BlueSci Issue 25 - Michaelmas 2012

The Cambridge University science magazine from

Cambridge University science magazine

FOCUS

Armchair Experimentation

Michaelmas 2012 Issue 25 www.bluesci.co.uk

Academic Spring . Sleep Deprivation Astrobiology . Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Michaelmas 2012 Issue 25

Contents

Cambridge University science magazine

Features

Regulars

6

We Look Like You

8

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on

10

Whose Training is it Anyway?

A History of Making History News Reviews

Nick Crumpton looks at the stereotype of the scientist Leila Haghighat finds out what we really know about our dreams

David Kent wonders whether doctorate training has gone stale 12

Through the Looking Glass

14

Balm or Burden?

Jonathan Lawson reflects on the two faces of handedness Isaac Elliot finds out how sleep deprivation can affect our mood

Behind the Science

30

Matthew Dunstan explores the life of controversial physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science and Policy

32

Vicki Moignard examines exactly where scientific information is coming from

Initiatives

34

Ian Le Guillou reports from the 2012 UK Conference of Science Journalists

History

36

Hugo Schmidt reveals the advances made in the field of astrobiology

FOCUS

24

3 4 5

Perspective

38

Leila Haighighat discusses the recent revolution in academic publishing

Armchair Experimentation BlueSci reveals how technology has made science more accessible

Weird and Wonderful

40

Issue 25 Specials About Us...

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.co.uk, 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.

Committee President: Jonathan Lawson ..............................president@bluesci.co.uk Managing Editor:Tom Bishop ................. managing-editor@bluesci.co.uk Secretary: Lizzie Bateman .................................. enquiries@bluesci.co.uk Treasurer: Tim Hearn ..................................... membership@bluesci.co.uk Film Editors: Nick Crumpton & Alex Fragniere ..............film@bluesci.co.uk Radio: Anand Jagatia................................................ radio@bluesci.co.uk Webmaster:.................................................... webmaster@bluesci.co.uk Advertising Manager: Fiona Docherty.............. advertising@bluesci.co.uk Events & Publicity Officer: Jordan Ramsey ........... events@bluesci.co.uk News Editor: Joanna-Marie Howes ..........................news@bluesci.co.uk Web Editor: Vicki Moignard ..............................web-editor@bluesci.co.uk

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18BlueSciSpecial

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GSLS Image Competition Not-Sci BlueSci news BlueSci Film BlueSci Radio BlueSci Events

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Contents

1

Issue 25: Michaelmas 2012 Editor: Nicola Love Managing Editor: Tom Bishop Business Manager: Michael Derringer Second Editors: Keren Carss, Fiona Docherty, Matt Dunstan, Leila Haghighat, Jonathan Lawson, Vicki Moignard, Jannis Meents, Hugo Schmidt, Jordan Ramsey, Lou Woodley Sub-Editors: Joanna-Marie Howes, Jonathan Lawson, Laura Pearce, Alua Suleinienova News Editor: Joanna-Marie Howes News Team: Mrinalini Dey, Nicola Hodson, Jannis Meents Reviews: Fiona Docherty, Ali Ghareeb, Jonathan Lawson Focus Team: Nick Crumpton, Luke Maishman, Jordan Ramsey, Weird and Wonderful: Keren Carss, Mrinalini Dey, Jannis Meents Pictures Team: Matt Dunstan, Jonathan Lawson, Luke Maishman, Laura Pearce Production Team: Matt Dunstan, Jonathan Lawson, Luke Maishman, Laura Pearce Illustrators: Alex Hahn, Cristos Panayi

ISSN 1748-6920

Varsity Publications Ltd Old Examination Hall Free School Lane Cambridge, CB2 3RF Tel: 01223 337575 www.varsity.co.uk business@varsity.co.uk 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.

2 Editorial

Let’s talk science adults in the uk spend around 45 per cent of their

waking life in front of screens. We are constantly watching TV, browsing the Internet and playing with Smartphones.

The Internet has revolutionised the way we socialise, shop and do business, and as this issue of BlueSci discusses, the way we communicate science.

Modern technology has opened up the world of science and made it more accessible. The public has not been this involved in research since the days before science became confined to the ivory tower of academia, when wealthy amateur ‘Gentleman Scientists’ like Darwin pursued scientific discovery as a leisurely pastime.

In this, our 25th edition of BlueSci, we focus on how the digital age has changed science. From the revolution in academic publishing which started with a single blog post to the use of the internet in citizen science projects which enable the public to actually get involved with research, we discuss the role technology has played in popularising science.

Although an increase in the public’s interest in science is never a bad thing, the explosion in science communication has not been without its drawbacks. The Internet has allowed amateur scientists to share their work with the world but it has also allowed an abundance of pseudoscience, incorrect claims and hype to enter the public domain. The need for good, accurate scientific reporting has never been more apparent, or more in demand.

BlueSci has been at the forefront of student science journalism for the past 8 years. We have inspired a number of other science magazines, including three new magazines launched just this month. Although print journalism is as popular as ever, science journalism is increasingly becoming an online medium, in no small part due to the popularity of blogging. Here at BlueSci we have diversified to keep up with the latest technology; we can be found online on our website, Facebook page and Twitter feed. Our films produced

by BlueSci film are available on our YouTube channel and our radio show is available as a podcast download.

The future of science communication looks promising, and at BlueSci we are looking forward to producing the next 25 issues of ‘BlueSci’ and to using the Internet to communicate science in new and exciting ways. Now has never been a better time to get involved in science communication, so if anything in this issue inspires you to get involved we would love to hear from you!

Nicola Love Issue 25 Editor Michaelmas 2012

A History of Making History Jonathan Lawson recounts the story of BlueSci from the beginning The Cambridge University science magazine from

Cambridge University science magazine

FOCUS

Armchair Experimentation

Michaelmas 2012 Issue 25 www.bluesci.co.uk

Academic Spring . Sleep Deprivation Astrobiology . Neil deGrasse Tyson

A lot has changed since Issue 1 in Michaelmas 2004

Michaelmas 2012

back in 2003, a series of discussions between a small group of like-minded Cambridge scientists and science students resulted in the idea of producing a termly science magazine. Reflecting a growing feeling that conversations about science and scientific events deserved more attention, this group hoped to explore the potential of science communication within the university. At a similar time, Cambridge University Science Publications (CUSP) had been set up for Cambridge scientists interested in talking to the public about their work and science in general.

The two groups combined forces, and friendships, to create BlueSci. Originally, CUSP’s focus was on creating short science films and producing a show on Cambridge University radio. With the creation of BlueSci, and the enthusiastic team that quickly grew up around the magazine, its main activities shifted to the printed form. At this time, CUSPs goals were two-fold.

Firstly, the magazine provided a regular forum for connecting those interested in science and science events in Cambridge, countering the isolation sometimes caused by the college and departmental systems. Secondly, BlueSci and CUSP afforded anyone interested in gaining practical experience of science communication an opportunity to write, edit and learn the tasks involved in putting together regular content.

BlueSci was the first university-based, student-run popular science magazine. Since the first issue went out in Michaelmas 2004 there have been a series of evolutionary changes: BlueSci is now the common name for all CUSP ventures which, in addition to this magazine, now includes an active web presence as well as events, and a revival of radio and filmmaking activities. Yet one thing remains unchanged; we are still dedicated to sharing science in an exciting and engaging way with as large an audience as possible, offering online editions and subscriptions for those outside Cambridge.

BlueSci is proud to have built a strong reputation amongst science journalists and journal editors, with a history of producing experienced and enthusiastic alumni. We have also been involved in spreading the word and helping to start similar groups at other universities including EUSci in Edinburgh.

Students are now contributing to science magazines at institutions all around the world and are excited by the changes that this has brought to the academic

view of science communication and the standard of popular science writing and broadcasting. We are happy to have been able to meet up with our sister magazines recently at a conference organised by the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) and hope to have inspired additional new student science magazines in other universities across the UK. I am still astounded to be writing in our 25th Issue, having first encountered Issue 3 of BlueSci as a prospective applicant in 2005. For the current generation of science students in Cambridge, BlueSci has been ever present in tearooms and combination rooms throughout the university. Yet, even after more than eight years, BlueSci only comes together each term through the hard work and dedication of a fantastic team of volunteers; our writers, editors and producers. In particular, many thanks are owed to Managing Editor, Tom Bishop, who’s vision has been integral to BlueSci throughout the last year. He and Issue Editor, Nicola Love, have brought together a fantastic celebratory issue bringing featuring some old elements that haven’t been seen in BlueSci for several issues, as well as some brand new sections especially for the 25th Issue.

Without the much appreciated help of Varsity Publications it would have been much harder for BlueSci to get started and we are still proud to be a part of the student newspaper group that first reported such significant discoveries as the structure of DNA in 1953. Finally, the support of our numerous financial supporters including the university schools & departments, CSaP (Centre for Science and Policy), Science, Nature Publishing Group and Equinox Graphics ensure that we can continue to produce BlueSci in the full colour, high quality form for which it is known.

I hope you will enjoy this exciting new issue and will feel inspired to get involved in science communications.

Jonathan Lawson BlueSci President 2012 On the cover of Issue 25 is a montage of the covers from the previous 24 issues of BlueSci A History of Making History 3

News

equinox graphics ©

today we live in fear of bacteria; from microbebusting hand gels to antibacterial surface wipes and sprays, we are on a mission to rid our lives of these microscopic life forms. However, as a new study published in the journal Science shows, not all bacteria are to be banished and a few of them could do with a long-awaited thank you.

The research, carried out by a team of scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH), found that the millions of bacteria which live on the largest organ in the body, the skin, have the ability to communicate with immune cells to protect us against harmful microorganisms.

The investigators found that “germ-free” mice, which had been raised in a sterile environment and therefore contained no bacteria, were unable to fight off the skin parasite Leishmania major. However, when they were colonised with the “good bacteria” Staphylococcus epidermidis, their immune cells were able to produce a signalling molecule called interleukin-1 that enabled them to defeat the pathogen.

This research gives us new insights into the protective role of skin bacteria and demonstrates their ability to communicate with the immune system. The authors suggest that with further research they’ll be able to determine whether skin disorders such as eczema may be caused by an imbalance of the skin’s resident bacteria. nh Doi: 10.1126/science.1225152

Check out www.bluesci.co.uk or @BlueSci on Twitter for regular science news and updates

How to Bend it Like Beckham scientists at the

University of Leicester have come up with a formula that could help anyone score a goal like Beckham or Rooney. The researchers, four Masters students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, have created an equation which explains how the amount of spin a footballer puts on a ball affects it’s direction.

Spinning objects create a kind of whirlpool of airflow that results in different velocities of air at the upper and lower side of the object. This causes a pressure difference resulting in a force known as the Magnus force, which causes the spinning object to curl sideways.

The group found that the amount a ball bends as a result of the Magnus force depends on the ball’s radius, the density of air, the ball’s spin, it’s velocity, it’s mass and the distance travelled by the ball in the direction it was kicked.

Following the scientists equation, if a player standing just outside the penalty box would kick an average football with a velocity of 35 metres per second and a spin of 10 revolutions per second, the ball would bend approximately 6 metres towards the goal. jm https://physics.le.ac.uk/journals/index.php/pst/article/ viewArticle/458 Man77

Microbes Help Immune Cells Function

Meditation Reduces Inflammation caregivers for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. Now, thanks to a new study by researchers at University of California Los Angeles, it is known what causes this calming effect.

The study, published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, randomized 45 carers into two groups. One group practiced a form of chanting yoga meditation for 12 minutes a day for eight weeks, whereas a second group listened to a relaxation CD for the same amount of time. Blood samples taken at the start and end of the study showed that 68 genes responded to reduce inflammation in the group who

4 News

carried out meditative yoga.

When constantly activated, the inflammatory response can lead to stress related chronic health problems such as heart disease and depression. It is encouraging to know that something as simple as yoga meditation could provide some relief for these individuals who work tirelessly to maintain and improve the wellbeing of those in their care. md Doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.06.011 lONGTREKHOME

yoga has been shown to decrease stress levels in

Michaelmas 2012

Reviews Successful Science Communication - David J Bennett & Richard C Jennings IN 1985 THE Royal Society produced a report on the Public Understanding of Science.

CUP, 2011, £27.99

It marked a significant turning point in the interaction between scientists and the public.

Successful Science Communication explores the repercussions of this report over the last 25 years; the careers that it has nurtured, the challenges that have been faced and the debates that rage on. Through case studies of science media events, particularly around Cambridge, and discussions of the evolving nature of the world press, it introduces scientists to the rest of the world, and provides numerous means by which any modern researcher can share their interests with the public. Each chapter is individual, free standing and carefully structured, making this a useful reference for anyone new to making science accessible, although this can mean that similar points are covered many times throughout the book as a whole.

Most importantly, Successful Science Communication investigates the way that people interact with science and the information that they most desire from scientists. Science communication is not about presenting basic scientific knowledge and expecting people to use it. It is a dialogue that highlights the relevance of science to society and provides a deeper understanding of the scientific method. JL

Aping Mankind – Raymond Tallis IN HIS NEURO-PHILOSOPHY piece Aping Mankind, Raymond Tallis is not afraid to speak out

Acumen, 2011, £15.00

against the ideology which pervades modern thought on human consciousness. Taking a nondeterministic view, he launches a crusade against the phenomenon he calls neuromania: using neuroscience to explain every aspect of human nature. He attacks enterprises such as neuroeconomics and neuro-politics as well as basic neuroscience for their overzealous use of brain imaging to explain what we are thinking and why. Without having to reach to theology for support, Tallis points out many of the classical problems of a deterministic view on consciousness.

