Lent 2018 Issue 41 www.bluesci.co.uk
Cambridge University science magazine
FOCUS
Expeditionary Science
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Lent 2018 Issue 41
Contents
Cambridge University science magazine
Features 6
FOCUS
EXPEDITIONARY SCIENCE
Lady of Diptera
Matthew Brady talks to Dr Erica McAlister about her work exploring the world for some of science’s smallest animals 8
BlueSci investigates ow expeditionary science changed the course of civilisation
Ambling in the Arctic: a geological expedition in remote Greenland
Victoria Honour discusses Arctic camping, bear alarms, and the solidification of magma on her recent expedition to the Skaergaard intrusion 10
What a Single Fibre of Hair can do for a People Ignored by Big Pharma Neil Hampshire examines a case of blondism in Melanesia and its implications for a Melanesian people
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The Bizarre Benthos
Hayley Hardstaff peers down into the fauna and flora at the bottom of the seas 14
On The Cover News Reviews
PhD Project: Mapping a Miniature Brain
3 4 5 26
Alex Bates discusses his PhD on mapping a small part of the fly brain
Interview: Timothy Gregory
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Jack McMinn and Seán Herron talk physics and geology with the finalist from the BBC’s ‘Astronaut Apprentice’
On Top of the World
Atreyi Chakrabarty looks at what research in the extremes can teach us about the human body, with Dr Andrew Murray 18
Regulars
Bringing Birds Back from the Brink
Laura Nunez-Mulder tells us how the Hawaiin crow was trained in captivity so it could re-populate the wild 16
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Pavilion: Cecilia Glaisher
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Weird and Wonderful
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Martha Dillon explores early science illustration in the Fitzwilliam Museum archives
How to Study a Polar Bear
Rachael Beasley investigates how scientists get to grips with these 400 kilogram behemoth bears in one of Earth’s most inhospitable environments
BlueSci was established in 2004 to provide a student forum for science communication. As the longest running science magazine in Cambridge, BlueSci publishes the best science writing from across the University each term. We combine high quality writing with stunning images to provide fascinating yet accessible science to everyone. But BlueSci does not stop there. At www.bluesci.org, we have extra articles, regular news stories, podcasts and science films to inform and entertain between print issues. Produced entirely by members of the University, the diversity of expertise and talent combine to produce a unique science experience
From toilet reading and digetsive health, to pterodactyl nesting habits we bring you the strangest stories from recent literature
President: Alexander Bates ���������������������������������������������������president@bluesci.co.uk Managing Editor: Elsa Loissel...................................managing-editor@bluesci.co.uk Secretary: Mrittunjoy Majumdar.......................................... enquiries@bluesci.co.uk Treasurer: Atreyi Chakrabarty �������������������������������������� membership@bluesci.co.uk Film Editor: Sarah Madden ������������������������������������������������������������� film@bluesci.co.uk Radio: Rebecca Richmond-Smith................................................radio@bluesci.co.uk News Editor: Stephanie Norwood ���������������������������������������������news@bluesci.co.uk Web Editor: Letitia Birnoschi...........................................web-editor@bluesci.co.uk Webmaster: Adina Wineman.............................................webmaster@blueci.co.uk Art Editor: Martha Dilllon...................................................art-editor@bluesci.co.uk
Contents
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Issue 41: Lent 2018 Issue Editor: Seán Thór Herron Managing Editors: Alex Bates, Martha Dillon Second Editors: Lauren McGinney, Laia Serratosa, Seán Herron, Elsa Loissel, Philip Myers, Amanda Buckingham, Atreyi Chakrabarty, Martha Dillon, Hannah Thorne, Jenni Westoby, Arian Jamasb, Rebecca Broome Art Editor: Martha Dillon News Editor: Stephanie Norwood News Team: Joanna-Marie Dear,Thea Elvin, Elsa Loissel Reviews: Chay Graham, Elsa Loissel, Georgia Tindale Feature Writers: Rachael Beasley, Atreyi Chakrabarty, Neil Hampshire, Hayley Hardstaff, Victoria Honour, Laura NunezMulder Regulars Writers: Alex Bates, Martha Dillon , Jack McMinn Focus Team: Silas Yeem Kai Ean, Seán Herron, Elsa Loissel, Krystyna Smolinski Weird and Wonderful: Martha Dillon, Jack McMinn, Amelia-Joy Thompson Production Team: Alex Bates, Martha Dillon Caption writers: Alex Bates Copy Editor: Laia Serratosa Advertiser: Jennifer Payne Illustrators: Alex Bates, Nina Carter, Molly Cranston, Alex Hahn, Hayley Hardstaff, Imogen Harper, Olivia Healy, Sammi Lynch, Oran Maguire, Sean O’Brien, Catherine Prowse, Philipp Schlegel, Sarah Vines Cover Image:Thierry Porter ISSN 1748-6920
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (unless marked by a ©, in which case the copyright remains with the original rights holder). To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
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Editorial
Adventure in Science Through our history, humans have shared an innate trait: a drive to adventure. Our pre-historic ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers, their appetite for food as well as knowledge of the world around them leading them to nomadic lifestyles, following resources wherever it took them. Marching into the unknown forced us to reckon with new environments and ideas, and respond to new challenges for survival. This inexorable push to uncover and overcome has persisted throughout our history, and today manifests itself in the sciences; the systematic study and explanation of the natural world. Our FOCUS article examines how this spirit of exploration directly descends into the sciences today, in the expeditions of the recent past and today yielding discoveries and new knowledge that changed the course of our civilisation. It has been said that the great achievements of the future are built on the adventures of the present. Atreyi Chakrabarty takes this literally, examining how the biological effects of extreme altitudes on humans could improve treatment of patients on the ground unable to transport enough oxygen round their body. Having braved harsh conditions herself, Victoria Honour describes the wonderful understanding of magmatic systems that can be gained if one is willing and able to visit the remote Skaergaard intrusion in East Greenland. Her team had to be wary of the Polar Bears inhabiting the region, but luckily Rachael Beasley describes how we can use new technologies and techniques to study them more effectively and improve our relationship with these Kings of the Arctic. But travelling so far is not always required for adventure and exploration – Alex Bates describes the intricacies of a small part of a fly brain, mapped in a lab, and Laura Nunez-Mulder tells us about how the Hawaiian ‘Alalā bird – technically extinct since 2002 – is being trained by humans to survive reintroduction into the wild. On the other hand, as Timothy Gregory, a finalist on the BBC’s ‘Astronauts: Do you have what it takes?’, explains in interview with BlueSci (introduced by Jack McMinn), our curiosity can and should drive us to adventure in places so distant as interplanetary space. The more we know about the world, the more there is for scientists to do. A lot of adventure is involved in the cataloguing and categorisation of new life and phenomena the world over. Hayley Hardstaff describes an experience of exploring the strange and unique world revealed in the diverse ecosystems of our ocean floors. Matt Brady interviews Erica McAlister of the Natural History Museum, as she describes her career-long undertaking in travelling the world to uncover new species of fly. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known,” Carl Sagan reminds us. We can be glad that there are so many of us ready to go and see what it is. Sean Herron Issue 41 Editor
Lent 2018
Art in the Issue Our illustrations celebrate the richness of the worlds explored by scientists: from natural creatures like Catherine Prowse’s polar bear and Olivia Healy’s crow, to physical phenomena such as Nina Carter’s ethereal asteroids, novel takes on natural history from Molly Cranston and Sammi Lynch, and explorations of anthropology and genetics by Imogen Harper and Sean O’Brien. Thierry Porter’s cover image captures the imagination and creativity required to achieve this: “I wanted the illustration to convey a sense of adventure and wonder. When I think about the exploration of the planet, I think of the world’s oceans and how they cover 70% of the surface of Earth, yet 95% of them still remain unexplored. Within the image, the ocean lies inside the silhouette of a human head, which is being explored by scuba divers. This combines the ongoing discovery of the world’s oceans with the exploration of human nature and intelligence itself, both of which remain largely unexplored and go hand-in-hand. The divers represent this continual growth, with their vision only allowing them to see part of a bigger picture – one that may never be fully explored or understood.” Expeditionary scientists are perhaps not the norm, but they most tangibly show us that science is an incredibly dynamic and exciting field. Science illustration has a similar role in capturing this dynamism. We hope that the vivid images in this issue help portray the power and sheer beauty of the work described Martha Dillon Art editor
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News
Check out www.bluesci.org, our Facebookok page or @BlueSci on Twitter for regular science news
Tracking Quantum Particles
The Genius of Tree Crickets
What are quantum particles doing when we are not
Life is tough when you are a male tree cricket: if you
watching? Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found a technique that allows the movements of quantum particles to be tracked for the first time. In an article published in Physical Review, the scientists studied the movement of particles by looking at the way they interact with their environment. Quantum objects can be described by wavefunctions, which allow the outcomes of an experiment to be predicted. However, these do not tell us about what the object is doing when it is not being observed. Using the fact that a particle will be ‘tagged’ by its surroundings as it moves through space, the researchers were able to come up with a method where this tagging information can be decoded when a quantum particle is measured. This allowed them to find out where the particle has been. This experiment has helped to expand the current understanding of wavefunctions, showing they can be used as more than just abstract mathematical tools. PhD student, David Arvidsson-Shukur commented that “Our results suggest that the wavefunction is closely related to the actual state of the particles”. The technique also provides scientists with a method to test fundamental predictions in quantum mechanics, such as the idea that a particle can exist in two places at once, or that information can be transmitted between two places telepathically, without the movement of particles between them. The scientists hope that the tagging method will help to test these postulates in the future and improve our understanding of the quantum world te
are not trying to find food, you are dodging predators, or doing your best to attract a mate. Males ‘seduce’ females by ‘stridulating’, rubbing their legs against their wings to produce vibrations that set the air in motion, creating a song that will signal the individual’s location to the ladies in the vicinity. For the male, the louder the sound, the further it will travel and the more likely it will reach a large number of females. To ‘pump up’ the volume, the insects have an ally: the leaves in the tree in which they live. A paper by Mhatre et al. published in December 2017 eLife reveals that crickets can create baffles by cutting a hole the size of their wings right in the centre of a leaf, and singing exactly above it. This behaviour is also flexible: the insects choose the biggest leaf available, even not bothering to altering it if the size was not large enough to enhance the volume of their song. The jury is still out on whether or not this could be considered tool-use, but it is certainly a deafening discovery el
Pulsars vs. Population New research suggests
that habitable planets may exist around volatile pulsars. Pulsars are only 30km across, but despite their small size they emit high-energy particles and harbor strong magnetic fields. Despite their turbulent nature, scientists at the University of Cambridge and Leiden University have discovered that theoretically, pulsars could support a ‘habitable zone’ at a distance similar to that between the Earth and our Sun. However, fast spinning pulsars emit very little visible light and would bombard any 4
News
orbiting planets with radioactive stellar winds. In order to withstand the onslaught, these planets would need to be a ‘super Earth’- one to ten times the mass of Earth, and with an atmosphere a million times thicker. Only then would the planet be able to support life, which would likely resemble that found deep within our oceans. To test their theory, the researchers studied pulsar PSR B1257 + 12 which is 2300 light years away and has two orbiting ‘super Earths’. These planets have a mass four to five times that of our Earth and are close enough to their host star to allow the existence of liquid water, though the density of their atmospheres is as yet unknown. Of the 3000 pulsars studies to date however, only five planets have been identified. Now Dr. Patruno and Dr. Kama will use the Alma Telescope at the European Southern Observatory to observe dust discs around other pulsars, which could indicate the existence of more planets jmd Lent 2018
Reviews Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond
MICROBE WORLD
Curb or truck: this is the dilemma thousands of evicted families living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin face.
