Easter 2018 Issue 42 www.bluesci.co.uk
Cambridge University science magazine
Wellbeing Survey: BlueSci investigates study and mental wellbeing amongst the University’s students
Community Mapping . Ice Shelf Collapse . Taste and Cutlery . The Eden Project
Easter 2018 Issue 42
Contents
Cambridge University science magazine
Regulars
Features 6
Charting the Unknown
On The Cover News Reviews
Cara Louise Woods discusses how we are putting places on the map using technology and the power of people, with Dr Bjoern Hassler
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The Birds at the End of the World
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Science For All
Euan Furness talks to Dr Michael Brooke, Curator of Ornithology at the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, about his work finding birds in remote places
Emma Werner discusses the Cambridge Science Centre and its role in inspiring a new generation of scientists with Lisa-Marie Cahill 12
Breaking up at Sea: The Great Collapse of an Ice Shelf
Dr Alison Banwell tells Silas Yeem Kai Ean and Seán Thór Herron how ice shelves break up
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Pavilion:The Eden Project
Hayley Hardstaff investigates the phenomenal architecture behind one of the UK’s brightest sustainability projects 24
Medicine’s Forgotten Warriors
Laura Upstone tells the story of virus based medicine in the war against bacteria, the wonder drug that almost was
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Why Limit Ourselves to Silverware?
Think goldware, zincware and copperware! Bianca Provost explains what Professor Mark Miodownik’s work can tell us about materials and food
BlueSci was established in 2004 to provide a student forum for science communication. As the longest running science magazine in Cambridge, BlueSci publishes the best science writing from across the University each term. We combine high quality writing with stunning images to provide fascinating yet accessible science to everyone. But BlueSci does not stop there. At www.bluesci.org, we have extra articles, regular news stories, podcasts and science films to inform and entertain between print issues. Produced entirely by members of the University, the diversity of expertise and talent combine to produce a unique science experience
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FOCUS
FACULTIES AND WELLBEING BlueSci investigates mental health in students at the University of Cambridge
Time Flies
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Peering into the Past
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Weird and Wonderful
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Philip Myers tells us how scientists unravelled the secrets of time telling using the humble vinegar fly
Dan Brubaker and a mishmash of know-nothings convene at the Dr Ralph L Buice, Jr Observatory, Atlanta
From robotic bees to the hours spent folding toilet paper, we bring you the strangest stories from recent literature
President: Alexander Bates ���������������������������������������������������president@bluesci.co.uk Vice President : Elsa Loissel............................................. web-editor@bluesci.co.uk Managing Editor: Martha Dillon..............................managing-editor@bluesci.co.uk Secretary: Mrittunjoy Majumdar.......................................... enquiries@bluesci.co.uk Treasurer: Atreyi Chakrabarty �������������������������������������� membership@bluesci.co.uk Film Editor: Sarah Madden ������������������������������������������������������������� film@bluesci.co.uk Radio: Rebecca Richmond-Smith................................................radio@bluesci.co.uk News Editor: Stephanie Norwood ���������������������������������������������news@bluesci.co.uk Webmaster: Adina Wineman.............................................webmaster@blueci.co.uk Art Editor: Martha Dilllon...................................................art-editor@bluesci.co.uk
Contents
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Issue 42: Easter 2018 Issue Editor: Laura Nunez-Mulder Managing Editors: Martha Dillon, Seán Thór Herron Second Editors: Alex Bates, Amanda Buckingham, Martha Dillon, Seán Thór Herron,Victoria Honour, Kashif Katib, Alexandra Klein, Elsa Loissel, Laura Nunez-Mulder, Joy Thompson, Hannah Thorne, Jenni Westoby Art Editor: Martha Dillon News Team: Rachel Fox, Esther Pilla Reviews: Rachel Fox, Elsa Loissel, Kaspar Vasiliauskas Feature Writers: Dan Brubaker, Euan Furness, Hayley Hardstaff, Seán Thór Herron, Philip Myers, Bianca Provost, Laura Upstone, Emma Werner, Cara Louise Woods, Silas Yeem Kai Ean Focus Team: Martha Dillon, Elsa Loissel, Laura Nunez-Mulder Weird and Wonderful: Martha Dillon, Victoria Honour, Hannah Thorne Production Team: Alex Bates Caption writers: Alex Bates Copy Editors: Alexandra Klein, Laia Serratosa, Max Wilkinson Advertiser: Christina Turner Illustrators: Sean O’Brien, Hayley Hardstaff, Imogen Harper, Sammi Lynch, Oran Maguire, Connie Noble, Catherine Prowse, Sarah Vimes Cover Image: Nina Carter ISSN 1748-6920
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (unless marked by a ©, in which case the copyright remains with the original rights holder). To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
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Editorial
The Cambridge Hothouse Cambridge students are vocal about mental health, raising awareness and reducing stigma through initiatives such as Student Minds Cambridge. The university, for its part, offers support systems that are mostly in college, or central like the University Counselling Service. Meanwhile, faculties are a formative part of the Cambridge experience - sometimes more so than colleges. So when the results from BlueSci’s 2018 Wellbeing Survey came in, I was dismayed to read that 55% feel they have not received adequate support from their faculties when they needed it. With contributions from students, faculty staff, and the Head of Counselling, this term’s FOCUS is an informative read. Out of the respondents to the BlueSci survey, one third of Cambridge students had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and another fifth had undiagnosed mental health issues. But while some faculties work hard to support their students, others have a reputation for neglecting student welfare. (Who can forget the infamous email from the Director of Studies of Physics at Queens’?) Together, Martha Dillon, Elsa Loissel, and I have collated the results of the Wellbeing Survey and revealed the variation between faculties. Elsewhere in the magazine, we continue to celebrate Cambridge scientists. Cara Louise Woods describes how she took part in a Cambridge ‘mapathon’, where she contributed to a crowd-sourcing effort to chart unmapped areas of Ghana and Uganda and spoke to a few of the scientists behind the project. Euan Furness invites us into his conversation with Dr Michael Brooke, a researcher of rare birds in remote locations, and Silas Yeem Kai Ean and Seán Thór Herron hear from glaciologist Dr Alison Banwell about ice shelves and how they fall apart. Also, our Reviews include two books by Cambridge scientists – a recent release from Dr Cecilia Brassett, Emily Evans, and Dr Isla Fay, and a much-loved classic from the late Professor Stephen Hawking. Also within these pages: experience three wonderful science attractions through the eyes of students. Emma Werner and Lisa-Marie Cahill invite you to get involved in the recently re-opened Cambridge Science Centre. Over a beautiful two-page illustration, Hayley Hardstaff takes us further afield to the Eden Project in the Pavilion section. Further still, Dan Brubaker writes from across the ocean of his awe at the stars seen from the observatory at Fernbank Science Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. On reading this issue, you may choose to volunteer for Cambridge Science Centre, or take part in a Missing Maps Mapathon. You may get involved with the next issue of BlueSci (and you’d be welcome). But above all, I hope you recognise that although Cambridge is an exciting place to study science, it is a tough place, too. The student body is calling – yelling – for faculties to sit up and engage with our mental wellbeing. Will they take notice?
Laura Nunez-Mulder Issue 42 Editor
Easter 2018
Art in the Issue Issue Editor Laura Nunez-Mulder focussed this issue on a new wellbeing survey, exploring whether the experiences of members of the university differ based on faculty. Our three focus illustrators responded to this theme in diverse manners. Imogen Harper’s troubled scientist and Sarah Vine’s distracted reader echo our evidence that a large portion of the university, regardless of discipline, are finding their ‘Cambridge Experience’ a negative influence on their mental wellbeing. Nina Carter’s powerful cover is a stark reminder of our ability to disregard individual testimony, however: “my focus was not only visualising the misaligned identity that mental health can induce, but also capturing the lack of understanding and mass assumption that circulates popular discourse about mental health”. Elsewhere in the issue, we are lucky to have images from scientific projects themselves in Cara Louise Wood’s piece on Open Street Map, and our discussion of collapsing ice shelves by Seán Thór Herron and Silas Yeem Kai Ean. Sean O’Brien and Sammi Lynch gave us their own light-hearted takes on scientific study of birds and flies, while Catherine Prowse’s beautiful clocks are perhaps BlueSci’s first original sculptural illustrations. Finally, Bluesci’s art and science ‘Pavilion’ section looks at scientific architecture. Hayley Hardstaff reports on the collaboration between designers, scientists and ecologists that created Cornwall’s Eden Project, with her beautiful watercolour highlighting the variety of mathematical and natural inspirations underpinning the complex Martha Dillon Art editor
You can follow some of our illustrators on instagram at: ninarosiekelleycarter, immiharper, sarahvinesillustration, seanobillo, sammijlynch, catherineprowse
News
Liquid-liquid Phase Transition Observed for the First Time
Check out www.bluesci.org, our Facebook page or @BlueSci on Twitter for regular science news
On Earth, water can exist as solid, liquid and gas. These phase transitions are important because they occur within a range of temperatures compatible with human life (or, in the case of boiling water, temperatures that allow cooking). This March, a team from Arizona State University and the University of Amsterdam demonstrated for the first time that water can transition from one liquid state to a different liquid state. This proves that super-cooled aqueous liquids can change to a liquid form with lower density and higher viscosity. This transition could not previously be observed because when reaching super-cooling conditions (about -90°C), water tends to crystallise to ice before the critical temperature point for a liquid-liquid transition is reached. This technical limitation, defined as the ‘crystallisation curtain’, can now be lifted because newly discovered solutes permit the super-cooling of water, acting as antifreeze. The anti-freeze solutes described in the article allow water to behave in its normal way, without disrupting the liquid-liquid phase transition that is prevented by freezing. Professor C Austen Angell and colleagues speculate that liquid-liquid phase transition of water may occur also in neat water. Further experiments are needed to determine the effects of other factors, such as pressure and ionic concentration, on this phenomenon, and especially to understand whether this transition can be exploited without the need for super-cooling ep
Age Changes in Epigenetic Methylation Ageing is defined biologically as the inherent and inevitable functional decline which limits lifespan. Though people swear “you’re only as old as you feel”, developments in the field of epigenetics have shown that a record of your age is written within your genes. Discovered first in humans and characterised in mice by a group of Cambridge-based scientists (Stubbs et al 2017), there are “clock regions” in DNA: CpG islands, regions of DNA made up of alternating cytosine and guanine bases, whose methylation state correlates with age. Models generated based on these data have been able to predict age with a median error of 3.6 years in humans and 3.33 weeks in mice, whose average lifespan is 1.5-2 years. Remarkably, DNA methylation age has also been shown to be affected by smoking status, healthy eating, stress, alcohol consumption and education among other diverse lifestyle factors known to impact longevity. The mechanism of these molecular timekeepers is unclear, and the question remains whether these marks simply correlate with or cause the progressive deterioration of ageing. Nonetheless, these results have stimulated speculation as to whether altering epigenetics could open the door to sci-fi style rejuvenation: increasing population life-span and health-span in the future. More pragmatically, since advanced age is a major risk factor for nearly all diseases, epigenetic ageing could serve as a promising biomarker for age-related diseases, or, with development, as a useful surrogate outcome measure in testing interventions to increase longevity rather than waiting decades to assess actual change in life-expectancy rf
