In memoriam et causa honoris: Johannes Gundlach

The german naturalist Johannes Christoph Gundlach was born on this date in 1810. Originally from the town of Kessel (Hesse) in Germany, he lived most of his adult life in the Caribbean island of Cuba, where he became one of its most productive naturalists.

His contributions are widely encompassing from the invertebrate mollusks to the sophisticated bats, and still relevant today. Gundlach's natural curiosity and keen taxidermy technique are well appreciated and respected by Caribbean biologists and paleontologists. The specimens he collected and prepared are treasured by many museums throughout the World. Many Caribbean species carry his name in his honor.
This post is a small tribute to his life and work and a token for the inspiration he has been in my natural interests.

Johannes Gundlach was the youngest of the seven sons of Johann Gundlach and Marie Cristine Rethberg. Since a young age, the family moved to Marburg, where his father was a professor of physics and mathematics at the Phillips University.

Since young had been interested in the natural sciences. He learned the art of taxidermy or embalming animals from his brother Henry, who was a medical student. But, although Johannes is unsuccessful in his earliest studies, he excels later as a student of zoological sciences of the University of Marburg, where he received a doctorate degree in 1837.


Dr. Gundlach arrived in Cuba in 1839. He came to Cuba, along with other two important German naturalists, Edward Otto and Louis Pfeiffer. He was passing through on his way to Suriname, by invitation of a colleague. However, his colleague died, and Gundlach decided to stay in Cuba: an island he soon fell in love with.

In Cuba, he met Carlos Booth from Matanzas, who invited him to stay at his coffee state near Cardenas. Those years were very prosperous for Gundlach, and soon the Cuban countryside revealed natural jewels to him. Immediately he discovers news species of birds, bats, mollusks, and butterflies. Among these is the Cuban bumblebee hummingbird Mellisuga helenae, named in honor of Mrs. Helena Booth, and first published by the Galician Juan Lembeye in his work "Aves de la Isla de Cuba" in 1850. This is likely the most famous of his discoveries. Others include the bats Pteronotus quadridens, Phyllonycteris poeyi, Nycticeous cubanus, among many other birds, mollusks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. The list is indeed very long.

Whilst in residence in Cuba, Gundlach collaborated with Cuban, American, British, and German colleagues, to whom he sent specimens collected and prepared by himself. These included the already mentioned Felipe Poey, Carlos de la Torre, William Sharp, Wilhelm Peters, Dr. Lawrence, and others of revered relevance in the world of species classification and naming (taxonomy and systematics of today).

Cuban red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes superciliaris collected by J. Gundlach near Matanzas, Cuba.

His collection grew quickly, and between 1842 and 1852 he established a small museum. Many of the specimens showcased there are preserved today in Cuban, European, and American museums.

The realization of having had the opportunity to hold specimens collected by Gundlach, still with his handwritten tag, had been a lifelong dream until recently. Visit my previous post about museum collections to find out more about this experience.

During his 50 year stay in Cuba, Gundlach published numerous articles, and at least 5 monographs dedicated to the mammals, birds, and crustaceans of Cuba. He traveled throughout the island, and also visited Puerto Rico, where he is today revered too as an important zoologist for his additional contributions there.

Tag of a Cuban red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes superciliaris collected
by J. Gundlach.

Dr. Gundlach died on march 15 of 1896, in the city of Havana. He is buried in the Colon Cemetery. Today he is remembered for inspiring many generations of naturalists and zoologists.




The details for this post come from several sources. Most come from Gilberto Silva-Taboada (1983) Los Murcielagos de Cuba, Editorial Cientifico-Tecnico, La Habana. The others are cited in the following:

Garcia, Florentino. 1987. Las Aves de Cuba: Subespecies endemicas, vol. 2. Electron, Gente Nueva, La Habana.

Garcia Gonzalez, Armando: Gundlach, Johann Cristoph in La Web de Biografias http://www.mcnbiografias.com/app-bio/do/show?key=gundlach-johann-cristoph

Vilaró, Juan (March 1897). "Sketch of John Gundlach". Appleton's Popular Science Monthly: 691–697.

For additional information in Spanish about Carlos de la Torre and Johannes Gundlach, visit my other blog SanCarlosdeMatanzas.blogspot.com

The Bats of Cuba

Bats inhabit nearly every landmass on the planet, with the exception of the arctic and Antarctica, reaching their maximum diversity in the tropics. Current tallies rank bat diversity at 202 genera and over a thousand species! (Simmons, 2005).