Crown Books 2016
Curb, and all their earthly possessions, down to the content of their freezer, will be deposited on the sidewalk. Truck, and they will be put at the back of a lorry, to be reclaimed later for a few hundred of dollars that most do not have. In Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Matthew Desmond, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, decides to leave his books behind and to live within the very communities that regularly face this life-shattering event. As the eight families he follows go through the exhausting cycle of renting, eviction and homelessness, the mechanisms by which eviction fosters trauma, poverty and institutional racism become obvious. “Evicted” also exposes the juicy business of renting to the poor and how eviction has become a coercive tool in the hands of landlords who exploit society’s most disadvantaged citizens. The whole system, from the judiciary to the police, is in fact rigged against underprivileged populations - for example when new ‘nuisance’ ordinances corner domestic violence victims into choosing between calling 911 or risking getting an eviction notice by an angry landlord. Reading like a novel, Evicted is a powerful and necessary piece of research that exposes how the intimate links between poverty, exploitation and housing enrich a few while leaving over ten million US citizens struggling for the most basic of life’s necessities: shelter el
“Reading like a novel, Evicted is a powerful and necessary piece of research“
Symbiotic Planet : A New Look at Evolution - Lynn Margulis Genre-less, genius and gregarious, Lynn Margulis casually blurs and blends from personal memoir to an
Basic Books 1999
iconoclastic reframing of life on Earth. In Margulis’ world, gone is authority; lost from her parents (since the second chapter, aptly named ‘Against Orthodoxy’) as she truants the school they want her to attend without being caught for months. The revelation that she is not the humanistic Jew her parents raised her to be is later matched by her epiphany that she is also not a neo-Darwinist. Disregarding the ‘three billion years out of date data set’ of famous zoologists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, Margulis gigglingly arrays how she dragged her microbiology-focussed theory of endosymbiosis through decades of backlash, rejection and mockery into classroom textbooks. Margulis coruscatingly blazes a trail into death, sex and the origin of life with her research, breaking the great taboo of science by going straight to the public with her dramatic ideas, interweaving her polemic reflections on the cultural meanings of her key findings with a visionary interpretation of her and independent chemist James Lovelock’s infamous Gaia hypothesis, intellectually influenced by her long marriage to freethinker Carl Sagan. As Gaia spawns a movement across environmentalists, New Age religions and ecofeminists, the geoscience community quietly renames and reworks the hypothesis into Earth Systems Science, ducking an outpouring of criticism from esteemed neo-Darwinists, engendering a new sub-field of study Margulis’ tale is the story of the maverick let loose in science, making you chuckle, exclaim, decry and scornfully tell her ‘no way…’ only to pause and uneasily think, ‘well, maybe…’ cg
“Genre-less, genius and gregarious, Lynn Margulis casually blurs and blends from personal memoir to an iconoclastic reframing of life on Earth”
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry - Jon Ronson Best known for his 2004 non-fiction and 2009 feature film The Men Who Stare at Goats, Ronson’s The
Picador 2011
Lent 2018
Psychopath Test takes the reader on a comic and eye-opening adventure through the madnesses which permeate modern society. Using his personal experiences with anxiety as a starting point, Ronson speaks to psychiatrists, psychologists and possible psychopaths (including top-dollar CEOs). Trying to get to the heart of what madness is, he asks who, exactly, can be described as completely sane. Ronson’s book is engaging, insightful and compulsively readable. His use of Robert Hare’s diagnostic tool, the Psychopath Test itself, is entertaining, but a little simplistic - tempting though it is to try and label everyone I don’t like a potential psychopath. Ronson’s book is above all a work of journalism, not science, but it never claims to be otherwise. As with his 2001 work, Them: Adventures with Extremists, Ronson meets extraordinary people during his research: from the scientists who gave LSD to psychopaths in the 1970s, to the founder of a Haitian death squad, to a prisoner claiming he faked madness to get into Broadmoor. Reading Ronson’s book will leave you with challenging questions about how both ‘psychopaths’ and ‘madness’ are diagnosed, and, inevitably, will make you spot psychopaths everywhere (including, most likely, your supervisor!) gt
‘Ronson’s The Psychopath Test takes the reader on a comic and eye-opening adventure through the madnesses which permeate modern society’”
Reviews
5
Lady of the Diptera Matthew Brady talks to Dr Erica McAlister about her work exploring the world for some of science’s smallest animals
"I had to hoover flies off a mountainside 5000m up, from a potato which was growing in the side of a
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MB: Dr McAlister, what’s the most challenging field environment you’ve experienced in your career? EM: I have to say: all of them are challenging, but for very different reasons. Tajikistan was really difficult because I was dealing with the most different environment, both physically
Lady of the Diptera
MOLLY CRANSTON
With approximately 160,000 described species, and having evolved over 260 million years ago, Diptera are amongst the most diverse groups of organisms on the planet. They also mean a lot of science, and vinegar flies have been directly involved in Nobel prize winning work for physiology or medicine six times. The University of Cambridge has the capacity to grow millions of vinegar flies at any time. Flies are found on every continent on Earth; the collection at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London contains the fruit of expeditions to every conceivable environment: from the Central Asian stepp, to the lush jungles of South America, to the summit of Everest and the deserts of Africa. Matt Brady interviewed Dr Erica McAlister, author of the recent book The Secret Life of Flies, and Senior Curator of Diptera and Siphonaptera at the NHM, to talk about her work, her numerous projects in far flung corners of the planet, and the future of human consumption as we know it.
as well as politically and socially, that I’ve ever worked in. I was walking round with a donkey and a vacuum cleaner collecting mosquitos from cowsheds. Sometimes it felt very obtrusive, especially as everyone was so kind and offered to Lent 2018
feed me wherever I went, in spite of their limited resources. MB: To what ends have you gone to collect a sample? EM: The most extreme environment I’ve worked in was when I had to hoover flies off a mountainside 5000m up, from a potato which is growing in the side of a cliff. You’re constantly reminded of the hierarchy of ‘specimen first, equipment second, and everyone else third’; I always remind my students that I can get more of them, but not more of my samples. MB: Have you ever put your body on the line for the sake of science? EM: Personally, no, but on an expedition in a rainforest a friend of mine had a Bot Fly larva burrow into his head, where he kept it for a week, after which he insisted I take it out. Apparently, he could feel it moving at night, and because the larvae defecate, it had started to ooze. It’s really hard to find Human Bot Flies like that, so it’s wriggled its way into the collection. MB: When you aren’t scaling cliffs, or fighting off nests of Redback spiders in the Australian outback, you spend a lot of time in the NHM, in London. While the environments are clearly different, are there skills that overlap between the two? EM: You have to make sure you keep really good notes about everything. I have so many issues where other people have collected data for me, and they cause me an absolute headache when they scrawl something down incorrectly. You have to calm yourself down from the excitement of collection and then investigation in the lab, in order to get all of the data. We don’t like killing things, but it’s necessary for the collection, and if the data isn’t there or is wrong, you’re like ARRRRRGH! MB: Note-taking must have been been paramount when the NHM’s vast collection - containing over 2.5 million specimens of flies comprising approximately 30,000 species - was re-examined. How are these used by the museum? EM: We have field notebooks from many of the important expeditions of the past and by studying these, as well as the ones from more recent trips, we can garner more information about different species habitat requirements and so forth. This is why museum collections are so great and that we are being able to ask new and novel questions about our collections due to advances in technology. MB: Your book highlights the crucial importance flies could play in feeding ourselves and our livestock in the future. Can you see everyone eating flies or maggots? EM: Environmentally, eating maggots (the immature stage of the fly) is brilliant because you’ve got no methane production, the water requirement is minimal, there are no by-products, and you’re not causing oceanic species loss. When it comes to us eating insects, two-thirds of countries in the world already consume insects in some way, for us, it’s just a case of getting over our weird qualms about eating them – we drink cow’s milk for goodness sake! They are so rich in protein but perhaps protein-rich Lent 2018
The Pot Pooter: Flies’ small size and rapid movement often make them difficult to catch in the field. To combat this, entomologists use a pooter to ‘hoover’ specimens when they are stationary. Using a pooter is simple: one end is placed in the mouth and the other above the desired specimen, and once in the correctly positioned above the insect, a short, sharp intake of breath draws the insect into the chamber, or the pooter pot, where it can be removed ready for further processing (e.g. pinning).