Stick Spiders from Different Hawaiian Islands Evolve in Parallel It is very rare for scientists to catch examples of parallel, convergent evolution, but earlier in March Professor Rosemary G. Gillespie and her colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that highlighted parallel evolution in Hawaiian stick spiders. The group analysed a genus of spider, Ariamnes, whose ancestor probably first arrived on the oldest Hawaiian islands and later spread to the youngest ones. The ancestor used other species’ spider-webs to feed, either on insects or on the host. When Ariamnes started free roaming and hunting, they had to face the challenge of hiding from predators. Hence, they evolved into three differently camouflaged species: matt white (to hide in lichens), dark (to hide in moss) and gold (to hide on the underside of leaves). Both the dark and the gold coloured stick spiders live on four islands of the archipelago, whereas the white species live on only two. 4
News
To understand how they evolved, the team analysed their DNA and, surprisingly, they found that the spiders living on the same island were more closely related than similarly camouflaged spiders on the other islands. This could only mean one thing: the ancestors of Ariamnes on the four different islands all evolved into the dark, gold and white coloured spiders in parallel. This kind of deterministic evolution was already observed for the spiny-leg spiders of the genus Tetragnatha, which display different mimetic colours depending on their feeding and living habits. In the case of Ariamnes spiders, we could hypothesise that the strategy adopted to escape predators by camouflaging to match different backgrounds was so successful that evolution ‘had to’ repeat itself. These results may help in understanding what determines the evolution of different species in parallel and hopefully predict why evolution repeats itself in some cases but not others ep Easter 2018
Reviews
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy - Cath O’Neil
MICROBE WORLD
What do job recruitment, teachers’ yearly evaluations, bank loans, probation decisions, health insurance
Penguin 2017
and online advertising have in common? They are increasingly decided not by humans, but by algorithms. At first, this may sound like a good idea; we are notoriously bad at being objective and unbiased. What better than a computer to make these decisions, to be subjective and devoid of biases? In Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O’Neil, a Harvard PhD graduate in mathematics who, just before the 2008 crisis, started working for a hedge fund, debunks this myth. She reveals the insidious impact that Big Data algorithms – in her words, “Weapons of Math Destruction” - have on our society. Far from being a paragon of transparency and objectivity, algorithms are fed with data that perpetuate structural racism and discriminate against the poor. For example in the US, a combination of zip codes, Internet surfing patterns, purchasing habits and other personal data collected are used increasingly for assessing anything from credit scores to whether a candidate should get a position. The increasing role of Weapons of Math Destruction is an utterly disturbing threat to our society, more so because of how silently they operate. Becoming aware of their existence and the damages they are already causing is the first step to fight their grip el
The Secret Language of Anatomy - Cecilia Brassett, Emily Evans and Isla Fay
Lotus Publishing 2017
Did you know you have a harp in your heart (chordae tendinae), a snail in your ear (cochlea) and a beehive in your lungs (alveoli)? In their newly released book The Secret Language of Anatomy, Cecilia Brassett, Emily Evans and Isla Fay explore the etymological roots of anatomical terms in an elegant but playful way. The authors will be familiar to Cambridge medics – with Brassett and Fay heading up the anatomy course and Evans a senior demonstrator in the dissection room. Evans is also a medical illustrator and owner of an online boutique selling anatomical art and homewares designed by her (anatomyboutique.com). Each page of the book selects a term, explains its roots, where it is found in the body and is accompanied by two illustrations by Evans – one of the item and one of its anatomical homologue. Suitable for the squeamish, the monochrome line drawings are accurate but spare the gore. The terms are grouped in categories such as architecture, birds and music and each category has a short preface punctuating the book with historical insight into anatomy and the anatomists that shaped the field. Students of biological sciences, particularly anatomy, know the dread of memorising hundreds of seemingly arbitrary names, cursing whoever it was that chose them. But with a sense of wonder and whimsy, this book reveals the thoughtfulness of anatomists through the ages and urges you to view your body with new eyes rf
“... reveals the insidious impact that Big Data algorithms – in her words, ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’ - have on our society“
“... with a sense of wonder and whimsy, this book reveals the thoughtfulness of anatomists through the ages”
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Bantam Books 1998
Easter 2018
Professor Stephen Hawing’s best-known work is more than an introduction to cosmology and physics. A Brief History of Time takes the reader on a journey through humanity’s thought development, and it does not balk at emphasising the plentiful backward steps taken. Hawking’s personal journey, with its parallel twists and turns, is woven into the intellectual story. Though primarily scientific, the book borders on the philosophical - surprising, given that Hawking stated he had not read a single philosophy book, at least not prior to writing A Brief History of Time. Throughout the book, he discusses the necessity, development, and possibility of a Grand Unified Theory - a set of rules universal to any natural phenomenon. The text will certainly spark interest in anyone with a curious mind, regardless of scientific background. To borrow a concept from A Brief History of Time, the first-time reader will become aware a of a ‘light cone’ that will connect past experiences and thoughts with the future wondering mind. Once read, the book serves as a relatable and clear reference text, which you can come back to more than once. Every time, it reveals something new, surprising and often awe-inspiring. It is a perfect read for anyone interested in the ways the Universe works. But remain cautious: as our scientific understanding expands, like an island emerging from the ocean, so does its coastline - the level of ignorance that we can see. This seems to be Hawking’s denouement discovering some answers should raise even more interesting questions kv
“Hawking’s personal journey, with its ... twists and turns, is woven into the intellectual story”
Reviews
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Charting the Unknown: Crowdsourcing the Maps for Overlooked Villages Cara Louise Woods discusses how we are putting places on the map using technology and the power of people, with Dr Bjoern Hassler Imagine you need to go somewhere, but you have never been there before and there are no maps to show you how to get there. If you look at Google Maps on your phone, all you see is a few roads. So where would you start? Maybe you could ask around, find someone local to show you the way or give you directions. Ultimately you would have no way of knowing yourself, you would be stuck relying on local knowledge whose reliability you could not verify. Perhaps this is not such an issue, you might say, and to be expected in some parts of the world, even in this day and age. Now imagine you are a humanitarian aid worker, and you need to set up a famine relief station in a remote location that no one your organisation knows has ever been to before. The problem is now significantly larger. It is only when you stop and think that you realise how vital maps are to so many activities. In the UK, we are spoilt
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Charting the Unknown
by a legacy of good quality, highly detailed maps produced by the Ordnance Survey for over two hundred years. We also have highly detailed maps from Google which include Street View functionality. But in other parts of the world, only very basic maps exist, if at all. Open Street Map (OSM) was founded in 2004 by Steve Coast. It started with him building a map of his local area using a GPS unit and then sharing this map for free. Today it has grown into something much bigger: a global network of volunteer mappers. I spoke to Bjoern Hassler, a research associate at the Department of Education at Cambridge University whose work focuses on how open education resources can be used in schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Bjoern has also been involved in organizing and contributing to humanitarian mapping events since they came to Cambridge. He explained to me “Open Street Map
Easter 2018
is the Wikipedia of maps”. People all around the world are able to add to and edit the global map. This map is then available for everyone to use on an open license. The nature of the open license means that this mapping data can be distributed and used within other apps as long as the data is attributed to Open Street Map. This freely available mapping data is invaluable for various humanitarian projects. Missing Maps is a consortium of several humanitarian organisations whose aim is to put the world’s most vulnerable people on the map. They use OSM as an infrastructure to help them plan and run projects. Specific tasks are created by the humanitarian organisations and added to a global task manager. Mappers can then log on and see what areas need mapping urgently. Projects that have been on Missing Maps include various malaria campaigns. Here, building numbers need to be known so that the right amount of insecticide can be provided to spray inside the buildings. More urgent mapping tasks may be required after natural disasters, such as earthquakes or flooding. I spoke to Morven Lavery, President for the Centre for Global Equality Student Society, which is supporting the Missing Maps project, about why she was so passionate to get involved with the project. “You have people who need these maps, as they are a vulnerable population,” says Morven, “and then you have people who have computers, internet and their spare time. You end up with an elegant partnership.” While mappers can work individually, perhaps one of the best ways to get involved is through local “mapathons”. Steve Penson organized the first Missing Maps mapathon in Cambridge in May 2016, after being inspired by the ones run in London. Since then they have been steadily growing in size. Each month they take place at a new venue in Cambridge, held in locations as variable as the Scott Polar Research Institute and a beer garden. I went along to the Missing Maps November Mapathon at the Perse School in Cambridge to find out more. Arriving at the school, I entered the hall where around fifty people were clustered in small groups ready with their laptops. I was welcomed by Bjoern and then set up my Missing Maps account. After a short introduction to bring the beginners - including me - up to speed, we were ready to start mapping. A couple of different tasks were suggested for beginners to have a go at. The first one involved marking buildings in Uganda. This involves scanning areas of satellite photos, then tracing over the area where you spot a building. This takes a bit of practice but the best tip I received from Bjoern was to look for the shadow of the building. During the event, I caught up with Steve Penson, who has been organising the Missing Maps events in Cambridge. He talked about how the events are a great way to volunteer your time, meet new people, plus the added bonus of pizza.