Bats are highly specialized mammals. Not only can they truly fly (meaning powered flight), but they use echolocation to navigate and detect prey while in flight. Echolocation is a way of navigation by echoes, which bats and other mammals like dolphins emit to sense their environment and find food. Some birds, like the oilbird Steatornis caripensis, uses echolocation, but at a level we can hear. In addition to their characteristic webbed wings, their eyesight is better in the dark than ours, demystifying their bad reputation of poor eyesight.

Leach's single leaf-nosed bat Monophyllus redmani (subspecies clinedaphus) a
pollen-nectar feeder Microchiropteran common to the Greater Antilles

Chiropterans are divided into two groups: the small echolocating bats or Microchiroptera, and the non-echolocating and much larger Megachiroptera. The giant bats portrayed in movies often represent the large fruit-eating Megachiropterans. They are not all vampire bats!    

Ecologically, bats play keystone roles in the consumption of insects, distribution of plant seeds, and pollination of plants. Other bats are carnivores, also helping maintain the ecological balance of the ecosystems they inhabit.

Bats are the most diverse mammals of the Cuban archipelago representing over 75% of Cuba's mammalian fauna! Of the 34 species of mammals recorded in Cuba, 26 are bats. Currently, these 26 species are classified into six main groups including the nose-leaf bats (phyllostomids), the funnel-eared bats (natalids), the fisher bulldog bat (noctilionid), the free-tailed mastiffs (molossids), the insectivorous ghost-faced bats (mormoopids) and the vespertilionids. The majority are well distributed within the main island of Cuba, the isle of Pines, and a few of the thousand keys that make up the archipelago (Silva, 1983; Mancina, 2011, 2012).

Waterhouse's leaf-nosed bat Macrotus waterhousei
and the Cuban fig-eating bat Phyllops falcactus digitally
drawn by biologist and bat specialist Dr. Adrian Tejedor from
field sketches of specimens captured in Pinar del Rio.

The Cuban archipelago is the largest of the Antillean islands. It is located in the Antillean subzone of the Neotropics where it enjoys a warm weather and abundant rainfall most of the year. The geological formation of the Caribbean islands provided an intricate and complex mosaic of calcium-rich rocks, such as limestone, so important to cave formation and varied soils. Altogether, these variables give rise to lush vegetation, which supported by the warm climate, incites Cuba's biodiversity, especially of bats.

The Cuban archipelago, in the Caribbean basin, as seen in Google Earth.

Geologically, Cuba has been available for bat colonization since the latest Eocene (MacPhee and Iturralde, 1994). This means that there have been somewhat permanent group of islands where Cuba is located today, at least for the last 35 million years, giving ample time for bats to reach it and evolve there.
In the Pliocene - 5 million years ago - the islands had their largest subaerial extent, and thus their largest landmass increase to date (Iturralde, 2010). This was followed by the multiple landmass fluctuations experienced during the Quaternary glaciations. During the last 800,000 years, the Cuban archipelago increased and decreased in size at least 20 times, with the glacial periods decreasing sea levels, and the interglacials increasing it. This is within a range of ~20 meters from the modern standard. In effect, this had substantial effects on the formation of karstic features, such as caves, that serve some bats as roosts, affected plant distribution, and likely also the distribution and evolution of bats in the island. But most importantly, it likely played a role on the total number of species the archipelago could sustain.

A lone Cuba fruit bat Artibeus jamaicensis parvipes in roost in Cueva Ambrosio,
Varadero, alongside Amerindian cave pictographs.

During the Quaternary, Cuba, and the Bahamas acted like a single archipelago. Today that archipelago is mostly drowned by higher sea levels. Increased sea levels likely flooded potential cave roosts affecting strict cave dwellers. There are bats that have adapted not only to live in caves but also preferring hotter environments within cave systems. Caves with hotter than normal chambers are called "hot caves" because the temperature in some of its rooms increases to above 40 degrees C with a relative humidity above 90 percent. These hot environment form in chambers with restricted access, in which large colonies of the bats roost. Their body heat, perspiration, urine and droppings, all within a very restricted and poorly ventilated cave room results in the abnormal increase in room temperature and humidity. Hot cave bats include the pollen-eater Phyllonycteris poeyi and Pteronotus quadridens.