flour [from maggots] is the way forward. I’ve eaten lots of maggots and insects, and I’m especially a fan of Anty Gin from the Cambridge Gin Distillery. MB: It seems like you’ve been everywhere, where next? EM: I want to go to Mongolia, first, and then to New Zealand to see a bat fly where it’s the only species, in its own genus and family. They live in colonies, surviving on bat poo. What’s so amazing is that there is communal living with males and females cleaning each other, which is essentially a unique trait in the fly world. The thing is when writing the book, every time I wrote or heard about a new habitat it triggered this feeling that I have to go and see it. Clearly, Dr McAlister’s tenure at the museum has not made her lose her sense of adventure. Her desire to explore some of the world’s most challenging terrains in search of one of the physically smallest, yet most diverse groups of organisms on the planet is palpable. This is evident when you hear her talk on podcasts such as No Such Thing As A Fish and Do The Right Thing, in her book The Secret Life Of Flies, or in one of her numerous public engagement events at the NHM. It is truly refreshing to hear someone so passionate, honest and funny spread the word about science, its pitfalls, but also its huge capacity to be exciting and different – her style is something on which others in science communication should take note Dr Erica McAlister’s book The Secret Life of Flies was published by the Natural History Museum in 2016. Matthew Brady is a PhD student in the Department of Earth Sciences at Darwin College. Artwork by Molly Cranston and Martha Dillon
Lady of the Diptera
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Ambling in the Arctic: a geological expedition in remote Greenland Victoria Honour discusses Arctic camping, bear alarms, and the solidification of magma on her recent expedition to the Skaergaard intrusion True wilderness is hard to find in today’s globalised world. But with a population of only 70,000 people, and a landmass nine times the size of the UK, Greenland remains relatively untouched by human activity. Fieldwork there is a blissful escapism from the 24/7 connectivity of everyday life. Location, location, location! I was part of a six person science team with the aim of collecting exciting new geological data. The location was a ~15 km² area of rock called the Skaergaard intrusion, a ‘frozen’ magma chamber in east Greenland, at 68˚N. Around 55 million years ago, a vast amount of basaltic magma intruded the earth’s crust here, but failed to reach the surface. The vat of magma cooled slowly, taking about 100,000 years to solidify. The same large-scale processes that formed the Skaergaard magma also caused the opening of the Atlantic Ocean along the midAtlantic ridge, pushing Greenland away from the UK. Through the erosive action of ice, wind and snow over 8
Ambling in the Arctic
millions of years, a cut-through of the intrusion is exposed at the surface today. It is a fantastic natural laboratory and certain horizons (discrete layers of rock), are known to be rich in platinum, palladium and gold. The intrusion was discovered by Lawrence Wager in 1930, whilst part of a British Arctic Air Route Expedition. Since then, many fundamental ideas in igneous petrology (the study of rocks cooled from magma) have resulted from its analysis. Arctic colours | The scenery in Greenland is dramatic and unforgiving. Jagged dark grey mountains sweep down to glacial rounded hills which sink into deep fjords, some days they are completely filled with icebergs, other days they are devoid of any. The colour palette you’re accustomed to shrinks to browns, whites and blues, and the only bright colours are our kit: tents, coats, inflatable motorboat (‘zodiacs’). As summer slipped into autumn, the few groundhugging plants faded to a gorgeous range of purples, reds Lent 2018
and oranges. At the start of the field season we had only a few hours of darkness, but the days dramatically shortened during our time there, and we pushed our daily schedule earlier to make the most of the light. Camp life | Our camp was comprised of a large, aggressively orange kitchen, sleeping tents, and a collection of aluminium boxes used to store our copious food supplies, kept at a distance from our tents to deter polar bears. Going to the makeshift toilet was a hundred metre trudge down a steep slope of loose rocks, and a shower was merely something to dream about. Fieldwork in such an environment is always a delicate balance between ‘science time’ and ‘camp time’. Life in camp is based around a routine, to ensure everything stays in working order – including ourselves. Our sleeping tents were surrounded by a bear alarm setup: metal poles with fishing line stretched between them and panic alarms attached to the fishing lines. If the line was broken, the alarm would go off and alert us – luckily we never had to deal with this for real. The mush in the magma chamber | My PhD looks at the physical behaviour of emulsions in porous media. Emulsions are a dispersion of one liquid within another liquid (like oil and water). While emulsions are widely studied in the petroleum industry, carbon sequestration and food science, my interest lies in how these liquids behave during the evolution of large bodies of molten rock trapped beneath the Earth’s surface. As magmas cool and solidify in the Earth’s crust, they can split into two immiscible liquids - one silica-rich and one iron-rich. The different physical properties of these liquids mean that they may separate from each other. This effects the chemical evolution of the magma and hence related ore deposits and the style (potential explosivity) of volcanic eruptions. During the field season, I studied how permeable the mush (crystals surrounded by magma, forming a kind of slurry) was just before the intrusion solidified by looking at the variety of structures we could see in the rocks, formed from the very last ‘gasp’ of melt. There were dendritic structures forming fantastic ‘Christmas tree’ like shapes, believed to form as pressurised liquid is forced out between two planes. We saw examples of separated emulsions, iron-rich and silica-rich lenses of liquid, alongside blobby accumulations of melt scattered through the intrusion. These all provide information about how the very last bits of liquid were moving, just before Skaergaard solidified. Moving forward with the science will involve analysing the chemistry of the rocks I collected, and studying them under a microscope to reveal details the naked eye cannot detect. All of this will help build our understanding of how emulsions form and migrate in magma chambers, giving us insights into ore deposit formation. The weather | Despite its northerly latitude, the area has a favourable micro-climate attracting an abundance of narwhals and seals, and therefore it is a desirable hunting
ground - though the local delicacy of mattak (raw whale skin and fat) reminded me of the gristle you occasionally happen across in a burger. We were particularly lucky with the weather; crisp, sunny days were the norm. Arctic field seasons count anything under 50% “weather days” (i.e. it’s snowing, blowing a storm etc.) as a success, and we had only 3 days in 32. We were camped on the edge of Kangerlussuaq fjord, an area where the sea ice does not melt until June-July and then returns in October. The weather noticeably deteriorated towards the end of the trip, one morning we woke up to snow covering the high peaks around our camp; a hint of the winter wonderland the region transforms into for winter. Arctic fauna and the environment | We were largely unbothered by the local wildlife; we spotted plenty of seals and some whales, but only one polar bear swimming in Kangerlussuaq fjord. Our camp did, however acquire two cheeky Arctic foxes, who had a nasty habit of chewing through ropes: ropes for important things like our boat land anchor, tent guy lines and socks. The town of Tassiliq is surrounded by glaciers and many are receding rapidly.The locals remembered when the majority of these glaciers reached the sea, and now few do. As an Earth Scientist I read papers about the impact of climate change, but too often fail to appreciate what the numbers physically mean for the environment. Such throwaway stories from people so in-tune with the landscape was a stark reminder of the fragility of this place. Working together as a small team of scientists, 24/7, is an intense, but incredibly rewarding experience. Science is not just about laboratories and theory, for a geologist being outside gives context to all the data our machines spit out, and having a field area in the remote Arctic is an added bonus! Our departure from Greenland in the beautiful sunshine was bittersweet. While running water and a bed beckoned, the magical wilderness of Greenland is hard to walk away from. It is a truly spectacular environment and it was a privilege to have visited and worked in such a special place “As an Earth Scientist I read papers about the impact of climate change, but too often fail to appreciate what the numbers physically mean for the environment”
Victoria Honour is a 3rd PhD student in Earth Sciences at Jesus College. Twitter: @victoria_honour
What a Single Fibre of Hair can do for a People Ignored by Big Pharma Neil Hampshire examines a case of blondism in Melanesia and its implications In the wake of an ice age around 30,000 B.C.E, a large series of interconnected causeways and forests became host to human life with the arrival of the first groups of pioneering Papuan speakers. They settled what is now the isle of Malaita, in a landmass that has since become the archipelago that constitutes the sovereign state of the Solomon Islands. Twentysix thousand years later, the descendants of these original inhabitants were joined by another group of explorers--the first Austronesians--who made landfall on the islands by sea-worthy outrigger canoes. Their journey had been an extreme one, they had navigated hundreds of miles from their previous home. The sun’s rays were intense. Sharks circled the small fleet. Food supplies dwindled. Many perished. But they endured, and so did the unique copy of a gene they carried for hair colour--a strand of connection between the modern population and their ancient ancestors. The genetic origins of hair colour in the Solomon Islands began to be unraveled in May 2012, when a study on blondness was published in Science. Though the South Pacific has been an area of intense activity for anthropologists since the discipline’s conception, advances in science have enabled a clearer conception of the region’s past peoples. The South Pacific is idiosyncratic in its level of richness and diversity, as each of its small islands is inhabited by a people largely different from their neighbours, especially with regard to language. Anthropologists have published reports on every aspect imaginable of the means by which indigenous inhabitants experience and shape their world, but one such observation formed a riddle that was largely ignored until molecular biology helped to make sense of it: that of the ‘blond Melanesian.’ Blond hair is relatively scarce across the globe, with major distributions present only in Northern Europe and to a lesser extent in Oceania. Incidences of this hair colour in Europe are generally tied to lighter skin pigmentation. The conjoined evolution of these two traits has long been discussed, with potential reasons for their survival including reactionary selection in response to reduced levels of sunlight (lighter skin accelerates the synthesis of the essential compound Vitamin D, which would otherwise be in short supply due to limited exposure to UV light). A number of researchers also have argued that blond hair was attractive to mates as a result of its scarcity, but this is dismissed by more recent research which states that the reasons for blond hair’s survival are similar to those which explain the bright plumage of the peacock; regardless, the trait appears to have endured in part due to sexual selection. The reason behind blond hair’s persistence is not yet definitive, with some geneticists even arguing for a synthesis between these 10
Blondism in Melanesia
major hypotheses. Anthropologists in the early 20th century assumed no genetic basis for the appearance of blond hair amongst Melanesians, believing it to be a non-heritable trait as a residuum of some other social practice. Initially they assumed that the Melanesian instance of blondism was a biological transformation that took place during the early years of a subject’s life given a diet rich in fish, or alternatively that it was the result of a traditional hairbleaching process. With an improved appreciation of human genetics, these hypotheses were dismissed fifty or so years later as speculation turned in favour of the trait being hereditary, passed on as a ‘Captain Cook allele’--a copy of the gene for hair colour unique to blond Europeans that an early coloniser had introduced to those living in the South Pacific. This theory was upheld widely until 2009, when two scientists journeyed to the Solomon Islands with the aim of finally carrying out empirical research into the origins of the trait. Canadian geneticist Sean Myles first conceived of the study while conducting fieldwork in the Solomon Islands a few years prior for a separate project. He predicted that the blond hair he saw amongst five to ten percent of the population was heritable, and likely was associated with a single gene. “It looked pretty obvious to me that it was a real binary trait. You either had blond hair or you didn’t”. After designing a study and assembling a team to test his hypothesis, Myles and fellow geneticist Nicholas Timpson spent four weeks in the Solomon islands gathering 1209 samples of saliva and hair from indigenous inhabitants. This was not a straightforward task, as the researchers had to receive express permission from community leaders in each village to carry out their study. Taking into account the diversity in systems of governance and hierarchy, even just from village to village, the nature of this challenge becomes self-evident. Additionally, the task of travelling from one village to the next was often made arduous by a lack of paved roads. Fortunately Myles already spoke Solomons Pidgin, a language in the English Creole family that is spoken by most inhabitants of the Solomon Islands, alongside more localised languages and dialects. The language has many commonalities with Papua New Guinea’s Tok Pisin and Vanuatu’s Bislama; together, trade pidgins arose as a consequence of increased interaction with other populations. That said, these languages constitute a tiny fraction of the many thousands spoken in the South Pacific, the most linguistically diverse region of the planet. With the major hurdle of communication overcome, the researchers could work to pinpoint not only the hereditary basis for blond hair, but also its point of origin in the South Lent 2018
