Finally visiting Liszt's last apartment in Budapest (January 2025).
Typical me amusing myself with fungi, wearing inappropriate footwear in a leech-ridden Vietnamese jungle (February 2024).
Me rejoicingly expressing my opinion of dear old communist ideology by the statue of good old Mr Lenin in Hanoi (February 2024).
I tend to spend most of the time by myself or in the hard-to-avoid company of my children and possible future trouble-and-strife. It is said that posting pictures of oneself in the jolly company of others raises one's online attractiveness, so here I am with a bunch of upbeat botanists in the autumn of 2024.
Contrary to what people think, I don't spend all the time in my man cave or at the piano. Actually, I do get out on occasion to do actual, albeit usually utterly useless, things in the physical world. It is only seldom witnessed.
I once spoke to a psychiatrist, who asked what he could do for me, and I told him to go a way, have me put on a mountain and leave me alone. He didn't do any of that—absolutely pathetic! (January 2024)
Poeple are often surprised that I have kids—two, actually, and soon there will be three.
(December 2024)
Typical me amusing myself with fungi, wearing inappropriate footwear in a leech-ridden Vietnamese jungle.
Edit this title
Good writing is simple, but not simplistic.
Good copy starts with understanding how your product or service helps your customers. Simple words communicate better than big words and pompous language.
Typical me amusing myself with fungi, wearing inappropriate footwear in a leech-ridden Vietnamese jungle.
Edit this title
Good writing is simple, but not simplistic.
Good copy starts with understanding how your product or service helps your customers. Simple words communicate better than big words and pompous language.
Recent topics
Recently, I have translated or revised texts, for example, in the following fields:
enzyme biochemistry · mathematical molecular modelling · computer-aided drug design · metabolic engineering · drug discovery · drug delivery · flood protection technology · ichthyological monitoring · biochemistry of mRNA · peptide pharmacochemistry · physical chemistry · physiochemistry · plant metabolomics · protein biochemistry · radiopharmacochemistry · structural membrane biology · synthetic organic chemistry · quantum chemistry · archaeology of Great Moravia · plant cytogenomics · Arctic dendrochronology · plant population biology · functional virology · plant taxonomy · organic photochemistry · palaeontology of Tertiary and Quaternary sediments · plant physiological ecology · fish protection · tropical geobiocoenology · polyploid evolution · environmental toxicology · archaeology of stone knapping and grinding · protein crosslinking · biogeography of the Amazon · data science in mass spectrometry · environmental impact of hydraulic dams · exploratory organic synthesis · pharmaceutical analytical chemistry · dendrodemography · cancer research · Raman spectroscopy · a new species of pine from Vietnam · plant evolutionary genomics · RNA biochemistry · subtropical wetland ecology · viral hepatology · invasion ecology in India · seed dispersal by neotropical scatter-hoarding rodents · regulated cell death · alien flora of Mount Kinabalu . . .
(This might seem like a too wide a range of fields for one person to get the meagrest grasp of, but it really isn't.
Nature is just nature and science is just science—nothing more and nothing less.)
Topics I refuse to work on
For an array of reasons I usually decline all jobs on texts concerning, about, involving or pertaining to the following fields:
pseudoscience and quackery of all sorts (especially alternative medicine, unproven therapies, etc.) · religion · political ‘science’ · philosophy (I've had enough of that, thank you) · most studies in the humanities, including the majority of sociology and psychology (this does not apply to your work if you do good science in these fields) · insufficiently founded marketing · nonsense in general · non-free software · technofascist and other propaganda
(Please understand that there are fields I'm just not good at, ones I oppose, some that are beyond my comprehension, and some to which I object conscientiously.)
References
In my career so far, I have served more than a couple of hundred research teams, individuals and business ventures. Some of my long-term and more recent clients and employers are, or are affiliated with, the following institutions and companies:
(my current e
Latest blog posts
Recommended reading and watching
Sabine Hosenfelder's YouTube channel
Being a biologist by education and reviser / translator by profession, I'm completely undereducated in physics and mathematics, a handicap I'm trying to mitigate, at least when I'm not distracted by something else of interest. Fundamental physics and cosmology have nevertheless fascinated me since childhood, and Sabine Hosenfelder scratches this itch of mine regularly.
CHEmic podcast
This podcast, presented by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Science (IOCB Prague, my current employer), is in Czech only, but if you understand this language, I wholeheartedly recommend binging on it, and if not, I assure you that it is well worth checking it out on YouTube with (autogenerated) subtitles.
Dr. Jorge S. Diaz's YouTube channel
I cannot recommend devouring the content of this most fascinating of channels highly enough. It has helped me gain some insight into modern physics and how it has come to be more than many a book and lecture.