For this reason, the book is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in neuro-philosophy.

Tallis argues that primate intelligence has been greatly exaggerated and that there is a huge and unexplained gap between the abilities of humans and animals.Boldly, he goes further and suggests his own ideas about how human consciousness may have evolved. Whether or not you buy into all of Tallis’ ideas, he shows that there are troublesome issues with the way science approaches human nature. Being both a clinician and philosopher, Raymond Tallis presents his case in an elegant manner, while being tenacious and sharp in his arguments. AG

The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters - Mark Henderson

Bantam Press, 2011, £18.99

Michaelmas 2012

THE GEEK MANIFESTO begins as a wry commentary on the way the British Government handles science policy, but then transitions into a passionate rallying of the troops. As Henderson suggests “it is time for the geeks of the world to unite.”

Citing numerous (and often hilarious) examples of times when policy has let scientists down, Henderson argues that it is not just the fault of politicians that the government has failed to keep up with the advances of science. Scientists have always shied away from involvement in politics. We live in a country where only one of our 650 MPs is a scientist and even at the undergraduate level, arts students dominate student politics. Henderson proposes that it is now time to redress this balance and for scientists to take action and stand up for the issues that matter to them. The Geek Manifesto is a refreshing take on an important issue, and Henderson makes a compelling argument; it is time that scientists stopped complaining about the state of science policy in the UK and decided to do something about it. Not bad considering Henderson himself has a degree in history. FD

Reviews 5

s Panayi

Christo

We Look Like You

Nick Crumpton looks at the stereotype of the scientist

PENN VET

When picturing a scientist most people imagine a white, bespectacled man in a lab coat

6 We Look Like You

for ‘the good of all mankind’ on the opening track Race for the Prize in 1999’s album The Soft Bulletin capture that fear of being beaten to discovery (‘the cure that is the prize’). Not only does the track encapsulate the fevered obsession that accompanies specialisation (‘both of them side by side, so determined’), but Wayne Coyne also screeches that the academics in Race for the Prize aren’t superheroes.

After all, “they’re just humans, with wives and children.”

Type ‘scientist’ into Google image search and you’ll realise that The Flaming Lips had a rather uniquely well informed idea of what a scientist is.

The stereotype of the bespectacled, chemical-wielding maniac still abounds. Brian Cox resembles a rockstar in comparison. Scientists, according to search engines, aren’t normal: they’re brains wrapped up in lab coats.

Those pristine gowns have, time and time again, been the most highly cited publicly perceived accessory of the scientist; in Argentina it even forms the national symbol of learning. Clinicians however, although identified most strongly with the white coat, only began wearing them towards the end of the 19th century in an effort to portray themselves as scientists and to distance themselves from the mysticism of quackery. Early photographic evidence traces late 19th century doctors moving from beige coats to white, and wearing a black form of the coat, reserved for dissecting cadavers, less and less. Whether the white coats were chosen specifically to unite medicine with science, to announce a change in hospitals from buildings in which one was admitted to die, to clinics of healing, or to act as a cloak of purity when engaging intimately with patients’ bodies, the coat stuck. Only in 2007 was the white coat phased out by the NHS in the UK. A fear of spreading infectious diseases was cited for the adoption of scrubs in place of white coats, despite that being among the reasons for their original adoption.

I don’t particularly mind my lab coat. Actually, I

David Corden

the flaming lips nailed it. The scientists racing

The mad scientist meme is largely based on Einstein, shown here in an extremely lifelike tattoo

borrowed mine about three years ago from a rather petite girl in Bristol and never gave it back. But I don’t have to wear it all the time: I’m lucky in that I don’t work in a ‘wet lab’ which means I don’t have to dodge acids, alcohols or fluorocarbons. Neither did Einstein, and yet the modern crazy-haired mad scientist meme is sadly based largely on him. Indeed, while the coat is regarded publicly as the uniform of the scientist, throughout my time spent in academia I’ve learnt that this is a fallacy. In fact, the closest thing scientists have in terms of a uniform is a pair of headphones; no matter what specialisation you’ve chosen, all forms of science require at least a little mindless data entry, repetition and nail-biting, fingercrossing interludes whilst something does something to something else. Why not listen to Bjork whilst that happens?

The isolation of scientists away from society, within laboratories, may have helped contribute to the meme’s persistence. The ‘Draw a Scientist Task’ devised by David Chambers in the 1980s asked participants to sketch their interpretation of a scientist before and after meeting one. Almost universally the participants first drew a bearded, Michaelmas 2012

Michaelmas 2012

URCOMUNICACION

DAVID CORDEN

unnatural obsession, or just a necessary passion for their work? Underneath their coats, the geologists in Zimmer’s book have geological logs (which really are beautiful) painted on their backs, the biochemists have equations, and the conservationists have bees.

Surely the sight of an Osprey on the leg of an ornithologist is a sign of sincerity in their work, a permanent mark that reminds us of how deep their commitment to their subject really goes? Maybe this is what we really want in our scientists?

So while ‘This Is What A Scientist Looks Like’ is an enjoyable romp through a hitherto hidden diversity, the #IAmScience hashtag that paraded around Twitter was much more informative. In describing how scientists began their careers it generated a collection of vastly different experiences and inspiring stories; people who pursued science at the expense of anything outside its realm, be it childhoods, friendships or relationships. Perhaps we might conclude that, actually, scientists are a cut above the rest, believing more than most in their ability to make a difference and improve society, life, and the world.

But then I remember their fondness for wearing conference t-shirts and I despair.

They’re nothing out of the ordinary, there’s no such thing as a mad scientist, and none of them are superheroes. As The Flaming Lips put it, “they’re just humans.”

LUKE MCLEOD

white, spectacled man in a lab coat. The same task was later adopted by the ‘Who’s A Scientist project,’ in which seventh graders were introduced to physicists at the Fermilab high-energy accelerator in the US. After this meeting, all of the children engaged in the project realized their mistakes and the subsequent drawings and descriptions illustrated ‘normal’ men and women who were, oddly, pretty interesting.

That was 10 years ago, but earlier this year the internet hummed with news of a similar project: science communicator Allie Wilkinson’s This Is What A Scientist Looks Like blog. As a collection of real-life scientists’ mug shots, the contrast to Google’s image search is stark. Yes, at least one of the images belongs on Awkward Family Portraits and yes, there are way too many ‘hilarious’ fancy dress costumes, but most are, to plagiarize Douglas Adams, “just these guys, you know?”

In his 1882 The Physician Himself and What He Should Add to the Strictly Scientific, D. W. Cathell recommended that the physician should “[avoid] forcing on everybody the conclusion that you are, after all, but an ordinary person.” Any uniform can be a wall to understanding and the proliferation of The Scientist meme proves that the public still view scientists as out of the ordinary, maintaining the 19th century mythology that medics constructed for themselves.

But those who seek to counter the public’s (largely erroneous) idea of what The Scientist is should be aware: the fight for the recognition of normality can backfire. The person who feels comfortable uploading a picture of themselves onto a publicly available tumblr blog also, one would imagine, likes to put themselves out there generally, as is more than evident in the amount of links to blogs and twitter accounts that accompany the photographs. And so the balance tips towards the extrovert. Carl Zimmer’s latest book is a perfect example of this. Science Ink gathers together images Zimmer had amassed on his blog after calling for scientists who had work-linked tattoos to forward photographs to him. I won’t pretend it’s not a fun book, and as I studied for my undergrad with one of the legs showcased, I can’t be too mean-spirited. But is an anatomically accurate tattoo of a chloroplast really that normal? Well maybe it isn’t. Let’s return to the Lips.

Race for the Prize’s heroes were obsessive. The song finishes with the lament ‘Theirs is to win. It will kill them’. No matter how ‘normal’ scientists are, there’s always a hint of addiction and the very act of science itself is time (if not all-) consuming, and dependent on repetition, thoroughness and compulsion.

Without a willingness to sacrifice at least a little time others can spend in the pub, the scientist is doomed to fail. So perhaps I’m being too harsh. Is theirs an

It’s easy to spot scientists in the lab, but would you notice them on the bus?

Darwin’s tree of life decorates the leg of one scientist, while another sports an Archeoptyrx fossil tattoo on his arm

Nick Crumpton is a 3rd year PhD student in the Department of Zoology We Look Like You 7

www.alexhahnillustrator.com

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On Leila Haghighat finds out what we really know about our dreams

Dreams often seem random but it is thought they allow the brain to make sense of new experiences

we’re not tucked beneath the covers, fast asleep.

In philosophy, for example, it regularly enters discussions about the meaning of life. The ‘dream argument’ holds that what we call ‘reality’ may, in fact, be a dream because it relies on sensory input that cannot be trusted. Shakespeare propagated this philosophy through his literature. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep”, he wrote in The Tempest. In more recent years, dreaming has also entered political discourse.

Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, delivered a riveting appeal to end racial segregation with a speech entitled “I Have a Dream.” But why is it that we dream, often several times each night and for an average of six years of our lives? Scientists are still struggling to find an explanation, but they do have some theories.

Before the 20th century there was no formal approach to studying the science behind dreaming.

The first written record of dream interpretation dates back to 1275 BC, a time when the Mesopotamians and Egyptians believed that dreams were a medium for delivering divine messages. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus abandoned this religious take on dreams and suggested, instead, that dreams were created by individuals within their own minds. A few centuries later, Aristotle also discarded the notion that dreams were an externally driven phenomenon. In his treatise On Dreams, he posited that residual sensations from waking hours course through the bloodstream and stimulate the heart, producing dreams as a result.

The heyday of psychoanalysis at the end of the 19th century saw the study of dreams become more scientific. With the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud popularised the understanding of dreams as expressions of repressed desires. Freud linked symbols in dreams to specific sexual desires and maintained that dreams allowed

8 Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On

the unconscious mind to act out these, often socially unacceptable wishes. According to Freud, the taboo subject matter of dreams explains why we remember so few of them. In fact, on average we forget 50 per cent of our dreams five minutes after waking. Freud’s protégé Carl Jung believed dreams allowed a synthesis of the day’s event by permitting us to reflect on ourselves and solve our problems by taking the time to reflect on them.

But to understand why we dream, scientists realised they first needed to better understand what exactly a dream is. As a result, physiological studies of the 1950s formed the beginnings of Oneirology; the formal scientific study of dreams. A major milestone in the field was the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Two researchers at the University

Frank Bonilla

dreaming pervades our lives, even when

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PD-Art

of Chicago, Eugene Aserinksy and his supervisor Nathaniel Kleitman, serendipitously discovered REM after a physicist published a paper in Nature claiming that he could identify the onset of sleep in his fellow train passengers by the rate at which their eyelids twitched.

Most dreaming occurs during REM; the last of the five sleep stages which comprises a single cycle beginning approximately 90 minutes after first falling asleep. Each dream usually lasts between five and 20 minutes. A good night’s sleep comprises multiple sleeping cycles with progressively longer periods of time spent in REM. During REM, heart rate and breathing quicken, blood pressure rises and body temperature varies much more considerably.

In addition, the body enters a momentary state of paralysis in order to pre-empt any physical and potentially dangerous enactment of a dream. This condition, known as REM atonia, involves the release of an amino acid called glycine from the brain onto the neurons that innervate muscles.

Having established the physiology behind the dreaming process, scientists in the second half of the 20th century started to study the neurobiology of dreams. In 1977, Harvard psychiatrists John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley proposed that dreams arise from random electrical impulses generated by the brain during sleep. According to Hobson and McCarley’s ‘activation-synthesis hypothesis’, the waking mind’s attempt to make sense of this imagery results in the stories that form the plots of our dreams. They found that brain wave patterns can be used to differentiate between subjects experiencing REM versus non-REM sleep. Different brain waves emit electrical voltage at different rates and are individually referred to as alpha, beta, delta and theta waves. During REM sleep, brain waves are desynchronous, whilst non-REM sleep comprises more synchronous patterns of the four distinct types of brain waves. By this point in time, scientists could apply at least three parameters to identify REM sleep: The electro-oculogram, which measures eye movement, the electromyogram, which measures muscle tone, and the electroencephalogram, which measures brain activity.

Nowadays, scientists have even more advanced technology for studying dreams, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines that detect blood flow in the brain. With this equipment, they have been able to map specific features of dreams to different regions of the brain. The occipitotemporal cortex, for example, is believed to be responsible for visual imagery, whilst the amygdala allows us to experience emotions and the prefrontal cortex introduces logic into our dreams. Structural integrity of the hippocampus is also important, as the

This image of Sigmund Freud was taken soon after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams

size of this part of the brain is comparatively reduced in insomniacs. Such neurobiological studies have led to a new hypothesis that attempts to explain why we dream by postulating that dreams are necessary for the maintenance of ‘synaptic homeostasis.’ Constant stimulation of our brain during the day leads to many connections being made between different brain cells. Dreaming may be a means of sifting through these connections, strengthening the ones that are important and weakening the ones that are not.

