Origins - The Downe House STEM Magazine - Issue 3 2023 by Downe House School

ORIGINS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING MATHS

June 2023

In this edition, we look at the role engineering plays in our current society and how it can help to shape the future of the human race: ● Will ‘Net Zero’ Aviation be Achieved? ● Bioprinting: The Future of Organ Transplantation ● Gender Equality in Engineering

A N N UA L S T U D E N T- L E D S T E M M AG A Z I N E

WELCOME Welcome to the third edition of our annual STEM magazine publication – Origins. This year, we have two primary focuses: to continue offering fabulous STEM-related articles authored by students throughout our Upper School and Sixth Form, and to provide insight into the careers in STEM and the journeys professionals have undertaken to get there. Therefore, the magazine presents an exciting balance of articles and interviews where you can learn about a diverse range of STEM-based topics. Furthermore, this magazine will provide an insight into the STEM provision at Downe House, including our week-long STEM residency. The residency featured Johnny Ball showcasing the magic of mathematics, the Stryker Corporation teaching our students how to perform joint replacements in the human body, a journey back through the decades to explore technologies from the past with the ‘Code Show,’ and much more. None of the content within this magazine would be possible without the enormous effort contributed by our student and staff contributors, external professionals who generously donated their time, and, of course, our three wonderful co-lead editors: Georgina, Ella, and Jocelyn. I am incredibly grateful to all of you. MAGAZINE TEAM Editors Georgina Boucher, Ella Spry, Jocelyn Yue and Mr Charles Littledale. Our thanks to Pixabay and Pexels for the use of images. Cover image Shutterstock.com

I hope you will enjoy absorbing the content of this magazine as much as I have. If you are suitably inspired, please do get in touch. We are always on the lookout for keen contributors for our next edition! Mr Charles Littledale Head of STEM

CONTENTS

4 6 7 8 10 11 12 14 15 16 18 19 22 24

WHAT IS SICKLE CELL ANAEMIA Tundun Are (LVI) THE HIDDEN WONDERS OF BLACK HOLES Xinrui (Sherry) Chen (LVI) THE ANIMAL THAT NEEDS NO OXYGEN Annabel Munnelly (LVI) RACIAL BIAS IN MEDICINE Liberty Spry (LV) THE POWER OF THE PLACEBO EFFECT Ella Spry (LVI) ADHD AND THE BRAIN Kexuan (Angela) Zou (LVI) MATERIALS ENGINEERING WITH MR ARRAN EMBLETON Sion Ovbiebo (LVI) ORIGAMI IN ENGINEERING Jocelyn Yue (LVI) COMPLETE THE CAPITALS QUIZ F1 CAR DESIGN WITH MR MILES KAYNE Kexuan (Angela) Zou (LVI) TURRITOPSIS DOHNRII Yuwen Ge (LV) WILL ‘NET ZERO’ AVIATION BE ACHIEVED? Charlotte Mackinnon (LVI) DRIVERLESS CARS WITH MR LIYOU ZHOU Shiloh Akintaju (LVI) ROYAL ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS WITH MS CLAIRE WHITLAM Ella Spry (LVI)

PURDUE PHARMACEUTICALS AND THE AMERICAN OPIOID EPIDEMIC Isabelle Wessely (LVI)

CRYPTOGRAPHY PUZZLES & ELEMENTS EMOJI QUIZ

BIOPRINTING: THE FUTURE OF ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION Alice Boyle (LVI)

32 36 38

ENDOCRINOLOGY WITH PROFESSOR STIMSON Georgina Boucher (LVI)

GENDER EQUALITY IN ENGINEERING WITH MISS JENIFER ADAMS Louise Alldis-Kervella (LVI)

42 44 46 47

STEM CAREERS WITH MS LARA HELLMAN Yuchen (Rebecca) Gao (UV)

ENERGY PROVISION AND SUSTAINABILITY WITH MR MARK FUTYAN Alice Boyle (LVI)

51 53

GUESS THE ELEMENT

55 56

NTFS AND CRYPTO Astrid Davis (UV)

KENKEN PUZZLES AND STEM CROSSWORD

MINI LIVERS AND REGENERATION Georgina Boucher (LVI) COULD WE REGENERATE OUR TEETH IN THE FUTURE? Kimberly Gan (LVI)

PRECOGNITIVE DREAMS Louise Alldis-Kervella (LVI) MATHS PUZZLES HOW HAS EVOLUTION AFFECTED THE HEALTH OF THE HUMAN RACE? Clothylde Debray (LVI)

HOW DO “JUNK FOOD” CHEMICALS AFFECT THE HUMAN BRAIN Janice Li (LVI)

NUCLEAR FUSION WITH MR STEVEN NELTHORPE Tundun Are (LVI)

KEY Pupil contributor Alumnae/guest contributor

Other 03

WHAT IS SICKLE CELL ANAEMIA? Tundun Are (LVI)

Sickle cell anaemia is an inherited recessive disease which occurs when a person inherits 2 abnormal copies of the ß-globin gene (HBB) – one from each parent. Haemoglobin is a protein in red blood cells that transports oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body cells. It does this by binding reversibly to oxygen and forms a compound called oxyhaemoglobin.

For those with sickle cell, their haemoglobin gene causes their haemoglobins to be rigid shaped and filled with spikes instead of biconcave and smooth. The rigid structure of the red blood cells makes them fragile and susceptible to breaking within capillaries which can cause a number of different health problems. A person with one single normal haemoglobin gene and an abnormal haemoglobin gene does not have symptoms and is said to have the sickle cell trait – they are referred to as carriers.

COMPLICATIONS OF SICKLE CELL ANAEMIA A Sickle cell crisis is the most common complication that people with sickle cell disease face. This happens when the crescent shapes red blood cells passing through small blood vessels get stuck. This can block blood flow to parts of the body, causing pain. This pain could be mild or severe and could even result in hospitalisation. The pain can last for any length of time and most commonly occurs in the hands, feet, chest and back.

SO WHY DOES THE SICKLE CELL EVEN EXIST People living with the sickle cell trait (one abnormal copy and one normal copy of the haemoglobin gene) have a significant reduction in the number of malarial parasites living in the body. The reason for this has not been exactly determined but some theories from a recent study suggest that either: - The infected red blood cells will sickle can then be destroyed by the spleen. - The lower oxygen states due to haemoglobin S in infected cells interfere with the parasite growth. - The infected red blood cell isn’t able to stick as easily to the walls of the blood vesselwhich is one of the ways malaria causes illness. - The decreased parasite growth may allow more time for the immune system to react and destroys the infected red blood cells. Its estimated that the sickle cell trait and malaria

have existed for over 5000 years, and it appears the mutated gene has mutated to be more protective against malaria.