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“You have people who need these maps, as they are a vulnerable population, and then you have people who have computers, internet and their spare time.You end up with an elegant partnership.” Throughout the evening there were also a couple of short talks on specific projects. Bjoern spoke about the project he is involved with in Ghana. The aim of the project is to map forty schools, which will then be used to plan how to implement Wi-Fi networks in these schools. The second task I worked on involved tracing roads and buildings on top of satellite images. By the end of the evening I had made sixteen edits. Information that is proudly displayed in your Missing Maps online profile along with the badges that you earn as you reach various mapping milestones. The sense that you are doing something meaningful here is well described by Morven. “When you are tracing the outlines of a building, it feels like for the first time somebody cares about these people”. The mapping done by volunteers at Missing Maps mapathons literally puts new places on the map. These small edits and changes add up. On Missing Maps, over 13.5 million buildings have been added and nearly 1.5 million kilometres of road. This method of crowd-sourcing maps is highly effective. It is then taken a step further by local volunteers on the ground who tag important buildings on the map such as hospitals and schools, to begin to build a more complete and highly useful map. The number of total edits on Open Street Map continues to increase, and new places are constantly being added. That said, there is always more that needs to be mapped. Whether that be due to physical changes in the landscape or environment after a natural disaster, or simply the construction of new buildings. Gradually it is getting easier for people to find each other. If you are interested in getting involved in mapping yourself, you can go along to one of the regular mapathon events that are held in Cambridge or across the world. All you need as a beginner mapper is a laptop, a mouse and enthusiasm. People at the events are very welcoming and happy to teach you. Alternatively, you could download the “Mapswipe” app, which allows you to scan areas of satellite images and select those with features so that mappers know which areas to focus on. This prevents mappers from having to look at lots of images of rural areas where there are no buildings or roads Cara Louise Woods is a 3rd year student of the Biological Natural Sciences at Downing College. Images © OpenStreetMap
Charting the Unknown
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The Birds at the End of the World Euan Furness talks to Dr Michael Brooke, Curator of Ornithology at the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, about his work finding birds in remote places
Technically, birds (Aves) are a clade of reptiles, and are more closely related to crocodiles than either are to lizards
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Even today, hundreds of scientists around the world are discovering new and amazing things that have been hiding right under our noses. Some are also discovering things that were not really hiding at all but were just a very long way away from anyone interested in them. The ‘frontiers of science’ do not always have to be metaphorical. Consider this: where would you look for a seabird colony that nobody else could find? The coast would seem like a good start but, at least in the case of Hornby’s storm petrel (a blackbird-sized seabird closely related, believe it or not, to albatrosses), you would be a long way off target. That is because this particular seagoing bird lives deep in the Atacama Desert, more than seventy kilometres inland in a more than 80,000 square kilometre chunk of Pacific South America which, with the exception of the poles, is generally considered to be the driest place on earth. The extreme aridity of the Atacama stems from its position between the Andes to the east and the Chilean Coastal Range to the west. These mountain ranges block almost all moisture from reaching the desert. It is probably no surprise, then, that nobody was looking for storm petrels on these high peaks. There was a search at lower altitudes, but no
The Birds at the End of the World
higher than around fifteen-hundred meters above sea level (merely the height of Ben Nevis). Given that nobody had ever seen a Hornby’s storm petrel nest until April 2017, it is worth asking why the Atacama Desert was being looked at in the first place. “Naturally mummified fledglings [young birds] would occasionally turn up in the desert, so we got the impression that they must be nesting there somewhere,” says Dr Michael Brooke. “There were also records of birds in the region from the early 1900s nitrate mining era.” Mike is the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology’s Curator of Ornithology and a long-time researcher of birds that live in the most remote parts of the world. Mike searched the Atacama Desert for the elusive Hornby’s storm petrel twice: once in 1999 and once in 2000, each time spending (literally) forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, a task which sounds almost biblical. Although it would be another sixteen years before anybody found what Mike had been looking for, his work was not fruitless. When he explained to a passing truck driver that he was searching for “golondrina de mar” (literally, “sea swallow”) Mike was directed to a salt mine beside an ancient dried-up salt lake Easter 2018
(called a salar). There, at the back of the repair garage, were half a dozen juvenile Markham’s storm petrels: another species, almost as elusive as Hornby’s. Acting on Mike’s report, a group of scientists from South America led by Fabrice Schmitt returned to the mine several years later and found a breeding colony of Markham’s storm petrels nesting between the salty slabs of Salar Grande. There aren’t many places in the world quite like the Atacama Desert, but there are plenty more remote. Most of these are islands and Mike has been to a lot of them too, always with birds on the brain. Henderson Island is located about half way between Auckland and Ecuador: almost as far from any major landmass as it is possible to get. Probably partly because of this isolation, and definitely partly by good luck, Henderson has remained almost untouched by human influence with one notable exception: the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans) which was introduced by human settlers expanding across Polynesia almost 1000 years ago. The island, one of the Pitcairn Islands, was claimed by the British in 1819 (by which time the Polynesians were long gone) and in the absence of any human occupants to object to imperial rule it has remained British ever since. The Sir Peter Scott Commemorative Expedition to Henderson Island took place in 1991-92 and was composed of all manner of scientists including botanists, geologists, archaeologists and, of course, ornithologists (including Mike). Although much focus was on the investigations into Polynesian settlement, the expedition also surveyed the populations of two little-known seabirds: the Murphy’s petrel (Pterodroma ultima) and the Henderson petrel (Pterodroma atrata). Like many island animals, both turned out to be suffering from the impact of the rats. “The parent petrels proved totally incompetent at chick protection,” Mike tells me, and they aren’t the only ones: island birds have a long history of not understanding what rodents are or how to avoid them. On Gough Island, a sub-Antarctic island in the Atlantic, even giant birds like albatrosses can be killed by swarms of invasive mice. The mice here have grown larger than anywhere else in the world, but they weren’t here at all before humans came. The birds simply never learned how to defend themselves. Wondering whether the terrible breeding success of the petrels might have been a one-off, Mike returned to the island in 2003 to re-survey the population. The story was the same, but all hope was not lost. “In the noughties, the idea of getting the rats off Henderson Island was beginning to look technically feasible,” Mike explains. However, that did not make it a simple job: Henderson Island presented a couple of confounding factors which made dropping poisoned rat-bait more complicated. The first problem was the land crabs. These were immune to the rat poison but would potentially eat so much of the bait that there wouldn’t be enough left to kill off all of the rats. The second problem was the rails (a group of water birds, like moorhens). Like many islands, Henderson was Easter 2018
home to an endemic species of flightless water-bird (the Henderson crake) which, unlike the crabs, could quite easily be killed by the rat poison; a potential disaster. Mike returned to Henderson Island in 2009 to see if these problems could be solved. Finally, it was decided that removing the rats should be possible. In August 2011, seventy-five tonnes of poisoned rat bait were dropped onto the island at a cost of £1.5 million while a batch of rails were held captive, protected from access to the bait. For seven months not a single rat was seen. However, this happy state did not last; a National Geographic crew visiting the island in March 2012 saw a rat, and by April the rat population was growing rapidly. Genetic sampling showed a bottleneck of eighty individuals, down from the eighty-thousand before the extermination attempt, but enough that the population could recover. Since then, Mike has been trying to figure out what went wrong and how a second attempt might be made to remove the rats. “Just a very small percentage of rats, for whatever reason, prefer to eat natural food to the bait pellets,” he suggests. “Could you add some attractant, the equivalent of chocolate truffles, to the bait?” This failure hasn’t stopped Mike from studying the Henderson Island birds; if anything it makes study more urgent. Thanks to RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) staff, GPS trackers have been placed on Murphy’s petrels to find out where they’ve been feeding, and have revealed an extraordinary trip. The birds forage at sea for as many as twenty days at a time, flying in loops as long as fifteen-thousand kilometres which take them more than four-thousand kilometres from their home while their mate protects a single egg back on Henderson Island. Mike explains this more thoroughly in “Far from Land”, his new book published in March 2018. There has not yet been a second extermination attempt on Henderson Island; the first one was expensive enough, and in light of its failure a second one would have to be even more thorough. We can only hope that, when the rats are finally removed, some of these extraordinary birds are still around to be appreciated by generations to come. Whether it is in the Atacama Desert, the Pitcairn Islands or elsewhere, such rare creatures are worth remembering. As long as there are scientists who are willing to go to the ends of the earth (or as close to them as they can get) to find and protect them, there is hope that birds like these will flourish, safe from human impact
The tropics have the greatest diversity of bird species, though interestingly it seems that speciation can happen at higher rates at higher latitudes - but extinction rates are also higher
Euan Furness is a 3rd year Zoologist at Clare College. Artwork by Sean O'Brien
The Birds at the End of the World
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Cambridge Science Centre: Science For All Emma Werner discusses the Cambridge Science Centre and its role in inspiring a new generation of scientists with Lisa-Marie Cahill N umerous scientists today hold fond memories of childhood visits to science museums and festivals, where they learnt about the world around them and perhaps pictured themselves as future scientists for the very first time. The Cambridge Science Centre was established in 2013 to help children in and around Cambridge uncover the exciting world of science through hands-on activities and workshops. Last year, the main site closed due to relocation. It is now ready to re-open in April 2018 at a brand-new address: Unit 44 of the Clifton Road Industrial Estate, just behind the Cambridge Junction. Lisa-Marie Cahill, the Marketing and Communications Manager at the Science Centre, talks about her workplace with infectious enthusiasm. “We see ourselves as a fun educational institution I would say, so we toe the line
Since it opened in 2013, the Cambridge Science Centre has had over 99,000 visitors
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Science For All
between visitor attraction and educational resource - we enjoy that really, it’s a nice mixture. . . . Our overall ambition is to ignite curiosity in a younger person, to dissolve any preconceived idea of what science and tech may be, and to create a passion that could lead to a future STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] career”. She hopes that more young people will choose to study STEM subjects in the future. As she points out, “the metrics change every year, but there are currently around 1.2 million STEM job shortages in the UK, a figure mostly down to a lack of skills in those areas”. The Science Centre aims to tackle this issue by giving the knowledge and experience of what a science-based career might offer in an engaging and interactive way. “And it’s really good fun!”, Lisa-Marie adds. “We have had such nice feedback cards from parents, saying, “Now my daughter wants to be a scientist.” The Science Centre endeavours to reach as many young people as possible by regularly running science interventions in communities in and around Cambridgeshire: “We like to bring the Science Centre to them! . . . I think a very important thing is to keep coming back to communities to set up a cycle of sustained learning. Every time we come into a new community and have a continued presence, we really get a lot of returning visitors with their families, and that excitement and enthusiasm can be continued at home”. For instance, the Centre brings its pop-up exhibit – the COSMOS Roadshow – to primary and secondary schools as well as public spaces such as town halls and churches. Helped by new funding from the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Learning Enterprise Partnership, the Centre has recently brought its show to Ely, Peterborough and Kings Lynn. To further its reach beyond the physical space of its exhibits, the organisation has also set up the “COSMOS Online” platform. Parents can sign up and access handson activities to try in their own home. With a different theme every month, COSMOS Online has covered everything from gravity to the heart, and even backyard garden diversity in the summer months. The March theme was 'Happy Families', focused on genetic heredity and the various ways animals raise their young in the wild. Easter 2018
Children could, for instance, enjoy learning about trait inheritance by building their own family tree, and explore how birds care for their chicks while trying out an edible bird nest recipe. While its central site was temporarily closed, the organisation has certainly been far from idle. In addition to its Roadshow, the Centre recently launched its “Street science” initiative, taking exciting science activities to unexpected public venues in and around Cambridge such as local school fêtes, a stately home and even a bank. Activities include learning about the Delboeuf illusion through optical illusion games or discovering material sciences with a safe, borax free slime recipe. Lisa-Marie also mentions an especially rewarding outreach project in Addenbrooke’s hospital. The Science Centre took a sailing science workshop to the C2 children’s oncology and haematology ward. “It was so great for the kids to have some play whilst they are in hospital”. The new location is bigger than the previous site, allowing for larger exhibits, birthday parties, and venue hire – “if anyone wants to hold a team-building event in a science centre,” suggests Lisa-Marie. To improve visitors' comfort, it will also provide sofas, children’s science books and a healthy vending machine for a quick on-site snack. Located close to the train station, it is also