Much attention has also been directed to the relationship between dreams, eating disorders and a slew of mood disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, which have all been linked to abnormal dreaming habits. Individuals with these conditions tend to recall fewer or less detailed dreams than the norm. Currently, these relationships are being further explored for their potential use in diagnosing and predicting the outcome of patients with psychological disorders.

The fact that similar motifs reappear in everyone’s dreams—from being naked in public to falling down, being chased, sitting or forgetting to arrive for an exam, flying, running without purpose or having teeth fall out—suggests that there is an underlying biological purpose for the dreaming process. Scientists may still not have fully wrapped their minds around what that purpose is, but much progress has been made in the field of Oneirology, as dreams have now entered the domain of science.

Leila Haghighat is an MPhil student in the Department of Medicine Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On 9

s Panayi

Christo

Whose Training is it Anyway?

David Kent wonders whether doctorates have gone stale

as long as the world has complex problems

to solve, we need to pursue creative and clever solutions. A doctoral education equips people with the knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary to imagine solutions, but there appears to be an acute sense of despair amongst graduate students when it comes to their training and prospective career options. This dissatisfaction is precipitated by two major trends that threaten to destabilize the foundation of good academic science. The first is that researchers begin their independent careers later in life and the second is the increase in cookie-cutter projects, that is, projects in which an established method is applied in a slightly different context to anything that has been done before. The cookie cutter approach is an easy way to do research but it is without the revolutionary innovation that used to be the trademark of a doctoral degree. These trends are particularly evident in the biomedical sciences, where the number of people involved and funding levels have risen sharply in the wake of major advances in genomics, stem cells and regenerative medicine.

Universities and policymakers would do well to take note of these trends and try to address them sooner rather than later.

Ujjval Panchal

PhD students need to be able to assess the literature and identify work that will impact the field

10 Whose Training is it Anyway?

In countries where the length of PhD programmes is flexible, times to graduation have been pushed further and further back. Currently, over 13 per cent of PhD projects in the US take over ten years to complete. This represents an enormous investment of one’s early career. Consequently, students in three or four year programmes find themselves several years (and papers) behind, and they are often forced to undertake substantially more post-doctoral training to get to the same stage in an academic career. This has a particular impact on those applying for fellowships with a ‘number of years post-PhD’ maximum, as is the case for many UK-based awards. Furthermore, the average age to independence has been pushed back by the glut of highly trained candidates applying for academic jobs. Again, US data are a worrisome beacon with the reported average age for obtaining a grant to start a lab being 42.

Along with increased age comes an increased number of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows who are parents, own houses and are generally less movable. A 2009 survey of over 1200 Canadian postdocs reported that 80 per cent were over the age of 30, about half had a spouse, and nearly one-third had children. This restricts possibilities even once one is able to gain independence.

In 1998, Professor Sir Ken Robinson of Warwick University famously accused the UK school system of killing creativity, leading to a reduction in invention and innovative thought. Is this occurring in universities as well? If so, keeping graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in a training stage for longer may make them less creative, less risky and less productive due to too many years underneath someone else’s wing.

A successful academic career relies on designing experiments to answer novel questions about the particular system being studied and interpreting Michaelmas 2012

Ron Smith

the results of those experiments, something that is missing from ‘cookie-cutter’ projects. Many Universities do not have formal requirements or metrics for measuring such skills, making it difficult to determine, from publication history, which graduates possess these skills and which projects are just part of a standard batch that was already guaranteed to work. A PhD is meant to teach the philosophy of a discipline. This means not only being able to carry out experimental procedures, but also being trained to assess the literature and identify research that will impact the field. Some professors take this job very seriously, but others see the PhD student as someone who simply carries out experiments.

While a PhD in the sciences should involve long hours and a certain amount of struggle, it needs to be focused on the question that is being asked and why it is being asked – in other words, it needs to be hypothesis-driven research. Far too many PhD students do what their supervisor tells them to do without asking whether or not it is the best approach. PhD students should be given ample time for figuring out where the field is going and what the ‘big questions’ are. A PhD is not a box checking exercise of ‘did I complete the requisite number of experiments?’, but rather it is an assessment of critical thinking ability and the ability to have a philosophical discussion about the field. All too often young researchers are pushed to feel like it is late evening and they just have to finish that last paper or last experiment.

The undeniable reality is that there are many more thousands of people undertaking PhDs than ever before. In the United States alone, a steady climb between 1999 and 2009 resulted in a 17 per cent increase in the number of PhDs awarded (41,100 to 49,554, according to the National Science Foundation). While academic job posts have grown in number, they have been far outstripped

by PhD production. If we hope to tackle the big issues facing society we still need more graduate students, not fewer. However, we need to put more Michaelmas 2012

effort into training the next generation, not just teaching them to do experiments but equipping them with the skills to invent their own. There needs to be better recognition for supervisors who invest heavily into training their students and a significant reconsideration of the way in which PhD programmes are implemented.

Teaching and training are often under-recognized qualities that have a huge impact on the future of science, and it seems that the best positions are given to those who have opted to be a publication machine first and a teacher later. This attracts the best students who will often find themselves in what is affectionately known as a ‘sink or swim’ environment.

It is important for people to realise that no single supervisor produces work that eclipses the sum of the work of their trainees, and each student shipped out reflects (poorly or otherwise) the supervisor’s ability to train. The rewards should be evident for supervisors: future collaborations, good international reputation and more productive students are among the benefits that make good training well worth the investment.

Many fields, especially the biomedical sciences, have created permanent positions for grant facilitators, project managers, human resources managers and accountants as essential components of the research enterprise. But where are the scientists?

Respectable, well-compensated positions for PhDs who love bench work need to be created for those who love exploring new ideas and love academic lab environments but are simply not going to run their own lab. This would leave postdoctoral fellow positions for those who are explicitly involved in a temporary training experience with the intention to move on to start their own group. To drive projects that fall outside of a technician’s role, hire a scientist, pay them well, keep them happy and watch the benefits roll in. Much thought must go into how universities can best equip the majority of trainees for non-academic careers and have them leave the academy as motivated young scientists. This means refraining from demonizing non-academic careers, such as industry, law and journalism, and identifying good candidates for these alternatives early so that they can avoid suffering postdoctoral fellow apathy.

It is important to grapple with the reality of these trends instead of trying to reverse them. By redeveloping academic training, providing well thought-out projects and accepting the reality of alternative career paths we can improve the quality of scientific research as a whole and ensure that nobody gets a PhD that’s half baked.

Creative experimentation was once the trademark of a doctoral degree

David Kent is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research Whose Training is it Anyway? 11

Through the Looking Glass

s Panayi

Christo

Jonathan Lawson reflects on the two faces of handedness

3Dscience

A normal ‘righthanded’ DNA helix (right) and its unnatural mirror image (left).

issues of handedness are a common feature of human societies, throughout history it has been used to judge people. Even the terms associated with ‘right’ (dextrous) are perceived as good and correct whilst ‘left’ (sinister) has darker implications. In many societies left-handedness has been punished and conformism to the ‘right’ way has been enforced.

However, on the atomic level, handedness becomes even more sinister. Many chemicals also have handedness and for us this handedness can be the difference between life and death.

In some chemicals, atoms are joined together in specific conformations to form molecules. These can be small and simple such as water (H2O) – consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen – or they can be unimaginably large such as DNA, which can be up to two metres long and includes millions of individual atoms of many different types.

Mirror image molecules occur whenever one atom in a molecule is directly attached to four or more different parts of that molecule. These

12 Through the Looking Glass

attachments can be organised in two different ways – one a mirror image of the other – and these molecules are known as optical isomers of each other.

Optical isomers were first identified in the early 19th century from their differential interactions with certain types of polarised light. Based on how the molecule is arranged, the two forms can be named as the R-isomer (Rectus/Right) or the S-isomer (Sinister/Left) or, in biology, as D and L respectively.

Molecules that can have distinct optical isomers are called chiral molecules.

In most cases, optical arrangement doesn’t have any effect and it can be very difficult to tell the difference between the two isomers without very specific tests.

However, a chiral molecule will interact with other chiral molecules in specific ways depending on their handedness. This may not seem very important, until you consider that many of the molecules in your body are chiral. Understanding chiral molecules is crucial to understanding illnesses and helps to develop new medical technologies.

Many important molecules in living things are chiral, including sugars, proteins and DNA. In all of these cases one isomer of any chiral molecule is strongly favoured over the other and the same one is favoured in all life on Earth. For example, almost all of the sugars in your body are the R (D)-isomer.

Conversely, amino acids, the basic building blocks of proteins are predominantly S (L)-isomers and form left-handed proteins. The processes that release energy from sugars and build amino acids into proteins are highly sensitive to chiral arrangements and are typically unable to make use of the mirror images.

The cellular components that drive these processes have evolved to recognise just one optical isomer and cannot process the mirror image because it has a different arrangement that cannot be identified.

The implications of chirality in the human body

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Klaus Hoffmeier, KENPEI & Hans Hillewaert

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Thalidomide taken during pregnancy resulted in babies born with defects such as extra fingers and toes Filip em

vary from the innocent and entertaining to the life threateningly severe. Smells provide some great examples of this. The sense of smell is the result of specialised cells in your nose interacting with molecules in the air that you breathe in. One of these molecules is called limonene. As the name suggests limonene is an important part of the smell of lemons and other citrus fruits, if it is the D-enantiomer.

However L-limonene has a fragrance similar to pine trees.

The difference in aroma between D-limonene and L-limonene is the result of how they interact with the smell receptor cells in your nose. Each cell is covered in only one of 900 scent receptor proteins and each protein has a pocket that recognises specific parts of molecules in the air. Since the different parts of D- and L-limonene are arranged differently relative to each other they fit into the pockets of different receptor proteins, activate different cells and so cause you to react differently. You recognise that smell as either citrus fruit or pine.

Whilst limonene is an innocuous example, there are other cases where mistaken identity of isomers has had in tragic and deadly outcomes across the developed world. Many drugs have different enantiomers and generally this is relatively harmless: not so in the case of thalidomide. Thalidomide is a very simple chemical and a chiral molecule. It was developed in the 1950s after being discovered accidentally whilst searching for antibiotics.

Originally marketed as a sedative, Thalidomide became known as a wonder drug that could be used to treat a wide range of ailments. One of its most popular applications was as a treatment of morning sickness during pregnancy.

After less than five years on the market Thalidomide was withdrawn from over 50 countries.

In just a few years over 10 000 children were born across Europe and Africa with severe developmental defects. These defects, which killed around 40

per cent of the affected children before their first birthday, were shown to be directly due to use of thalidomide by mothers during pregnancy. Although Thalidomide was thoroughly tested for side effects prior to release and was found to have no obvious toxic effects directly on the patients treated, it was never tested on pregnant women.

The birth defects caused by Thalidomide were linked to how much of the drug was taken and when during the pregnancy it was used. Defects could be minor and relatively superficial including loss of gain of fingers and toes, although more commonly babies had completely underdeveloped limbs, known as phocomelia. In the most severe cases babies had fatal defects such as restricted lung growth, underdeveloped hearts, nerve dysfunction or intestinal defects.

In the case of Thalidomide the isomers live up to their names; the R (right)-enantiomer has health benefits, whereas the S (sinister)-enantiomer is responsible for causing birth defects. Sadly, it is not possible to have the beneficial drug without having its evil twin. Even though R-Thalidomide can be made without the S-isomer and given to patients, once inside the human body it is possible for S-thalidomide to be made from R-thalidomide in a process called racemisation. Despite this thalidomide continues to prove itself a wonder drug with many new applications still being uncovered. After all, thalidomide is still harmless for use by anyone who is not currently pregnant.

In the modern age handedness may seem like a trivial issue – we no longer beat our children for showing left-handed tendencies – but when it comes to molecules in chemical reactions a left-handed molecule and its right-handed counterpart, in the right context, may still be polar opposites. One chemical can either give life, or it can take it away. Of course in most cases the difference between optical isomers is much less severe and is simply an amusing scientific curiosity: the difference between lemon and pine.

The scent of lemon and the scent of pine are mirror images

Jonathan Lawson is a 2nd year PhD student in the Department of Genetics

Through the Looking Glass 13

Christos Panayi

Balm or Burden?

Isaac Elliot finds out how sleep deprivation influences our mood

14 Balm or Burden?

We use this time to consolidate memories, express subconscious creativity, and in the early stages of life, to drive brain development and repair. It is notable that newborns and infants may spend more than 80% of their sleep in REM phases whilst REM often takes up less than a quarter of an adult sleep pattern.

There is a well established connection between depression and sleep patterns. Noticeably, untreated depression patients typically have longer periods of REM sleep and shorter intervals between them, meaning that in any 24 hour period, depressed patients tend to spend more time in REM sleep.

Significantly one of the most commonly noticed side effects of antidepressant drugs is their suppression of REM sleep. In experiments where a patient is denied a night of sleep, some studies have reported up to 60% effectiveness in reducing signs of depression (antidepressants typically have a similar efficacy).

In 1971, a group of researchers led by Dr Burkhard Pflug deprived patients of REM-sleep either by stopping the patient from sleeping at all or by selectively waking the patients when they entered REM phases. The scientists found that depriving people of a single night of REM-sleep demonstrated some improvement in mood and future outlook, apparently illustrating an antidepressant effect that

Wiki/User:Sponge

Depressed patients tend to spend more time in REM sleep

people with depression should sleep less, evidence suggests. Research complied over the last 40 years suggests reduction or complete deprivation of a specific phase of sleep, known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep may have an effect similar to Prozac, acting as a powerful anti-depressant. For many people in the 21st century sleep deprivation may seem more like a way of life than a condition. Most Cambridge students are certainly more than familiar with, sleepless nights cramming, are just part of the course.