PREVENTION OF SICKLE CELL DISEASE: EDUCATING PEOPLE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING THEIR GENOTYPE Educating people about sickle cell disease and encouraging them to get tested and know about their genotype is the most important and easiest way the prevent this disease from continuing to be passed down to future generations. This is particularly important for individuals with heritage from West Africa where the sickle cell trait is most commonly found. Its encouraged that people are tested from birth if one parent is a carriers of the disease, so that they also know if they are carriers. This is important to know for future family planning, so people can take the necessary precautions to prevent the continuation of sickle cell anaemia. Such precautions could include exploring the idea of adoption or where possible going through the IVF process.

AVAILABLE CURES FOR SICKLE CELL Bone marrow transplants are currently the only known and approved cure for sickle cell disease. This is done by replacing bone marrow from the patient with healthy bone marrow from a donor. The donor is usually someone with a blood type match and this could be a family member who doesn’t have sickle cell anaemia. Although bone marrow transplants are efficient cures for the disease, this procedure is extremely dangerous and can cause severe complications including death. Because of these risks bone marrow transplants are only recommended to people who are severely affected by sickle cell. In 2021, a new gene therapy called LentiGlobin was introduced. In the clinical trial a single dose therapy was tested on 35 adolescents with sickle cell disease. The dose eliminated severe pain crises in the month following the transfusion (this was followed up from 4 to 38 months). Although this gene therapy produces life changing results, the patients must be treated with a high dose of chemotherapy to eliminate old stem cells to make room for the ones modified by the gene. This process is called conditioning chemotherapy and could potentially be dangerous as there is a small risk of cancer.

THE HIDDEN WONDERS OF BLACK HOLES Xinrui (Sherry) Chen (LVI)

Black holes are some of the most mysterious and enigmatic objects in the universe. They play a vital role in the evolution and structure of the universe. From triggering the formation of new galaxies to shaping the evolution of individual stars, and influencing the overall structure of the entire universe, black holes have a profound impact on the cosmos. They also offer a unique opportunity for scientists to study the laws of physics under extreme conditions, helping us to better understand the fundamental nature of the universe. Black holes are formed when a star collapses in on itself, creating a region of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape. Despite their fearsome reputation, black holes play a crucial role in the evolution and structure of the universe such as the formation and growth of galaxies. When a star collapses to form a black hole, it can release a huge amount of energy in the process. This energy can be used to heat and ionize the surrounding gas, which can then cool and collapse to form new stars. Black holes also produce jets of gas that pushes atoms throughout the galaxy, ‘distributing’ the materials. This special feature of black holes contributes to the birth of new stars far from the central regions of the galaxy, though at the same time halting star formation at the centre of the galaxy.

In addition to their role in the formation and evolution of galaxies and stars, black holes also play a key role in the overall structure of the universe. According to the theory of general relativity, the presence of a black hole can distort the fabric of spacetime, creating a “well” that can trap nearby matter and energy. This can help to explain the observed distribution of matter in the universe and how it is structured on large scales. Contrary to what its name suggests, black holes are not actually holes, they are anything but empty space; a black hole is a 3D sphere that is so greatly packed with matter that the volume-matter ratio is equivalent to, according to NASA, ‘a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City’. Black holes are the most ‘packed’ objects in the universe, this region in spacetime has gravity that is so strong not even light can escape, and that’s why it creates the illusion of a ‘black hole’. Black holes remain the subjects of intense observations by research teams worldwide, with ongoing investigations aimed at answering crucial questions such as whether black holes can merge, whether they can emit anything beyond Hawking radiation, and the true nature of their singularities. We will look forward to the forthcoming revelations resulting from their ongoing studies.

THE ANIMAL THAT NEEDS NO OXYGEN Annabel Munnelly (LVI)

Scientists have long believed that aerobic respiration, which requires oxygen, is critical to the survival of all animals, as it is their main source of energy. However, researchers at Tel Aviv University have unexpectedly discovered a non-oxygen breathing creature called Henneguya Salminicola, a unique salmon parasite that challenges widely held assumptions about the animal world and evolution. H. Salminicola is believed to have lost the ability to breathe through evolution and is now better suited to its anaerobic environment inside the flesh and muscles of salmon. Fish infected with H. Salminicola are said to have “tapioca disease” due to the white oozing bubbles in their flesh resembling tapioca. H. Salminicola is a relative of jellyfish, corals and anemones, as they belong to the same group of invertebrates called cnidarians. Jellyfish, with over 2,000 species, are known for their fascinating and diverse characteristics. The discovery of the lack of respiratory genes in the DNA of H. Salminicola adds to the understanding of the uniqueness of these aquatic creatures. Jellyfish begin their lives much like other animals, through the fusion of an egg and sperm cell. After large numbers of adult jellies gather to spawn the fertilised egg develops into a planula larva, resembling a microscopic flatworm covered in cilia. The planula larva grows larger and finds a suitable solid surface to attach to, in preparation for the next stage of its life: the polyp. Polyps are small stalk-like animals, which have one end attached to the ground, and the other extends into the water, helping the creature to catch prey. Strangely, jellyfish eat and excrete through the same hole, and by this stage, they have a fully developed digestive system. Up until this point, anemones and corals would have followed the same lifecycle, but they will essentially become an adult polyp. The jelly can remain at this polyp stage for years, waiting for the perfect conditions to mature and reproduce. After a few more stages, including strobilation, which is effectively cloning, the jellyfish finally reaches its adult form, known as the medusa, which is the stage of the jelly’s life we are all probably most familiar with. Although the lifecycle of H. Salminicola is still unknown to scientists and may be different from that of its relatives, it is still valuable to acknowledge their comparable abilities, such as their effective adaptation to changing

environments and rapid reproduction. H. Salminicola belongs to a vast family of microscopic, parasitic jellyfish called Myxozoans that have undergone a bizarre evolutionary process, becoming less complex over time. It is believed that they may have once looked a lot like their jelly ancestors. Whilst over 2,180 species of Myxozoans have been discovered there are at least 30,000 more species just waiting to be found. The characteristic that prevents the cnidarian salmon parasite from respiring aerobically is the loss of its mitochondrial genome. Eukaryotic cells have previously been thought to require this important metabolic pathway to survive, however the recent discovery shows that aerobic respiration is not ubiquitous in animals. Aerobic respiration occurs in organelles called mitochondria and requires the reaction between glucose and oxygen to produce water and carbon dioxide. This releases energy in the form of ATP, a molecule which provides energy for various metabolic reactions in cells. Further analysis suggests that the parasite has not only lost its mitochondrial genome, but nearly all its nuclear genes involved in transcription and replication of the mitochondrial genome. Myxozoans have some of the smallest genomes in the animal kingdom, and this genetic downsizing is beneficial to the parasite, as it allows for quick and frequent reproduction.

Healthy Salmon

Salmon infected with H. Salminicola

The question of how H. Salminicola acquires energy if it is unable to produce its own through aerobic respiration remains unanswered. Some similar parasites have proteins that can import ATP directly from the infected host, so it has been suggested that H. Salminicola could be doing something similar, however further study of the organism’s genome is required to find out. This recent discovery is an insight to the infinite number of unique organisms, still patiently waiting to be encountered, which certainly brings hope and excitement for future scientific endeavours.