more accessible to visitors from outside Cambridge. With the re-opening of its main exhibition site, the organisation is also looking for volunteers – students and science professionals alike – to help further its goal and inspire the next generation of scientists. “[They] will be able to run activities and really get a feel for what science communication is like, and full training is given” says Lisa-Marie. “It’s also so rewarding, I cannot stress that enough”. Since opening, the Science Centre has welcomed over 99,000 visitors and reached many more through outreach efforts, inspiring children and adults alike. Though the Centre is primarily directed at an audience of around 7-14 years of age, “to be honest”, says LisaMarie, “we welcome very young children all the way up to adults. One of our birthday packages is called ‘Destination Space’ and we actually had a 60th birthday party there because this person always wanted to be an astronaut! So we find that we have something for everyone. I know it sounds like a blanket statement but we are all for science for all” Emma Werner is a PhD student at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Photographs from the Cambridge Science Centre
You can get in touch with the Cambridge Science Centre on 01223 967 965 or email info@cambridgesciencecentre.org
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Science For All
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"You're fractured and cold but your heart is unbroken My favourite foremost coastal Antarctic shelf Oh Larsen B, oh you can fall on me Oh Larsen B, desalinate the barren sea" - Oh Larsen B, a song by British Sea Power
Breaking up at Sea: The Great Collapse of an Ice Shelf Dr Alison Banwell tells Silas Yeem Kai Ean and Seán Thór Herron how ice shelves break up In 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated into the Antarctic ocean in a mere span of two weeks. A floating mass of ice about the size of Cambridgeshire simply disappeared into the sea. This spectacular event not only inspired the lyrics to a British Sea Power song and sparked mass panic amongst environmentalists – it also motivated glaciologist Dr Alison Banwell to study the mechanism behind such a dramatic process. Dr Banwell works at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, where she and other climate scientists examine the state of the polar ice caps on both ends of the planet. In particular, she is interested in the stability of Antarctica’s floating ice shelves – how they become unstable, how they break up, why they have done so in the past, and, most importantly, why they may do so again in the future. Ice shelves are large floating platforms of ice that extend out from ice sheets, which are grounded on bedrock. One common misconception is that melting ice shelves directly cause sea levels to rise. This, however, is not true. Since they are essentially large bodies of ice floating in the ocean, they displace a volume of water equal to their mass, and so melting creates no direct effect on sea level. (Try the following experiment at home: fill a glass with water and add enough ice such that the water level reaches the brim. Leave the glass in the sun for a few hours, and you will find that the melted ice does not cause the glass to overflow.) However, they are still of climatological importance. Dr Banwell explains: “Ice shelves buttress the inland glaciers from flowing into the oceans. If they go, the inland ice will accelerate and flow outwards, and that will cause sea level rise.” So how exactly do ice sheets such as Larsen B disintegrate? It turns out that right before the breakup event, over two thousand lakes lying on top of the ice sheet suddenly and rapidly drained through the ice into the ocean below, each lake spanning up to ten kilometres wide. It has been suggested that the ice shelf fractured as a response to the change in stress due to the sudden drainage of such lakes. Dr Banwell, along with a colleague from the University of Chicago, Dr Douglas MacAyeal, modelled the effect of lake filling and drainage on ice shelves by approximating it to an already well-understood problem in engineering: the effect of a load on a flexible plate. Glaciers are dynamic. While they appear to be brittle on short timescales, they behave like a viscous fluid and can in fact flow on very long timescales. Dr Banwell’s research concerns the ice 12
Breaking up at Sea
shelf’s behaviour between these two extremes. Dr Banwell’s computer models reveal something interesting. If a lake drains rapidly into the ocean, causing a change in local stresses, the ice shelf responds by fracturing around the lake. If these fractures were to occur beneath other lakes, those lakes would also drain rapidly, which in turn causes further fracturing. It could well be that this chain reaction mechanism was what caused Larsen B to break up so quickly. Of course, models require corroboration from field evidence in order to have any form of explanatory power. “No one had any field measurements of ice shelf flexure or fracture in response to lake filling and drainage; no one really studied the lakes on ice shelves – or hadn’t, until our past two field seasons,” Dr Banwell says. “We went to the McMurdo ice shelf in Antarctica, in the northwest corner of the Ross ice shelf.” Just before the start of the melt season, when supraglacial lakes form, Dr Banwell and her colleague Dr Ian Willis set out with the rest of the team on snowmobiles across the sea ice to designated field sites, where they installed pressure transducers and GPS devices on the ice shelf. These instruments are used to measure the rate of lake filling and drainage and ice shelf flexure respectively. Both instruments are incredibly precise, capable of measuring differences in height on a scale of millimetres to a centimetre. The journey was not without peril. Dr Banwell recounts, “I drove a snowmobile over what I thought was simply ice, but it turned out to be a frozen-over lake. The whole thing collapsed and I got totally drenched. The snowmobile had to be pulled out by an enormous tractor. Luckily it was right next to the
Easter 2018
airstrip on the ice shelf, so there were lots of vehicles around to pull me out.” Risk of hypothermia aside, the trip was worth it. “We got a nice dataset of lakes filling and GPS stations going down due to the weight of the water, and then coming up as the lakes drained,” explains Dr Banwell. Now armed with data, her team is ready to verify their computational models. The team’s fieldwork yielded another fortuitous discovery. During their time at McMurdo station, they witnessed firsthand some smaller scale rifting and calving of the ice shelf, where masses of ice broke off the shelf to form icebergs. Using the data from their instruments, as well as seismometers and field cameras already installed by the staff at Scott Base, the team was able to undertake an unprecedented study of the rifting event. While the exact mechanism behind this calving event remains unknown, this preliminary study identified the presence of high-energy sea swells just days before the breakup event, which point to energetic sea storms hundreds of kilometres away. If these storms were indeed responsible for the glacial breakup, it would help climatologists impose an additional order of sophistication to current climate models by including the complex interplay between atmospheric storm systems in the low latitude regions and glacial dynamics in the Antarctic. Of course, further work remains to deepen our understanding of these complex processes. Would Dr Banwell like to traverse to the ends of the world once more? “Yes, I’d like to!” she exclaims. “We are in the process of writing more grant proposals to go again, maybe to another ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in West Antarctica. That area of Antarctica is warming the fastest, and the ice shelves there are more vulnerable as they have more meltwater lakes.” Should the trip happen, however, she and her team will not be enjoying the relative luxury afforded at McMurdo. “The Peninsula is logistically harder to get to. You can’t really stay in a field base, and you’ll be in the ‘deep field’. You will have to camp and get all the equipment flown in and then get collected a month or so later.” To Dr Banwell however, it will be worth the trouble - it will help her improve her models and their predictive power. “Although the models I run are usually small-scale and quite theoretical, the results, along with the work of many other glaciologists, will ultimately be used in larger climate models,” she explains. These studies have profound implications in calculating the eventual amount of ice that will end up in the oceans, which in turn are an important factor further downstream in sea level predictions. We now have an improved picture of the future of our planet’s glaciers. But what of Dr Banwell? For her, the work continues. “I’m moving to the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, where I will be taking on a two-year research fellowship to continue my study of ice shelves,” she says, bittersweetly, “although I will miss Cambridge. I’ve been here for almost 10 years. It is probably time to move away, at least for a bit.” The subject of her research may be icy cold, but her passion for glaciers is certainly anything but Easter 2018
Scientists try to shelter from the strong updraft and spindrift from a helicopter as it takes off from the McMurdo Ice Shelf
Seán Thór Herron is a 2nd and Silas Yeem Kai Ean a 3rd year Natural Scientist reading Earth Sciences. Twitter: @SilasYeem. Images from the public domain. Photo from Alison Banwell Breaking up at Sea
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Pavilion: The Eden Project The Eden project is a botanical garden housing thousands of plant species from around the globe in two biomes of tropical and temperate climates and in outdoor gardens, comprising a total of thirteen hectares. Tim Smit was the mind, and Nicholas Grimshaw the architect, behind turning an unstable and disused Cornish China clay pit into a centre of horticulture, botany, education, sustainability and entertainment visited by hundreds of thousands of people annually The core building architecture was largely inspired by nature. The roof was designed with opposing Fibonacci spirals to biomimic phyllotaxis, the arrangement pattern of lateral organs along a plant stem or branch. This phenomenon can be seen most obviously in plant structures such as the pinecone and the pineapple; the spirals represent two consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. To minimise the carbon footprint of the build, the roof tiles are made from recycled Heineken bottles, the flooring from flax and maize products, and the concrete from sand extracted on site As well as Eden’s architecture itself being an impressive piece of art, the core building hosts art exhibitions and the gardens exhibit a myriad of sculptures, many making statements on sustainability. Eden also has a central stage where many famous musicians have performed and a festival of light and sound is hosted. Image, the WEEE man waste sculpture
Hayley Hardstaff explores the phenomenal architecture behind one of the UK's brightest sustainability projects
In designing the buildings that were to hold plants from tropical and Mediterranean climates at Eden, the curators wanted a construction that would maximise light transmission to the plants whilst simultaneously being strong in an unstable holding, and that would require minimal materials to build. This resulted in the idea of lightweight transparent geodesic domes. Inspiration for the geodesic nature of the biome structures came from buildings such as Waterloo International station, Buckminster Fuller’s Montreal biosphere and Kibble Palace glasshouse in Glasgow. The term geodesic refers to the shortest possible line between two points on a sphere or other curved surface, which is how the frames of straight steel tubes (combined with joints) give rise to lightweight dome structures. Eight interlinked geodesic domes were built at Eden covering a total area of 2.2 hectares. Each dome consists of a hex-tri-hex space frame inspired by the structure of honeycomb. This frame has an outer layer of different sized hexagons and pentagons and an inner layer of hexagons and triangles. The panels were designed as triple layers of ETFE (ethylene tetra fluoro ethylene) foil which are inflated to give 2m deep pillows. These insulate the domes, allow UV light transmission and are self cleaning, all at 1% of the weight of glass. The structures are in fact so lightweight that ground anchors are used to secure them In 2017, Eden International was launched. There are to be a further six Eden projects around the globe, with four in China. The Eden Project in Qingdao China is scheduled to open in 2020. It will house the highest indoor waterfalls in the world
Artwork by Hayley Hardstaff, a recent graduate of the Biological Natural Sciences from Emmanuel College
The BlueSci Mental Wellbeing Survey Through Lent and Easter 2018, BlueSci conducted a survey on mental wellbeing at the University of Cambridge. Our aim was to better understand how studies interact with mental health, and explore how faculties can best support students. Here are our results
Overview Prefer not to say 6%
A snapshot of mental health at the University No mental health issues 40%
The Cambridge experience is split between two worlds; the colleges we live in, and the faculties we work in. Why should Diagnosed mental only one of these worlds be responsible for student welfare? health issues 23% Faculties can offer unique forms of support, such as a degreesaving extension on a deadline. While students fight for reduced stigma, more transparency, and better support, many still feel a pressure to prioritise demanding workloads over mental wellbeing. As a second year student in the Earth Sciences and Geography faculty put it, Diagnosed and undiagnosed mental “sometimes it feels like Cambridge takes people who have a health issues 10% tendency to overwork themselves, and then applies a workload that makes these tendencies feel rational, or even necessary. It makes it hard to remember that overworking yourself isn’t a Undiagnosed mental good thing to do.” health issues 21%
The BlueSci 2018 Mental Wellbeing Survey was Veterinary medicine 3% Earth Sciences and open to responses for seven weeks, shared on social Geography 3% Other sciences 2% media and submitted to the bulletins of CUSU, Education 8% Other humanities 7% GU, departments, and colleges. 463 people from Engineering 7% over 25 faculties completed the survey. Students Other 6% are keen to talk about mental health – 141 English 4% respondents offered extra comments at the end Human, Social and of the survey, to tell us more about their mental Natural sciences Who responded Political Sciences 4% wellbeing and how it has been affected by their 22% to our survey? Law and studies. For analysis, we compiled faculties with Criminology 2% fewer than ten respondents into ‘other’ groups, Mathematics 2% leaving a final sample of 15 subject groups. Medicine 7% 59% of our sample were undergraduates, 33% were postgraduates, and a large portion have had Modern and Medieval mental health problems in the last five years, Languages 23% whether formally diagnosed or not. The most common illnesses are depression (54% of the respondents who reported a diagnosed mental illness), anxiety (44%), and eating disorders (13%). Undergraduates and postgraduates are not worlds apart in the BlueSci survey. Though the university experience is very different, both groups are similarly affected by workload, with a majority reporting a negative or somewhat negative effect. The relationship with staff changes significantly after graduating and yet, surprisingly the impact of staff on wellbeing is also similar for all groups. According to Tamsin Whitfield, a PhD student in the Department of Material Science and Metallurgy who has been both undergraduate and postgraduate in Cambridge, “a supervisor to a postgraduate is more like a boss at work than a teacher.” Despite this, 29% of postgraduates and 23% of undergraduates reported a negative effect, while 51% of postgraduates and 47% of undergraduates reported a positive effect. “...sometimes it feels like Cambridge takes people who have a tendency to overwork themselves, and then applies a workload that makes these tendencies feel rational, or even necessary. It makes it hard to remember that overworking yourself isn’t a good thing to do”
The personal experiences shared in the survey are diverse. For some students, the high expectations are a blow to self-esteem, leaving them vulnerable to unhealthy behaviour patterns and poor mental wellbeing. Others make a point of choosing mental wellbeing over high performance. Postgraduate researchers looking towards a career in academia comment that even when mental health is supported in their faculties, “the fact still remains that taking time off to deal with a mental health problem decreases your ability to produce papers, and your career will suffer.” Still, other students find that work offers a distraction from the symptoms of their mental illness. Over the next few pages, these diverse experiences come together to form a picture of mental health in Cambridge.