The side effects of sleep deprivation are well know to us all; fatigue, weakness, lack of intellectual focus, irritability and a propensity for emotional outbursts.

We are told continually that getting enough sleep is an imperative part of life and that, in the long term, lack of sleep can be severely damaging to our health. In fact, the body is capable of surviving longer without food than without sleep. So you could be forgiven for showing surprise upon being told that there is some scientific evidence to suggest that reduced sleep could actually be good for you.

It is well documented that sleeping is not just one constant thing, the way or body and mind acts and reacts changes through a series of well defined phases as we sleep. The different parts of these cycles are recognised by differing degrees of wakefulness. the deeper stages of Non-REM sleep correspond to greatly reduced brain activity and are linked to more restful sleeping with much less body motion, including eye movements. In contrast, during REM sleep, brain activity is at a very similar level to being awake, although your mind remains isolated from the real world. During these phases high brain activity results in vivid dreaming. REM is so called because someone in REM sleep clearly shows a lot of eye movement, appearing to look all around them, whilst they sleep. As with so much of cognitive neuroscience, the definitive role of REM sleep is still unknown, but researchers believe that REM is when our brains are able to catch up with themselves.

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has been supported by several follow-up studies. By contrast, long-term deprivation of an entire night’s sleep is both hazardous for your health and highly unsustainable.

It has been suggested that REM sleep plays a crucial role in the function of neurons (brain cells).

Neurons process and transmit information by electrical and chemical signals. Communication between neurons occurs when chemicals released from one neuron cross a small gap known as the synapse and cause a response in a second neuron, this is how your thoughts occur, how you control your body, how you learn new skills and store memories. There are a specific group of chemical signals, called monoamines, which are closely linked to how your brain processes feelings and emotions.

When monoamines are transmitted to a new brain cell they initiate new electrical signals which go on to spread messages throughout the brain. The new cell can’t make these signals indefinitely so it slowly ‘desensitises’ and stops responding to the chemical signal.

When chemicals, like monoamines, are used to carry messages between neurons they get used up and it takes time for those chemicals to be regenerated.

A key role of REM sleep is to help replace these chemicals whilst the brain is at rest. It has been suggested that this also allows the neurons affected by chemical signals to recover from their effects and return to normal, a process called resensitisation.

The theory, termed the monoamine hypothesis, states that some forms of depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Many drugs use this hypothesis for the basis of their activities and a lot of therapeutics – as well as several illegal mindaltering substances – closely resemble the chemicals found in the key mood centres of the brain. There are several lines of evidence that have been found to support this viewpoint based around different medical interventions. The drug Reserpine lowers blood pressure by suppressing monoamines, as a side effect it has been known to cause severe depression suggesting monoamines prevent depression. Euphoric effects from amphetamines and cocaine increase the response to monoamines. Finally, the first antidepressant drugs also generally act by increasing monoamine concentrations.

There are multiple theories of how depression develops, including purely cognitive, behavioural, anatomical and biochemical interpretations.

However, as responsiveness to treatments varies from case to case, it seems likely that there are many causes that can lead to the development of depression, with chemical disturbances being just one possibility.

However, monoamine imbalance is crucial in the consideration of our current treatment of depressed patients, as they are mainly treated in one of two

When denied sleep studies have reported up to 60% effectiveness in reducing signs of depression

ways: using psychological interventions, such as the extremely effective cognitive behavioural therapy, or pharmacological interventions which tend to target monoamines.

Similarly REM sleep deprivation has been found in certain studies to stimulate the regeneration of small populations of neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in memory formation, a finding duplicated in trials of pharmacological antidepressants. Whilst the importance and mechanism by which this hippocampal neurogenesis affects the course of depression is currently unknown, it is further indication that REM sleep deprivation interacts with similar pathways to antidepressant medications. The effects of REM sleep deprivation are also very short lived as there is a strong drive to undergo ‘catch up’ rebound sleep (which can be put off by forcing the patient to only have light sleep afterwards) in a way mirroring the tendency of antidepressants to decline in efficacy over time.

Numerous questions still surround this area of research. The prevailing opinion is that the biochemical changes which occur in depression result in sleep disorders as a side effect. A potential explanation of the research on REM sleep would be that the extended duration of REM sleep in depressed patients results in excessive removal of monoamines from the synapse, meaning that depressed patients have a lower circulating level of monoamines. On a simplistic level, a person’s emotional response is dependent on the monoamines, meaning this imbalance might result in the ‘lack of pleasure’ characteristic of depression, suggesting that the REM sleep imbalances may be compounding the effects of depression.

If this is true then modifications to patients’ sleep cycles, either using new drugs or alarm clocks, when combined with current pharmaceutical therapy to stabilise the effects, might be able to improve the treatment of depression for the low cost of the loss of a bit of shut-eye.

Isaac Elliot is a 3rd Year Undergraduate studying Medicine

Balm or Burden? 15

first place Bats Are the Best

Dorit Hockman impressed the judges with this collection of black mastiff bat embryos (right). Each shows a more advanced stage of development, with noticeably longer wings and larger ears.

Dorit Hockman Department of Physiology, Development & Neuroscience

second place

Not What You Think Whilst Paola Cognigni’s image (left) is very plantlike it actually shows part of an adult fruit fly. Sugar from food is stored as fats in the structures highlighted in gold.

Paola Cogigni Department of Zoology

16 Pavilion

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Celebrating Life the graduate school of Life Sciences (GSLS) image

competition is a celebration of the variety of biological research that is ongoing here in Cambridge, from the investigation of the social behaviour and ecology of living things to the detailed study of individual cells.

Towards the end of lent term each year, submitted images are displayed in the Muesum of Zoology at an open event, during which they are judged by a panel of scientists, science communicators and representatives of the general public.

The competition is open to all MPhil, PhD and post-doctoral members currently working in the Life Sciences at Cambridge.

To find out more, visit the GSLS website.

third place

Two Heads are Better Than One Yoan Coudert’s image (below) shows an unusual branched moss on the left of the image. Natural variants like this may have been the earliest evolutionary precursors of modern plants and trees.

Yoan Coudert Department of Plant Sciences

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Pavilion17

we’re celebrating the 25th issue of BlueSci with this special collection of articles describing some of the other activities and events that BlueSci is involved in. All of these projects are organised and run by members of the University and we’re always happy for new members to get involved and learn new skills. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to find out more.

Not-Sci

Sita Dinanauth reveals why it is important to fight against bad science

Equinox Graphics ©

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre provided the inspiration for Not-Sci

18 BlueSci Special

for years, mainstream media has held sway over

our lives, directing the opinions of the public and biasing their views on the issue of the day. There have been several high-profile cases where the media driven opinion has clashed with scientific advancements and generally science has lost out. As a result, the majority of bench scientists I have come across, believe that when it comes to the reporting of science stories, sensation is what captures the non-scientist’s attention and what sells newspapers. As one biochemist put it, “when you consider the media from the perspective of a scientist, whose mind is quietly calmed by facts and detailed technical descriptions while being equally repulsed by emotive opinion and polarised arguments, you see why many are reluctant to interact with a machine they consider sensationalist, unbalanced and inaccurate.”As the very public interrogation of the Murdochs and the libel reform campaign demonstrate the mainstream media are now being held accountable for their tactics and their ability to report on correct information. However, biased reporting and sensationalism continue to be a problem when it comes to the reporting of science stories.

One of the greatest barriers between academic science and the general public is the restriction on access to peer reviewed publications. In Cambridge, those not employed by the University can expect to pay around ten pounds for a copy of this months Nature magazine, or a similarly inflated amount to access articles online.

Until access to science journals is changed, scientifically accurate, engaging reporting in paramount. Science writers act as an interpreter relaying first hand published data to the masses, so it is important that present data in an accurate, balanced way. The aim is to translate something fairly technical to a non-specialist audience but not to just recycle facts or impress the reader with extensive vocabulary and colourful metaphors. Brilliant science writers are able to marry the passionate curiosity that made them interested in science in the first place with theory and vivid explanations about the fundamentals. Oliver Sacks does this with

neurology, Lawrence Krauss with physics, Vilayanur Ramachnadran with neuroscience Ben Goladacre with medicine and David Attenborough with nature.

Science writing is not about ‘dumbing down,’ nor is it about filtering out the complicated parts of peerreviewed publications. The best science writers assume that what applies to all other media disciplines applies to science: your readers are intelligent enough to want to find sources, view your argument from several, balanced angles and decide whether they believe the evidence supporting the facts. They don’t need to be told what to think.

A new emerging challenge in the modern world of smartphones, social media and the Internet, is the hunt for the truth. When it comes to science in a society like this how can we ensure that people are exposed to informed opinions and hear truths supported by research and evidence? In a world where everyone has a voice, who do we listen to?

Now that the public are able to challenge the media and blogging and social media have opened up more avenues for communicating than ever before, it is a great time to produce an opinion or voice backed up by logic.

But in an endless sea of voices, the voice of scientific reason and logic can only be heard if all scientists get more involved in public communication. This is why Not-Sci was founded.

To give young scientists in Cambridge a strong and reliable voice that can stand against unsupported claims, false treatments and empty promises and share the joys of good science with everyone.

Not-Sci is written by BlueSci members for Varsity. You can find them all on the Varsity blog online at varsity. co.uk. Contact us at president@bluesci.co.uk to get involved.

Sita Dinanauth is finishing her PhD in the Department of Biochemistry. She created Not-Sci in 2009 and was Head of BlueSci Film until 2011.

Michaelmas 2012

BlueSci News Louisa Lyon talks about the fast-paced world of science news

BlueSci News articles can be found near the front of every issue and online

Michaelmas 2012

HOW MANY GENERATIONS would it take a mousesized animal to evolve into an elephant-sized one? Is a malaria vaccine in sight? And what exactly is dark matter?

In articles just a few hundred words long and suitable for a general reader, BlueSci News covers the entire spectrum of science, from immunology to astrophysics.

Being able to take complex information – perhaps on a topic that you previously knew little about — and transform it into clear and readable prose is a skill valued in many fields, both inside and outside science. Especially if you also need to get it done whilst the story is still relevant and interesting and you have to juggle a whole bunch of other pressures, a Cambridge degree for example.

Perhaps the greatest challenge is finding a worthwhile story, new scientific papers are published all the time and each one is a potential story but finding one with high public interest and impact factors is a much more intricate procedure. Often news stories don’t come from the title of a paper, sometimes they are found buried in the discussion or one of the experiments, it takes an inventive and dedicated writer to find these hidden gems and build them into a story.

Furthermore, it’s not just about the text. Whenever you scan a website or flick through a magazine, it’s the headline and the images that pull you in.

Giving an article a catchy title and making it look appealing on the page are key considerations and vital skills if you want to get your message across. As the publishing industry moves increasingly towards

online content, learning to think about how to attract and keep a reader despite infinite competition, shorter attention spans and busier lives is paramount.

If you’re at all tempted by a career in science communication, or you’d simply like to develop writing and editing skills to help in your thesis or when publishing papers, then preparing an online news story is an excellent way to get started without having to commit a huge amount of time. The skills that you can acquire at BlueSci are particularly highly valued by the publishing industry but also equip you to be successful in academia and industry.

I decided to get involved with BlueSci whilst I was working as a post-doctoral researcher, having realised that I did not want to be an academic for the rest of my career I decided to try out some alternatives. After only a short time working on BlueSci News, I was able to leave my research and took on a new role as sub-editor at Nature. I now work on the ‘front half ’ of the magazine, helping to hammer non-research copy (editorials and “news & views” type things) into shape before Tuesday’s weekly press deadline. My new job means that I make constant use of the abilities that I developed and honed at BlueSci. During my interview at Nature Publishing Group (NPG), it quickly became clear that my answers to most of the questions, for example, “What should a news reporter keep in mind when they prepare a story?”, “Can you give an example of when you’ve had to work to deadlines?”, “What about when you’ve worked in a team?”, “How do you decide whether a story is newsworthy?”, revolved around the experience I’d gained working with BlueSci, and particularly with the news section. And that experience does seem to have helped out over the past few months, too. Most of the principles are the same no matter what the magazine – it’s just the scale and the pace that can differ!

BlueSci news articles can be written about any science story and can be sent to the news editor for online publication. Articles are typically 300-400 words so are very quick and easy to write – even if you have a busy schedule. BlueSci News is now run by JoannaMarie Howes, contact her on news@bluesci.co.uk to get involved in news writing or editing.

Louisa Lyon was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Experimental Psychology and edited BlueSci News during 2011/12. She is now a sub-editor at Nature.

BlueSci Special 19

BlueSci Film Nick Crumpton explores the past, present and future of science documentary making

navicore

Policy making for high impact, low probability events can be a risky business

in 1981 it turned out that it didn’t take a lot to

make a really great science film. The team behind the BBC’s Horizon took a gamble and found that one person sitting in chair, talking candidly to an offcamera interviewer, could produce one of the finest pieces of television about science. It helped that the interviewee was Nobel Prize winner and world-class raconteur Richard Feynman, an extraordinary lecturer who knew how to communicate to non-scientists.

