. Although Siegfried Merzbacher and both his sisters got out of Germany in time, there are also Holocaust impacts on the family which the author reveals in the final part of the book. Siegfried’s sister, Elisabeth Kitzinger, ran a Jewish orphanage in Munich, which was so successful it eventually cared for children of all ages and even young adults, eventually accommodated in its own building with 20 rooms from 1926. After it was closed by Nazi authorities, Elisabeth’s close friends and long-term coworkers Alice Bendix and Hedwig Jacobi were deported with the last 12 children in their care and presumably murdered at Auschwitz. The author stumbles through this minefield of moral complexity like an inquisitive but endearingly clueless family history researcher depending on luck more than on expertise, accompanied by snarky comments from his mother who, he writes, insisted on remaining anonymous. While the resulting book is a gripping read I feel the material deserves a more academic treatment. At the time of this writing, Siegfried Merzbacher does not even have a Wikipedia entry in German or in English. The genealogy is online, however, and his son, physicist Eugen Merzbacher (1921-2013) is in Wikipedia in nine languages. Heck, even Siegfried's father Eugen Merzbacher, his grandfather Abraham Merzbacher, and his nephew Ernst Kitzinger are in Wikipedia so I'm beginning to find it suspicious that Siegfried isn't. I am sure Siegfried's life straddling the moral divides of the Holocaust would make a fascinating PhD project for a more expert historian. PS I'm intrigued to see that a German translation has appeared the same year as the English original: Kinder des Radiums: Auf den Spuren meiner jüdischen Familie Piper Verlag 2025 * * * My brand new list of book reviews is here.

I have difficulties remembering Japanese words (because they're not related to any language I know) so I have to write about tsundoku, to finally inscribe it into my memory as well as in the blog. Tsundoku is of course the art of collecting more books than you can conceivably read, or growing an ever expanding to-be-read pile. As this excellent piece in The Conversation explains very succinctly, it's all about the pleasure of anticipation, which is actually measurable with the methods of modern neuroscience. Thus, looking forward to potentially reading an interesting book in the future is almost as satisfying as the reading experience itself. According to the piece, the words involved in the neologism tsundoku are about stacking things up (tsunde), leaving something for later (oku) and reading (doku). To me personally it is also important that I can arrange physical manifestations of knowledge in an order of my choice, such that I can find it whenever I need it. Especially now that AI is eating the internet and it is getting harder every day to find anything. meaningful online. Stockpiling books is also a way of prepping for the coming information apocalypse. While I've always had tsundoku tendencies (also extending to other activities beyond reading), the availability of free books from street libraries and house clearances in the neighbourhood have recently been a major boost, enabling me to start collections of early rororo paperbacks and Bloomsbury related biographies, respectively at zero cost. Here's one of my tsundoku shelves ... fittingly including the book Spillover, because it is also kind of a spillover shelf. For the books I have actually read, see my new page on bookreviews.

Lithuania and Canada were also pressured to withdraw, and days before #Disinfo2026, logos were wiped off website

Though chaotic, the city’s transition has become a global role model

A landmark survey of the world’s largest free-roaming giant tortoise population has revealed the once endangered species is thriving and stable in the Seychelles. Giant tortoises found on the Aldabra Atoll - one of two population centres in the world - are now numbered at around 180,000 individuals following five years of surveying and the use of sophisticated statistical techniques.

Tardigrades, also called water bears, are famous for their ability to survive nearly anything. They protect themselves in extreme environments using proteins that researchers have developed into an efficient and effective strategy to preserve human red blood cells. Publishing in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the researchers report that the technique, which is simpler than the current freezing method involving glycerol, restored red blood cell counts in anemic mice.

A new study, led by Paul Schulze-Lefert from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne in collaboration with Ricardo F.H. Giehl at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben, revealed how Arabidopsis plants adapt their chemical communication with the bacterial root microbiota to maximise the acquisition of bio-unavailable iron from acidic or calcareous soils. The study is now published in Cell.

Majestic African antelopes known as gemsbok have been roaming the U.S. southwest since their introduction in the 1960s and 1970s. Brought to New Mexico as game species for hunting, gemsbok quickly settled in, expanding more than 100 kilometers from their introduction point. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers say that’s due to their exceptional adaptations to arid conditions, which they predict will dramatically expand under climate change.

Scientists have succeeded in reconstructing the family tree of cells in a developing mouse embryo by using a new recording technology inserted into the genetic material of the fertilized egg before it started dividing. This DNA Typewriter is like a ship's logbook that keeps a history of cellular events in the order that they happen. This technology employs the cells' DNA as a recording medium. Scientsts were then able to trace cells’ relationships, starting when the fertilized egg first split in two and ending after the body with organs took shape.

Octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, collectively known as coleoid cephalopods, have evolved exceptionally large and elaborately structured nervous systems capable of complex behaviours such as problem-solving and rapid camouflage. A new study by scientists at The University of Vienna suggests that the origins of this complexity may lie not just in the genes themselves, but in how the genome is organised in 3D. The researchers found that ancient, extensive reorganisation of the genome altered how DNA is arranged inside the cell. These shifts brought previously distant regions of DNA into contact, changing the way genes are regulated. Understanding this process could change how we think about how new traits emerge during evolution. The findings are currently published in the renowned journal Nature Communications.

Colorado State University researchers have developed an air quality monitoring device that can be paired with systems that track wildlife location and physiological data to learn how smoke impacts wildlife health and behavior.