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Focus
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Overwhelmed? Do: Seek help. Talk to others. Improve self-care Do not: Hide away. Think your problems are too small, or that they will go away by themselves How study-load affects students’ mental health English Other sciences Law and Criminology
A negative effect
Other
A somewhat negative
Earth Sciences and Geography Education Modern and Medieval Languages
No effect/Do not know
Natural sciences Veterinary medicine
A somewhat positive effect
Human, Social and Political Sciences Engineering
A positive effect
Other Humanities Medicine Mathematics 0%
50%
100%
overworked and overhwhelmed | In Cambridge, the terms are short and the workload is dense; 7 in 10 students feel that their workload harms their wellbeing. Subjects vary in volume and pacing of work, and results from the BlueSci survey show that the effect on wellbeing differs across subjects too. Though often a subject of good-natured debate amongst students, the difference between the humanities and sciences is imperceptible. Bruno Barton-Singer, a Masters student in the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics, is unsurprised that mood is negatively affected across the board. “But,” he says, “the negative impact on social life is more widespread than I expected. According to stereotype, I’d expect the impact to be worse for science than humanities students.” An undergraduate finalist in Modern and Medieval Languages (MML) told BlueSci that they “often feel very overwhelmed and have breakdowns. It is so difficult to deal with the sheer volume of work, and the lack of time to socialise or rest.” Another student notes that workload impacting mental health, and vice versa, can create a vicious cycle.“The Cambridge workload seems to not allow for any sort of neurodivergence or mental illness - any such conditions will affect your ability to work, and you will get behind, which in turn worsens your mental health conditions”, writes a Natural Sciences student who has intermitted twice. Evidently, for many, the effect of a heavy workload can be more than a bit of stress before a deadline. More than mood, ‘wellbeing’ also includes lifestyle factors that may at first glance appear to be physical rather than mental. But health of body and mind are inextricable. One second year MML student described the way that her workload touches all parts of her life: “The sheer quantity of work affects my mood and makes me cry with frustration and helplessness. Stress affects my sleep (inability to get to sleep, and nightmares when I do), and takes over the rest of my life: I can find hardly any time for socialising or exercising. Eating hours are messed around depending on when I’m working on an essay (I’ll eat very late), or I’ll eat as part of procrastination (which I then feel guilty about).” Will Kitchen, a second year medic, thinks the central University and its departments have a responsibility to “take the initiative and design courses that are friendly to students’ wellbeing, with careful checks on the volume of content and the pace at which it is covered.” As Welfare Strategy Officer of Cambridge Medical Society, he recently conducted a large survey of pre-clinical medics. The results, together with similar surveys from Veterinary and Engineering Societies - and now BlueSci - show “worrying patterns of high workload amongst science students, with clear impacts on students’ mental health.” Will hopes that the mounting evidence will galvanise his faculty to change. “When it comes to any health issue - including mental illness - prevention is always better than cure. In this context, prevention means providing students with an educational environment in which they are not placed under excessive strain over prolonged periods by expectations that they should spend most of their time working.”
“[The University needs to] take the initiative and design courses that are friendly to students’ wellbeing, with careful checks on the volume of content and the pace at which it is covered”
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How students perceive the effect of study-load on quality of life
A negative effect
100% A somewhat negative 75% No effect/Do not know 50% A somewhat positive effect 25%
0%
A positive effect
Sleep
Mood
Eating habits
Social life
I had wanted to go to Cambridge ever since I took a punting trip down the Cam with my family when I was eleven. My brother bet me £100 I wouldn’t get in. But I did. I do take great pride and confidence that I am a Cambridge student: not to be arrogant, but to remind myself that while I may be not extraordinary here, we are all extraordinary people. This can be hard to remember, given the overwhelmingly negative effect Cambridge can have on mental health. The level of competition that it breeds in students who are already paranoid about their own achievements is a recipe for disaster. I try to reject much of this burnout culture, but even so I eventually fall into bad habits. My own struggle with mental health began in sixth form. My depression blighted quite a lot of the first year and only really got better towards the end. I never considered not applying to Cambridge because of my health, but I also wasn’t aware of the problems that Cambridge had. I don’t think any prospective student does. Over my first two years at the University, I had a lot of insecurities about being accepted and finding friendships whose bonds went further than politeness and proximity. I worried about missing out on key moments and I found it difficult to say no to things. Thinking beyond Cambridge also scared me. That sense of freedom is tinged with uncertainty. Recently, however, I have suffered from anxiety. I began to feel disconnected from my emotions and experiences, getting panicky and having the classic signs of an anxiety attack.
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Physical health
The triggers are complex - not a single event or thought - but often it will be emotional stress around the future, jealousy in my relationships, or crisis in confidence. The most extreme symptoms are panic attacks. My entire body will shut down and simple tasks become very hard, near impossible. The Hollywood-style shouting and screaming happens inside, and it’s trying to communicate the situation to others that can be the most difficult. Anxiety also causes tightness in your chest, an inability to concentrate or relax. It’s like having nerves before a big event, but over the smallest detail, with no end in sight. Constantly having your body on that level of alert is exhausting. Receiving support for my anxiety at Cambridge has been a mixed bag. I’ve used the University counselling service three times for different parts of my mental health. Talking therapies are effective and, however painful, necessary for recovery. Yet, when I applied to see the UCS, I think they were understaffed and oversubscribed, and it took around eight weeks between filling in the form and being seen. This year, I am pleased to say it has been far quicker, and I have seen someone within weeks instead of months. I think longer terms and a reduction in workload would be ambitious, but necessary changes. These are the roots of many issues: stress, lack of sleep, people falling out of love with their subject… The relative importance of different pieces of work also gets very badly skewed. When we worry excessively about a supervision essay, our response to actual exams or coursework becomes ludicrous. I seriously believe that the rankings, scholar’s prizes, and underperformance meetings are very damaging. I started speaking out about mental health as soon as I came to Cambridge. It struck me how little it was being discussed about and how isolated I felt, thinking I was the only one. I started writing blogs and articles in student newspapers and speaking at a few events. Taking the first leap was hard and I delayed many times, but since that first blog post I have never felt judged or unwelcome. By asking others to accept my mental health, I have also found it easier to accept myself, and not feel ashamed.
Focus
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Peers
Do: Make the first move if you think someone else is suffering. Listen and take proactive steps to supporting them Do not: Push them to share more than is comfortable, or riticise them if they choose not to open up fully to you Effect of fellow students on respondents’ mental wellbeing Education
A negative effect
Modern and Medieval Languages Natural Sciences Other sciences Law and Criminology Other Humanities Veterinary medicine
No effect/Do not know
Human, Social and Political Sciences Engineering English Other Medicine Earth Sciences and Geography Mathematics 0%
A positive effect
50%
100%
the positives of people | Many Cambridge students find firm friendships in their subjects. The majority of the sample reflect this sentiment; 3 in 5 feel that other students in their faculties had a positive or somewhat positive effect on their overall wellbeing. However, 17% of respondents feel a negative or somewhat negative effect on their overall wellbeing from other students in their faculties. Some students compare themselves to their peers; some find the competitiveness between students “depressing”. A first year student of Linguistics wrote, “Being in such a competitive environment can affect one’s perception of oneself. I suddenly had issues with my self-esteem that I had never had before.” Mathematicians stand out as the group where students feel that their peers within the faculty have the most negative effect on overall wellbeing. But, with the smallest number of respondents in this sample – 11 – the results from Mathematics may be skewed. Eoghan McDowell, a fourth year undergraduate in Mathematics, says, “I’m a bit surprised. It is at times frustrating and stressful seeing other students being so much more capable, but its massively outweighed by the support I get from fellow students. We go to each other for help with work – understanding lectures, completing examples sheets – and everything would be a lot tougher without that.” Meanwhile, students in Education, MML, Natural Sciences, and Biology appear to experience markedly less harm to wellbeing from fellow students. Simina Dragos, a second year student of Education, says that students in her faculty “get to know each other well, because we’re a small course. Our lectures are more like seminars, so we are always listening to each other and learning from each other.” More than a quarter of respondents report that staff have a negative or somewhat negative effect. One research postgraduate, who wishes to remain anonymous, is unsurprised. “There is a definite hierarchical social structure, with supervisors at the top. It becomes a problem when you have superiors who set a bad example.”
Effect of staff on respondents’ mental wellbeing Law and Criminology
A negative effect
Earth Sciences and Geography Education Natural Sciences Modern and Medieval Languages
No effect/Do not know
Other sciences Engineering Other Humanities English Medicine Mathematics
A positive effect
Human, Social and Political Sciences 0%
20
Focus
50%
100% Easter 2017
Support received from faculty Law and Criminology English Education Modern and Medieval Languages
No, I have not received support when I needed it
Other Other Humanities Natural sciences Engineering Human, Social and Political Sciences Other Sciences
Yes, I have received support, but not enough Yes, I have received sufficient support
Veterinary medicine Earth Sciences and Geography Medicine Mathematics
No, I have not needed support
0%
50%
100%
At the same time, almost half of respondents said staff have a positive effect on wellbeing. Many students described huge help – or harm – from individuals within the faculty, particularly supervisors. As the key interface of student-faculty relationships, supervisors have a significant influence over whether students feel supported or abandoned by their faculties. For some students, the positive impact of supervisors can be as simple as “the odd positive comment to break up a stream of corrections”. Others attribute their recovery to supervisors who gave advice on how to study, who listened to their concerns and allowed extensions, and who encouraged students to access other forms of support. Human, Social, and Political Sciences students report the greatest negative impact from departmental staff, yet also report a positive impact that is near the average across faculties. Ashwin Raj, a second year undergraduate, is surprised that so few of his coursemates expressed indifference, “because we don’t have much faculty contact. But,” he adds, “our subject - broad, and often lacking in coherent structure - suffers from clustering of work during parts of term, and one of the powerful things supervisors can do is to be lenient with deadlines. If they aren’t, then that definitely has a negative impact on wellbeing.” There may be some explanation for the poor staff-student relations in Medicine. “My personal experience of staff in the medical faculty has been mixed,” says Jess Gurney, a final year medical student who intermitted in 2014, “but I think the results of the survey may look worse for Medicine partly because the clinical medical course has gone through some big changes over the last few years, with numerous teething problems, which may have increased tensions between staff and students.” Out of 223 students who needed support for mental health issues, over half felt inadequately supported by their faculties. Some may not have sought support. Yet, while many students may have felt encouraged by a climate of growing mental health awareness, a high number of them feel that they are being failed. One student who felt well supported by her supervisors - a fourth year undergraduate studying German and Russian - wrote, “My whole faculty has been incredibly supportive, academically as well as emotionally. I felt comfortable explaining my situation to my supervisors and have been supported with things such as applying for extensions and being unable to meet deadlines for assignments.” But a different student in the same faculty - a third year PhD student in Spanish and Portuguese - finds that “a lot of the systems put in place to protect my wellbeing - such as having a student advisor as well as my supervisors - are treated as ‘stupid’ bureaucracy.” Many people wrote in the BlueSci survey about their supervisors and Directors of Studies, and the data suggests that support from individual members of faculty often has more influence than faculty-wide policies on mental health. The data collected suggest that the level of engagement with mental health topics by a faculty does not reflect whether its students feel they are getting adequate support. For example, of the respondents in MML, 7 in 10 felt that the faculty rarely or never discusses mental health. But over half of those who needed support got the necessary help from their faculty. Medicine shows the opposite pattern – the faculty talks about mental health a lot, but a large proportion of students did not get the support they needed.
“I’d like the counsellors to know what a profound effect they can have on students’ lives many years after their sessions end. My sessions with one of your counsellors were at a time when I intended to end my life. Clearly I survived and went on to have a happy marriage and a fulfilling career. This weekend visiting my son who is a student, I can’t help but relive that difficult period of my life. Your counsellor probably didn’t realise what she did for me but please encourage your counsellors to keep doing what they do” - Feedback from a former student who used the counselling service
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Tutors
Do: Try and notice patterns of spiralling behaviour in your students. Show encouragement, not just constructive criticism Do not: Put work over all else. Push them harder than they need to be pushed Do respondents think that their faculties engage in discussions around mental health?