RACIAL BIAS IN MEDICINE

Liberty Spry (LV)

Only recently has the medical community challenged a range of medical diagnostic tools and assumptions that have put people of some ethnicities at a medical disadvantage. From kidney disease diagnostic equations to visual references of rashes, there has been positive progress. For many years, doctors have used race-based diagnostics to diagnosis. Recently, though, medical clinicians are looking into these algorithms and the potential harm and lack of evidence backing the statements that have previously been considered fact in the medical field. One example of racial adjustments in the medical profession was chronic kidney disease diagnosis. If a doctor needs to measure your kidney function, they measure the creatinine levels, a type of waste product found in blood. The next step is to plug this result into an equation to find the estimated Glomerular Filtration rate (eGFR) which is the rate at which the kidneys filter waste. Generally, the lower the eGFR, the worse the kidneys are functioning. Furthermore, if the eGFR is below 60 for more than three months, it is an indication of chronic kidney disease. Yet, there was an alteration in the equation depending on race until very recently. If the doctor indicated that the patient who was having the test is of African American, or African-Caribbean descent, the eGFR result would be higher than an otherwise identical patient who is not. The only evidence for this practice was a small study from the 1990s that contained less than 2000 individuals, with 200 participants of African American descent. This study showed that participants who were identified of African American descent on average had higher creatinine. Yet, this result was never tested again and was used daily in the UK from what was considered a reliable source. A more recent study at King’s College, London, found out that the ethnicity adjustments incorrectly estimated the eGFR by about 25%, meaning there was a huge underestimation of the disease severity.

This problem has affected thousands of patients of African-Caribbean or African family descent in the UK. The use of racially based kidney disease diagnostic tests was only changed on 25 August 2021 when the NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) as well as many other organisations removed the adjustment. There are other examples of racial bias in the medical field. For example, a dermatologist, Dr Lester, discovered that rashes on the skin were a symptom of Coronavirus. During her research using the internet and medical texts to consider visual references of rashes, she saw that there was a lack of diversity with the skin shades. Lester also discovered that many dermatology textbooks had zero images of dark skin with acne, psoriasis, or dermatitis. This lack of images is one reason why many conditions, including Lyme disease, spider bites and cancers can go misdiagnosed in cases with patients of African American and African-Caribbean descent.

A final example of racial bias in the medical community is Race-norming. Race-Norming is a controversial and unsupported practice that assumed that NFL players of African-Caribbean or African descent have lower cognitive function than other races. With head injuries, players have historically needed to reach a lower level of cognition than an identical circumstance with a white patient to be classed as having a brain injury. Until June 2021, race-norming was used in headinjury lawsuits which made it more difficult for players of African American and African-Caribbean descent to qualify for financial compensation. Luckily, there is lots of pressure from inside and outside hospitals to stop these unfair racial adjustments and make sure that every ethnicity has fair treatment. The changes made to guidance of doctors is constantly changing in the right direction and challenging inequity.

REFERENCE LIST: Layal Liverpool. “Kidney Test Adjustment Based on Ethnicity Cut from UK Medical Guidance.” New Scientist, 25 Aug. 2021, www.newscientist. com/article/2288008kidney-test-adjustmentbased-on-ethnicitycut-from-uk-medicalguidance/. Accessed 2022. Malik, Kenan. ““Race Norming” Is Bigotry That Began with Good Intentions | Kenan Malik.” The Guardian, 6 June 2021, www. theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2021/ jun/06/race-norminggood-intentions-bigotry. McFarling, Usha Lee. “Lack of Darker Skin in Textbooks, Journals Harms Patients of Color.” STAT, 21 July 2020, www.statnews. com/2020/07/21/ dermatology-facesreckoning-lackof-darker-skin-intextbooks-journalsharms-patients-ofcolor/. OPTN. “Recommended EGFR Calculators | NIDDK.” National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, www.niddk.nih. gov/health-information/ professionals/ clinical-tools-patientmanagement/ kidney-disease/ laboratory-evaluation/ glomerular-filtrationrate-calculators/ recommended. Accessed 28 Jan. 2023. OPTN. “Understanding the Proposal to Require Race-Neutral EGFR Calculations – OPTN.” Optn.transplant.hrsa.gov, 2022, optn.transplant. hrsa.gov/patients/ by-organ/kidney/ understanding-theproposal-to-requirerace-neutral-egfrcalculations/.

THE POWER OF THE PLACEBO EFFECT Ella Spry (LVI)

In 1996, 56 volunteers enlisted to take part in a study to test a new painkiller called Trivaricaine. To experiment the effectiveness of this painkiller, it was applied to one index finger of each volunteer, and the other was left untouched. Both fingers were then squeezed with the same force with a metal clamp. The subjects reported that the finger that had been treated with the Trivaricaine hurt significantly less than the untouched finger. This would have been an expected result, if not for the fact that Trivaricaine is not an active painkiller at all, but a dummy drug. This phenomenon, known as the Placebo Effect, has become a sensation of much conspiracy over the years, however despite the awareness that it has gained in recent times, there is no real understanding of how the Placebo Effect actually works. It has been discovered that the Placebo Effect is basically a response of the body by the use of mechanisms already in place; for example, pain can be dulled using endogenous opiates as a response to the placebo drug. However, if the Placebo Effect is essentially a self-cure, as only inert drugs are used, the question we must ask is; if we can already essentially cure ourselves, why do we not simply do it, why must we wait until a placebo triggers our bodily mechanisms that cure itself? The truth is the power of the Placebo Effect has many boundaries. Placebos do not cure you of an illness, they are only useful in alleviating symptoms like pain, nausea and fever.

These symptoms are not diseases, but the body’s response to disease. While these symptoms can cause harm to the body, when stopping these bodily responses, the actual root of the problem is not dealt with. For example, by reducing a fever prematurely, bacteria that would not have survived in the heat of the fever, may continue to multiply and infect the body, or if pain is dulled too significantly, one may cause further harm to wounds by being careless. Placebos will not shrink a tumour or cure Dementia. As Ted Kaptchuk, director of the program in Placebo Studies at Harvard states, ‘Placebos may make you feel better, but they will not cure you’, and are most effective ‘for conditions like pain management, stress related insomnia, and cancer treatment side effects like fatigue and nausea’. All of which illnesses are bodily responses to ailments that placebos do not cure. Essentially, the Placebo Effect is not a self-cure mechanism, rather a false safety signal that lets the body know it can relax, as the danger has passed, and in this sense are maladaptive as a result of faith in medicine. The very nature of the Placebo Effect is founded on the principle that the patient must be unaware that the drug is a dummy, therefore it brings up many ethical concerns. Firstly, since the Placebo Effect is not founded in any actual medication, scam medication can exploit this effect, and expensive ineffective drugs may be chosen by patients over FDA approved active medicine. Additionally, if a doctor had prescribed a placebo, and it had been effective in treating pain, as an example, one may miss out on new treatments for their illness due to a reliance on a dummy drug. However overall, is it ethical to allow a medical professional to prescribe a drug which effectively does nothing, while pretending that it will cure a patient’s symptom? Overall, it is clear that the Placebo Effect has many boundaries, however, its power is not to be overlooked. The simple fact that trust in a healthcare professional can produce such medical miracles, has the potential to change the way we think about and treat pain in the medical field. However, there will always be issues to be considered in terms of the patient’s consent and livelihood when using dummy drugs to treat real pain. The Placebo Effect’s power should not be inflated to a phenomenon which can cure all disease, but hailed as what it is, the manifestation of how intimately connected the mind and body really are.