But the fact that his opening monologue has been watched around 200,000 times on Youtube says a lot for the role television can play in popularizing science.

As a zoologist, I’m drawn to Natural History reportage, a historically softer form of science documentary, but one of western society’s most important sources of information about the natural world.

The genre has altered significantly over the years, as clearly demonstrated by the work of David Attenborough. In 1984, his series The Living Planet consisted of hour-long lectures whilst the Natural History Unit’s footage acted as a slideshow for him to talk over. When Bluesci was first published, the most expensive science documentary ever made, the cinematic Planet Earth, was still two years away from being broadcast, and today Attenborough is, generally, a presenter of beauty, no longer a writer of explanations.

Recently, film makers are moving away from Attenborough’s traditional style of film making, highlighting how used to the documentary “formula” we’ve all become. Green, an extended portrait of a dying female orang-utan and the overall winner of

20 BlueSci Special

the 2010 Wildscreen awards, is an independently produced, free to download feature, created by an ‘ordinary citizen trying to protect the rainforest’. In introducing concepts such as deforestation and palm oil production whilst dispensing with narration, the film succeeds in posing questions, not answering them. Rather than explaining a concept to the audience, it asks them to consider the implications of an action. In a way, it asks them to think - to be scientific, rather than acting as a visual anchor for hand-holding narration.

While Green might be an indication of just where long-form science documentary making is heading, thanks to the Internet, scientific documentary making as a whole seems to be moving in another direction.

Short visual-heavy infographic films are giving difficult to understand science topics a helping hand.

Take for instance the eight minute long animation on the Higgs Boson by Jorge Cham, the creator of the Piled Higher and Deeper comics or the number-heavy issues surrounding fishing quotas which become obvious (and appalling) to anyone watching the thirteen computer generated jumbo-jets flying into a single trawling net in Uli Henrik Streckenback’s animated infographic Ending Overfishing.

In the future I’m foreseeing a schism in science documentary making between mediums, with more poetic representations of reality on one hand, and the fact-heavy five to ten minute long infographics pervading Vimeo and YouTube on the other. The latter are what we’re linking to on our blogs and retweeting, from Wired and BlueSci.co.uk: it’s already happening. Whether we’re bound to carry on down this route, I’m not sure.

BlueSci Film produces short films explaining new scientific discoveries and advances, as well as showcasing some of Cambridge’s brightest and best science researchers and communicators.

Our films can be found at bluesci.co.uk or at the BlueSciFilm youtube channel. If you are interested in getting involved with film making, or if you have an idea for a film, contact the Film Editors Nick Crumpton & Alexandra Fragniere at film@bluesci.co.uk

Nick Crumpton is a PhD student in the Department of Zoology. He is currently co-editor of BlueSci Films.

Michaelmas 2012

BlueSci Radio Anand Jagatia discusses the benefits of communicating science over the airwaves

in my mind for two reasons. One reason is that I got to meet Brian Leith, the executive producer of Human Planet, and hear some of the amazing stories behind the footage and people that were featured on the programme which made it such a success. The second is that after meeting the BlueSci President for the first time, to my complete surprise, he agreed to let me have my own radio show.

At the time I hadn’t even finished my radio training at CamFM, so I had no idea how I was going to gather enough material to even fill one hour, let alone create anything that people would actually want to listen to. But, as with most things, I was thrown in at the deep end, and before I even had a single show under my belt I was faced with the prospect of interviewing Dr Stuart Clark, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and now the author of a series of historical fiction novels about the lives of scientists such as Newton and Galileo. Although I was nervous at first, by the end it was hard to stop the torrent of questions that kept popping into my head, and a free copy of a book is always nice.

Since then, we’ve done ten shows and three special features on all manner of fascinating science, from synaesthesia to using video games in nature conservation. I have had the privilege to talk to people from all sides of the scientific community, work with some wonderful co-hosts and learn even more about what I find most interesting in the world.

One of the highlights of the year was the talk I had with Dr Helen Scales, a marine biologist and diving explorer, about the secret lives of seahorses and the mysteries of the deep. When I look back on all we’ve done this past year, from attending seminars to interviews and competitions, I can’t believe how much fun it’s all been. The BlueSci Radio Show has genuinely been one of the most rewarding things that has happened to me at University, and if science communication is something that you’ve thought about pursuing then I can’t recommend radio as a platform for it more highly.

The thing about radio is that it’s so much more personal than television. Staring at a camera to present a television show now seems so artificial compared to talking into a mic, and I think radio achieves a much more natural feel to its output than TV or the written word. Towards the end of last year,

Michaelmas 2012

Daniel stone

the first bluesci talk I attended sticks out

nearly all of the shows were broadcast live, and when you don’t have a script in front of you the only choice is to adopt an almost conversational tone with your co-host - and the listeners too. That, at least, is what I hoped people would think when they listened to one of our shows; that it wasn’t a lecture or presentation about science, but an animated chat that they could be a part of.

This year, the show will be bigger and even better than before. If you haven’t listened to any of our past programmes then do download our podcasts from the BlueSci website. If you would like to get involved in any aspect of the show, from research to presenting to producing, than please don’t hesitate to get in touch no matter how much you hate the sound of your own voice.

BlueSci Radio is broadcast live on CamFM, Tuesdays 16:00-17:00. Tune in to 97.2 FM, or log on to www.camfm.co.uk to listen online. Join us to hear about our feature of the week, get the latest science news and reviews and keep up to date with science events happening in Cambridge. Previous episodes of the show are available to download from bluesci.org. If you have a science question you want answered live on air or if you would like to get involved with radio production email the radio editor and BlueSci radio show host Anand Jagatia at radio@bluesci.co.uk.

Anand Jagatia is a 3rd year Undergraduatate studying Neuroscience. He has been the presenter and editor of the BlueSci radio show since October 2011.

BlueSci Special 21

[POPULAR Science] Helen Gaffney discusses BlueSci’s series of science communication talks the scientific celebrity is not a new phenomenon, but as ever more scientists are spending time telling the public about their work, questions about what popular scientific reporting should offer have become increasingly prescient. How strictly should scientific comment be regulated? Where is the correctly balance between providing information and offering entertainment? And perhaps most importantly, what does good scientific reporting look like? In order to find answers to these questions the BlueSci committee decided to launch the [POPULAR science] series of talks.

Our previous speakers have come from a broad range of areas within science communication, and talked about a wide variety of subjects. Our first speaker Tim Radford, former science editor for the Guardian, described his experience of the shift toward online journalism and the resulting accelerated pace of reporting. Gareth Mitchell provided us with an insight into the challenges of radio broadcasting, while presenter and BlueSci alumnus Greg Foot shared with us his journey up the rungs of the television broadcasting ladder.

As well as providing advice on how to communicate science the talks are also a forum to debate problems with science journalism. Often there seems to be a trade off in

the media between delivering scientific reporting that is representative of the scientific consensus and capturing the imagination of the general public, something that was discussed by BBC journalist Vivienne Parry in her talk last year.

One thing all of our speakers agreed on was that the most important thing to think about when communicating science is what makes a good story.

You need to capture the readers attention with a strong headline and then retain their interest by thinking carefully about the most interesting way to present the relevant scientific facts and findings.

BlueSci organises the [POPULAR Science] series of talks which explore the importance of direct communication between the academic community and the general public in modern society. Talks are open to everyone. Information about upcoming talks can be found on the BlueSci website (BlueSci. co.uk). You can also keep up to date with the latest BlueSci events on Twitter (@BlueSci) or on our Facebook page.

Helen Gaffney was BlueSci’s Events and Publicity officer from 2010-2011. The current officer is Jordan Ramsey.

She can be contacted at events@bluesci.co.uk.

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22 BlueSci Specials

Michaelmas 2012

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Michaelmas 2012

Away from the Bench 23

Armchair Experimentation

BlueSci reveals how technology has made science more accessible

Trey Ratcliff

r n

FOCUS

“eureka! boffins find Higgs Boson” ran the headline on The Daily Star website. News of the Cern report on the 4thJuly 2012 was echoed by all of the major British newspapers and news channels, while Twitter and Facebook were lighting up with the announcement before the press conference in Geneva had even concluded.

While this public acclaim reflects the importance of the finding, it also represents the interest that ordinary people have in scientific discoveries today.

Non-scientists are invading the stereotypical world of spotty teenage nerds and ancient fumbling bespectacled professors, and finding that they like it.

Could it be that science is becoming cool?

The statistics certainly point that way. A series of surveys on public attitudes to science in the UK found that interest in science has been continuously increasing since 2000. These surveys also show a recent increase in the number of people attending science-related activities. In 2011 a third of participants had attended a science museum (or centre) in the last year, up from a fifth in 2008.

Examples abound of entertainment activities and events with a science spin, from the Guerrilla Scientists setting up entertaining science demonstrations at popular music festivals, to the ever-popular, adult-orientated ‘Lates’ at the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum in London. Rachel Inglis is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and a regular volunteer at the Science Museum Lates. She thinks that they are perceived as “a different and fun way to spend an evening out with friends.” Apart from the more obvious lures of wine, speed dating and a silent disco, Rachel believes that guests are attracted by the easy to understand Christmas lecture-style talks, and leave “more interested in, and excited by, science.”

We are all surrounded by science. It’s on our computer screens, televisions, radios and in our newspapers. TV shows, particularly those combining science with comedy have done a lot to draw in broader audiences, as has the rise of the scienceentertainment celebrity. The success of Robin Ince and Professor Brian Cox’s ‘Monkey Cage’

Focus 25

Jknight1603

The London Science Museum makes a great family day out

Seti@home SETI@HOME

SETI@home allows anyone to get involved in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, (right)

phenomenon is an excellent example of this . Both the BBC Radio 4 show The Infinite Monkey Cage and the ‘Uncaged Monkeys’ live tour combine light-hearted comedy with real scientific issues, from cryogenic freezing to statistical bias in the pharmaceutical industry. Although this particular blend of science with chatty comedy is not without its critics, such as New Scientist reporter Jacob Aron on his Just a Theory blog, by and large it has been an extremely popular mix, as testified by the radio show’s Gold Award in the Sony Radio Awards 2011 (and the audiences of thousands that turn up to watch the live performances).

It is likely that the ubiquity of science in mainstream entertainment increases our interest in science, while continuing to be driven by it.

Producers only make science shows because they judge them likely to draw an audience; yet the successful shows ignite an interest in science topics even in the uncommitted audience member or channel-surfer. As a result, public scientific enthusiasm is increasing and scientists are becoming more creative in encouraging people to enjoy and

26 Focus

understand science.

With the popularisation of science, rapid evolution of technologies and widespread use of the Internet, the motivation and means for a brand new way for the public to get involved with science has come about. ‘Citizen Scientists’ are members of the public—often with no scientific training—who, through their own curiosity or interest in science, are helping scientists analyse data by observing, measuring or allowing researchers to use the computing power of home computers.

The participation of non-scientists in scientific research is novel for our generation but old news to science. Historically, modern science was often an amateur endeavour explored as a hobby by wealthy ‘gentlemen of science’, with some entire fields of science largely self-funded until the mid-20th century. Northern pubs in the 18th century saw taxonomical debates of plant and animal species by working men as part of Linnean societies, and Charles Darwin strongly encouraged hobbyists to contribute to his work, receiving and replying to letters from amateur scientists around the world.

Nowadays the Internet has helped to transform citizen science, uniting amateurs and scientists with a common interest and feeding back into society to fuel a passion and awareness for scientific endeavour.

Citizen science projects have begun to pop up all over the Internet in a broad range of scientific fields.

Distributed computing projects like SETI@home, which analyses radio signals from outer space for signs of extra-terrestrials, are a popular means for non-scientists to get involved. They work by taking advantage of your home computer’s downtime to allow researchers to harness a bit of extra computing power for their project.

Michaelmas 2012

Distributed computing projects help out researchers considerably, but have minimal opportunity for active citizen involvement. Stardust@ home was one of the first distributed thinking projects to focus on engaging its citizen scientists in the research task. In this project, volunteers sift through 1.6 million images of a synthetic porous material called an aerogel that had been exposed to interstellar dust during NASA’s Stardust mission.

Its goal is to find stardust in this vast collection of pictures, a task estimated to take about a century for an individual. By crowdsourcing the problem, however, a pair of interstellar particles was found within four years of releasing the images taken by Bruce Hudson, a former groundskeeper from Canada, whose right side had been paralysed by a stroke.

Galaxy Zoo, another popular distributed thinking project, gets its users to classify galaxies. Participants have made impressive discoveries, finding images of unusual astronomical phenomena like quasar mirrors and ‘green pea’ galaxies that would otherwise be lost in an impossibly large heap of data.

Online communities have sprung up from citizen science projects like Galaxy Zoo, with chat rooms, message boards and wikis for users to engage in research even further by communicating with scientists and fellow citizen scientists. In fact, though most citizen scientists volunteering for Galaxy Zoo report a wish to contribute to research as their main reason for participating in the project, others list the sense of community as a top reason for taking part.

Researchers heading crowdsourcing projects count on this kind of motivation to keep members active and recruit new participants.