Education English Veterinary medicine Medicine Engineering Human, social and political sciences
No, never
Not often
Natural sciences I do not know
Other Other humanities Other sciences
Yes, sometimes
Modern and Medieval Languages Mathematics Law and Criminology Earth Sciences and Geography
Yes 0%
50%
let’s talk | Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Education are the only faculties for which more than half of students report engagement - ‘Yes’, or ‘Yes, sometimes’ - with mental health topics. These three subjects are vocational, where mental health is a key part of professional development. Other faculties, however, seem to show a lack of proactivity: only 22% of students outside of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Education feel confident that their faculties are at least sometimes encouraging discussion around mental health topics. One PhD student in Plant Sciences described how, since hearing in the departmental introductory lecture that going to see the University Counselling Service was a last resort, they “have had the feeling that mental ill health is seen as something the department wants to brush aside, or take no responsibility for.” What makes mental health hard to discuss within a department? Some respondents feel that teaching staff care more about grades than individuals. Others point out that they would prefer to seek support for mental health outside of their work sphere, especially if their struggles are related to their studies. Others express a sense of stigma – that being open about mental or physical illness is “a sign of weakness” in the faculty. BlueSci invited Dr Lucia Ruprecht, a Director of Studies for MML at Emmanuel College, for comment on the results for her department. “From my experience as a Director of Studies, I think that the density and range of support for mental health is extraordinary - both within the faculty and beyond. I don’t know the details of the faculty’s mental health
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policies. What I do know, however, is that even though students might have the impression mental health is not being discussed, the Faculty makes every effort to accommodate any special needs that arise, often on a very individual basis and involving elaborate procedures.” Dr Richard Davies, Sub-Dean for Student Welfare in the Clinical School of Medicine, tells BlueSci how he and his colleagues engage with student mental health. “We have three key approaches. First, we provide information, in an introductory lecture and online. Secondly, we try to improve access to support and mental health services: linking each student to a pastoral advisor who is also a clinician; promoting peer support; funding a mental health service for clinical students; and, enabling easy and flexible access to the Sub-Dean for Student Welfare - myself - for advice, signposting to other services, or face-to-face consultations. Because of the emphasis on small group teaching, we also encourage faculty to be mindful of students who may be struggling and to offer advice and guidance. Thirdly, we want to break down stigma. This is more difficult to achieve, but we work hard to encourage students to be comfortable about seeking help. One way to do this is through lectures and seminars in which clinicians - as well as students - share their experiences of mental health problems.” Laura Nunez-Mulder is a 4th year student of Medicine at Emmanuel College, Martha Dillon is a recent graduate of Civil and Environmental Engineering from Emmanuel College, and Elsa Loissel is a feature editor at eLife. Artwork by Imogen Harper (p18) and Sarah Vimes (p23)
Room for improvement
The results from the BlueSci survey show - not for the first time - that students want more from the university when it comes to the subject of mental health. With more than one hundred students reporting that they didn’t get the support that they needed from the faculty, there is definite room for improvement.The widespread harm of intensive workloads to student wellbeing is a gloomy discovery, but not a shocking one. Meanwhile, students and staff alike are making a positive difference to the people around them in their faculties. Various faculties offer pastoral training for supervisors, introductory lectures about support available from the department, and online information about how to access support. In particular, supervisors play a key role in minimising the negative health effects of work and supporting students during during times of poor physical or mental health. Dr Davies’ three strategies for supporting the students in his faculty - being generous with information, improving access to support, and breaking the stigma - are clear ways in which faculties can transform a student’s experience of Cambridge - or even save a life. The unique forms of support available from faculties can sometimes be overshadowed by the vast resources accessible through college or centrally. But they matter. 22
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I have always been interested in helping and empowering people. I have spent all my career in social care, working as a counsellor with sexual abuse survivors, drug and alcohol users, young people and students. Working with students, we meet people from all backgrounds; we can make a real difference by supporting them and helping them to reach their goals when they are at university. The UCS sees over 8.5% of the student population for counselling – last year, 2095 students got in touch with us for help. In the past four years, the service has experienced a 33.86 % increase in the number of students contacting us, with a marked rise in the academic year 2017/2018. We received a record 110 counselling first appointments during the first week of Michaelmas term 2017, compared to 380 referrals for the whole month of October in 2016. This rise reflects national and international trends. There is a lot less stigma regarding asking for help with mental health issues, which we see in the number of students who access our service. Counselling is also increasingly part of mainstream educational provision at secondary level, rather than an emergency measure accessed by only a very small minority of students. Students who have been accustomed to being counselled throughout school will continue to seek this support at university. There are several other factors that contribute to that surge in demand. Between 2008 and 2018 there has been an increase of disclosures of
mental health difficulty of over 1600% in students. Finally, part of the growth in demand mirrors the increase in the number of graduate students across the university, as our service sees a higher proportion of this population. Last academic year 45.9% of those attending counselling were postgraduates even though they make up 41.3% of the student population here. Seeing a counsellor is about making a positive choice to get the help that you need. Please don’t wait until a problem has grown very serious - we would much rather you came early on, when problems can be resolved more quickly. The specialist support that we offer is tailored to the needs of Cambridge students, and is available on a continuum. Most people know us for our individual counselling, but we also teach students the skills they need to manage themselves successfully. For example, we run the largest Mindfulness programme offered in a British university. We also have consultations with a mental health advisor for those in crisis or managing an ongoing psychiatric condition, consultations with our psychiatrist, or appointments with the university Sexual Assault and Harassment Advisor.
GĂŠraldine Dufour, Head of Counselling at the University of Cambridge
If you need someone to talk to or emotional support you can contact the Samaritans 24 hours a day on 116123 or at jo@samaritans.org
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Medicine’s Forgotten Warriors
ZEISS MICROSCOPY
Laura Upstone tells the story of virus based medicine in the war against bacteria, the wonder drug that almost was In this age , of modern medicine, it is easy to forget that only a century ago, an infected scratch from a bramble could have cost you your life. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the first antibiotic – penicillin – opened up a wealth of opportunities. Now an infected cut is just a mild inconvenience, and surgeons can perform revolutionary operations, safe in the knowledge that a bacterial infection will not destroy their work (or their patient’s life!). But doctors are becoming uneasy. As the usage and diversity of antibiotics has increased, so has the incidence of resistant bacteria that still replicate under chemical onslaught. With hindsight, it is easy to realise that antibiotics would provide a strong selective pressure on microbes. Bacteria replicate rapidly by each dividing into two identical cells. Every new generation yields ‘mutant’ cells where the genetic material has not been correctly copied. Occasionally a mutant arises that can defend itself from the antibiotic, so escaping the druginduced massacre. Unfortunately, it only takes one such mutant to resume an infection. With exposure to every new antibiotic, bacteria have another chance to evolve. And yet, while the Western world fights never-ending bacterial battles with a chemical arsenal, a treatment continues in the East – bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophages are viruses that attack and replicate in bacterial cells; replication of the viruses eventually leads to membrane rupture and death for the bacterium. Remarkably, despite their minuscule size, they were discovered in the early 1900s by Félix d’Herelle. Working in his Parisian laboratory, he observed the culling of dysentery bacteria in faeces from a patient. As was the nature of science in the pre-war era, D’Herelle trialled his phage ‘soup’ first on himself, as a test of safety, and then on dysentery sufferers, effecting a cure within only 24 hours. D’Herelle admitted that this small sample size could not provide definitive evidence of the benefit of phage therapy, but the discovery was promising and had the potential to be revolutionary. So why are we not using phages in treating bacterial infections? Actually, phage ‘cocktails’ are used as a first line treatment in several Eastern-European countries including Russia, Georgia and Poland. Phage therapy is predominantly absent in Western countries, with a clear preference for antibiotics. A disordered history of political unrest and poor experimental technique may be to blame. 24
Medicine’s Forgotten Warriors
Initially the chaos of the First World War diverted D’Herelle’s time from research to vaccine production and although he continued to run experiments during the night, this significantly slowed developments. Following the war, interest in phage grew and researchers who had caught onto the hot topic began myriads of studies. Many of these experiments were poorly controlled, and dosages of phage were not even reported. Patients could have been receiving ineffective doses, which could explain negative results. It was even proposed that the bacteriophages were not the supposed assassins, and instead an antibacterial compound or protein in the phage mix was responsible. This was still a viable hypothesis up until the mid-1930s, when the phage broth was heat-treated to destroy the viruses and injected into sick mice – these mice died. Western countries showed great interest in bacteriophage, with the US hopeful that the treatment would prove effective. During the first few years of the Second World War, American scientists carried out careful research into the behaviour of the virus that preyed upon the group of bacteria, Shigella – the common cause of dysentery. By 1945, the US teetered on the edge of clinical trials but antibiotics won the race. American scientists rediscovered Fleming’s work and penicillin was hailed as the new ‘wonder-drug.’ While Western countries remain enchanted by antibiotics, Eastern-European countries continued with the antiquated phage. The war may have driven the US towards the quick fix provided by antibiotics, but it also led to the establishment of the Iron Curtain, limiting Eastern access to antibiotics and forcing investment in phage research. The Eliava Institute in the country of Georgia was established in the 1920s, and – despite suffering the terror of Stalin’s reign – it is now viewed as a leading centre for bacteriophage research. It not only focuses on phage discovery and characterisation, but routinely treats patients. Mass production of phages has been attempted using large scale bacterial cultures, and innovative bandages impregnated with phage have shown efficacy in treatments. A rise in resistant bacteria has led to people travelling to Georgia to receive treatment, or doctors posting swab samples in an attempt to find a cure for their patient. Where antibiotic options fail, bacteriophages are still able to defeat superbugs.
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So why are phages able to do what antibiotics cannot? Viruses are under pressure to infect a cell. Bacteria provide a nutrient-rich home for phage replication and without a host a virus is doomed. Similar to bacteria, phages reproduce rapidly and acquire random mutations. Even as the bacteria develop mechanisms to counteract infection, the phages look for a new way to come out on top. Unfortunately, this constantly changing medicine often strikes fear into the pharmaceutical companies and health institutes. While an antibiotic will remain in its static form, a mixture of phages used in one week, or even one day, may become very different the next. Georgian scientists even refresh these mixtures, adding new strains of phage to maintain their potency. The resulting ingredients may be somewhat unknown. And this is only touching upon some of the anxiety around phage therapy. As humans, we are naturally afraid of viruses. Pathogens such as polio, HIV and rabies, have been responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide. You might worry we are about to create the next pandemic virus, but in fact the very name ‘bacteriophage’ hides one of their greatest benefits: specificity to bacteria. A type of bacteriophage may only prey on one species of bacteria and even discriminate between particular strains. They distinguish the pathogenic bacteria from our beneficial gut microbes, making them more like snipers than massacrists. This does mean that infectious bacteria would need to be identified in order to select an appropriate phage, but improving diagnostics may also be useful for selective use of antibiotics. The proteins that bacteriophages use for attachment to microbes are also ineffectual on human cells. All of that said, however, we have witnessed the horrifyingly short timeframe needed for bacteria to evolve. Perhaps it is a well-grounded fear that the viruses could evolve to infect us too. This is why current, high quality research is so important. Recently there has been renewed interest in bacteriophage research, with a number of clinical trials taking place. A large scale collaboration known as ‘Phagoburn’ even involved several European countries including France, Switzerland and Belgium. Many of these studies are presently focussed on the usage of phage ‘cocktails’ to treat infected burns, commonly caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterium is also the nemesis of cystic fibrosis patients and leads to dangerous respiratory infections. Results of experiments in a mouse model of cystic fibrosis were published only this year. Delivery of phage mixtures into infected mice resulted in either complete clearance of the bacteria within a few days, or reduced bacterial counts by around 70% even after a week of infection. But not all studies have produced such good results: attempts to treat some infections, such as the Staphylococcal infection mastitis, have been futile due to the bacteriophages themselves being rapidly Easter 2018
eliminated from the mammary gland. Studying efficacy of phage treatment on mastitis suggested that certain tissues may mount immune responses against phage, with milk from the study animals containing large numbers of inflammatory cells. An immune response not only damages healthy cells, but may inactivate the phages through neutralising antibodies. It is possible that phages may need to be administered differently for distinct infections. Phages may not become the new ‘wonder drug,’ but many believe that they would be a useful last resort for patients whose superbugs no longer respond to antibiotics. Ultimately we must decide how much time should be spent on research and clinical trials before we transfer phages to the hospital bed. Antibiotic discoveries are slow and there is fear of a return to a time when bacteria could not be controlled. Viruses may play a key role in preventing this possibility, but only time will tell if our medicinal infrastructure, and our culture, can accept them
The size and shape of the capsid, the ‘head’ of a bacteriophage, varies with the size of its genome, which can contain up to hundreds of genes
Laura Upstone is a 3rd year in Biological Natural Sciences at Pembroke college. Artwork by Oran Maguire
Medicine’s Forgotten Warriors
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Why Limit Ourselves to Silverware? Think goldware, zincware and copperware! Bianca Provost explains what Professor Mark Miodownik's work can tell us about materials and food With every spoonful of food you eat, you are also consuming billions of atoms worth of the spoon's material. It should therefore come as no surprise that your spoon’s composition affects the taste of your meal. Dr Mark Miodownik, Professor of Materials and Society as well as director of the Institute of Making at University College London, has been exploring this very topic for several years now.