ADHD

AND THE BRAIN Kexuan (Angela) Zou (LVI)

ADHD stands for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and it is a condition where patients have difficulty with inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity and organisation. This condition is mainly diagnosed in children or adolescents but 30-50% of people diagnosed in childhood continue to have ADHD in adulthood. CAUSES OF ADHD The precise causes of ADHD remain unknown for the majority of cases but genetics play a key role as ADHD tends to run in families with a heritability rate of 74% [1]. The genes that cause ADHD are polygenic which means it is caused by the combination of many different gene variants each having small effects on increasing the likelihood. Environmental factors such as brain damage, toxins, alcohol and nicotine exposure during pregnancy can also increase the chances of having ADHD [1].

BRAIN STRUCTURE Many studies suggest that ADHD is associated with functional impairments in some parts of the brain, especially in the neurotransmitter system. The brain is made up of nerve cells called neurons and they are responsible for transmitting electrical signals in the brain, which forms networks. In an ADHD brain, some networks involved in focus, attention, planning and movement work differently. It is detected that people with ADHD have low levels of two neurotransmitters - norepinephrine and dopamine. The norepinephrine and dopamine pathways originate in the ventral regimental area and locus coeruleus, it is then projected to the prefrontal cortex and stratum which is directly responsible for cognitive control, motivation, reward, perception and motor function. Research shows that there is a general reduction of volume in certain brain structures in children with ADHD, especially in the left sided prefrontal cortex [2].

HOW IS ADHD DIAGNOSED? Firstly, ADHD symptoms are determined and the

patient will be evaluated by a doctor for social, medical and family history. ADHD tests will be done to determine whether the person has ADHD or other problems such as learning disabilities, autism or mode disorders. Common tests used to diagnose ADHD are brain scans, computer tests, intelligence tests, tests of specific abilities, broad-spectrum scales and ADHD rating scales. ADHD affects 5-7% of children when diagnosed via the DSM-IV criteria and 1-2% when diagnosed via the ICD-10 criteria [3].

TREATMENT AND MEDICATION There are two types of medication targeting ADHD - stimulants and non-stimulants. Stimulants such as methylphenidate and amphetamine are the first-line treatments for ADHD because they are the most effective pharmaceutical treatments. Stimulants reduce the risk of unintentional injuries, by increasing the production of norepinephrine and dopamine. MRI studies show that long-term treatment with methylphenidate and amphetamine decreases abnormalities in brain structure and function over a period of time. However, some side effects include loss of appetite, weight loss, and emotional lability. Non-stimulants are prescribed to patients who don’t tolerate or see benefits from stimulant medications. Three main types of nonstimulants approved to treat ADHD are atomoxetine, guanfacine, and clonidine. Although both types of medication appear to have side effects, it is found that stimulants have a more significant effect on improving academic performance. Selecting the ‘best’ type of ADHD medication usually takes time for trail-and-error processes for dosage and timing and it varies from patient to patient due to their history, genetics, experienced side effects and unique metabolism. ADHD medication is often accompanied by behavioural therapy as well as other nonpharmacological treatments such as regular physical exercise and dietary modifications [4].

REFERENCES [1] Faraone, S.V. and Larsson, H. (2018). Genetics of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Molecular Psychiatry, [online] 24(4), pp.562–575. doi:https://doi. org/10.1038/s41380018-0070-0. [2] Arnsten, A.F.T. (2009). ADHD and the Prefrontal Cortex. The Journal of Pediatrics, [online] 154(5), pp.I-S43. doi:https:// doi.org/10.1016/j. jpeds.2009.01.018. [3] Seay, B., Flynn McCarthy, L. and Williams, P. (2009). ADHD Diagnosis and Testing Guide: ADD Symptom Evaluations. [online] ADDitude. Available at: https:// www.additudemag. com/adhd-testingdiagnosis-guide/. [4] Silver, L. (2011). ADHD or ADD Medications for Adults and Children: Stimulants, Nonstimulants & More. [online] ADDitude. Available at: https:// www.additudemag. com/adhd-medicationfor-adults-and-children/

MATERIALS ENGINEERING WITH MR ARRAN EMBLETON Sion Ovbiebo (LVI)

Arran Embleton works at a British aerospace manufacturer as a Manufacturing Engineer in their cooling systems section. Mr. Embleton is also completing his CEng to augment his skills and experiences thus far. ‘HOW WERE YOU INFLUENCED TO PICK THIS FIELD OF WORK?’ I did mechanical engineering at university where there were different modules that distinguished mechanical, to aerospace to automotive etc. Manufacturing was one of the chosen modules, and I quite liked how it gave an overview of all the products. Whereas a lot of the design modules we did focused on one area – you were sort of seeing one specific element of the product and I quite liked how manufacturing gave an overview of everything. Also prior to starting at university, I worked as a machinist, at a company, so I had already integrated into the manufacturing field. I found that the skills I brought up from machining favoured more a job in that area than just the degree alone.

‘WITH MANUFACTURING WOULD YOU SAY THAT ITS MORE PHYSICS AND MATH BASED THAN PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY?’ Typically, yes, it would be more math based than chemistry. At the job I’m doing at the moment, we do a lot of brazing, which is more chemistry than I had done to date. I did A Level Chemistry way-back-when; now I’m having to develop that knowledge in the role, as it wasn’t really covered in the degree. But generally, with manufacturing, chemistry wouldn’t be as big a factor as physics and math.

‘WHAT TYPE OF TESTING PRACTICES DO YOU CONDUCT ON THE THINGS THAT YOU MANUFACTURE, TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY ARE SUITED FOR THEIR JOB?’ Because we make heat exchangers, a big test we do is leaks around joints. We have micro tubes that we fit into headers and then braze the two pieces together; so there can’t be any contamination between the working fluids. So, whatever is going through the micro tubes, it’s very important that it is not mixed up with the airflow. There’s also material testing that goes on before we get to the point of manufacture, which is looking at structures in the paths, just to make sure that any stress fractures are going to follow a typical path. The tensile strength of any joints that we have are also thoroughly tested, they’re typically the main testing that we do. But we do some surface testing post-manufacture, like surface finish testing.