The changes in world climate during the last 2 million years, or that Quaternary epoch that we've been referring to, brought changes in rainfall, temperatures, and potential land size, therefore potentially affecting different species. However, bats were not significantly culled by the Quaternary climatic fluctuations, as far as we can tell today from the fossil record, in comparison to other mammals groups, like monkeys and sloths, which disappeared completely. Cuba lost only three species during the last glacial maximum, ~18,000 years ago, as indicated by the fossil record of Cueva El Abron, in Pinar del Rio (see Suarez and Diaz-Franco, 2003; Balseiro, 2011). Others survived until a thousand years ago or less (Orihuela, 2012; Orihuela and Tejedor, 2012, Orihuela et al, in prep).

The greater bulldog bat Noctilio leporinus. This is Cuba's largest bat. It feeds mostly on fish,
but it has been observed eating insects near street lamps.

Cuban bats, like most bats, inhabit most ecosystems where they have evolved adaptations to many forms of feeding. There are bats that eat insects, seeds, fruits, nectar, pollen, and some that feed only on blood, such as the infamous vampire bats, or fish - as the Noctilio leporinus above. In the past, there were vampire bats in Cuba. Vampire bats are locally extinct in Cuba today, but their fossil remains suggest their presence on the main island up to several hundred years ago! (Suarez, 2005; Orihuela, 2011, 2012) (see my previous post on vampire bats here).

Thomas Horsfield on the right and John Edward Grey on the left.
Both men dedicated time to collecting and describing the first Cuban bats during the XIX century.

We owe the first published account on Cuban bats to Thomas Horsfield, who sent a letter to the prestigious Zoological Journal in 1828 while he resided in Cuba. Horsfield and the British naturalist William Sharp MacLeay sent specimens to the British museum. These specimens allowed John Edward Grey to properly describe the first species in 1840 in his article "Description of some Chiroptera discovered in Cuba", published in the Annals of the Natural History, volume IV (Silva, 1983).

The Antillean fruit-eating bat Brachyphylla cavernarum and the big free-tailed bat Nyctinomops macrotis
lithographs from Grey's first description of Cuban bats. These are also the first graphic depiction of any Cuban bat.
Lithographs made by the french J. Basire in 1839. B.cavernarum here is likely B. nana but nana was not properly
described until the early XX century.

Since then, and no doubt thanks to the efforts of many naturalists such as Johannes Gundlach in the XIX century and Gilberto Silva-Taboada of the XX, among others, the knowledge on the natural history of Cuban bats grew steadily. Their research quickly demonstrated the diversity of the Cuban bat fauna. There are more species in Cuba, with species representing most of the known New World groups, than in all the North American continent!

  Parnell's mustached bat Pteronotus parnelli from Nesofontes Cave near Matanza, Cuba.

The Cuban bat fauna is surrounded in interesting stories of accidental discoveries and rediscoveries. Such as it happened to the two bat specialists, the Cuban mastozoologist G. Silva-Taboada and Karl Koopman of the American Musem of Natural History (NY) while mistnetting bats in the Pan de Guajaibon, Pinar del Rio, in the 1950s. There they caught a living Cuban pallid bat Antrozous koopmani, the only one ever caught alive for decades. This is a species similar to the pallid bat Antrozous pallidus of the arid western U.S. The Cuban pallid was previously known from a handful of isolated skulls and two specimens preserved in spirits collected in the early decades of the XX century. The feat his yet to be repeated. Antrozous koopmani is today the rarest of Cuban bats, and is presumed nearly extinct (Mancina, 2012).

The list is followed by the greater funnel-eared bat Natalus primus, a critically endangered species known alive only from the single location of La Barca cave in Guanahacabibes, extreme western Cuba. There it was rediscovered by biologist Adrian Tejedor in 1991. Tejedor has written several interesting articles and a monograph on the rare and interesting funnel-eared bats (Natalids) of Cuba and the Caribbean (Tejedor, 2011 and citations therein). Cuba has other two funnel-eared bats. One of them, Nyctiellus lepidus, is one of the smallest bats in the world, known in Cuba as the "butterfly bat". The other, Chilonatalus macer, is similar to the Natalus major on the right of the image below but smaller.  Cuban natalids are all are endemic.