sour (lemon juice), bitter (lemon pith), salty (table salt) and plain. The samples were tasted using four stainless steel spoons, three of which were electroplated with either zinc, copper or gold. The study concluded that different metals taste different, and, additionally, can strongly influence how food tastes. A particularly interesting finding was that zinc and copper spoons enhanced each cream sample’s dominant taste. Even
In a 2012 study published in the journal of Food Quality and Preference, Miodownik and collaborators presented the first study which aimed to establish a relationship between the perceived pleasantness of food and the composition of the cutlery used to consume it. The food samples, which were tasted by a group of thirty volunteers, consisted of five double cream samples which had different tastes: sweet (table sugar),
more surprising is that although zinc- and copper-plated spoons have an unpleasant metallic taste, they did not significantly affect the perceived pleasantness of the cream samples. Based on this finding, the authors suggest zinc or copper cutlery could be used for special diets which require low salt or sugar intake, for example. Another proposed application for the difference in taste offered by different spoons was the creation of
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SEAN O'BRIEN
In a 2013 study out of the University of Oxford, researchers found that people would on average rate the same yoghurt 15% tastier when served with a silver spoon than with a plastic one
Why Limit Ourselves to Silverware?
Easter 2018
cutlery and food pairings, much like food and wine pairings, to create interesting culinary experiences. The food and cutlery pairing experiment was carried out by Miodownik’s team by hosting a meal at Michelin-starred Indian restaurant Quilon in London in the company of a varied group of guests including chefs, food writers, and scientists. Attendees were presented with a seven course menu alongside seven spoons coated with different metals. Gold was chosen as the overall best spoon, as it offers “a smooth, almost creamy quality, and a quality of absence – because it doesn’t taste metallic” explained Dr Zoe Laughlin to the Financial Times. Both artist and scientist, Laughlin is the co-director of the Institute of Making and orchestrated the original spoon tasting experiment. For those of us unable to invest in gold cutlery, tin proved to be a surprise hit, and provided a particularly good match for pistachio curry. Other pairings proved less popular, as explained by cook and food writer Fuschia Dunlop in an article for the Financial Times: “Baked black cod with zinc was as unpleasant as a fingernail scraped down a blackboard”. The spoon experiment forms part of a greater area of materials science research pioneered by Miodownik called 'sensoaesthetics', which aims to relate scientifically the physical properties of materials to a person's sensory response to them through sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Such matters have always been of prime concern to designers and architects, but have rarely been explored by scientists. For example, some materials are considered cold (e.g. metals) while others are considered warm (e.g. wood), and this plays a role in how they are used in interior design. In reality, this has nothing to do with the absolute temperature of the material; the correlation of perceived temperature with material type relates to the material’s rate of heat transfer. Metals are excellent thermal conductors, so upon touching them, they efficiently draw heat away, which gives the impression that they are cold. Wood, on the other hand, is a thermal insulator, which is why it feels warmer to the touch. A better understanding of the link between a material's physical properties and the response it elicits from touch, taste, smell, or sight can provide new opportunities for material design which incorporates the information arising from our different senses, also known as multisensory integration. One application for sensoaesthetic optimisation is the smell, feel, and appearance of hospital wound dressings. There is a mounting body of evidence showing that a patient’s perception of their healing process, including the aesthetics of their wound dressings, is correlated with faster patient recovery rates, which in turn contribute to reducing the cost of operation of hospitals. In addition to carrying out fascinating research, Professor Miodownik is committed to improving public awareness and understanding of materials science. His book "Stuff Matters" presents the science behind everyday materials and objects, from porcelain teacups, Easter 2018
through elasticised underpants, all the way to towering skyscrapers. The book was a New York Times bestseller and received the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for science books. He is the most recent recipient of the prestigious Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture, awarded annually to scientists and engineers such as Sir David Attenborough and Brian Cox for excellence in communicating science to UK audiences. He also engages in radio and television interviews and feature both as a participant and a producer. Last year, Miodownik produced a BBC Four program entitled “Chef vs Science: The Ultimate Kitchen Challenge” in which he competes against a Michelin-starred chef to craft a delicious meal using his knowledge of science and access to state-of-the-art technology. Spoiler alert: there is a reason why Michelin-starred chefs achieve celebrity status in the culinary world. Since 2013, Miodownik and his collaborators have been introducing sensoaesthetics to the public via the Institute of Making’s Materials Library at University College London. The library contains over 1500 unusual and unique materials including freeze-dried ice cream, self-healing concrete, and ferrofluid, a magnetic liquid developed by NASA. The library is accompanied by a Makespace which allows members of the general public to interact with the materials on special open days. Allowing non-scientists to play with different materials offers a direct mechanism to study the interplay of one’s senses and the material’s physical properties. Two years ago, Miodownik published a piece in which he predicts technological advances and their impacts on mankind for the next 50 years. Alongside his musings on the future of sustainable cities, energy, food, and healthcare, he also emphasises the importance for materials scientists to work in close collaboration with designers, architects, and artists, the so-called “materials artists”. Sensoaesthetics is a burgeoning research area, so we can expect important developments in the understanding of mankind’s sensual and emotional connection to materials. In the words of Professor Miodownik, “Whatever happens, it seems certain that humanity’s love affair with stuff is not going to end any time soon. Materials are, quite literally, a physical reflection of who we are, and as long as we are changing, so will our material world”
"Baked black cod with zinc was as unpleasant as a fingernail scraped down a blackboard"
Bianca Provost is a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at Girton College, Twitter: @biancaprov. Artwork by Sean O'Brien
Why Limit Ourselves to Silverware?
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Time Flies Philip Myers tells us how scientists unravelled the secrets of time telling using the humble vinegar fly You cannot win a Nobel Prize if you are dead. Last year, the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded for the ‘elucidation of the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms’, and the living received the credit. But some missed out - some who had passed away, who had been central to the bizarre collection of individuals that helped make the first steps towards understanding not just the genetic basis of our sense of time, but of behaviour itself. The laureates of last year's Nobel Prize - Michael Rosbash, Michael Young, and Jeff Hall - helped pick apart the genetic basis of the internal body clocks, known as circadian rhythms, which exist in almost all living organisms. Their work was born of a somewhat troublesome union between two different areas of the life sciences: classical genetics and molecular biology. While the former sought to understand patterns of inheritance, the latter used the tools of chemistry and physics to explain biology at the level of molecules. The idea that certain behavioral patterns could be heritable grew out of the work of physicist-turned-biologist Seymour Benzer, and the succession of graduate students and postdocs that came through his lab at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). Benzer made his name as one of the pioneers of molecular biology. His students, from the unassuming Ronald Konopka to recent Nobel laureate Jeff Hall, went on to lay the foundations of modern research into the molecular basis of our own innate sense of time. The basis of this work was laid over a period of about thirty years in the early 20th century, during which a series of people working in the lab of Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University (and "It is so difficult to convince [humans] to mate in the right combinations, generations take too long a time, and the offspring are too few" - Seymour Benzer
later, CalTech) played a crucial role in the creation of genetics as a discipline. Working with the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster (colloquially known as a fruit fly), Morgan and his students first established that discrete units of hereditary information – genes – were both the raw material of evolution and the controllers of development in all living organisms. They were then able to create genetic ‘maps’, pinpointing the location of these traits in an organism’s genetic code. Why fruit flies? Many of the fundamental biological mechanisms studied in ‘model’ organisms exist in almost all animals; they are, in the language of biology, highly conserved. The transmission of hereditary information in the form of genes is the most conserved trait in all of biology – it is the fundamental fact of known life in the universe. Humans are not ideal subjects for studies of genetic transmission because, in Benzer’s own words, "it is so difficult to convince them to mate in the right combinations, generations take too long a time, and the offspring are too few." Flies, on the other hand, get it all over and done with in about two weeks. Using fruit flies, Morgan and his ‘Raiders’ – the series of undergraduate and graduate students that worked to establish his research tradition – were able to help everyone else, the embryologists and evolutionary biologists, make sense of what they were doing. But they did not know what genes were made of, or even how they worked.