‘WHEN YOU TEST THE MATERIALS, HOW MUCH DO YOU CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS THAT COME WITH THE WASTE OF PRODUCTS THAT DON’T MEET YOUR STANDARDS?’ That is considered more so when we are manufacturing. If you have a big material and you’re machining out of that, there’s naturally going to be some waste. So recently, in the last couple of years, they’ve brought in an ISO 14001 (An environment management system), which is customer 12

driven, but companies are required to give off their environmental impacts for the manufacture. That includes travel of the components, the energy that is used in the manufacturing of the components, the waste that comes out of the processes – so material that is not used. All of these are summed up to a figure that customers can ask us for, so that it dictates what the carbon offset is on our part. There is quite a big emphasis to reduce the waste during the manufacturing stage, to make the parts less cost intensive – hence the switch more towards additive manufacturing away from machining. This way, you’re building material up rather than removing material from a big stock.

‘CAN YOU EXPAND ON HOW MUCH THIS POLICY HAS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS THAT YOU’VE BEEN A MANUFACTURING ENGINEER?’ When I went to my second job which was an automotive OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), the carbon offset was such a big factor that we had to sum up everything – for every part we were making, we had to come up with this figure of what the carbon offset was. I think it’s progressing at different rates in different fields, definitely with automotive it is more of a factor than in aerospace, but we are fully expecting aerospace to catch up and be just as stringent in the future.

‘WHAT IMPROVEMENTS ARISING TODAY IN YOUR WORK DO YOU THINK CAN CONVINCE STUDENTS THAT ARE INTERESTED IN ENGINEERING TO GO INTO MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING?’ ‘ I find manufacturing interesting because you see the full length of the product cycle. With my colleagues, we’re doing an aerospace structure, they might focus on one ceiling interface, and that’s what they’ll do for three to four months. […] they’ll do the stress analysis and that’s the part of the project they’ll see. As a manufacture engineer, we get to see the path from its preliminary design, work out how to build the product, implement all the processes and all the procedures, right through to testing of the products – we see a bigger portion of the life cycle of the part than any other field does. I also feel that manufacturing has developed more recently in aerospace as other parts of manufacturing leave the company for mainland Europe, the aerospace aspect is one of the things the UK is doubling down on because companies are expanding their facilities here. So, there is bigger growth of knowledge and more partnerships with universities inside the UK. In that sense, I can see more of a life span in manufacturing than I can say for the

design side of it. Because I believe that the design side of the manufacture could be more outsourced to different countries going forward.

‘WORKING WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT FIELDS OF ENGINEERING, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU SAY IS THE MOST TIMECONSUMING AND LUCRATIVE TO CARRY OUT?’ I’ve only seen a scope of it in companies I work in; but definitely the design side, the aero-thermal takes longer in the product life span than say manufacturing does and material testing. It is a lot of back and forth with customers, there’s a lot of trial and error until you get a design that works, and that’s all really time consuming in the lifespan of the product. Specifically with aero-thermal, the customer implications on space and what sort of volume you can take up in there – in their parts. So for example, if we are making a cooling system, there’d be quite a tight sized envelope that we gave to fit in, and that detriments design as it encloses the space that they have to work in. I’ve got a friend that works in the nuclear sector, he’s a design engineer and I’ve found with stories that he has about work, that the process is very slow. Because theirs is customer driven, there will probably be deadlines assigned by the customers, they have something they have to achieve and it will take a long time to get there and they will slowly work towards that goal. With different branches there’s going to be different requirements with your time and what level of knowledge is expected of you as well.

‘HOW MUCH WOULD YOU SAY YOU WORK WITH CUSTOMERS? DO YOU TALK TO THEM ABOUT WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE AND TRY TO COMPROMISE ON WHAT THEY ASK FOR?’ At my job at the minute, I’ve had less to do with customers. Previously when I worked in the automotive sector it was a lot more customer facing. So, we’d have weekly calls with the customers through TEAMS, and there would be a lot more discussion on what they expect of the product and asking us how we aim to hit it. Typically, how projects are set up is to say a project manager is in charge of everyone’s time and what fields they will be working in, and under that would be a project engineer, or a project lead; and they would be the main customer facing. That is a role I am hoping to progress into later in my career.

ORIGAMI IN ENGINEERING Jocelyn Yue (LVI)

BIBLIOGRAPHY Fernanda Ferreira (2022). Engineer uses ancient art of origami to solve a very modern aerospace problem. [online] phys.org. Available at: https://phys.org/ news/2022-07-ancient-artorigami-modern-aerospace. html. Lalloo, M. (2014). Ingenia – Applied origami. [online] www.ingenia.org. uk. Available at: https:// www.ingenia.org.uk/ ingenia/issue-61/appliedorigami#:~:text=Origami%20 provides%20an%20 elegant%20mechanism. Lee, H. (2021). Origami in Space Engineering: Rediscovering the Meaning of Discovery. The New York Times. [online] 29 Apr. Available at: https://www. nytimes.com/2021/04/29/ learning/origami-in-spaceengineering-rediscoveringthe-meaning-of-discovery. html. Meloni, M., Cai, J., Zhang, Q., Sang-Hoon Lee, D., Li, M., Ma, R., Parashkevov, T.E. and Feng, J. (2021). Engineering Origami: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Applications, Design Methods, and Tools. Advanced Science, 8(13), p.2000636. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/ advs.202000636. Shidlauski, K. (2020). Small Imperfections Can Have Significant Impact on Origami Metamaterials. [online] ce.gatech.edu. Available at: https:// ce.gatech.edu/news/smallimperfections-can-havesignificant-impact-origamimetamaterials. Treml, B., Gillman, A., Buskohl, P. and Vaia, R. (2018). Origami mechanologic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [online] 115(27), pp.6916–6921. doi:https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.1805122115.

Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. One might be familiar with its function of occupying bored hands by transforming an ordinary sheet of paper into an elegant crane. However, its potential applications extend far beyond being a mere recreational activity. Although origami appears to be a purely creative art form, there is a lot of mathematics, geometry, and design involved. The magic of origami lies in its ability to transform material between twodimensional and three-dimensional shapes using an intricate pattern of mountain and valley folds. One of the most used folds is the Miura-Ori pattern, which can collapse and open with one tug. It was designed and used by astrophysicist Koryo Miura in the 1970s to fold the solar panels on Japan’s Space Flyer Unit. Origami can be described as a compliant mechanism, as it involves a single piece of material bending instead of rotating on hinges, meaning friction does not affect its motion. The main advantages of using origami in design are scalability, deployability, and ease of manufacture (Meloni et al., 2021). Due to their geometrical properties, designs can be scaled from micrometres to metres. Many other mechanisms do not work when shrunk to the size of a speck of dust, as friction is too large to turn gears and wheels at that scale, whereas the principles of origami mechanisms are not size-dependant. Deployability refers to the flexible capability of origami to deploy from its initial state to a final 3D state, and this can be used to change the shape and size of various structures and allows them to be collapsed into compact systems. These designs are also easy to manufacture in 2D and then assembled in their 3D state, optimising the fabrication process and material usage compared to conventional designs. These qualities of origami-based designs mean they have a wide application in different fields.