Despite its increasing popularity citizen science is not without its critics, with some scientists expressing

concerns over the validity of volunteer-generated data. The worry is that without scientific training citizen scientists may not accurately collect data and may introduce bias into the results. Simple projects, like counting the number of animals in an area, leave little room for error, however as projects increase in complexity, such as identifying the species of animal in the area, the risk of inaccuracy also increases, with one study suggesting that volunteers are only just over 10 per cent more accurate at identifying species than random guessing.

So how do scientists insure the validity of results generated by citizen science projects? Zooniverse, the largest citizen science website, and home of Galaxy Zoo, regularly carries out spot checks on citizen science data and claims users do pick out good matches that tally with data collected by professionals. Other small-scale projects ensure trained scientists verify all data, something completely unfeasible for large projects generating massive amounts of information. These larger, mostly online, projects try to limit error by encouraging volunteers to ‘leave it out if in doubt’ and use scientist-led discussion boards and forums to allow citizen scientists to discuss their questions and concerns with experts.

Scientists need to know that volunteer generated data can be trusted as more and more researchers are turning to citizen scientists to aid analysis as current methods of data collection continue to spit out information at an alarming rate. Increased demand for their help will mean that volunteers will be able to pick and choose which projects are worthy of their time and effort. One project, evolved from a distributed computing project, may hold the key to attracting users.

Animation Research Labs, University of Washington

FOCUS

Foldit seduces users by presenting protein folding as a game

Michaelmas 2012

ESAHubble & NASA

Bob Lee

Professor Brian Cox (left), classifying galaxy’s seen from the Hubble space telescope is a mammoth task

Focus 27

Foldit requires participants to come up with new and innovative ways of folding a protein in order to minimise its energy state, potentially reflecting its natural shape. It seduces users by turning this important scientific problem into a game, with levels and ranks, collaboration and competition. One of the most successful citizen science projects, Foldit represents an important example of the direction in which this new area of science is heading, toward greater involvement of its users such that they get back at least as much as they contribute to research projects.

At the 2012 Cambridge Conservation Forum’s summer symposium, Professor Kate Jones of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) questioned where the majority of new citizen science data was going to come from. Before introducing her iBats application for bat monitoring with smart phones (which has so far collected data on 30 species from over 48,000 square kilometres, thanks to over 1,000 volunteers), she asked, “How can we get more data in smarter, better ways?.”

In more economically developed nations, the ubiquitousness of smart phones, their portability and complete integration into even the most intimate arenas of our personal lives (according to Ofcom, 47 per cent of teenagers use their smartphones in the toilet) has led to an explosion in citizen science applications, and there is little doubt now that they are the future medium of citizen science. Developing applications for smart phones has become easy, even for coding virgins, through sites such as Epicollect.

With just under 90,000 downloads so far, the ZSL’s recent Instant Wild app is a perfect case study.

“Many endangered animals are found in remote and inhospitable places such as mountainous terrain or the depths of the rainforest,” explains the ZSL’s web developer Alasdair Davies. “Traditionally, conservationists have used ‘camera traps’ to capture photographs of rare and endangered wildlife where 28 Focus

(matt)

Strange Ones

Bats and redwoods are just some of the species being studied using citizen science

it is often hard to track them down. It’s incredibly important to know that a species on the verge of extinction can still be found in a particular area so action can be taken. We can collect real time information and conservationists can act quickly to conserve species in the wild.”

Over a century after The National Geographic first published trail photographs from the camera trap pioneer George Shiras’, Instant Wild now sends camera trap photographs from ecosystems of the user’s choice straight to their pocket for identification.

Davies goes on to say that “Instant Wild aims to save conservationists thousands of hours by empowering the general public to help sort the live images by species group enabling scientists to analyse the data much faster and make informed conservation actions instantly due to the live feedback and data collected by the app users.”

It’s not just endangered animal research that has benefited from this technology. Interested in Redwood tree dispersal? Download Redwood Watch. Want to help NASA keep track of meteors?

Download Meteor Counter. No matter what your interest is, there’s an app for that, and anyone (with a smartphone) can help the scientists of their choice.

But the prerequisite interest of a phone owner in that subject might be a stumbling block. Citizen science might beat trawling through Facebook in a spare five minutes waiting for a train, but not everyone visits Scientific American to search for the newest ways to help complete metaprojects. In addition, citizen science projects usually require investments of time and apps need to keep users interested. Apple’s AppStore offers over 500,000 apps, so why would someone download an app, spend the time to get used to using it, and then keep on using it? The secret for recruiting citizen scientists, it seems, might lie with game designers.

With over 100 million ‘gamers’ in Europe (and the average 21-year-old American having played video Michaelmas 2012

FOCUS

Mykl Roventine

Welsh Government

Making life a game is the secret to success for many projects from health to conservation

games for five times as long as the time they’ve spent reading during their life), ‘gamification’ could be the key to participation. Although ‘gamers’ have already proved their worth at working on specific exercises such as FoldIt, even those who don’t play games and aren’t tuned to problem solving could become citizen scientists without realizing it and, more importantly, enjoy it. After all, enjoying games (or, as the philosopher Bernard Suits defined them, ‘voluntary attempts to overcome unnecessary obstacles’) seems to be hardwired into humans, and by defining goals, rules and a feedback system, tasks or even chores can be turned into activities we enjoy, return back to and try to get the highest score at. This hasn’t been

lost on industry, and gamification has become big business. Nike and Weight Watchers are just two of the companies that have inserted level ups and competition against other ‘players’ into their apps.

Even the Wellcome Trust this year called for scientists to gamify their PhDs to raise public awareness.

“There are only so many badgers you can identify before you grow tired of a similar photo appearing each evening,” said Davies on Instant Wild. “By incorporating a game element, such as competitions to become the quickest at identifying a species or identifying the most number of animals, we hope to include score charts and provide feedback and interaction.”

Citizen science projects have created a symbiotic relationship between the scientific community and the general public. By harnessing the computing power of the general public, scientists are able to analyse significantly more data and achieve far more than they could alone. Meanwhile, the public gains a greater understanding of science, the excitement of scientific discovery and, as gamification shows, entertainment.

From using the Internet to classify galaxies, social media to model pandemics and smartphones to monitor animal populations, new technologies have opened up science research to everyone, something that can only be a good thing for society and science as a whole.

Smartphone apps provide mobile access to citizen science projects, as well as old favourites like Facebook

Luke Maishman is a 2nd year PhD student in the Department of Pathology Jordan Ramsey is a PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology

Beau Giles

Nick Crumpton is a PhD student in the Department of Zoology

Michaelmas 2012

Focus 29

Written in the Stars Matthew Dunstan explores the life of controversial physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

NASA/ bILL INGALLS

neil degrasse tyson is a rare individual. One of

Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the worlds leading astrophysicists

Pluto was believed to be a planet for 76 years (shown here with its first moon, Charon)

30 Behind the Science

the leading astrophysicists in the world and a strong advocate for the importance of space exploration and scientific ambition in the American cultural landscape, he has also crossed over to the more public sphere to become one of the most recognised scientists of today, inspiring a whole new generation with the wonders of space science.

Much like the stellar bodies he works with, Tyson is seen very differently depending on your point of view.

He is regarded as a major thorn in the side of the US Senate, due to his continued demands for increased NASA funding. In popular media, he is a science star, with numerous appearances on late night talk shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or Real Time with Bill Maher. You might even join Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory by controversially accusing him of killing Pluto, after he played a key role in downgrading it from planet to dwarf planet.

In every case, Tyson is a force to be reckoned with, an eloquent, passionate voice for renewing our love of “dreaming for tomorrow”.

Tyson was born on 5th October 1958 in Manhattan, the very same week, in which NASA began operations as a civilian space agency. Tyson has been reported as saying that he feels his life and NASA’s are twinned somehow, tied to the same fate.

His interest in space and astrophysics was sparked on a family visit to the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan – of which he is now a Director – when he was nine years old. Growing up in the Bronx, Tyson was never exposed to a night sky full of stars, and upon seeing the thousands of lights on the ceiling of the Planetarium he described it as a “nice hoax”. It wasn’t until another family trip took him to Pennsylvania that his worldview was fatefully altered.

Upon seeing the heavens properly for the first time, Tyson was struck by it, saying from then on that it was as if “I had no choice in the matter, the universe called me”.

Tyson was soon determined to make astrophysics his life’s work. He studied Physics at Harvard before beginning a Masters course at the University of Texas.

He went on to gain a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia University in 1991.

Tyson’s journey towards academic success was far from easy – in his PhD Convocation Address at Columbia, Tyson recalls his personal experience at the University of Texas, where colleagues assumed that he had a better chance of a career in basketball

or business, but never astrophysics. The colour of his skin meant that nobody questioned his athletic prowess, but when it came to science, “my academic failures were expected, and my academic successes were attributed to others”. Thankfully, his scientific talents were more welcomed at Columbia, and after finishing his PhD, he went on to hold an academic position for three years at Princeton University, before moving back to the place where his interest in the cosmos was first sparked: the Hayden Planetarium.

He has remained there ever since and is currently the director of the facility, which was renamed the Rose Centre for Earth and Space in 2000.

It was during his Directorship that Tyson was involved in the controversy regarding the classification of Pluto as a planet. In February 2000, while designing new exhibitions for the Centre, Tyson and his team created a system that taught people about the common and distinguishing features of each object in the Solar System, not just the planets, but all objects that orbit the sun, from moons to asteroids. Having carefully gathered information from many leading academics, they designed an exhibition that classed Pluto with other objects of the Kuiper Belt (a region extending beyond the orbit of Neptune comprised of many small icy bodies) and not as a planet. The reason for this change was the discovery of many new Pluto-like objects in the Kuiper Belt making it clear that Pluto is not unique and has much more in common with these other objects than with the planets.

One year later, the New York Times ran a headline that read “Pluto not a planet…only in New York,” which drew upon Tyson’s new model and started a flood of requests from media, academia and the public for Tyson to defend his decision. His model even incited hate mail from those, outraged at the perceived demotion of Pluto.

Michaelmas 2012

NASA

Tyson has even been accused of having some form of personal vendetta against Pluto despite the fact that the decision merely reflected the most up to date scientific wisdom. This conclusion was validated when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially reclassified as a Pluto ‘dwarf planet’ in 2006.

Pluto became the archetype of this new classification, which currently includes five known examples, with at least another 50 thought to exist within the Solar System.

In 2001, Tyson began working with NASA when he was appointed by President Bush to the Commission on the Future of the US Aerospace Industry. He subsequently joined the Presidents Commission to Implement the US Space Exploration Policy, which then called for manned and robotic missions to the “Moon, Mars and Beyond,” he was instrumental in helping to modify this policy and set more practical goals for the near future. More recently he accepted a key role in NASA’s Advisory Council, of which he is now the Chairman. In 2011, Tyson was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian honour bestowed

by NASA, in recognition of his years of work.

His prominent academic standing has helped Dr Tyson to develop his interests in science communication and outreach. He regularly appears on television and radio, and has written several books targeted at a general audience in addition to his essays for the Natural History Magazine. His writings cover aspects of astrophysics and cosmology, but also reflections on the place of science and religion in society. He is especially outspoken about the danger that the teaching of Intelligent Design could have on scientific discovery. He says that he doesn’t want students to be taught that anything they don’t understand is divinely constructed and therefore

Tyson is a strong supporter of increasing NASA funding to allow more space missions to the “Moon, Mars and Beyond”

outside their capacity to observe and infer.

Tyson continues to be an outspoken supporter of increasing funding for NASA. By promising further space exploration, he hopes to ignite a new dream in the collective mind of both the US and the rest of the world. He is fighting an increasingly difficult battle to remind the public of why NASA is important.

NASA funding is reduced with every passing year, forcing ambitious programs such as manned flights to Mars by 2020 to be abandoned only five years after their inception. Tyson therefore calls for a doubling in taxpayer funding, so that NASA can once more reach for the stars. Crucially, he points out that an audacious and visible space program will inspire the next generation to become scientists and engineers.

One man’s dream of tomorrow, combined with the passion and drive to see these dreams realised may help to secure the foundation for the next great era of space exploration – the legacy of a life inspired by the night’s sky itself.

Matthew Dunstan is a 1st year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry

References Features

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on– http://www.semel.ucla.edu/sites/all/files/files/7/09/08/12/96-rem-discoveryaserinsky.pdf Who’s Training is it anyway? – http://www.universityaffairs.ca/the-black-hole/ Through the Looking Glass – Johnson L., (2005). Asymmetry at the molecular level in biology. European Review, 13, pp 77-95 doi:10.1017/S1062798705000670 Balm or Burden – ‘Sleep Medicine’ Harold R. Smith et al, Cambridge University Press (2008)

Regulars

Written in the Stars - http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/ Minority Report - The God Species Mark Lynas HarperCollins (2011) Life on Mars -Strick, J.E. (2004) Creation a Cosmic Discipline: The Crystallization and Consolidation of Exobiology, 1957-1973. Journal of the History of Biology, 37:131-180 Science for All – http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-executivesummary-FINAL-VERSION.pdf

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Behind the Science 31

Minority Report Vicki Moignard examines exactly where scientific information is coming from Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’ – Greenpeace protesters outside the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

over the past century, science has achieved more than at any other point in history. From splitting the atom to the invention of smartphones, scientific discovery and innovation have shaped the world around us. But in an age in which anyone can publish their opinion through comment sections, Twitter and blogs, we are constantly assaulted with a barrage of often incorrect and uninformed opinions.