Left: Pteronotus quadridens from Hispaniola. Right: Hispaniolan funnel-eared bat
Natalus major from Cueva de Los Patos, also in Hispaniola.
These are small insectivores that live only in caves.

Other interesting records include Myotis sodalis, likely an errant from Florida found mummified by G. Silva in the city of Havana during the winter of 1966 (Silva, 1983). Eumops perotis, likely a vagrant or erroneous record dating back to 1839, a tree-dwelling Lasiurus insularis found by Ricardo Viera on the banks of the Yumuri River, Matanzas, in 2004, and our rediscovery of Desmodus rotundus in 2003; the fifth vampire bat fossil record from Cuba, among other informative, but isolated discoveries (Silva, 1983; Viera, 2004; Orihuela, 2010; Orihuela et al, in prep.). To this adds an array of new species and new deposits rich in bat fossils (Silva, 1974; Suarez, 2005; Suarez and Diaz-Franco, 2003; Mancina and Garcia, 2005; Jimenez et al., 2005; Balseriro, 2011; Orihuela, 2012).

Most of these latter species, however, are either accidental records, critically endangered, extirpated or extinct today. In addition to the extant 26 species, there are 8 disappeared species for a total of 34 known to have existed in Cuba at least during the last 20,000 years. The complex account of Cuban bat extinctions is reserved for an upcoming post; a topic most interesting to me, and the focus of most of my research.

Stay tuned!

The greater Cuban funnel-eared bat Natalus primus, severely endangered
and extant only in Cueva la Barca, Guanacahabibes, western Cuba.
Digital painting by, and copyright of Adrian Tejedor.

References

There are more citations, especially on area restriction, bat habitat, feeding, and climatic changes of the Quaternary that, if included, would have made this post a bit more tedious. I think, however, that the references below, in addition to the work of Angel Soto-Centeno, David Steadman, Danny Rojas and Liliana Davalos, will provide a good background for those interested in keeping up with this ever-growing body of literature.

Balseriro, F. 2011. Los murcielagos extinctos. pp: 171-177 en Borroto-Paez, R. y C. A. Mancina (eds) Mamiferos en Cuba. UPC print, Vaasa

Jiménez, O., M. M. Condis, and E. García. 2005. Vertebrados post-glaciales en un residuario fósil de Tyto alba scopoli (Aves: Tytonidae) en el occidente de Cuba. Revista Mexicana de Mastozoología, 9:84-111.

Koopman, K.F. 1958. A fossil vampire bat from Cuba. Breviora 90:1-4.

Suárez, W. 2005. Taxonomic Status of the Cuban Vampire Bat (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae: Desmodontinae: Desmodus). Caribbean Journal of Science 41 (4):761-767.

Gonzalez, Alonso, et al. 2012. Libro Rojo de los Vertebrados de Cuba. Editorial Academia, La Habana. See "Mamiferos" pp:269-291 by mastozoologist Carlos Mancina.

Mancina, C. A., and L. Garcia. 2005. New genus and specis of fossil bat (Chiroptera:Phyllostomidae) from Cuba. Caribbean Journal of Science, 41: 22-27.

Mancina, C. A. 2011. Introduccion a los murcielagos pp: 123-133 en Borroto-Paez, R. y C. A. Mancina (eds) Mamiferos en Cuba. UPC print, Vaasa

Orihuela, J. 2011. Skull variation of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae): Taxonomic implications for the Cuban fossil vampire bat Desmodus puntajudensis. Chiroptera Neotropical 17(1): 963-976.

Orihuela, J. 2012. Late Holocene fauna from a cave deposit in Western Cuba: post-Columbian occurrence of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Phyllostomidae: Desmodontinae). Caribbean Journal of Science, 46 (2): 297-313.

Orihuela, J., and A. Tejedor. 2012. Peter's ghost-faced bat Mormoops megalophylla (Chiroptera: Mormoopidae) from a pre-Columbian archaeological deposit in Cuba. Acta Chiropterologica 14(1): 63-72.

Orihuela, J., R. Viera, and L. Vinola. 2017. New bat records based on modern and fossil remains from the province of Matanzas, Cuba.  

Silva Taboada, G. 1974. Fossil Chiroptera from cave deposits in Central Cuba, with a description of two new species, and the first record of Mormoops megalophylla. Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia, 19: 33-83.