APPLICATION OF ORIGAMI IN ENGINEERING In biomedicine, stents are deployable structures placed in blocked arteries to expand them and allow blood flow. By utilising origami folds, researchers 14

at Oxford have developed stents that can be automatically deployed based on temperature change once they reach the desired location and expand to its full size. Origami-based designs have also been explored for damaged tissue regeneration using paper-based scaffolds. This method was applied in a trachea regeneration operation in rabbits, resulting in optimal regeneration of the damaged area without graft failure or the use of sutures. The flexibility of origami designs could even be applied to full organ reconstructions in the future. In aerospace, origami is used to optimise storage for space travel and has even aided in our search for Earth-like exoplanets in space. Specifically, NASA’s Starshade is designed to enable telescopes to image exoplanets without interference from starlight by creating an artificial eclipse (Fernanda Ferreira, 2022). The entire structure has a diameter of 34m when fully deployed, but the use of origami in its design allows it to fold smoothly and fit within the constraints of a significantly smaller rocket because of its high deployed to stowed ratio. Use of origami can greatly increase the potential of our space structures, as they have to be compact during transportation but of large size when deployed in orbit.

CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS Most origami design models are approximations of real life, and one assumption used is that structures are built from zero-thickness material. This is insignificant for thin materials like paper, but there are still no solutions for converting designs to structures with a finite thickness. Another issue is that in the manufacturing process, the location of the creases will not be perfect and identical to the original theoretical design, resulting in products with different properties to the ones they were designed to have (Shidlauski, 2020). One more limitation is that there are currently no established design processes in the field of origami, so there is no simple way of finding and modifying existing crease patterns or designing new ones which makes the design process inefficient.

FUTURE OF ORIGAMI IN ENGINEERING Currently, researchers are looking at self-folding materials that eliminate the need for external actuation by humans or a robot. There are also possible applications in soft robotics by integrating origami structures as mechanical logic devices instead of electronic components. Fundamentally, origami takes a flat sheet of material and transforms it into anything by folding, so its potential in more disciplines of engineering is vast and only limited by one’s imagination.

15 ANSWERS General: 12 M in a C Y – 12 Months in a calendar year 12 S of the Z – 12 signs of the zodiac 7 W of the A W – 7 wonders of the ancient world 13 B in a B D – 13 Buns in a baker’s dozen 20 T in the P L – 20 Teams in the Premier League 366 D in a L Y – 366 Days in a leap year 12 I in an F – 12 Inches in a foot 32 P on a C – 32 Pieces on a chessboard 48 C C of E – 48 Ceremonial countries of England 1609 M in a M – 1609 metres in a mile 7 H made by V – 7 Horcruxes made by Voldemort 40 D in L – 40 Days in lent 11 L on the L U – 11 Lines on the London underground 7 C of the W – 7 Continents of the World STEM related: 118 E in the PT – 118 Elements in the Periodic Table N 3 L of M – Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion 6 S in a H – 6 Sides in a Hexagon 206 B in the H B – 206 bones in the human body

General:

STEM related:

12 M IN A C Y

118 E IN THE P T

12 S OF THE Z

N 3 L OF M

7 W OF THE A W

6 S IN A H

13 B IN A B D

206 B IN THE H B

20 T IN THE P L

360 D IN A C

366 D IN A L Y

3 S-A P IN AN A

12 I IN AN F

8 P IN THE S S

32 P ON A C

8 B IN A B

48 C C OF E

23 C IN A S C

1609 M IN A M

7 SI U

7 H MADE BY V

A N IS 6.02X1023

40 D IN L

28 D IN A L O

8 B in a B – 8 bits in a byte

11 L ON THE L U

4 C OF THE H

3 S-A P in an A – 3 Sub-atomic particles in an atom

7 C OF THE W

6 K OF L

360 D in a C – 360 degrees in a circle

8 P in the SS – 8 Planets in the Solar System

23 C in a S C – 23 Chromosomes in a sperm cell 7 SI U – 7 SI units A N is 6.02x1023 – Avogadro’s number is 6.02x1023 28 D in a L O – 28 Days in a lunar orbit 4 C of the H – 4 Chambers of the heart 6 K of L – 6 Kingdoms of life

In this quiz you must decode the statement by filling in the full words represented by the capital letters. For example: 52 C in a D is code for 52 Cards in a Deck.

COMPLETE THE CAPITALS QUIZ

F1 CAR DESIGN WITH MR MILES KAYNE Kexuan(Angela) Zou (LVI)

Mr Miles Kaye is a F1 Car Design Engineer for the F1 Team Williams.

‘WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO THIS CAREER?’ Growing up, I had an uncle who was an inventor. I’ve always admired his thought process and the kind of things he came up with. Going through school, I had a fantastic DT teacher for GCSE and he was the first person to ever mention engineering to me. I really enjoyed sciences, maths

and DT at school so he made me see a whole field of potential careers I could go into. I did Maths, Physics and Chemistry for A Level and continued to study Mechanical Engineering at the University of Exeter. At first, I was particularly interested in Helicopters, then I got a job in Formula 1 which was very exciting to be involved in a career behind what we see on TV every weekend.

‘WHAT DOES YOUR JOB ENTAIL FROM A DAY-TO-DAY BASES?’ I am a Principle Design Engineer. What this means is that I run a small team of designer engineers (there’s about 8 of us in the team) and we work on designing and building particular parts of the race car. In particular, we focus on composite serials, structures and materials.

‘WHAT WOULD YOU SAY HAS BEEN THE MOST EXCITING PART/PROJECT YOU HAVE WORKED ON?’ What I enjoy particularly about my job is that it is very fast paced and exciting. The racing cars we build go competing every other Sunday. We modify and upgrade the cars in between every race to make improvements in a short period of time. The work is very challenging but satisfying when we make achievements.

‘WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO INCORPORATE INTO A CAR MODEL FOR IT TO HAVE ITS BIGGEST POTENTIAL - REACHING HIGHER SPEED AND LOWER AIR RESISTANCE?’ The cars are made up of 90% carbon fibre, because it has an excellent strength to weight ratio, making the cars very lightweight but stronger and more competitive. What actually makes F1 cars different is the aerodynamics. The wings are similar to an aeroplane but fitted upside down, so instead of producing an uplift, it produces a down force, which is what helps the cars stick down to the track. We have a team of aerodynamic designer that come up with the shapes, making them very precise and accurate structures. They use a wind tunnel, computational analysis to design the structures and we then use specific materials to make it in a certain way. We use computer aided design (CAD) and analysis tools to maximise the down force and minimise drag. However, it’s almost impossible to have one without the other, therefore we are looking to obtain a suitable amount of each. Once everything has been designed, computer aided manufacture (CAM) and hand processing are used to build the cars.

‘WHAT MAKES F1 CARS SO EXPENSIVE?’ The material is definitely a part of what makes them expensive. We use carbon fibres and some exotic materials to make certain components. The materials we use definitely comes with high expenses, but we can make sure that they are good quality. The cars need to be designed very precisely so we put a lot of time and effort into it. The cars also have a very complicated design which is usually made up of 20,000 different parts. The racing team and the cars have to travel all around the world (18 different countries). The cost of shipping is high and we have a team of 800 people all working on it.