From governments, who cherry-pick evidence to suit their manifestos, to religions which deliberately suppress scientific teaching, our collective ignorance is being targeted by minorities to bend public policy to their will, often with detrimental consequences.

Earlier this year, it emerged that almost all airlines and ferry operators visiting the UK have ceased to carry animals destined for research. At the root of this issue lie People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a UK-based charity dedicated to promoting and protecting animal rights. Their interference could have disastrous effects on medical research.

Rather than entering into public discourse about the necessity of using animals in research, PETA have taken an aggressive approach to target transport companies directly and intimidate them into action.

Moreover, they focus on individual cases of animals being harmed to canvass support, denying that many of today’s lifesaving drugs and treatments would not exist without animal experiments. However, blocking transport routes is unlikely to shut down this research altogether. Instead, it may drive it to countries where animal husbandry and experimentation regulations are not as tight as those imposed in the UK. Our

RYAN HULING

PETA has over three million members involved in activism

32 Science and Policy

CONXA RODA

Isaac Asimov

struggling economy may be robbed of some of its scientific talent and industry revenue as researchers follow the animals abroad. Effectively, many animals may suffer more as a result of PETA’s interference.

In a similar fashion, several ‘green’ groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have played on the public’s perception of nuclear power in order to shut down power plants and abandon projects for new ones. Their views are generally based on grossly overstated claims of the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and are bolstered by the media frenzy surrounding last year’s meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Whether nuclear power is always the best power source is a debate for another time, however, the outcome of this intervention has not been a move towards greener power sources. Nuclear power plants have been switched off with no clean alternatives in place and as a result, the use of fossil fuels has increased. Under the guise of protecting the planet from the energy they have decided is dangerous, these supposedly green groups may have inadvertently contributed significantly to carbon emissions.

Perhaps more alarming are the reports of groups, who would deny future generations the opportunity to learn about their world. The battle of evolution vs. creationism that has long been waged in the US, has now taken centre stage in South Korea, home to a burgeoning research and biotechnology industry. A recent petition by the Society for Textbook Revise is aiming to remove all traces of the ‘erroneous’ theory of evolution from textbooks, exploiting debates over the origin of some species as evidence that the theory is wrong. The campaign has had surprising success and many publishers have revealed their intentions to Michelmas 2012

Michelmas 2012

Amy Watts

BJOERN SCHWARZ

produce revised copies of their textbooks, excluding particular examples of evolution.

Another assault on education comes from The Texas Republican Party, who recently stated their opposition for any sex education other than abstinence until marriage. While this is hardly a new story in the US, research has repeatedly demonstrated that this approach doesn’t work. The lack of education in alternative methods of contraception drove rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases skyward over the course of the Bush administration, even though millions of dollars had been ploughed into the teaching of abstinence. It serves as a powerful reminder of what can be achieved by a few, who place their beliefs above scientific evidence and above the lives of millions of people.

The media have a considerable role to play in facilitating the actions of these groups as they provide a public platform for many of them. The BBC’s science coverage came under fire last year following criticism that it gave too much weight to minority arguments and opinions. While trying to fulfil their remit of presenting a balanced and impartial account of the news, the BBC was accused of unintentionally generating controversy. Neither are we as scientists without blame. We often choose to hide in the safety of our labs to avoid facing societal issues or engaging with the public in an open dialogue that could prevent science from being exploited for the gain of a few.

Thankfully, it seems that there is light at the end of the tunnel for scientific policy. The likes of Brian Cox have done wonders to raise the profile of science and to dispel the view of scientists as white coat-

wearing, bearded eccentrics. Ben Goldacre, a doctor and author of the Bad Science newspaper column and book, has been an advocate for good science reporting in the popular press. He has helped to explain how research is conducted and to debunk the many adverts that assault us with impressive-sounding, but scientifically meaningless, claims.

However, many scientists and communicators, including Goldacre, have been sued for libel by large corporations, against which they have spoken in their effort to protect the public from the false scientific claims of their products and practices. In many cases our libel laws have allowed businesses to quash scientific debate and silence critics. The Libel Reform Campaign has recently raised this issue, with the aim of persuading the UK government to amend libel laws to protect free speech and scientific discussion. Meanwhile, in the health and education sectors, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s long standing campaign to get good, healthy food into school canteens has had some success through raising public awareness and lobbying MPs. In Korea, an outcry from evolutionary scientists has led their Ministry of Education to pledge to set up an expert panel to oversee future amendments to scientific textbooks.

These examples of the exploitation of science are not isolated, neither are the intentions of such minority groups always bad, though their means can be questionable. But policy shouldn’t be down to

The shutdown of nuclear power plants is the focus of many environmental groups

Creationists believe the theory of evolution is wrong and are campaigning for a ban on it’s teaching

the opinions of a few to fuel personal gain. It should be the result of careful consideration of the issues at hand and the evidence that surrounds them. There is great need for more openness and discussion to prevent the misrepresentation of evidence, and of science as a whole. There is also a need for more effort from the public to engage and question, rather than to merely accept information and be misled. Science is a discipline that invites controversy and opinion.

But because our world is irrevocably dependent on it to function, good science should be at the centre of policy.

Vicki Moignard is a 2nd year PhD student in the Department of Haematology Science and Policy 33

Big Issues in Science – UKCSJ Ian Le Guillou reports from the 2012 UK Conference of Science Journalists

Panellists and the audience debated the big issues facing science journalism

34 Initiatives

in gold,” pronounced Martin Fewell, deputy editor of Channel 4 News, which would make his science correspondent Tom Clarke worth approximately £2 million. Unsurprisingly, there was not much disagreement from the audience, considering this was at the UK Conference of Science Journalists organised by the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW). The second such conference, organised following the success of the World Conference of Science Journalists was held in the auspicious halls of the Royal Society and brought together hundreds of journalists, editors, scientists and students to discuss issues and develop their professional skills.

Fewell was part of a panel of editors at the conference discussing whether or not science punches its weight in the newsroom. He saw great benefit in having science-trained reporters not only for science stories, where they can dig deeper, ask the right questions and explain complicated issues to the public, but also for other stories where they can contribute a scientific perspective. On the other hand, Kenny Campbell, editor of Metro and also part of the panel, doesn’t employ any science journalists.

He believes it is an advantage to have non-specialists writing to make it easy for anyone on the Northern line at 8am to understand. With 4.8 million readers to entertain and engage with each day, he plays to the audience and wants “more pictures of mice with ears on their backs”. His suggestion to aspiring science journalists was to become a general journalist first and find out what the public are interested in, rather than deciding to focus on science. But, according to panellist Ian Katz, deputy editor at The Guardian,

TOM MORRIS

“science journalists are worth their weight

department of biochemistry, cambridge Ian le guillou

The second UKCSJ was held in the halls of the Royal Society in London

the public is interested in science stories, and not just sensational ones. On the Guardian website nearly as many people read science stories as read about politics or travel despite science having the smallest team working on it. In a survey, Guardian readers said they wanted to see more stories about science and foreign news, and fewer stories about celebrity gossip (which makes you wonder whether they were telling the truth or not).

Later, there was a session focusing on the Leveson inquiry into media practices and ethics and how it would affect science journalism. Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre, laid out some of the problems she saw with science journalism. She had previously appeared before the inquiry and from her enthusiastic (and rapid) manner it was easy to see why she had been asked to slow down by Lord Leveson, who was “concerned that smoke seems to be emanating from the shorthand writer.” One of the key points she made was the damage done by journalists seeking to balance opinions. By giving equal airtime to the ‘lone maverick’ and the respected scientist who is representative of 99.9 per cent of the scientists in the field, it presents the idea that the scientific community is divided and unsure. She used the reporting of a potential link between the MMR vaccine and autism as an example. While the small (and later shown to be flawed) study and its proponents were not taken seriously by the vast majority researchers and GPs, the continuous debate presented by the press caused a large change in the public perception. At the Leveson inquiry, she had presented these problems and also a 10-point list of Michaelmas 2012

guidelines that had been produced with both scientists and journalists. These covered relatively simple but widespread problems in science reporting, such as mentioning the size of a study, giving absolute risk as well as relative risk (think ‘Cupcakes double risk of cancer’) and distinguishing between correlation and causation.

The Association of British Science Writers had organised a stand for several student science magazines to publicise their work between sessions. Alongside BlueSci were EUSci (Edinburgh), Bang! (Oxford), The GIST (Glasgow), Au Science (Aberdeen) and I Science (Imperial). BlueSci is in fact the oldest of the bunch, having been around for eight years and 25 issues, whereas The GIST had just published its first issue. From talking to other editors it was clear that none of the magazines were struggling for contributors or advertising revenues and that student science journalism was in good health.

The day ended with the debate ‘Is science journalism special?’ which led to conflicting views. William Cullerne Brown, founder of Research Fortnight, lambasted science journalism for focusing so much on discoveries, likening it to football journalists writing

only about goals. He suggested that stories are being missed where science is not working so well, like the drop-off in drug discovery. This was echoed by Connie St Louis, president of the ABSW, who said that most science journalists are actually science communicators.

Without a true investigative aspect, it can’t be called journalism and that we need real journalism to expose the flaws within science. This was exemplified later in the evening at the ABSW awards, where the award for scientific investigative reporting had only a single nomination. However, Evan Davis, presenter of the Today programme, disputed that investigative reporting is the highest form of journalism. He blamed the Watergate scandal (and the film All the President’s Men) for stoking journalists’ egos and proposed that communicating is a more important aspect of journalism than investigation. In that regard, he believed science journalism was healthy. One thing the panel did agree on was the danger of being too close to sources. Science journalists are usually on very close terms with scientists, in a way that would not be acceptable for political correspondents. This prevents them from seeing the flaws in the system. The example used by Evan Davis was the economics reporters who failed to foresee the financial crash because they were too close to the experts.

In the background throughout all the sessions was the tapping of laptop keyboards and the twitching of thumbs. A few audience members were live-blogging the sessions, but most people were on Twitter, updating 140 characters at a time. While vocal debates were emanating from the stage, silent ones were spreading via WiFi, as the room full of science communicators were doing what they do best.

Ian le guillou

Recordings of all the sessions, as well as blogs and tweets have been collected together on ukcsj.org

“What i love about

communicating science

Ian Le Guillou is a 4th Year PhD student in the Department of Biochemistry

is the opportunity to tell untold stories. Finding an idea, thinking creatively about how it can make an interesting story and then investigating it gives me a rush of excitement. When I see the final article posted or printed it gives me sense of accomplishment, especially when it provokes comments and e-mails from people who read it. I have reported on everything from obscure robotics research that may help coordinate disaster rescue, to revealing scientific misconduct.

All of these stories matter to people and the public relies on good science journalism to find out about them. As an editor I don’t always go out and report on such stories myself; sometimes I have an idea and act as a coordinator to enable someone else to write a Michaelmas 2012

Although BlueSci was first, a number of other UK universities now produce science magazines

story – but editors, too, play important role in telling such stories.

Another great thing about communicating science – and science journalism in particular – is the opportunity to be involved in such a lively and engaged community of people.

Science journalists have many meetings, discussion groups and conferences - like the UKCSJ – where one can air their grievances, learn new skills and meet like-minded people who work on similar projects.”

– Mico Tatalovic, deputy editor at SciDev.net and BlueSci alumnus 2006-2008

Initiatives 35

Life on Mars Hugo Schmidt reveals the advances made in the field of Astrobiology democritus, the ancient Greek philosopher,

Steve Jurvetson

The SETI project scans the Universe for radio waves in the hope of detecting extraterrestrial life

36 History

famously stated that the world was composed of atoms and empty space. Despite his speculation no further advances were made in atomic theory for almost two thousand years until the turn of the 20th century when a number of key experiments provided the evidence to prove his assumption. As the field of atomic theory shows, without data even a correct hypothesis cannot advance.

The same is true for astrobiology, the study of life elsewhere in the Universe. The speculation that we are not alone in the Universe is as old as human civilization itself, and indeed Democratus himself believed it to be true. But, while the question of whether life exists on other planets is a verifiable hypothesis, it is one that is difficult to test, and progress in the field has been slow.

Despite the musings of various authors, philosophers and film directors on the subject, astrobiology as a science has only been around since the second half of the last century. Three major developments prepared its way. The first was the development of rocketry, given huge momentum by the Second World War and the Cold War. The second was radio astronomy. The third, and most important, was the experiment of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. Combining water, methane, hydrogen and ammonia, and adding a spark, they found that amino acids, the building blocks of life, were formed. Knowing the conditions under which life may have begun on earth allowed the search for those conditions elsewhere.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into orbit, and the Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg went to Calcutta to visit the evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane. Discussing the recent Soviet triumph, the two men agreed that if Sputnik were to land on the moon, it would carry with it microorganisms from Earth which would irreversibly contaminate the lunar surface. On his return to the United States, Lederberg wrote a series of memos that warned of possible contamination and the importance of sterilising all possible spacecraft thoroughly. At the time he suggested that the moon might be covered with organic precipitates of the kind that it was now clear could give rise to life. Though the possibility of terrestrial contamination of the moon remained an academic subject, the possibility of extra-terrestrial

contamination of Earth captured the public imagination, with headlines like “Space Academy Board Warns of Microbe Attack from Space”.