Pacific. To do so, Myles needed to analyse a large amount of data to locate any key genetic differences between those with blond hair and those without. This is where his co-senior author, Carlos Bustamante, came in, along with his lab at Stanford University. “Since most studies in human genetics only include participants of European descent, we may be getting a very biased view of which genes and mutations influence the traits we investigate,” says Bustamante, himself a scientist of Venezuelan descent. “Here, we sought to test whether one of the most striking human traits, blond hair, had the same — or different — genetic underpinning in different human populations,” he added. The project proved to be an extremely rapid and smooth first investigation for a new member of the Bustamante lab, Eimear Kenny, who joined shortly before the data analysis began in earnest. “Within a week we had our initial result. It was such a striking signal pointing to a single gene — a result you could hang your hat on. That rarely happens in science,” she says, adding, “It was one of the best experiences of my career”. The genome-wide scans had pinpointed a single major difference between those with and without blond hair in a gene called TYRP1. TYRP1 is known to be involved in hair and skin pigmentation amongst several mammalian species such as mice, and mutations in the gene are responsible for a type of albinism in humans which has been reported largely within Africa and New Guinea. In European instances of blondism however, it is the gene KITGL which has been linked to the trait. A change in one of the building blocks of the protein encoded by TYRP1 was responsible for 46 percent of the variation in hair colour amongst Melanesians, and this mutation was not identified in any of the 900 samples cross-referenced from outside of the South Pacific. “Blonde hair has clearly evolved twice,” says Bustamante. The genetic studies revealed something else too. The original genetic mutation that the first inhabitants of the Solomon Islands carried is likely to predate any other instances of blond hair. The initial report listed a recessive model of inheritance for the mutation, in which two copies of the mutated gene must be inherited for it to have an effect. What is important to note about this finding is that it is an attribute far more commonly associated with copies of genes manifesting in populations long ago. Recessive genes take a lot longer to proliferate amongst a population than those with dominant effects, which have the potential to be introduced and proliferated extremely rapidly. The patterns of inheritance thus appear to point to a more long-term period of selection, stemming from a common ancestor during a high-drift regime; that is, blond hair likely appeared by chance at first, in a single individual, and spread rather widely across the populace. Perhaps this individual was particularly attractive to mates as a result of their unique appearance. This theory necessitates that blond hair first manifested--and subsequently persisted--in Melanesians tens of thousands of years ago, whereas European blondism likely arose within the Lent 2018
last 5,000-10,000 years. Additionally, similar cases of bright blond hair unaccompanied by lighter skin are known to occur in some desert Aboriginals in Australia, who are known to have become a distinct population from the Melanesians at least 10,000 years ago. Although it has yet to be confirmed that the mutation is shared, scientists very much expect this to be the case. This revelation is twofold in its repercussions: with the Eurocentric view of blond hair’s origins now overturned, the importance of probing genetic diversity has been magnified. Bustamante says, “This tells us we can’t really assume that even these common mutations are common across different human populations. Non-European populations are critical to study to find mutations that may be underlying the vast phenotypic variation of humans”. According to Bustamante, the genetic basis for skin and hair pigmentation--and potentially other, more clinically relevant traits--has yet to be fully understood in different populations across the globe. In the Melanesian population alone, although 46 percent of variation in hair pigmentation is explained by this particular mutation, the remainder has yet to be explained genetically. “If we’re going to be designing the next generation of medical treatments using genetic information and we don’t have a really broad spectrum of populations included, you could disproportionately benefit some populations and harm others,” Myles says. But with a more complete understanding of the human genome, advances in genetic sequencing technology, a growing awareness in the medical-scientific community of Eurocentric biases, there is hope that the future may not be so stark. As Bustamante says, “Humans are beautifully diverse, and this is just the tip of the iceberg”
“Within a week we had our initial result. It was such a striking signal pointing to a single gene — a result you could hang your hat on. That rarely
Neil Hampshire is an Anthropology masters student at the University of St. Andrews. Artwork by Immogen Harper Blondism in Melanesia
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The Bizarre Benthos Hayley Hardstaff peers down into the fauna and flora at the bottom of the seas
"Every one of the crew are excited when the net comes up"
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Our oceans are changing. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing acidification and warming of seawater, whilst introduction of non-native species, overfishing and nutrient and pollutant inputs are also changing ocean ecosystems. The Marine Biological Association (MBA) is a scientific society based in Plymouth, devoted to researching all aspects of life in the ocean. Using both long-term field and laboratory studies, members of the MBA focus on studying the responses of marine organisms to environmental change. During the summer of 2016, I spent two months working with an MBA research group studying microalgae. The nature of my experiments meant that I spent many hours glued to a microscope or in the dark basement furiously clicking at a struggling computer. With the gorgeous, smooth, blue waters of Plymouth Sound glistening temptingly from the laboratories’ numerous windows, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a day on the MBA’s research vessel Sepia, as light relief from the flow hoods and pipettes. One early morning, under a clear blue sky, fellow intern Florence and I turned up at the pontoon fresh-faced and
The Bizarre Benthos
eager. The crew were already bustling about the deck, tidying lines and preparing nets. MBA Sepia was custombuilt in 2004 as a research vessel suitable for working both in shallow rivers and up to 60 miles offshore. The boat can accommodate 12 passengers with the core crew consisting of the skipper, deckhand, research technician, the research vessel manager, and a fish identification expert. The first 2 mile stretch of sea, as we motored towards the breakwater, gave a deceptively smooth ride. It was not long before Sepia, with her shallow draft, was throwing us from port to starboard. The crew, through experience oblivious to the swell, proceeded to brief us on the task at hand - the Benthic Survey. “Benthos” refers to the organisms that live on, in or near the seabed, the term being coined from the Greek noun for “depths of the sea”. The Benthic Summer Survey is carried out annually, and has been since the 1950s, at a set of stations off the Plymouth coast. The survey consists of a series of “grab samples” and a 3-minute trawl at each station. The aim is to assess the “macrobenthos”, those seabed-dwelling organisms visible with the naked eye and hence suitable for processing by human hand. The type of benthic organisms present at a site depends on the seafloor material, sea depth, temperature and salinity. Organisms living at the depths trawled by Sepia tend to scavenge and feed on dead matter, the main food source in these parts of the seabed where light penetration is poor. Filter feeders such as sponges and bivalves, and deposit feeders in the form of polychaete worms, roam the sediments and act as prey for the scavenging “epibenthos”: the echinoderms, cephalopods, crustaceans, cnidaria and gastropods. Many fish such as flatfish, stingrays and dragonets are also considered benthic, some spending more time than others scavenging the seabed or hiding within the sediment. The aim of the MBA’s benthic time-series is to analyse the effects of environmental change on benthic biodiversity. The larger organisms brought up by the trawling nets such as fish, starfish and octopus are first removed and placed in tanks. The remaining thick, grainy sediments are sifted through by hand to find any living creatures of smaller size. Florence and I were stationed at one of the workbenches on deck and given a large bucket-load of grey sea floor. With the hazy silhouette of the Devon coast on one side and an empty stretch of the English Channel on the other, we spent over an hour emptying the bucket. It was the most fascinating hour I have ever spent, sorting through creatures unlike any you would ever find rockpooling or snorkelling: black and orange brittle stars, Lent 2018
corals, urchins and worms - some ugly and alien, others shyly housed in ornate tubes. The snails had the most elaborate shells, from the ivory white spirals of Turritella terebra to the pelican's foot Aporrhais pespelecani. The most strikingly unusual of the creatures were the Macropodia rostrata; spider crabs up to a few centimetres in length with legs like branched seaweed, delicate and camouflaged. It was only after looking up from the workbench that I became aware of how seasick I had become. I spent the next five hours of the survey with my head in a bucket. Florence succumbed shortly after I did, leaving the professionals to finish sorting the samples by species, counting them and preserving organisms that could not be identified on deck. Aisling Smith has been working as the MBA’s research vessel manager since 2013. Unlike Florence and I, Aisling doesn't suffer from motion sickness when at sea, but rather finds that when she returns to shore “everything keeps moving!”. To carry out research at sea, the crew have to undergo specific survival and medical training. They aim to be operational each day that the weather permits, with Aisling spending 50-80 days per year at sea. On whether she prefers shore or ocean based work, Aisling admits “I absolutely prefer to be at sea, from the first time I set foot on a research vessel I was hooked! The environment is incredible, but I also love the team spirit of coming together to try to generate the highest quality data possible in sometimes challenging conditions... Every one of the crew are excited when the net comes up, because truly you never know what you are going to get - we have brought up everything from conger eels to mattresses. It never gets old for me.” Despite loving her job, Aisling acknowledges that days at sea can be demanding. “The days are long and you work very hard - somehow having to make your own dinner or call the bank on those days is more of a challenge.” Aisling believes the time-series has been vital for highlighting the effects climate change is clearly having on the benthic communities, but equally concerning is the frequency with which “ghost gear” (lost and abandoned fishing gear) and plastic are brought up in the samples. She notes that it is becoming rare for the samples they collect to be plastic-free. Using trawling methods restricts surveys to benthos inhabiting relatively shallow waters but recent technological advancements in remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and submersibles have allowed investigations of the deeper ocean, which remains largely unexplored. ROVs equipped with cameras and sensors have led to the discovery of many new deep ocean benthic species such as halosaurs, eel-shaped fish that feed on benthic invertebrates at depths of near 3300m where temperatures are between 2-4°C. Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point in the oceans at 10994m below sea level. In 2012, James Lent 2018
Cameron was the first human to reach this point solo, with the descent taking only 2 hours and 36 minutes in the bullet-like submersible DeepSea Challenger. Although ROVs have reached these depths in the past, having human-occupied vessels gives scope for much more efficient and fruitful expeditions. Human-occupied missions to depths of 5 miles have found spoon worms that etch rosettes into the sediment and hadal anemones on long stalks anchoring them to rocks amongst a landscape less familiar to humans than the moon. It is thought that finding these extraordinary organisms that can survive in such remote, high-pressure, lowtemperature environments, could provide insight into what may have been able to evolve within the oceans of other planets and moons Text and artwork by Hayley Hardstaff, recent graduate of the Biological Natural Sciences from Emmanuel college
“I absolutely prefer to be at sea... from the first time I set foot on a research vessel I was hooked"
Bringing Birds Back from the Brink Laura Nunez-Mulder tells us how the Hawaiian crow was trained in captivity so it could re-populate the wild In 2002, ‘Alalā (a-la-lah) – or Hawaiian crows –
Avian malaria does not usually kill birds, but isolated as they are Hawaiian crows have lost their evolutionary resistance and have suffered since its mosquito vector was accidentally introduced to the islands in the 1800s
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became extinct. The last two wild ‘Alalā had disappeared. Deforestation, human hunting, and invasive disease-carrying mosquitoes took their toll on the species, which only exists on the islands of Hawaii and is an integral part of its culture. But the ‘Alalā has a chance to come back from extinction. Some birds live on in captivity, and a huge team which includes representatives from state and federal government, cultural advisors, non-profits, and land-owners as well as scientists is dedicated to reintroducing the remaining ‘Alalā into the wild. The ‘Alalā is more than a struggling species. Many plants in Hawaiian forests depend on the birds for seed dispersal and activation. For the locals, the significance goes deeper still: the ‘Alalā is a cultural treasure. In Hawaiian mythology, the bird is said to lead souls to rest at Ka Lae, a volcano on the Big Island. “There’s a lot of history on this island of people coming in and imposing values on a population that weren’t held dear to the population themselves,” says Dr Alison Greggor, a key scientist in the team. “This is one of those rare opportunities to take a species that has a real cultural and historical value, and to restore it. There’s a real attempt to marry cultural conservation and species conservation.” In the aviaries at the Keauhou Bird Conservation Centre and the Maui Bird Conservation Centre, the entire ‘Alalā population – 125 birds– is regularly fed and sheltered from predators, in a very familiar environment. Each living individual is invaluable. But when five ‘Alalā were released into a local reserve in December 2016, three were dead within a fortnight, while the other two were retrieved to the safety of the aviary. Despite diligent care from the conservationists who had hand-raised them, the birds were unprepared for the challenges of winter storms and the predator ‘Io (ee-oh), or Hawaiian hawk. Greggor joined the team a few months later. “An awful lot of money, resources and time goes into fostering a conservation breeding programme, so that those birds are very valuable. This is true for any species that has been extinct and is being reintroduced. Not just in a monetary sense, but in what they’re worth for their whole species.” A former Cambridge academic, Greggor’s role bridges two worlds: academia, and conservation. She has been applying her background in animal behaviour and cognition research to selecting and preparing the individuals for the next release into the wild. While in Cambridge, Greggor “realised that using principles of animal cognition in conservation was something with untapped potential.” She explains: “I want to learn how practical the academic advice actually is, and what goes