The emergence of molecular biology is one of the most revered and mythologised stories in all of science. Famously, the race to understand the chemical basis of heredity came to a head in 1953, when Francis Crick and James Watson, using data generated by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, first described how a few molecular building blocks known as nucleotides could be assembled into our genetic code. The discovery of the structure of the hereditary material ushered in a period of extraordinary discovery. In the space of almost ten years we went from wondering what DNA was made of, to cracking the code of life itself - how a string of nucleotides can become a functional protein. But the uncertainty and excitement of the early days was far from over. Researchers had yet to unravel the genes that determine what we do, and why we do it. To understand these ‘atoms of behaviour’, Seymour Benzer would need the genetic maps developed by Drosophila geneticists over the first half of the 20th century. In characteristically direct fashion, Benzer decided he would poison flies to induce mutations in their genetic code and look for any that behaved differently. He could then trace the origins of these mutations to a specific region of the genome. The gene associated with these changes would likely have something to do with the differences in the flies’ habits. This approach, commonly known as forward genetics, would lead him and his students to the molecules that determine behaviour itself. In 1971, Ronald Konopka, a graduate student (and notorious perfectionist) in Benzer’s lab decided to probe the sleep habits of fruit flies. He had seen how fruit flies stop moving around sunset, and start up again as the sun rises, mirroring our own daily patterns of activity. He also showed that fruit flies can track daylight hours even if they are kept in the dark. That is, they must have some internal mechanism that tells them what time it is - a ‘master’ clock. Konopka created mutants that didn’t follow the typical fruit fly pattern of behaviour; some rose early, some late, and others took no notice of the time at all. He then mapped all three mutations to the same area in the genome, which he called period. He had shown three different behavioural outcomes mapped to mutations in three different parts of a single gene. Konopka’s efforts showed how complex behaviour itself could be explained as precisely as any other heritable trait using the language of genetics. Benzer was delighted at this discovery, supposing that he himself was a ‘clock mutant,’ given his habit of working all night and sleeping all day. Jeff Hall had seen Konopka’s seminal work as a postdoc in Benzer’s lab. As an assistant professor at Brandeis University, he used forward genetics to probe the molecular underpinnings of courtship behaviours in Drosophila, in which males buzz and sing and generally prance about trying to get females to mate with them. He thought that there must be a genetic basis for such stark differences in male and female behaviour. Together with his postdoc, Bambos Kyriacou, Hall found that all males sing a song with the same timing; that is, the intervals between tempo changes in the song are the same Easter 2018
for all males - about one minute. Seeing such a timeDrosophila-based Nobel Prizes dependent behaviour led Hall to wonder if Konopka’s period gene would play some role in this process. Hall asked him to send over some mutant flies with no sense of 1933: Role of time in the post, which Konopka promptly did. Hall and chromosomes in heredity Kyriacou found that those flies on a shorter sleep cycle sang with consistently shorter intervals, while the flies with no sense of time changed their songs seemingly at random. They wondered if both behaviours -- courtship and daily routine – were controlled by the same gene; whether period encoded the flies' actual sense of time. Hall explained his ideas to his friend Michael Rosbash, a molecular biologist, in the changing room after basketball games. Using the relatively new technology of molecular cloning, which Hall, a geneticist, had never learned, they were able 'to clone 1946: X-ray an instinct', as the writer Jonathan Weiner so described. They mutagenesis introduced a functional copy of period into mutant flies with no sense of time. If the flies’ sense of time was recovered, they would know that they had found its genetic basis. By 1984, they had done it - they had found the first ‘clock’ gene. In the coming years, Hall and Rosbash (and, somewhat independently, Michael Young at Rockefeller university) were able to explain how an animal’s sense of time actually works. The period gene encodes a protein known as PER. Levels of PER increase in the cells of organisms until a certain threshold is reached. The protein then shuts off its own 1995: Early embryonic production. As levels of PER drop, the gene is eventually genetic control turned back on, and PER levels rise again. This negative feedback loop occurs over a relatively constant period that maps closely onto day length, providing a relatively precise internal time reference. This basic principle is shared across all animals. Indeed, PER and its human equivalents have many downstream effects that regulate all kinds of other responses to the time of day, such as activity levels, metabolism, and even wound-healing, as recently shown at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology here in Cambridge. It is a wonderful 2004: Olfactory system example of the value of basic biological research using organisation model organisms. Science is, before anything else, a human endeavour, imbued with all the failings of humans themselves. It is filled with stories of fraud, hubris, jealousy, and more than anything, disappointment. Despite his seminal discovery, Ronald Konopka never gained widespread recognition, or even a tenured position. Hall himself had to leave science early after failing to get funding for his work. Seymour Benzer died in 2007; Ronald Konopka in 2015. For them, as for Jeff Hall, the award of the Nobel 2011: Activation of Prize came just a few years too late innate immunity
Philip Myers is a Masters student at the Department of Zoology. Artwork by Sammi Lynch
2017: Control of circadian rhythms
Time Flies
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Peering into the Past Dan Brubaker and a mishmash of know-nothings convene at the Dr Ralph L Buice, Jr Observatory, Atlanta
The Fernbank Science Center is a museum and teaching space in rural Atlanta
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A low, steady rumble vibrates through the air and under my feet. It is the sound of a garage door closing, only this is no garage. The single curved wall that surrounds the room remains remarkably still. It is the mechanical domed ceiling perched overhead that is causing the ruckus, that is rotating with careful precision—like a combination lock under the hand of a gigantic and expert safecracker. The dome comes to rest and returns our attention to its rightful place, stationed in the center of the space: a telescope shaped like a monumental hairdryer. It stares through a rectangular opening in the domed ceiling to feast on a tiny, yet endless, sliver of night sky. This is why I am here—why this mishmash group of astronomical amateurs and know-nothings has convened on a clear Thursday night. We are at the Dr Ralph L Buice, Jr Observatory, part of the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta, Georgia. One of our cosmic tour guides, a volunteer at the science center, wheels a metal stairway into position under the telescope and explains what we’re about to see: the Orion Nebula, a collection of four stars surrounded by a diffuse cloud of dust. It is within interstellar gas clouds like this one that stars are formed; nebulas are the universe’s stellar nurseries.
Peering into the Past
My turn arrives, and I take a few steps up the stairway. As I twist my neck to peer through the eyepiece, a second volunteer tells us that the Orion Nebula is over 1,300 light-years away. That means that what I’m seeing, this amorphous haze of periwinkle and magenta punctuated with four stellar pinpoints, reflects how the Orion Nebula looked around the start of the 8th century. The light hitting my eyes has been travelling since the time of the Maya. I step down from the stairs, offering the view to the next person in line. Then, standing behind the telescope, I try to follow its gaze to see the Orion Nebula without magnification. A volunteer points me in the right direction, shining a laser toward the nebula, and I can just barely make out a hint of the haze. As well as magnifying, the telescope catches starlight in 3-foot-wide mirrors, making that hint of haze appear brighter. And by passing the starlight captured by a telescope through a spectrograph, astronomers can generate Easter 2018
a spectrum. “If you shine sunlight through a prism it makes a rainbow,” says April Whitt, the astronomy instructor at the Fernbank Science Center. “You can do the same thing for a star. It doesn’t make a very pretty rainbow; it’s just black and white lines. But it’s a fingerprint." The spectrum separates the star’s light out by wavelength, and by inspecting it we can glean a whole suite of information. We can calculate the star’s temperature by noting which wavelengths along the spectrum appear brightest. Vertical black absorption bands at reliable wavelengths indicate which elements are present within the star’s gaseous surface. The width of these bands hint at the star’s size. And, taken together, a star’s temperature and size will determine its brightness. “You can have a very low temperature star that is enormous. And, as a result, it has a big surface area. So it’s really bright,” says Chris De Pree, a professor of astronomy at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. “Betelgeuse is a low temperature star, but if you put it in the solar system it would go out to the orbit of Jupiter. It’s just absolutely enormous. So that kind of surface area means it’s just really intrinsically bright.” Brightness, temperature, composition—all of this spectral information allows astronomers to classify a star. O-type stars have temperatures over 25,000 Kelvin, and their spectra include hydrogen and helium bands. F-type stars are cooler (6000 to 7500 Kelvin); their spectra include bands that correspond to hydrogen, calcium, and iron. But knowing, by virtue of its type, the actual brightness of a star—especially a faintly glimmering one—is particularly useful. “Each type of star is kind of like a different wattage of light bulb. So if you know how bright something appears and you use its spectrum to figure out how bright it actually is,” says De Pree, “you can figure out the distance.” A type 1 supernova in our galaxy, for example, will appear much brighter than a type 1 supernova in the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. The fainter the star, the farther the distance, the further back in time. Though the immenseness of these distances is foreign to me, a background in anthropology has trained me to think in long stretches of time. And I can now see parallels between the history of the universe that hangs above us and the history of man buried beneath our feet. Archaeology discovers the past by digging down, looking under our planet's crust, uncovering fossils trapped between stony sediments or swallowed up in amber. Astronomy probes upward, looking outside of our planet into the surrounding universe, peering past layers of cosmic gas at light caught up in the magnitude of space. The unaided eye can see as far as the Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. To look at Andromeda is to receive photons that left their stars before Homo erectus left Africa. With telescopes, the limit to how far into the past we can see has less to do with distance and more to do with the existence of stars to set our sights on. Astronomical estimates date the Big Bang to between 13.5 and 14 Easter 2018
billion years ago. But stars themselves take millions of years to form. Astronomers have observed the radiation from the universe’s first stars. Only, the radiation from a source that far back doesn’t reach us as visible light because of how the universe is expanding. The result of this expansion demonstrates the Doppler effect: like the drop in pitch you notice when a car blares its horn while whizzing past you, the waves emitted from receding stars have lower frequencies when they reach us. Since the speed of light in space is constant, a lower frequency means a greater wavelength. So for astronomers looking at stellar spectra, the Doppler effect presents itself as redshift—those black absorption bands shift toward the red side of the visible spectrum. For stars at sufficient distances, a greater redshift corresponds to a faster rate of expansion away from us. Those first stars are receding so rapidly that the waves they radiate are stretched across the electromagnetic spectrum, redshifted well beyond the range of visible light, beyond the infrared—even surpassing microwave frequencies. In order to get a clear image of stellar radiation that is almost as old as the universe itself, we must rely on radio telescopes. Squeezing past the crowd to exit the dark domed room, I spill out onto the observatory roof and drift through the still open air. Compared to the photons reaching us via radio waves after billion-year-long marathons, the journey between nearby constellations and our eyes would hardly register as a sprint. Even so, as I scan the night sky, I find it hard to appreciate the time in transit. I’m certain my pupils are fully dilated, trying to capture light from stars dominant and dim. I can feel my mind stretching too, trying to comprehend the images it’s receiving. “As overwhelming as it is and as small as it can make one feel, it still makes me marvel at the power of the human brain,” says De Pree. We may be small, but our collective knowledge of the universe is expansive enough to set my mind spinning. The observatory dome rumbles back to life, the crowd inside shifting its focus, in time with the dome’s rotation, to another point in the universe’s past. With a weary head and heavy eyelids, I must admit there is a small part of me looking forward to morning when—after the Earth does some rotating of its own—I won’t be able to see the stars for the sun, and I can again absorb the easy details of the day, knowing full well that the past will present itself again come night Dan Brubaker is a Masters student in Science Writing at Johns Hopkins University, Twitter: DanBrubaker7. Artwork by Catherine Prowse
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Peering into the Past
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Weird and Wonderful A selection of the wackiest research in the world of science
Creating a Buzz: Robotic Bees Take Flight
Time Lost Down the Drain
Three quarters of global crop species are dependent on pollinators, but across the world their populations are in decline. In England, for example, there has been a 54% decrease in honey bee colonies from 1985 to 2005. Numerous factors such as climate change, land-use change, pests and diseases all contribute to their decline. Ultimately, we need pollinators for food: these organisms enable flowering plants to reproduce but with dropping population numbers, scientists at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have been investigating the potential for artificial pollination using radio-wave controlled robots, which mimic the role of natural bees. Key to this research is a sticky ionic liquid gel. The team’s findings showed that this gloop has the necessary physical and chemical properties to act as an effective pollen carrier, but they needed a delivery method that did not damage the flowers. Pollinators like bees are naturally adapted to pick up pollen on their bodies because they are covered in fuzz. After testing a variety of natural and synthetic fibres, the material found to work best with the ionic liquid gel was vertically-aligned animal hair. These hairs were coated in the gel, attached to a four-propeller drone and successively cross-pollinated pink-leaved Japanese lilies. The team hopes that robotic pollinators could work alongside the natural ecosystem, learning pollination paths through a combination of GPS and AI. There is, however, a way to go before these robotic bees can match our natural bees for teamwork and flower identification vh
On World Toilet Day last November, BlueSci learned that there are 40,000 active germs per square inch on a public toilet handle, rolls of toilet paper should ‘hang over’ (so users’ fingers touch only the paper they will be using) and that improved sanitation could prevent around 842,000 deaths each year. A 2016 study from the Institute of Environmental Medicine found that 10 million hours are spent folding toilet paper each year. By assuming that the majority of toilet-paper-folding occurs in the ~15 million beds of branded hotels across the globe, the authors could identify the approximate number of room-preparation events. Applying this to the mean time to fold toilet paper (5.73 s), they found that humans are using more than 5000 man-years of work to fold toilet paper. This translates to up to 200h continuous work for a busy hotel (200 full beds yearly). The authors are clear that this is unnecessary: hotel room cleaners have a physically demanding workload, and there already exist occupational health inequalities within manual worker groups. The article serves as a stark reminder of the huge differences in sanitation support available to different communities md
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Weird and Wonderful
Born in the F = ma Throughout history, childbirth has been a difficult, painful, and frequently fatal process. Fortunately for ‘60s gynaecologists, George and Charlotte Blonsky took it upon themselves to solve this age-old problem. Their patent for an ‘apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force’ proposed strapping patients to a bed and rotating them at high speed, generating a force which helps push the baby outwards. The authors suggest that this device will be particularly helpful in the case of ‘more civilized women’, who allegedly struggle to generate the necessary ‘propelling forces’ as a result of their overly comfortable modern lives. Ever safetyconscious, the authors also suggest including a net into which the infant will be flung (“firmly pressed”) by the centrifugal forces, rather than into the wall surrounding the device. It may or may not surprise the reader to learn that the Blonskys were childless. The enthusiasm of patients for being strapped down and subjected to several g’s of force during childbirth proved to be low, so today the Blonsky device lives on mostly through its 1993 Ig Nobel award and the 2013 opera it inspired. The spin doctor will not see you now ht
Illustration by Connie Noble
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