The next year, US President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) into existence, and the year after that, two things happened that mark the birth of astrobiology. The newly formed NASA funded the first astrobiology project, a detection instrument for extra-terrestrial microbes, and the paper Searching for Interstellar Communications was published in the journal Nature. In it, Guiseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison addressed a fundamental problem in using radio to detect life in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The number of possible radio frequencies available to an extra-terrestrial intelligence to broadcast on is vast. Cocconi and Morrison identified the most universal of these frequencies, and the stars to be first searched for communications.

The stars were indeed searched the next year and the two men’s standards are still used today.

At the time, NASA administrator Dan Goldin predicted that the addition of biology to astronomy would lead to screaming from the physical scientists, but biologists were similarly sceptical. G.G. Simpson, one of the most significant palaeontologists of his time, dismissed astrobiology as a haven for exbiologists. The next two years saw a boom-time, with many Nobel Laureates and Carl Sagan, a prominent astrophysicist, joining the field. Without these scientists astrobiology might not have begun, as it is still often criticised as a “science without a subject,” a criticism first made by Simpson.

Fuelled by the Cold War, funding poured into rocketry. The moon was found to be barren, but Mars was a richer target. The first Viking missions carried with them tools to search for microbial life there. While they identified carbon dioxide produced from a nutrient broth, it was later found to be the result of a non-biological chemical reaction.

Following this disappointment, astrobiology entered a lull phase, having exhausted the available sources of data. Yet it was during this lull that the fundamentals for its renaissance were being put in place by developing new avenues of inquiry. Scientists began searching extreme enviroments on Earth in the hope of finding life thriving in conditions similar to those of other planets.

Michaelmas 2012

In 1977, the deep-sea exploration submersible Alvin found life clustering around volcanoes 2.5 km below the surface of the ocean, providing a demonstration that life can exist in the absence of the sunlight, something of particular importance when imagining life on the outer planets. Moreover, in the conditions of volcanoes, dissolved meteorite could yield some of the building blocks of life - probably a common occurrence in the volcano and meteorite rich early history of Earth.

This was further helped by another breakthrough in the search for the origin of life. Up until this point, the question of the first molecules had always faced a paradox.

The first molecules could not be proteins, as proteins cannot be formed without the cellular instruction manual, DNA. Neither could the first molecules have been DNA, as DNA is meaningless without protein to turn its message into something usable. The answer came in the 1980s, when a new class of RNA molecules, Ribozymes, were discovered. Ribozymes have both the ability to carry information, like DNA, but like proteins they can perform chemical reactions. Indeed, investigators studying the origins of life have produced ribozymes that are capable of self-synthesis. The idea that ribozymes have the ability of both carrying information and acting on it, provided a missing link between the dead world of pure chemicals and the first cells. Work immediately began looking for variations that could arise on Earth and in space.

The field was set for a full renaissance, and it got one 1995 when 51 Pegasi b, the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star, was found. Further successes followed in short order.

In the same year, NASA launched the Infrared Solar Observatory, which has discovered organic molecules in

Michaelmas 2012

comets and cosmic dust: hardly unimportant since even our atmosphere-protected planet accumulates between fifty and a hundred tonnes of extra-terrestrial matter a day.

Meanwhile the spacecraft Galileo returned suggestions of an ocean of liquid water beneath the ice of Jupiter’s satellite Europa. The work on undersea life clustering around volcanic hotspots without other sources of heat and energy took on new significance. The next year a Martian meteorite retrieved from Antarctica, ALH 84001, proved to contain possible nanobacterial fossils, although this discovery was controversial and many believe that the bacteria may have origionated on earth.

In the almost two decades since these momentous discoveries, two major journals have been founded dedicated to astrobiology, NASA has unveiled a roadmap to cover the next several decades of research, and the European space agencies have become involved. At each stage of the process of emerging from speculation to science, astrobiology has been firmly guided by the data, and it is on this solid base that it is set to succeed in the future. Further missions are planned with the European Space Agency’s ExoMars and NASA’s Red Dragon both destined leaving for Mars in 2018. This summer, the rover Curiosity landed on Mars, to begin its investigation of the habitability of Mars. There are already over 800 extrasolar planets discovered, with the rate of finding growing ever more rapid. From empty speculation to sound science, astrobiology’s future is secured.

Hugo Schmidt is a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Biochemistry

History 37

Science for All

Leila Haighighat discusses the recent revolution in academic publishing at the start of 2012, Cambridge mathematician Timothy Gowers updated his blog with an entry more invective than his previous posts on the cost of academic publishing. Gowers criticised Elsevier’s practice of keeping journal content behind paywalls and declared his intent to sever all ties with the major academic publishing company, hoping that others would do the same. Since then, a widespread movement has taken off in favour of free access to academic research published online. It is a movement that has opened up a dialogue amongst academics, publishers, and it goes by the name of the Academic Spring.

How can research papers be made freely available without compromising their quality? Is it morally acceptable to charge for access to the results of scientific research, especially when that research is paid for by the public? These are key questions that the Academic Spring is attempting to address. The name connotes a movement of liberalisation, in the same vein as the 2011 Arab Spring and the Spring of Nations, a series of populist revolts that occurred throughout Europe in 1848. In this politically charged spirit, the Academic Spring regards major journals as the oppressive few withholding papers from the masses and imposing hefty subscription fees upon the very institutions that provided them with their content in the first place.

British universities spend £200 million every year

38 Perspective

raysonho

James McNally

British Universities spend over £200 million every year on journal subscriptions

for access to electronic databases, and, while this cost may appear exorbitantly high, several major journals argue that the traditional business model is still the way to go. High fees are necessary, they insist, in order to provide for in-house editing that can keep up the quality of content. One of Elsevier’s 2,000 journals, The Lancet, has a core editorial team of over 40 people. Journals with restricted access also justify their paywalls by maintaining that, even if primary scientific literature were made free, the majority of the public would struggle to understand it. Another point made by these journals is that the submission process is already such a hassle for authors; adding a new set of guidelines to ensure open-access would only make the process even more cumbersome. According to Kent Anderson, CEO and publisher of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the Academic Spring is “shallow rhetoric aimed at the wrong target.”

Two novel business models have allowed journals to compromise between earning sufficient revenue for in-house editing and providing open access to content. The first is known as ‘green’ open access. It is a model used by several major publishers, including Elsevier, Springer and Wiley, which collectively account for 42 per cent of all published research papers. In this model, publishers allow authors to self-archive their papers in their own institutional repositories, making them freely available to the public. In contrast, ‘gold’ open access requires authors to submit their papers to an open access journal and pay a few thousand pounds for the article to be made immediately available to the public. The largest open access journal, PLoS ONE, charges authors $1,350 (£867) for each submission, whereas journals with restricted access, including Nature and Science, do not charge a submission fee per se, although authors are expected to pay a few hundred pounds for each coloured figure that is published. Despite the higher fee of PLoS ONE, the journal is experiencing a massive growth in output, as open access publishing gains popularity. During its first year in 2007, PLoS Thegowers

Cambridge mathematician Timothy Gowers has publically criticised the cost of academic publishing

Michaelmas 2012

Michaelmas 2012

Chee.Hong

ONE published close to 1,000 articles; currently, the journal puts out roughly 2,000 articles per month.

Even with these models of open access becoming more commonplace, supporters of the Academic Spring feel that further change is required. They accuse publishing companies of making annual profit margins as high as 35 per cent while simultaneously raising subscription fees by 5-7 per cent. One of the publishing companies’ more unsavoury practices is that of ‘bundling.’ Effectively, if universities want access to a specific journal, the publisher insists that they must to subscribe to a whole set of their journals or receive no access at all. In his blog entry, Gowers calls for ‘reverse bundling’, whereby libraries join together to boycott a publisher’s journals unless the publisher is willing to negotiate subscription costs.

An instance similar to ‘reverse bundling’ occurred in 1962, when the editors of Elsevier’s Topology resigned in opposition to high subscription costs.

Those behind the Academic Spring also point out that open access would facilitate text mining.

A relatively new method, text mining involves computers extracting information from plain text and making relevant associations, such as between a drug and its side effects, or a gene and mutations that can cause disease. In March 2012, the Joint Information Systems Committee, the UK’s government-funded body that oversees the use of technology in higher education, reported that text mining could potentially provide productivity worth £123-157 million every year.

In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its adoption of the Public Access Policy.

Any papers that come out of research supported by the NIH, the United States’s largest funding agency, must be deposited in PubMed Central, a popular online repository where the papers will be made freely available after 12 months. Subsequently, other funding bodies across the world, including the Wellcome Trust and the eight UK Research Councils, followed suit in insisting upon free public access to their funded research. In December 2011, a new legislative bill called the Research Works Act was introduced, challenging the NIH’s policy and seeking to prohibit any open-access mandate on federally funded research. A few months later, in response to widespread public criticism, the bill was rescinded, and publishers, including Elsevier, withdrew their support for it.

By February 2012, a website called the Cost of Knowledge emerged on the web, inviting researchers to join Gowers in a commitment to boycott Elsevier journals. The petition has now amassed over 12,000 signatures. In April 2012, the world’s richest university, Harvard, declared the current situation with subscription fees ‘untenable’ and encouraged its

entire staff to endorse open access publishing instead.

By May of this year, over 25,000 Americans signed a petition demanding that any papers arising from taxpayer-funded research be made freely available, a number sufficiently high enough to mandate that the White House release an official response. At the time of writing, the response has yet to be released.

In June 2012, a new business model was pitched by the upcoming scientific journal PeerJ, which is based in San Francisco and London. Authors pay a one-off fee to secure one of three types of membership dictating how often they can publish in the journal. Lifetime membership costs $299 (£192), while publishing twice a year costs $199 (£128) and publishing once a year costs $99 (£64). All authors of the paper must be paid members. Later in the same month, two separate UK reports—one from the Royal Society and the other written by Professor Dame Jane Finch upon commission by the UK government—declared strong support for the ‘gold’ model of open access research. However, the Finch Report cautions that such a policy could cost the UK as much as £50-60 million in submission fees every year.

Deciding on how to disseminate research findings without sacrificing quality remains a challenge for even the most highly reputed journals. The Academic Spring has already caused publishers to move towards open access, though more dramatic changes will need several years to take effect. Nonetheless, its consequences will inevitably impact how every publication, including this one, communicates science.

Harvard is one influential institution in favour of open access

Leila Haghighat is an MPhil student in the Department of Medicine

Perspective 39

Weird and Wonderful A selection of the wackiest research in the world of science

WWW.ALEXHAHNILLUSTRATOR.COM

WHAT WEIGHS IN at 287 million tonnes, the equivalent of more than 5400 Titanics? It is in fact the combined weight of the entire world’s population.

Of this weight, 15 million tonnes are derived from people classed as overweight, and an additional 3.5 million tonnes from those who are obese. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine believe that such data is a better way of measuring our impact on the planet, rather than just counting people. The team found that North America had the highest average weight, contributing to more than a third of global obesity despite comprising only 6 per cent of the world’s population. Using 2005 data on body mass index (BMI) and average heights from the World Health Organisation, the team calculated the average body mass for people in various countries, then factored in population data to give the total weight of adult humans as 287 million tonnes. If all countries had the BMI distribution of America, the world biomass increase of 58 million tonnes would equal a population increase of 935 million people with the energy requirements of 473 million adults.

Increasing population BMI could increase world food energy demands equivalent to an extra half a billion people, implying that overconsumption could lead to major problems in sustainability. MD

Evolution Rocks

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DOES MUSIC UNDERGO Darwinian evolution?

40 Weird and Wonderful

Scientists from Imperial College London show that it does, albeit not indefinitely. The group created a Darwinian music engine, called DarwinTunes, which maintains a population of short audio loops and periodically ‘mates’ them in a manner analogous to sexual reproduction. During this process, the musical ‘genome’ of each loop (which defines for example note placement and instrumentation) is randomly combined with that of the partner, mimicking genetic recombination. Just as in biological mutation, the newly created daughter loops contain new, random genetic material. The daughter loops are then played to a population of website users, who listen to the samples and rate the loops’ aesthetic qualities. These ratings determine which loops in a given generation will be allowed to mate and reproduce and which have to die. The scientists found that the audio loops

quickly evolved from noise into music. After 500-600 generations however, evolution stopped and reached equilibrium as recombination and mutation became more and more deleterious, breaking up pleasing combinations that had previously been achieved.

Music has constantly evolved over the centuries, and as this experiment shows we, the consumers, have played a creative role in shaping this. JM

Sexual-Frustration Drives Flies to Drink RESEARCH HAS SHOWN that sexually deprived male fruit flies consume more alcohol than those who are fulfilled. Scientists from the University of California split their unwitting males into two groups. One group mated with receptive virgins and the other with recently mated females, who promptly reject even the most persistent of advances. The males were then given a choice of food; one laced with ethanol and one without. The spurned group showed a significant increase in preference for the ethanol-laced food.

These observations shed light on the interactions between addictive behaviour and the reward pathways of the brain. The brain rewards activities such as sex and eating by releasing “pleasure chemicals” such as dopamine, because these actions benefit the survival of the species. However, these pathways can be hijacked by drugs such as alcohol to give a “high”.

In this study, the deprived flies had lower levels of a molecule called neuropeptide F (NPF) than the fulfilled group. This molecule sated the brain’s reward pathways as a result of their sexual encounters and so the urge to seek rewards from alcohol was diminished. KC

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28 Perspective

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