Bringing Birds Back from the Brink
into implementing it. It is one of the biggest challenges in conservation. The theory doesn’t always hold up. “For example, we don’t really know the optimal age to release birds. There were some release in the 1990s, and they released birds that were 6-8 months old – but there were still birds left in the wild, so they had mentors.” At that age, ‘Alalā and other corvids are still juveniles. As intelligent birds, they have a lot to learn before they are considered mature. “Without a mentor population in the wild, we had to step back, and figure out all the behaviours we need to make sure they have, and think how to train those behaviours. So that’s been my job with my background in corvid learning – to teach them to fear predators, to forage food.” Since the attempted release in December 2016, Greggor and the team of various stakeholders spent half a year deliberating a new strategy. After additional months for training and preparation, the conservationists released six ‘Alalā into the wild, at the end of September 2017. Two weeks later, five more individuals joined them. Another week later, I was speaking to Greggor, and all eleven birds were alive. What changed? Firstly, the ‘Alalā were released at a different site and at a different time of year, to reduce the challenges of winter storms. Secondly, both male and female birds were released, carefully chosen for well-established social bonds. The group was more diverse than that of December 2016; some individuals were bolder, some more fearful, because it is not yet clear which variations improve survival in the wild. Finally, the antipredator training programme was ramped up. To teach ‘Alalā to fear ‘Io, the main predator, the team borrowed a live ‘Io from a local zoo to recreate a realistic predation event. The more natural the learning situation, the more likely the training would build on instinctive cognitive biases that the birds are born with – for example, learning to fear dangers by hearing distress calls from other ‘Alalā. Greggor explains the setup: “We actually ‘flew’ a taxidermy ‘Io over the aviary, played [recordings of ] alarm calls, and then I came up on the side of the aviary with a live ‘Io on a glove, like you see a falconer wear, to get the ‘Io to flap at them, the way you would see a natural attack.” The birds underwent many similar training sessions so that they would be prepared for life outside the aviary. So far, it seems to have paid off. Greggor wrote out her thoughts for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research blog: “Seeing them all alive and well in the wild is indescribable. […] The field team and conservation breeding staff have known each individual since they were an egg, and have spent countless hours observing them in secret. We care deeply about each one, yet, they do not know us by face or name. Nor do they know that each one of them holds historical potential for their species.” Lent 2018
Laura Nunez-Mulder is a 4th year Medicine student at Emmanuel College. Artwork by Olivia Healy
OLIVIIA HEALY
Greggor is at the centre of the emerging field of animal cognition in conservation; at the same time she and her team are forming bridges with local culture and values. And at the heart of it all are the birds – individuals with their own names and personalities. “I love them all for their little quirks. It happens with all the species I’ve worked with, I’ve fallen in love with all of them. I don’t think you ever stop learning about them – even if all you’re doing is sitting and watching. And that’s what’s pretty special”
SARAH VINES
On Top of the World Atreyi Chakrabarty looks at what research in the extremes can teach us about the human body, with Dr Andrew Murray
The Tibetan name for Mt. Everest, Qomolangma, translates roughly to 'mother goddess of the universe'
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Ever wondered what it would be like to climb Everest? Well, for millions of patients in intensive care, climbing their own Everest is a daily reality. Hypoxia, a condition where the body cannot extract sufficient oxygen from the air, is the cause of death for 25% of patients suffering ailments such as heart failure and cancers. A group of scientists in Cambridge have just released findings that might help tackle this problem, by looking at populations that live at altitude. Hypoxia occurs in a number of ways: a failure to extract oxygen from the air; a failure to transport the oxygen around the body; a failure of oxygen to reach tissues due to obstacles; or a failure to utilise the oxygen at the tissues. Dr Andrew Murray, Senior University Lecturer in the Department of Physiology, studied patients with heart failure during his PhD, and the effects of the associated hypoxia on metabolism. When cardiac muscle fails, blood is not pumped to all tissues
On Top of the World
effectively and oxygen delivery is reduced. This limits aerobic metabolism and less energy can be converted to the form of adenosine triphosphate - ‘ATP’ - the energy currency of the cell. It had been proposed that the low oxygen environment at high altitude could be used to study changes occurring in hypoxic patients at the tissue level, because of how cardiac and skeletal muscle alter oxygen utilisation. Professor Hugh Montgomery from UCL, who examined Murray’s work, first urged him to join projects using high altitude as a model for hypoxia. Montgomery was the research leader of the first Xtreme Everest expedition. Xtreme Everest is a non-profit organisation led by doctors and scientists from a collection of universities in the UK and USA, who conduct research with the aim to help intensive care patients. Murray says of Hugh: “He was very encouraging to me as a young scientist, and it was
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GUNTHER HAGLEITNER
too good an opportunity for me to pass. It was the perfect combination of great science and the promise of adventure, which was a big draw.” Since then, Murray has started his own lab in Cambridge, and has travelled to Everest Base Camp twice. In the first major venture in 2007, not only did Murray and his team climb with an entire mobile lab, they acted as the sole guinea pigs. With their own blood samples and muscle biopsies at altitude, they could measure markers such as levels of metabolites, which provided fresh data of heart and muscle energetics in hypoxia. They also made measurements of parameters including cognition, muscle remodelling and biomarkers in the blood. These provided important comparisons with the effects of hypoxia in patients, which turned out or lung diseases) admitted to the ICU, 25 will recover to be very similar. fully, 25 will die, and 50 will survive with permanently But what about studying people who live at altitude? compromised health. We don’t fully understand what Do they face the same effects? The Tibetan Plateau, individual differences allow for this variability,” explains about 4500m above sea level, has been home to human Murray. “But we do see similar patterns to lowlanders populations for about 6000 to 9000 years. One such at altitude: muscle remodelling, decreased fat oxidation, community is the Sherpa people, descended from loss of mitochondria and compromised function – Tibetans, who live in the Himalayas in Nepal. The team validating the altitude model for hypoxic conditions.” were keen to find out how long-term adaptation to such Looking ahead, Murray is excited about the conditions had an impact. “During our time in the possibilities in novel therapeutics. He says, “so far the Himalayas, we had made strong contacts with Nepali approach has been to increase patient oxygen levels, doctors and researchers, eager to collaborate, and with but that doesn’t help and there is some evidence that the Sherpas themselves,” says Murray, “and upon talking it does some harm. The muscles can’t utilise the extra to them we realised they would be more than willing to oxygen due to decline in mitochondrial activity.” participate in our projects.” The alternative would be to modulate metabolism to The team found that certain genetic variants of increase efficiency of oxygen use, and allow the patients metabolic regulators showed differences between to tolerate low oxygen better. This principle could be lowlanders and highlanders. It had previously been used to revolutionise medical practice to try to help shown that the Sherpas had a lower red blood cell (RBC) patients adapt to new conditions rather than fight to count than lowlanders at high altitude, even though reverse them. fewer RBCs implies reduced blood oxygen content. Murray’s work is a prime example of how creative However, this also reduced blood viscosity, resulting scientific endeavours can have a tangible impact on in increased blood flow and overall oxygen delivery to improving lives. It shows that a bit of encouragement, a tissues. Imagine the RBCs as delivery cars in a lane lot of hard work and a willingness for adventure can go many cars in a lane will lead to a traffic jam and slower a long way delivery times. However, fewer cars can travel faster and do more rounds, delivering a greater number of goods. The Sherpas also had unusually high levels of nitric Atreyi Chakrabarty is a 3rd year Natural Sciences student oxide (NO), a potent vasodilator, which supposedly at Clare college. Artwork by Sarah Vines “widens the lane” for RBCs and further increases blood flow. Consequently, their metabolism was much better than lowlanders’ at altitude. The advantages do not end there. The new findings revealed that they rely less on fat oxidation, which is a highly inefficient use of oxygen, compared to lowlanders at high altitude. By keeping this to a minimum, the Sherpas have high mitochondrial efficiency and minimal oxygen waste. These traits allow them to live, work and reproduce with a fraction of the oxygen available at sea level. Bringing the science back to the UK, Murray has been collaborating with clinicians in pilot studies of patients in intensive care. “Out of every 100 patients (with heart
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“Out of every 100 patients (with heart or lung diseases) admitted to the ICU, 25 will recover fully, 25 will die, and 50 will survive with permanently compromised health. We don’t fully understand what individual differences allow for this variability”
On Top of the World
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How to Study a Polar Bear Rachael Beasley investigates how scientists get to grips with these 400 kilogram behemoth bears in one of Earth's most inhospitable environments
Following individual polar bears is tremendously difficult. The 2017 BBC documentary Snow Bears, features a dramatised story following a mother and her two cubs, but the documentary makers had to piece new and archive footage together from 12 different animals to achieve their story
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As you might imagine, studying polar bears is difficult. Even if the bears themselves were not strong and confident predators, their habitat provides further challenges to scientists in their attempt to learn more about this vulnerable mammal. Polar bears are nomadic and generally solitary, which results in home ranges of hundreds of miles square and low population densities. Combine this with the vast, mutable Arctic landscape and the average temperature of -40oC, and it’s clear that both scientist and equipment face a staggeringly tough time. Polar bears hit the limelight in the 1950s and 60s, when they were intensely hunted. This stimulated a great interest in their conservation and biology, and prompted the application and development of a wide range of techniques to study them. One of the first priorities was, and still is, to monitor the population size. This is especially important now in the heat of climate warming, their biggest threat. Given the huge area of the Arctic, the only feasible way to do this is by helicopter. As well as being time consuming and expensive, the cold weather increases the risk of mechanical failure; scientists have had many narrow escapes when the occasional engine stops, or they get blown off route. And, of course, the isolation of the Arctic only enhances the risk. As with all science, the rewards are often unpredictable, and even with numerous safe flights, there’s no guarantee of seeing a bear. It is a testament to the tenacity of those who study these animals that population data gets collected at all! A widespread method to measure population size is 'mark and recapture'. This involves tranquilising the bear and tagging it with white delrin ear tags (delrin is a highly durable synthetic polymer). They used to use coloured ones, but the pesky polar bears kept noticing them and sometimes groomed them off each other! The researchers also place a tattoo along the gum line. Microchipping is currently being piloted in Canada, but predominantly is to help monitor poaching. Capturing is then repeated in the following year, and using the ratio of untagged to tagged polar bears caught the population size can be estimated. Yet, even with such a tried and tested method, the confidence levels can be wide. Polar bears, surprisingly, don’t respect human boundaries so could easily amble out of the study area, and often segregate themselves in different locations depending on demographic cohorts. Thus, this method
How to Study a Polar Bear