Silva Taboada, G. 1983. Los Murcielagos de Cuba. Editorial Academia, La Habana.

Suarez, W. and S. Diaz-Franco. 2003. A new fossil bat (Chiroptera:Phyllostomidae) from a Quaternary cave deposit in Cuba. Caribbean Journal of Science, 39:371-377.

Tejedor, A. 2011. Systematics of the funnel-eared bats (Chiroptera: Natalidae). Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 353.

First Anniverary of Fossil Matter!

Fossil Matter turns one! How time flies. It has been a great year of rambling on old and new ideas. I am looking forward to another great year of research, discovery, and science.

And a great way to celebrate the ever ongoing process of science and the anniversary of my blog is by announcing the recent publication of my article Clay tobacco pipes from a colonial refuse deposit in fort San Severino, Matanzas Province, Cuba , in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology (available at Springer). It took nearly a decade to complete our research, and then finally find the time to write it, edit it, re-edit it, edit it once more, and did I say edit it again? Yes!

I co-wrote it/researched it with my colleague Ricardo Viera, who had the great opportunity to conduct the actual excavation at Fort San Severino (a subject of one of my previous posts), and to study the artifacts extracted there. He is also my co-author on our blog dedicated to the history of San Carlos de Matanzas, our city of birth in Cuba, where we took our first steps into the world of science and exploration.

In a gist, the article deals with clay tobacco pipes excavated from fort San Severino colonial-era latrines. These interesting objects provide a great insight into many aspects of the everyday life at the fort, for both the military personnel and the prisoners kept there.

Clay pipes were used to smoke tobacco at the fort. Because they are personal objects, used for personal entertainment or habit, in times of leisure, they can tell us a bit about their behavior and preferences. Also, they can hint about the socio-economics of the fort, and because the fort played such a central role in the city of Matanzas, it too can hint about socioeconomics there. For instance, the dominance of one type of pipe over another can suggest where these pipes were likely coming from, and thus hint with who the fortians were buying or trading. Or if the articles were recirculated or reused in hard times.


These personal objects had a very short life, meaning they broke easily and were discarded rapidly. This provides great insight into the age of the artifacts, and how long it took the deposit to form. If it formed out a whim of re-construction or day to day trash disposal.

The trash in the latrines of our deposit, date to a period after the mid 18th century, that is the 1770s, and through the 19th century (the 1800s) until the latrines were filled as the fort turned into a military prison toward the last half of the 19th century. The presence of pipes manufactured in Catalonia, in Spain, corroborate well with the large immigration of Catalan merchants in Matanzas during this period. During the late 18th century Matanzas was a mere outpost with incipient trade, low population, and riddled by hardship. It is not until the mid 19th century that Matanzas blooms into the second most important port in Cuba, a status that dubbed the city as the Athens of Cuba. The tobacco pipes, along with the other artifacts, thus provide a snapshot of life at the fort during this important socioeconomic shift. They speak volumes on life then.

The history of the fort and its archaeology are very interesting, but I will leave them for another opportunity. However, bits and pieces of that history gleam in the posts of our joint venue with Proyecto Progressus, and the articles of the few archaeologists that have actually worked the site (citations therein).

Unfortunately, our paper did not make it in time for this year's SAA (Society for American Archaeologist) held, as I type, in Orlando, Florida. But I would like to take this opportunity, instead thank all those researchers, friends, and colleagues that helped us along the way. They are Leonel P. Orozco, Adrian Tejedor, Roger Arrazcaeta, Odlanyer Hernandez, Peter Davey, Byron Sudbury, Osvaldo Jimenez, and other pipe archaeologists around the world.

Thank you. 

I look forward to yet another year of posts and more research, with the hope that it will contribute, at least a grain, in fostering an interest for our culture's historical sciences. The ancient philosophers said that learning and remembering history helps in advancing positively our society by not repeating the mistakes of the past and enriching our present. 

A Very Brief History of Zero

This post is in honor of Pi Day and Albert Einstein's birthday, both which we celebrate today. Although Pi is known to more than a million digits past the famous 3.14159, my post will be about zero, likely our most important number. 