‘WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF F1 DRIVERS EXPERIENCING AN ACCIDENT UNDER SUCH HIGH SPEEDS AND HOW ARE THE CARS DESIGNED TO PREVENT THESE ACCIDENTS?’ Risks are crashing into other car; losing control and falling off the track. We have a good understanding of the forces and momentum experienced by the cars. There is an energy absorbing structure just behind the front wing of the car, which absorbs a lot of the energy in a crash instead of the driver and the damaged parts can be replaced easily. We do a lot of testing to make sure that these parts don’t contain any safety issues.

‘HOW TO DO YOU KNOW WHICH TYPE OF TYRES TO USE? (SOFT, MEDIUM, HARD) AND DO CERTAIN TYPES OF TYRES HAVE LIMITS ON HOW MANY LAPS IT CAN BE USED FOR?’ Soft tyres are made out of softer rubber than hard tyres, meaning it has more grip to the track. However, at the same time, it wears out more quickly. On the other hand, a hard tyre doesn’t grip as well but lasts longer. When racing, using a softer tyre means that it can go faster but needs to be changed more often. Tyre choice also depends on the racing track. Some have more turns, some have more straights. It’s about choosing the right balance.

‘WHAT IS THE AVERAGE SPEED OF A F1 CAR?’ Around 325km/h

TURRITOPSIS DOHNRII Yuwen Ge (LV)

One of the most popular debates about the topic of ‘Life’ is the potential of gaining an immortal lifespan. This idea has led scientists to debate for centuries on whether the theory is achievable or not. Although the secret to immortality remains unsolved for humans, a never-ending lifespan has been achieved elsewhere by an unlikely organism. It is low in the food chain that has inhabited the oceans for an estimated half-billion years: the jellyfish. During the summer of 1988, two students, Christian Sommer and Giorgio Bavestrello discovered Turritopsis polyps (which were thought to be Turritopsis nutricula) by the coast of Italy and were collected for studies. Samples of marine life were monitored, however, after a few days of monitoring, Sommer realised the polyps of Turritopsis that were collected performed abnormally. It seems to grow in reverse, as the tentacles retracted, and it again reversely grew back into a Planula Larva, which is the stage after the marine invertebrate becomes fertilized. This signals the restart of a mature Turritopsis Dohrnii’s (immortal jellyfish) life cycle. The discovery was revolutionary. This was, and still is an unprecedented concept for marine biologists.

The process of reverse development is known as trans differentiation - when one mature cell is transformed into a new cell type directly. When conditions are favourable, sexually matured medusae reproduce sexually, to achieve genetic variation, and maximize the possibilities of evolution. On the other hand, when facing physical damages, ageing or disadvantageous

environmental conditions that may lead to death, Turritopsis dohrnii undergoes a life cycle. Weakened sexually matured medusae perform the reverse development process, they reduce the medusa feature to enter the cyst stage (however there is also a 20% to 40% chance that medusae will skip the cyst stage to enter the hydroid stage directly). Eventually, they sink to the bottom of the ocean and attach to a solid object before producing new polyp colonies (after the production of hydrorhiza). Now, the polyps enter a new life cycle, but with the exact same DNA. To investigate further, the DNA of a mature T.dohrnii was compared to T.rubra, a related species that does not perform rejuvenation. The data recorded monitored that immortal jellyfish possesses double the number of genes that repair and protect DNA than a T.rubra medusa does. (Jason P.Dihn, New scientists). More restorative and protective proteins are produced by the duplicates of these genes. The species also has special mutation, that inhibits cell division and prevents deterioration of telomeres which are the ‘protective caps’ of chromosomes. As well as the discovery of the duplication of genes, scientists also found that jellyfish stunts the developmental genes to enable the cells to return primaeval stage and activates other genes for nascent cells to re-specialize for the restart of its life cycle. Fundamentally, Turritopsis dohrnii has an extremely simple biological structure compared to human beings (homo sapiens), therefore its ability of eternal youth cannot be applied to humans as many have suggested. However, its ability of trans differentiation may lead humans to a higher level biologically. It may be the cure for terminal illness, the key to unlock the history of human ancestors and perhaps in the future may lead to the ideal result of immortality.

WILL ‘NET ZERO’ AVIATION BE ACHIEVED? Charlotte Mackinnon (LVI)

Aviation is widely recognised as both one of the most carbonintensive forms of transport and one of the most difficult to decarbonise. Despite some developments, post-pandemic passenger numbers are growing and time to slash emissions is dwindling fast. To tackle this, Governments from across the world have set out an ambitious goal of ‘net zero’ aviation by 2050. But will this be achieved?

WHAT IS ‘NET ZERO’, AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

switching to biofuels will reduce CO₂ emissions by 30% by 2050.

‘Net zero’ refers to the zeroing of carbon emissions causing global warming, achieved through balancing those released and removed from our atmosphere. Unless global warming is limited to 1.5 °C, as called for in the Paris Agreement, we risk suffering the worst impacts of climate change. These include more frequent and intense storms, droughts, crop failures and flooding.

Biofuels are any fuels manufactured from organic material; alternatives to fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal which are formed by geological processes over long periods of time. The carbon released during their combustion comes from that stored by organic matter as it grows, not from deep underground that has been stored for millions of years, as with fossil fuels. In theory, this means that the amount of carbon in our atmosphere is less likely to increase so rapidly, as carbon simply cycles between plants and the atmosphere.

Without swift action, by 2050 the aviation industry will have used up more than a quarter of all the carbon dioxide we can safely emit while keeping global warming to under 1.5 degrees celsius. A portfolio of mitigation strategies is vital if we are to decrease carbon emissions.

HYDROGEN AND BATTERY-POWERED PLANES The development of hydrogen and battery powered planes could be a solution, according to the FT. Next generation hydrogen fuels are already being developed by many companies. This includes Airbus, for a zero-carbon, demonstration aircraft model promised for 2035, as they only combust to produce water vapour. This means zero CO₂, so zero carbon emissions. However, hydrogen fuels release 4 times less energy per unit volume than traditional ones. This has caused subsequent limitations, such as a need for greater storage capacity on aircraft. Unless these are circumnavigated, they can only be used for shorter flights. In addition, continual research is being conducted into aircraft batteries. Possible contenders include solid state batteries, which do not contain liquids; lithium-sulphur and metal-air batteries. Metal-air batteries are based on electrochemical reactions between a pure metal and air. Likewise, aircraft batteries generally store and release a poor amount of energy per unit density. Consequently, batterypowered planes are unlikely to be suitable for flights over a mere 1000 km.