has estimated between 20,000 and 26,000 individuals who are listed as vulnerable. However, the vastness of the Arctic, combined with the limited timeframe to collect data, means that 9 of the 19 subpopulations remain data deficient. After finding a bear, the animal is tranquilised and the scientists safely move in to collect further data on the health, genetics and diet of the individual. Moving quickly - as the bear is tranquilised for only a short time to minimise stress - they measure length, circumference around the shoulder, sometimes weight and take samples of blood, fat and other tissues. Age can be determined by removing a premolar, and then softening it in acid in the lab to reveal the cementum rings which, like tree rings, increase with age. A relatively recent advancement in this analysis is the use of quantitative fatty acid signature analysis; this can determine the diet of an individual, accomplished by comparing the proportion of fatty acid types it has relative to potential prey organisms. This is slowly being made more accurate, by using calibrations and mathematical models to account for differential metabolism of the fatty acid types. There is some resistance, however, to the work these scientists are carrying out. The local Inuit, especially in Nunavut, disagree with the use of the ‘mark and recapture’ method and the handling of the bears. At first the locals believed that tranquilising the bears often left them too shaken to stand and wait by seal aglus (‘breathing holes’ in the ice) to hunt, which has led to the declining body condition in the bears. Countering this, numerous studies in the field, such as those by Dr Ian Stirling, Dr Lily Peacock and Dr Francois Messier, show that immobilising bears has generally negligible impacts on their health, and that climate warming is the actual culprit. Even so, some Inuit still oppose the process, which is exacerbated by Health Canada’s recommendation to wait 45 days between tranquilising bears and hunting them; this is testing for the locals who hunt the bears for subsistence. This resistance, as well as economic and accessibility factors in studying the bears, has led to a recent (but limited) use of aircraft monitoring and satellite technology to get population size data as an alternative. Scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute found promising reliability in assessing bears from planes moving along transect lines, as did a study by Dr Seth Stapleton at the University of Minnesota, in comparing satellite images from different Lent 2018
CATHERINE PROWSE
dates to find polar bears on the ground. Scientists of only two months compared to the several years of the concede that for the time being these are the only ways to collars. Further work to increase this lifespan is currently get rough estimates of subpopulations that are difficult to focused on improving their robustness, and reducing reach. The problem, however, is that a lot of data - such their noticeability to bears, who can tear them off. as sex, body weight, and age - obviously go unreported A final advancement - still in its infancy - is to by these methods. place tri-axial accelerometers on the bears. These Another method to reduce the use of drugs and accelerometers, like the ones in your phone, measure handling are biopsy darts. These simply involve shooting gravitational acceleration and inertial velocity to a bear with a dart that collects fur, hair and subcutaneous provide data which can be correlated with the particular tissue as it enters, and will, normally, fall out again. behaviour the bear is carrying out. A 2017 study has Therefore, data can be collected from the bear without found that only walking, running and swimming are it being made immobile. A study this year found that reliably determined, but, like with the ear tags, further this method was 99.3% successful at obtaining genetic development will hopefully lead to wider applicability. information, including its sex, and there was an 80% Thus it is clear that technological advances are essential success rate of collecting data with just one dart. With to overcoming the challenges of studying polar bears; some improvements to the method, like increasing its there is no doubt this interdisciplinary approach to effectiveness of obtaining a comprehensive fat sample, conservation biology promises more exciting innovations this could be incredibly useful in reducing tensions with in the not so distant future.That said, we need to act fast; the Inuit, and sampling more bears. with over two thirds of polar bears predicted to be extinct There are other areas with room for technological by 2050, study and interest in this fascinating animal advancements. Due to the difficulties of consistently needs to be confidently directed to ensure this King of finding polar bears, biotelemetric equipment has been the Arctic persists regularly fitted to bears since the 1970s. Radio collars are the most commonplace, providing detailed tracking information all year round, and they can have other Rachael Beasley is a 3rd year student studying sensors connected to them. For example external and Biological Natural Sciences at Homerton College. internal thermo-sensors allow detection of denning Artwork by Catherine Prowse behaviours (dens, and hence the bears inside them, are warmer than the cold outside), or tell you if the bear is even alive! Mapping this data on satellite imagery allows greater details of habitat selection and range to be found. Yet, these collars can only be used on adult females; the necks of males are larger than their heads so the collar would simply fall off, and juveniles and subadults would suffocate as they grew. This has led to the innovation of satellite ear tags, but they have the failing of a life span Lent 2018
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Ships to Rocket Ships How expeditionary science changed the course of civilisation
FOCUS “Let’s go see what’s out there” So says Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, gazing in wonder at the stars before him, thus concluding the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The next 7 years would see the establishment of the franchise’s arguably most ubiquitous instalment as a world standard for science on television. Picard was talking about all there was yet to see: new interstellar phenomena, new life, and new science waiting to be discovered. Star Trek resonates with a lot of scientists and science enthusiasts because it celebrates something at the core of why they do what they do. They explore. All science involves some kind of exploration – be that scanning across the night sky or examining microscope slides, or asking questions no one has before. But there is something particularly captivating about pioneering exploration, going into the unknown to observe “what’s out there”. It is worth remembering how much these adventures have given our fields, in understanding but also in technologies, and launching our own expeditions into the unknown with renewed vigour. The beginnings of what might justifiably be called modern science are often traced in part to the second half of the European Age of Exploration, in the 17th-18th centuries. As the world was discovered and catalogued (and colonised), there was more and more for Europeans to analyse, understand and explain. Scientia potentia est - knowledge is power, a quote commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, the so-called father of empirical science. And power is money. This trinity of interests has driven the nations of history to explore. Why was it that Columbus was sailing to the New World? To seek out new life and new civilisations? Not quite – as is commonly known today, he was trying to find a new sea route to India, to provide security for the fertile trade routes of exotic spices and paraphernalia. Similarly, James Cook’s first Voyage to the pacific (1768-1771), while ostensibly intended to reach the right locations to allow scientific observations of the upcoming transit of Venus, veered off this course to complete Cook’s sealed orders of Imperial Importance: the search for Terra Australis Incognita, a presumed Southern land that would bring much economic and prestige gain to the empire that found it. Today we know it under the name of Australia.
The First Woman to Circumnavigate the Earth While the first man around the world, Louis de Bougainville, has made a name for himself, the same cannot be said for the first woman to circumvent our globe. And yet, she was there, on that very boat, when the navigator set sail for his famous – and last – journey. This is the story of Jeanne Barrett. Born in France in 1740, she became the housekeeper, as well as the romantic partner of Philibert Commerson, a famous naturalist. When he was called to take part in Bougainville’s expedition, she joined him as his valet. This was a brave move, as women at the time were forbidden on royal ships, risking death when caught. Jeanne bound her breasts, put on a male disguise, and prepared herself to hide her true identity for months on end on a crowded ship. The ruse worked (or everybody turned a blind eye…) until two years later, when the crew reached Tahiti and the locals blew her cover. She and Commerson disembarked a few months later to stay in what is now Indonesia. Years later, after Commerson died, Jeanne made her way back to France, achieving her world tour. There, she was awarded a pension by the French Ministry of the Navy, proof of the high regard in which she was held. Jeanne was a talented botanist, relentlessly collecting and categorising samples all over the world, from Brazil to Polynesia. Commerson was sick for most of the trip, and Jeanne did the bulk of the botanical work. Today, only one species, Solanum baretiae, commemorates her life EL
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FOCUS The cover image of Sir Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (‘New Instrument’) – a philosophical work in which he outlines a new standard for the scientific method based on experiment and evidence-based reasoning. Before Bacon, scientists often relied on their existing knowledge of the world around them to deduce how the world worked; to perform experiments, in an artificially controlled environment, was a strange thing
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That said, one needs only look at the names of the ships taking part in Cook’s expedition to see that exploration was very much a conscious part of the task: HMS Endeavour on his first voyage, and the Resolution and Adventure on his second. And science was still undeniably a focus. The great number of observations by botanical heavyweights Joseph Banks (of the Royal Society) and Daniel Solander led to the naming of the now famous Botany Bay, where Europeans first landed on Australia. Cook in fact did not believe this to be the famed Terra Australis, though when no further Southern continents were discovered, the name began to stick. Furthermore, the observations of the transit of Venus were intended for the noble purpose of calculating the distance between the Earth and the Sun – a feat that was accomplished to within only a few percent of the value known today. For the European empires in the Age of Exploration, science was a welcome by-product of territorial expansion and trade exploration. It generated prestige and income, but was rarely being pursued in its own right. Carl Linnaeus, one of the most famous naturalists of the 18th century, is a prime example of this ambiguity. He adorned his home with exotic plants and animals from faraway jungles and deserts, many of which he described and categorised. He introduced the binomial nomenclature zoologists know and love today (for instance Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus being a genus and Tyrannosaurus rex a species): this contributed to the revolution in categorisation required to handle the new influx of information in the age of discovery. Today he is remembered as the father of taxonomy. But Linnaeus, too, understood the triangular relationship between knowledge, money and power. His native empire of Sweden had been slow to join the race of colonisation and exploration of the wider world; he hoped he could bring this world to Sweden instead. Linnaeus attempted to grow sub-equatorial spices and fruits in the cold Northern climate of his homeland, for sale to other nations. He tried to domesticate exotic animals. He even convinced the Swedish crown to let him attempt to grow pearls in the northern part of the country – and astonishingly he had some success (his technique was similar to one that Chinese pearl cultures had been employing for years). While scientific developments and inquiry came with European exploration, so did cultural superiority and conquest. A chilling example is provided by writer Andrew Chapman, who discusses the treatment and public view of a man known as Omai. Omai was a so called “noble savage” – an islander brought back on one of James Cook’s expeditions as a specimen for the enjoyment of the British upper classes. “The idea of the ‘noble savage’ seems a necessary foil to the excessive cultivation of 18th-century society,” writes Chapman. “The presence of these people from vastly different cultures affords the elite the opportunity to flatter themselves by irony: see
how he has a natural grace, which we can only acquire by education. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could live a simple life hunting for fish and wearing next to nothing, instead of having to put up with all our riches and sophistication?”. Historians in the field today often refer to many such actions of the “savage nobles” of the time. The age of exploration – of Cook, Linnaeus, and so many more – ended centuries ago, though their legacy lives on. While perhaps not as famous, there are plenty of modern explorers in the sciences today. In modern expeditionary science, the scientific interest is no longer simply a happy by-product of an otherwise commercial venture. Scientists themselves often drive the course of exploration. This has become more common in the last couple of hundred years, as the impacts of industrialisation and globalisation have meant that science, and the technology it produces, has become ever more central and economically important to us all. Science makes money. As they were in the past, the seas are still the main playing ground for explorative efforts. This time however, it is not what is on the surface that counts. We are interested in something deeper. Deep sea drilling. In the early 1960s, American earth scientists were looking for a way to tap in to the vast funding and resources being allocated to projects of national importance like the space race. They needed a project that was just as big, just as groundbreaking (literally in this case) and promising just as much of an American display Lent 2018