The number zero is included in the sets of whole and complex numbers but not in the set of natural numbers. Zero is a number placed in the neutral space between the positive and negative numbers on the number line, extending to negative and positive infinite, and thus is neither positive nor negative. Zero has no value and is considered null digit. Mathematicians consider zero an even number based on the premises that if even numbers, when divided by 2 leave no remainder, as odd number do, then is clear that zero is even (1). Moreover, others have stated that it is because if an integer “N” is called even if there exists an integer “M” such that N= 2M. From this, they infer that zeros evenness is clear because zero= 2 multiplied by 0. See (1) and (2) below.

The concept of zero was recognized before the existence of the negative integers was ever considered. Babylonian and Indian mathematicians first thought of the zero around the second to the fourth millennium before the birth of Christ (4000-2000 b. C). However, its real development occurred around 36 b. C. in Mesoamerica. Archeologists hypothesize that other Mesoamerican civilizations like the Olmec may have had some knowledge of the zero much before the Mayans because of number-like hieroglyphs found in their stone calendars, and the values they are supposed to represent. Mayans used mathematics for astronomy and counting. They used their calculations to measure time and to track the stars (2). The use of zero was important because the numeric system depended on the position of the symbol for value; each symbol or glyph represented a level. Zero represented the beginning or no value from where all values originated. The values had additive properties. Precise knowledge of the previous value was crucial to get to the next (4). 

The number zero does not equal emptiness or nothingness. It is the midpoint of our number line and is commonly used to indicate magnitudes or sizes. Think of how we use zeroes every day, in our money, measurements, etc. In fact, the text you are reading now is based on a binary code of ones and zeroes. Mathematics surround us with the number zero playing a central role. 

Cited bibliography

(1)Penner, Robert C. (1999). Discrete Mathematics: Proof Techniques and Mathematical Structures. World Scientific: pg. 34.

(2) “Numeración Maya” retrieved on 2/13/09 from http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/numeraci%C3%B3n Maya.

(3) Barrow, John D. (2001). The Book of Nothing. Vintage.

(4) Dichl, Richard A. (2004). The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization. Thames & Hudson.

Why Do I Blog?

Most of us blog to communicate ideas, discoveries, news, and the excitement that accompanies discovery. I started this blog with the intention to promote and divulge interesting ideas and information about the sciences that study the past, and the understanding I have gathered through my own experience in learning and research. This, of course, is with the hope of reaching a curious and interested audience.

This ideal is important for several reasons. One is that most of the scientific data we gather through field and cabinet work is later published in specialized journals, but these journals and their content are not really accessible to the general population. Moreover, people do not have the time to keep up with the amount of articles and journals published at all times, or because they are difficult to read.

These create a breach between the most recent scientific discoveries that is of value or interest to us all. Unfortunately, this breach is also a source of mistrust and unhealthy-biased skepticism for science in general, largely due to misunderstanding or ignorance. In fact, this goes against the grain of science communication and education, and it creates a deep gap between mainstream scientific advance and public knowledge.

I have hoped to contribute, although I recognize on a smaller scale, by posting about the things that I am curious about in science, promoting the scientific rationale behind them, and my personal experiences in my journey of learning and researching within these fields. I try to explain processes to find the practicability, or even really the excuse for what we do.

But what is the excuse. What if that curiosity pays off in the long run? It does. Curiosity does pay off in the long run. Look around you. The world that surrounds us is a world created by curiosity, science and technology. Think of the computer or cell phone in which you read these lines. The principles that make these appliances are hundreds of years old, invented or idealized by curious people who had no idea that their curiosities will turn out to be practical or useful to societies of the future.

As a geoscientist, I am trained to use the present as the key to the past. We are constantly trying to recreate and reconstruct the past. But, we try to reconstruct the past in the hope that that knowledge will give us a better present and future. We use models and predictions to hypothesize and reconstruct both the past and the future. So can we reconcile what we do with the practicability of our curiosity in the scheme of time? I think so. Discovering something new or interesting is one of my greatest pleasures. If the present is indeed the only reality and a product construction of our minds, then what better way to spend one's lifetime trying to understand the world that surrounds us, the things that draw our curiosity, even if at the time they seem impracticable or useless. Most of all, sharing and distributing that knowledge makes the quest most rewarding. I think that time has shown that in science no discovery is useless. We must surely always try to answer the whys, and how, where and who of our curiosity, and science allows for that freedom of thought and exploration that can surely fill more than a lifetime, and no doubt continue to better society and enrich human life.