FOCUS of economic and technological superiority. ‘Project Mohole’ was their answer. The idea was to drill into the Earth’s crust and reach the Mohorovicic discontinuity, the ‘Moho’, which divides the crust from the mantle. Doing this would mean a better understanding of the dynamics of the inner Earth. The deepest hole was drilled east of the Caribbean and penetrated nearly two hundred metres below the sea floor, after the drill had travelled through three and a half kilometres of water. Reaching such depths (of water) was unprecedented at the time. The project was also instrumental in the development of the ‘dynamic positioning system’ which allowed ships to drill successfully as untethered platforms. Not as useful to national prestige as the space race, however, funding was cut in 1966. The next phase of organised ocean drilling was the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), beginning 1968. With new coring technology developed to solve problems with extracting samples, and a good idea of what they were looking for, these pioneering scientists made some discoveries fundamental to our understanding of our planet. For one, they revealed how the surface of the Earth moves. Anyone who has seen Al Gore’s 2006 documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ might recall his anecdote about a schoolboy questioning his teacher on these two continents and their relative shapes: “Did they ever fit together?” he asks, referring to the way that the East coast of South America and West coast of Africa mirror one another like two pieces of a jigsaw. Well, as it turns out, they did. Yet, the theories of continental drift – that the continents move across Earth’s surface over vast timescales – and plate tectonics (explaining how they do so) were not adhered to until the 1950s and 60s. According to the plate tectonic theory, the Earth’s surface is made up of a series of ‘tectonic’ plates. These plates are in constant motion because of convection currents in the mantle below – the mantle material moves, and the plate on top moves too (taking the continents with them). Where they meet, they have various interactions - sliding past one another, compressing one another to form mountains or forcing one plate beneath the other to be destroyed within the mantle. Destroyed crust is proposed to be replaced by new ocean floor being created constantly at vast spreading ridges in the middle of the oceans. These ‘mid-ocean ridges’ or ‘oceanic ridges’ occur where two plates are moving apart, causing mantle material to rise up from below to fill the gap created. Due to the excess heat and new material spilling out, the ridge builds up higher than the seafloor around it. It was already known that such ridges exist – long chains of high land in the middle of many of the world’s oceans had been mapped using techniques like sonar, which can take ‘pictures’ of the seafloor by measuring the time it takes for sound waves to be reflected. The DSDP went further. The crew drilled at 10 different locations across the oceanic ridge between the continents of South America and Africa to investigate the relationship between them. The core samples recovered across the ridge in the DSDP showed that ocean crust on either side was Lent 2018
symmetrical, in that rock cored from one side had identical magnetic signatures to rock the same distance on the other side of the ridge. This could only be true if it had originally been produced at the same time and place – at the midocean ridge. Furthermore, it was shown that the seafloor that spreads from ridges like these is incredibly young compared to the age of the Earth (oceanic crust is not older than about 200 million years, in comparison to the 4.5 billion year old Earth). This owes to its continual destruction at the ‘subduction zones’ where tectonic plates go to die, being drawn down into the Earth’s mantle. This finally confirmed Alfred Wegener’s theory that continents could and did move, and bolstered the young idea of plate tectonics, which was also being employed at the time to explain the origins of mountains and ocean trenches Focus
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Bacon’s original title page for the Novum Organum showed a galleon sailing through the Pillars of Hercules at the strait of Gibraltar, marking the exit of the Mediterranean and thus, the known world, in Greek Mythology. On the pillars was inscribed a warning: “Non Plus Ultra” – nothing further beyond. Bacon hoped his readers would have the courage to chart unknown territory. A reimagining of Bacon’s cover in view of modern science is given to the right
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(subduction zones), and the earthquakes that seemed to occur near them. After Albert Einstein published his theories of relativity, after Hitler invaded Poland and sparked the largest war in history, after the Cuban Missile Crisis had threatened humanity’s very existence, the dynamics of the ground on which humans stand was finally understood. More recently, the successive International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) discovered and investigated the fault that caused the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, whose death toll numbers in the hundreds of thousands. It had broken along an unprecedented distance of 1500 km (900 miles), explaining the vast amounts of energy released. Internationally collaborative ocean drilling continues to this day. Taking science into the unknown has been incredibly valuable in driving scientific, social and technological progress. What sorts of expeditionary science are being undertaken right now, that might promise future breakthroughs? For one, not all of Earth’s dry land has been wellexplored. Papua New Guinea for instance has gained traction in the last two decades as a site for scientific expeditions, with its unmapped forests and volcanoes. The Nature Conservancy sent a team of conservation experts to undertake a bioacoustics project in the Adalbert mountain range, using the forest soundscape to assess their ecological health in response to human development in the region. The University of Cambridge dispatched earth scientists to New Guinea last September to perform the world’s first detailed study of carbon degassing from the islands’ isolated volcanoes, to better understand the global carbon cycle. Both projects featured intrepid explorers who braved rough terrain, dense forestry, militant malaria-bearing mosquitoes and wild animals to deepen our understanding of the unknown. Meanwhile, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that a whopping 95% of the ocean is still not yet explored. Hydrothermal vents – where seawater is heated deep underground to temperatures sometimes in excess of 400°C – with their hot gas plumes, tubeworms and giant clams, may now be commonly illustrated in any oceanography textbook, but its discovery was actually fairly recent. Their first observation was in 1977 by the crew of the Alvin, a submersible for three that explored the Galapagos Rift. “The entire volume of the world’s oceans is going inside the earth and out, every six to eight million years,” says Dr. Robert Ballard, who worked with Alvin, in an interview with Scientific American Frontiers. “And that’s what’s caused the chemistry of the world’s oceans. And we didn’t know that.” A tempting next stage of pioneering science is of course to go to Mars. Dr. Robert Zubrin is an American
aerospace engineer who designed Mars Direct, showing for the first time that going to Mars needs not be unfeasibly expensive. He has argued strongly for a human expedition to Mars in the near future. “Ask yourself: What happened in 1492?” says Zubrin, speaking at the NASA Ames Research Centre in July 2014. Perhaps the most obvious response, at least to the western reader, is ‘Columbus sailed in 1492’. Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World and, though he was not the first, his voyage spawned an age of discovery and colonisation in the Americas that – for better or worse – has shaped the course of our planet’s history. “But that is not the only thing that happened in 1492”, Zubrin explains. “In 1492, England and France signed a peace treaty.” he says. “In 1492, the Borgias took over the papacy. In 1492, Lorenzo De’Medici, the richest man in the world, died.” he continues. “A lot of things happened, and if there had been newspapers in 1492, which there weren’t but if there were, those would have been the headlines, not this Italian weaver’s son taking a bunch of ships and sailing off to nowhere!” Zubrin quips. “But Columbus is what we remember, not the Borgias taking over the papacy.” Zubrin goes on to extend his point into the modern day. “Five hundred years from now, people are not going to remember which faction came out on top in Iraq, or Syria, or whatever...but they will remember what we do to make their civilisation possible.” Zubrin argues that, as important current events and politics may be, it is breakthroughs in exploration like going to Mars that advance the species for good in the long run. Expeditionary science helped found the tradition as we know it today. It has provided and continues to provide fundamental advances in many areas of our sciences, proving that it is sometimes by looking where it is difficult to look that the most interesting answers are found. It inspires new generations, and more than that it has often been the main pilot controlling the course of our civilisations over long periods of time. It could do us all well to remember the value in exploring the unknown, discovering the challenges to be overcome, and bravely taking the next big step. Humans have always been a species of explorers – who knows what the next adventure holds for us
Seán Thór Herron, Silas Yeem Kai Euan and Krystyna Smolinsk are 3rd Year Natural Science students at Magdalene, St. Johns and Emmanuel colleges respectively. Elsa Loissel is a features editor at eLife in Cambridge. Colour artwork by Molly Cranston, blackand-white artwork by Lucy Hart
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Size Matters: Mapping a Miniature Brain Alex Bates discusses his PhD on mapping a small part of the fly brain "Please draw a picture of a juvenile fruit fly brain,” Stephen Fry invited his guest panelists late in the ‘M’ season of the popular fact show QI. “I’ll wager it doesn’t have one,” punted Alan Davies exasperatedly, before proceeding to draw a banana. He did not seem that surprised the brain turned out to look much more phallic than that. But the show made a mistake, they showed an adult fruit fly central nervous system when actually its larval equivalent looks far more like that most famous of male appendages. Perhaps more damningly, the image they showed included the fly’s equivalent of the spinal cord and really, if you dangled the human spinal cord provocatively under the brain it is going to summon a phallus in the highly susceptible human mind. But studying the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster, serves a greater purpose than contributing to the cottage industry scrutinising QI factoids. In fact, it is serious business. Originating from equatorial Africa, the humble fruit fly was used to pioneer genetic research for over a century. Because they breed fast and are cheap to maintain, the early 1900s saw Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students at Columbia University use them to prove that males and females can inherit different genetic information, show that ionising radiation damages genes and build a genetic map of the animal which laid the groundwork for a complete DNA sequencing of its major genes in 2000. Waves were soon after made in neuroscience. The vinegar fly possess a complex nervous system, one of the smallest capable of performing high level tasks such as learning and memory. The genetic toolkit begun by Morgan has been expanded and applied to the study of some of the most serious, intractable medical conditions such as ataxia, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson’s disease. Whilst this valuable work has strikingly improved our knowledge of brain-related disease, most of these studies tended only to ‘break’ bits of the fly’s biology, and use the results to guess what the broken things did. In a well known essay, “Can biologists fix a radio?”, Yuri Lazebnik noted that biologists would not understand how a radio works by breaking and sorting bits, rather the insight of an electrical engineer is needed. A circuit diagram is warranted. After all, assigning functions to bits of brain ‘this bit is for seeing because when we damage it, it cannot see’ - does not actually describe how a brain works. I would like to build such a diagram for a little piece of vinegar fly brain. The part of the brain my laboratory at the MRC LMB wants to understand is a part of the brain thought to trigger a fly’s instinctual behaviour, analogous 26
Mapping a Miniature Brain
A single, female brain was chosen from a selection that had been dissected out
The brain was cut into ~7,000 sections using a diamond-tipped knife, each only 50 nanometres thick An electron micrograph showing cable from dozens of neurons smushed together
Each section was imaged by a transmission electron microscope in a series of small squares at a resolution of 4 x 4 nanometres Neurons are now being reconstructed from assembled micrograph data by scores of scientists world-wide
We build circuit diagrams of connected neurons in order to see whole neural networks that can tell us about the architecture of the brain
Then we go to the wetlab and use molecular and genetic techniques to test the hypotheses we create from looking at our networks, e.g. seeing how manipulating these networks changes behaviour Lent 2018
up to a week to complete one of her 150,000, much larger neurons. Even storing all the data from the human brain at an appropriate resolution would fill an area the size of Cambridge with four stories of state-of-the-art data pods. To trace out its 86 billion neurons and their connections we would need to employ the population of Earth for months. That is why the vinegar fly brain is ideal. It is small enough to manage and maybe small enough to understand, yet large enough to produce behaviour we readily recognise in mammals, from courtship dances to addiction. My aim, with collaborators, is to try to understand the connectivity of all the neurons involved in routing smell information to the instinctual part of the maggot brain, and some similar key pathways in Tracey’s much larger noggin. Already, we are finding new connections with the fly’s memory centre that we have never seen using conventional microscopy. Success in this endeavour will not result in an answer to the question, “How do flies respond instinctively to a smell, and how to they learn to act differently?”. If the brain is a digital radio, mapping its neurons gives you a circuit board but it does not tell you much about its software, the megabytes of genetic information governing cellular processes that determine how components actually work, individually and together. What it does do is constrain the possible ways in which our chosen system works, after which we need to return to genetics to gain control of individual neurons in the brain and return to, amongst others, the old practices of breaking them to infer yet more about the system. What I think is clear, however, is that just as Drosophila paved the way for a ‘genomic’ revolution in the 1900s, the 2010s will see its puny penis brain spearhead a ‘connectomic’ one Alex Bates is a PhD student at the MRC LMB in the Jefferis group. Artwork by Philipp Schlegel
ALEX BATES
with the human amygdala, in response to different smells. Specifically, I want to understand how the fly’s memory system talks with this instinctual behaviour generator, the interaction needed, for example, to learn that the pleasant smell of a certain ripe fruit is actually bad because predatory wasps lurk about it. Even the simple fly cannot adapt only at the scale of evolution, it needs to learn to continue to live. Our collaborators at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have taken the brain from a newly hatched maggot and an adult female fly, salami-sliced them into thousands of sections and imaged each with an electron microscope. Electron microscopy enables researchers to examine tissue at the nanometer range, visualising all the ‘wires’ in the brain and, crucially, all the connections these wires make upon one another. These wires are all squished together much more like a bowl of spaghetti than the veins in your arm. The first whole nervous system mapped in this way, that of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, sports a meagre 302 neurons but took 14 years at the MRC LMB in the 1970s-80s to complete. Then, the reconstruction method, ‘tracing’, was to mark neurons out from one another in electron micrograph print-outs with a felt-tip pen and the data storage method was to file these micrographs away on shelves and shelves of folders. Today, tracing is done with computers and laboured on by dozens of scientists since researchers still need to look at the micrographs online through an interface known as the ‘Google maps’ of brains. Even now it takes at least a working week to completely rebuild one of adult fly's neurons by following its branching, tree-like structure through consecutive slices. The process is similar to manually drawing out a road map from Google’s satellite images. A few of us working on the female adult brain affectionately call it ‘Tracey’. For Tracey, it takes
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Mapping a Miniature Brain
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Space Rocks, Astronauts and the Power of TV: a Conversation with Timothy Gregory Jack McMinn and Seán Herron talk physics and geology with the finalist from the BBC's 'Astronaut Ever wondered if you have what it takes to work in the high-risk environment of outer space? The recent BBC series Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes set out to answer this, with astronaut Chris Hadfield and a panel of experts organising an Apprentice-like affair. Over a dozen or so weeks, the show saw applicants subjected to a series of physically and mentally gruelling tasks, from scuba-diving and flying helicopters to coming to terms with the concept of death. Ultimately, Suzie Imber, 33, an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Leicester and an amateur mountaineer, took home the prize – the promise of a recommendation by astronaut Chris Hadfield for involvement with Europe’s space programme. Timothy Gregory, one of the finalists, stood out as one of the most memorable contestants, being the youngest by nearly a decade. The programme has made him a minor celebrity. He has spoken recently at Sea Mills Primary School, as well as his academic hometurf of Bristol University, about his experiences with the various trials he mastered under the guidance of Chris Hadfield. However, Timothy has not lost sight of what’s important to him - he has a paper on meteorites under his belt, and continues to study chondrules (the component grains of ancient asteroids) for his PhD. He is, at heart, both an astronomer and a geologist, and both these fields factor into his present work. His self-proclaimed love of chickpeas (judging by his Twitter profile) has factored less into his studies thus far. BlueSci’s Sean Herron recently got the opportunity to chat to Timothy about his experiences on the show, and their shared interest in earth sciences. SH: Which task in the ‘Astronauts’ series did you find the most enjoyable? TG: If I had to choose one single point, it was after the lagoon dive. Kerry, Suzie[the other finalists], and I each got assigned a role. I was the lead diver, Suzie was the dive planner and Kerry had to present the data that we collected when we were down there… not the roles that we would have naturally chosen. I really value that 28
A Conversation with Timothy Gregory
trust that they put in me. I think that is a testament to how close we had all grown during our time in selection. SH: How long did the whole process actually take? It wasn’t clear from the show and surrounding information. TG: It took almost two months. SH: Okay, so quite intense then! TG: Very intense, yeah! It wasn’t just the tests…the amount of waiting that we did as well was draining. They took our phones and iPods off of us as well, so we only had each other. Not having any contact with the outside world was a big advantage – I’m very glad that it was that way, because it allowed me to focus on the process and be totally immersed in it. We didn’t find out a lot of the tests until we were in the room about to do it. SH: Thrown in the deep end, then? TG: Absolutely. For some of them, you had a few hours of notice, but there was nothing you could do to prepare for it. For example, the helicopter test - it was a couple of hours between finding out I was going to be doing that, and being sat in the cockpit! A lot of the time it felt like they were testing our innate ability at particular tests - also our ability to adapt, and have a good crack at a new thing. SH: What was the most important motivation for you to get where you are today? TG: I think curiosity is the most important thing. It’s been the ever-present theme in my life so far. It’s the reason I took an interest in science to begin with as a child, the reason that I worked hard at A-Levels, and the reason why I’m still continuing to do science now. It drives my hobbies as well: with doing a geology degree, you spend a lot of time in the field, which really feeds into my interest in hiking and stuff like that. SH: Is challenging yourself to push frontiers also important? TG: Yeah, definitely - I think that is a side-effect of the curiosity. Curiosity is the fundamental thing. That’s the cause, and the effect is adventure, and the wanting to find things out. Lent 2018
SH: What’s your favourite branch of geology (obviously you like geochemistry!) TG: That’s a good one. My favourite branch of terrestrial Earth geology is probably sedimentology. SH: My favourite too! TG: Yeah, it’s awesome! Sedimentary rocks preserve the history of life on Earth. SH: It’s like time travel. TG: I always remember thinking as an undergrad that sedimentary rocks are like a book. You go further back in time as you peel the layers away, and each one has a slightly different thing to tell you - when you piece all the layers together, you end up with a story of the environment those rocks were formed in. When you read enough of them all over the Earth, you really get to piece together quite a good idea of the history of the Earth. Igneous and metamorphic rocks undoubtedly play a big part in that too - they record their own things that sedimentary rocks can’t - but I find it particularly compelling that sedimentary rocks contain the record of life on Earth. SH: Would you say that your love for rocks and space ultimately come from the same source? TG: Oh yeah - as a kid, I was interested in everything. I think I went through a phase of everything. I was a keen birdwatcher as a child. I went through a cloud spotting phase, a mushroom identification phase. I was just interested in so
Lent 2018
much stuff, but rocks – it’s always been there. My mum bought me a cabinet from IKEA – one of those cheap plywood ones - and I made a little museum exhibit in my bedroom. I’d print off little geological timelines and had this exhibition of rocks in my room. I’ve always just been fascinated with them and I’m really lucky that that fascination has never been stamped out of me... When I’m enjoying myself, that’s when I perform best - and gosh did I enjoy myself during the filming... I remember thinking to myself several times during the process, ‘Ah Tim, this is going to be so short-lived. It’s going to be over before you know it – you could be going home tomorrow. But make the most of it.’ And that was not only good for me, because I enjoyed it, but good for my performance as well" Jack McMinn is a 3rd year zoologist at Emmanuel College. Seán Herron is a 3rd year Earth Scientist at Magdalene college. Artwork by Nina Carter
A Conversation with Timothy Gregory
29
SNOW CRYSTALS, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL
Pavilion: BlueSci explores early science illustration in the Fitzwilliam Museum archives Cecilia Louisa Glaisher (1828-1892), née Belville, worked at a time when detailed illustrations were often used to record and present the findings of the Victorian scientific community. Her images of snow crystals (above) were documentations of observations she and her husband, Victorian scientist James Glaisher, made for his paper ‘On the Severe Weather at the beginning of the year 1855; and on Snow and Snow-crystals’. Cecilia Glaisher made precise, pen and ink illustrations showing snow crystal structures at various magnifications which she then contact printed photographically, using William Henry Fox Talbot’s ‘photogenic drawing’ process. This creates a negative image in which the snow crystal structures appear white. Subsequent crystallographic researchers have noted that the images are ‘the most accurate observations published before the development of photomicrography’. While words like ‘Sea Spleenwort’, ‘True Maidenhair’ and ‘sporelings’ are not widely used today, Glaisher’s ethereal photographs of ferns (left) were intended to illustrate a publication on British Ferns in the midst of the famous Victorian pteridomania (fern craze). Again using Talbot’s 30
Pavilion
process, these were made by placing the fern on writing or drawing paper made light sensitive by application of salt (sodium chloride) and silver nitrate, forming silver chloride. This darkens on exposure to light, producing a negative image from which multiple positive prints could be made and distributed. Cecilia Glaisher’s images were widely praised and exhibited at learned societies, and still today provide a fascinating insight into the world of crystallography and natural shapes. Researchers have also noted that, despite increasing marginalisation of women in the increasingly ‘professionalised’ field of Victorian science, it is likely Cecilia Glaisher played a more active role in the research than she was publicly credited with at the time. As a result, as well as being beautiful images in their own right, Glaisher’s work arguably represents an intriguing moment where the fields of art, technology and science were perhaps less distinct than they are today. Her son, Cambridge mathematician James Whitbread Lee Glaisher, left much of Glaisher’s work to the university with the note: “my mother’s work… of some value” MD Lent 2018
All images Š The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Bluesci wishes to thank the Fitzwilliam Museum image library and Caroline Marten for their support and assistance. An online exhibition of Cecilia Glaisher’s work researched and curated by Caroline Marten can be seen at http://www.fitzmuseum.cam. ac.uk/gallery/ceciliaglaisher/
Weird and Wonderful A selection of the wackiest research in the world of science Harry Potter and the Reactive Profile Picture If you ever worried that your online avatars were too static, or online banking app bots a little cold, a new collaboration between Facebook and Tel-Aviv University could be the answer. The project, published in November, has managed to not only animate the Mona Lisa and a variety of emojis, but also to bring a series of real human photographs to smiling, frowning and ‘idle’ life. While previous moving image technologies required videos, multiple images or manual user interactions to create manipulations, the new technique introduces an automated process that can be applied to a single still headshot. Using standard expressions mapped from a ‘driving video’ of a different subject, the target portrait is manipulated by imitation using 2D warps (animations of slight rotations and tilts). Fine-scale dynamic details – such as creases and wrinkles - are then added to create a photo-realistic effect, and regions hidden in the target face (such as teeth) are ‘hallucinated’. The result is a moving, breathing, expressive photograph, and even a mockedup Facebook profile picture that reacts to triggers from a viewer. The authors say the next stage is to develop methods of selecting ‘driver’ videos that more accurately match the target image, and to introduce compatibility with 3D and possibly even AI technology md
Read, learn, and inwardly digest In 2008, Goldstein and colleagues were concerned about a hole in the gastroenterology literature. It’s common knowledge that many a person has “first solaced his mind, then wiped his behind”, according to the limerick, but no-one had studied the effect of toilet reading on digestive health. Goldstein et al. hypothesised that toilet reading could make defecation easier by providing relaxation, and tested this by quizzing 500 Israeli adults about their lavatory library habits. Their results, published in the journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility, showed that although toilet readers considered themselves less constipated, there was no statistically 35
Weird and Wonderful
significant difference between readers and non-readers. (Readers also complained more of haemorrhoids, which doesn’t sound healthy.) Sadly, Goldstein et al. failed to eliminate all sources of uncertainty: they didn’t survey their subjects’ reading matter. Perhaps their readers simply hadn’t consumed enough thrillers to be scared ...less – but then again, perhaps some things should remain sacred, and reviewers should keep their potty mouths shut. In fact, Goldstein et al. are part of a steady stream of toilet research. The 2000 IgNobel in Public health went to a terrifying study of collapsing toilet seats in Glasgow, and since then the An(n)als of Improbable Research have been replete with toilet trivia. There’s a custom-designed desk for toilet users (U.S. Patent filed in 2011), complete with a shelf for coffee or nourishment. (In case the user wants to replenish what he has lost?) Then there’s Lustig et al.’s 2017 study linking deep tissue injury with prolonged sitting time. (That definitely rules out War and Peace.) The take-home message? If there’s a queue for your local throne, it’s definitely tl/dr. One thing is for sure: Cambridge students, these stools aren’t the ones on which you’d want to sit your Tripos ajt
Pterodactyls lived like seagulls Pterosaurs were the the dominant airborne animals of the Mesozoic Era (252-66 million years ago), dying out alongside the dinosaurs and being ecologically replaced by birds. However, a new study by Xiaolin Wang et al. seems to suggest that pterosaurs often used the same evolutionary strategies as their avian replacements. Fossilised embryos of Hamipterus, a Chinese cousin of the famous Pteranodon, were found still inside their eggs and subsequently analysed; this revealed that, in spite of the eggs being close to hatching, many of their bones lacked proper ossification. Wang et al. thus hypothesise that newborn Hamipterus were unable to fly, and relied on their parents for food. This, along with the fact that over 100 eggs were found on one site over 4 consecutive geological levels, could mean that Hamipterus nested like modern seagulls and puffins, in large long-term colonies. This strategy probably isn’t universal across pterosaurs. 2011 work by Junchang Lü et al. on Darwinopterus suggested that this species buried and abandoned their eggs in a similar fashion to sea turtles, with the young being able to fly immediately after hatching. This reflects the diversity of pterosaur life histories, and explains in part why the group was so successful jm
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