BIOFUELS According to the Air Transport Action Group, a shocking 80% of aviation CO₂ emissions come from flights of more than 1,500 km. For longer flights in particular, fuel choice is paramount in reducing carbon emissions. But producing less carbonemitting fuels is no easy feat. Fortunately, switching to biofuels could give us the hope we need, according to Sustainable Aviation, a coalition of UK airlines, airports and manufacturers. They claim that

COULD BIOFUELS CLEAN UP AVIATION’S CARBON CRISIS? Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), are biofuels used to power aircrafts. They could be key for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the lifetime of fuels, according to scientists. This is compared to current petroleum-based jet fuels such as kerosene. The two main types of kerosene fuels are Jet Fuel and Avgas. Extracted from crude oil deep underground, kerosene is extracted via fraction distillation at atmospheric pressure, followed by treatments to increase its purity. Despite kerosene’s ability to produce a plentiful supply of energy, its subsequent emissions of carbon dioxide are unsustainable. SAF, providing there is sufficient energy produced, could not only prevent dangerous CO₂ emissions, but they could also reduce emissions of other greenhouse gases. However, the scale of that reduction depends on the process used to make the fuels and the carbon source. So, what are the options? There are many ways to create SAF but compared with Jet A or Jet A-1, hydro-processed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) fuels are regarded as the most cost competitive. These are produced from the oxygen molecules in waste oils, fats, greases and unused vegetable oils, which can be treated with hydrogen to yield burnable hydrocarbons the right length for aircraft fuel, usually between 10 and 20 carbons long. Generally, biofuels made from wastes and byproducts tend to have lower carbon emissions than crop-based ones, according to the ICCT. Consequently, the SAF industry is shifting more towards such waste-based fuels, according to Aaron Robinson, Senior Manager of Environmental Strategy and Sustainability for United Airlines. According to the IATA, SAF could save up to an astounding 80% of CO₂ emissions in comparison to Kerosene.

REFERENCES: Airbus (2021). How to store liquid hydrogen for zero-emission flight. [online] www.airbus.com. Available at: https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/ news/2021-12-how-to-store-liquid-hydrogen-forzero-emission-flight. Aviationbenefits.org. (n.d.). Sustainable aviation fuel. [online] Available at: https://aviationbenefits.org/ environmental-efficiency/climate-action/sustainableaviation-fuel/[Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Bergero, C., Gosnell, G., Gielen, D., Kang, S., Bazilian, M. and Davis, S.J. (2023). Pathways to net-zero emissions from aviation. Nature Sustainability, [online] pp.1–11. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893022-01046-9.

But are SAF really going to curb carbon emissions? Unless they are used in the right way, biofuels could be a bigger source of carbon than expected, according to some scientists. Direct emissions from biofuels are lower than fossil fuels. Burning enough biofuel to generate one megajoule of energy gives off the equivalent of 39g of CO₂, whereas for fossil fuels that figure is 75.1g. However, the indirect carbon emissions from creating and transporting biofuels must also be considered. Firstly, growing crops for some biofuel types requires vast tracts of land. This could lead to even higher deforestation rates. Therefore, a decrease in the amount of carbon stored by environments such as rainforests, contributing extra carbon into our atmosphere. But even the creation of waste-based fuels can interrupt the carbon cycle. This is because waste products absorbing carbon into the soil deplete, so more carbon is stored in the atmosphere instead. Cost remains another hurdle. SAF are estimated to be between two and six times more expensive than traditional fuels, although incentives are expected to help lower this over time.

IS ‘NET ZERO’ FEASIBLE, OR JUST A DANGEROUS TRAP? Despite current developments, there is still speculation as to whether ‘net zero’ aviation is actually possible. Although hydrogen and batterypower could be used for shorter flights, there are complications surrounding biofuels proposed for longer flights, which release the most carbon emissions. Unless production methods can be made more sustainable, biofuels may not be the best solution. The solution may lie in technologies yet to be developed. For example, other biofuels created using algae and water, or via other chemical processes using energy. Excess renewable energy could be used to manufacture hydrogen fuels via electrolysis of water, or even other forms of manmade fuels during times when that energy cannot be used for anything else. There is hope among the scientific community that ‘net zero’ aviation can be achieved. However, continual developments still need to be made and action must be taken now to drastically decrease carbon emissions. We have no choice but to, if we are to preserve a liveable planet for generations to come.

Boerner, L. (2021). Airlines want to make flight more sustainable. How will they do it? [online] Acs. org. Available at: https://cen.acs.org/environment/ sustainability/Airlines-want-make-flightsustainable/99/i32. Client (2020). How net zero aviation is preparing for take-off. [online] www.ft.com. Available at: https:// www.ft.com/partnercontent/societe-generale/hownet-zero-aviation-is-preparing-for-take-off.html [Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Dyke, J., Watson, R. and Knorr, W. (2021). Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https:// theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-ofnet-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368. Ellerbeck, S. (2022). The aviation sector wants to reach net zero by 2050. How will it do it? [online] World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www. weforum.org/agenda/2022/12/aviation-net-zeroemissions/. Hirst, D., Mason, E. and Dempsey, N. (2021). Aviation, decarbonisation and climate change. [online] House of Commons Library. Available at: https:// commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/ cbp-8826/#:~:text=However%2C%20aviation%20 is%20widely%20recognised,the%20most%20 difficult%20to%20decarbonise. [Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Memon, D.O. (2022). What Are The Major Challenges Of Hydrogen-Powered Aircraft? [online] Simple Flying. Available at: https:// simpleflying.com/hydrogen-powered-aircraft-majorchallenges/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20 significant [Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Nast, C. (2020). Biofuels are meant to clean up flying’s carbon crisis. They won’t. [online] Wired UK. Available at: https://www.wired. co.uk/article/biofuels-aviation-carbonemissions#:~:text=Biofuels.&text=The%20group%20 claims%20that%20switching [Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Nations, U. (n.d.). Net Zero Coalition. [online] United Nations. Available at: https://www. un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coa lition?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsPWbi5OY_ QIVT4rCCh2pXgmXEAAYASAAEgJmtvD_BwE [Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Phillips, A. (2022). Global aviation sets a goal of net zero by 2050 – now its time to deliver. [online] ADS Group. Available at: https://www.adsgroup.org.uk/ blog/global-aviation-sets-a-goal-of-net-zero-by2050-now-its-time-to-deliver/[Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Piesing, M. (2022). The epic attempts to power planes with hydrogen. [online] www.bbc.com. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/ article/20220316-the-epic-attempts-to-powerplanes-with-hydrogen. Planemakers step up hydrogen tests in push to clean aviation. (2022). Financial Times. [online] 20 Jul. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/ a35c2f15-7f24-4022-9860-6e7382af8f02 [Accessed 18 Feb. 2023]. Reuters (2022). UN body reaches long-term aviation climate goal of net zero by 2050. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/environment/2022/oct/07/un-body-reacheslong-term-aviation-climate-goal-of-net-zeroby-2050. Timperley, J. (2020). Should we give up flying for the sake of the climate? [online] BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218climate-change-how-to-cut-your-carbon-emissionswhen-flying.

Timperley, J. (2021). The six problems aviation must fix to hit net zero. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2021/sep/05/the-six-problems-aviation-must-fix-to-hit-net-zero.

DRIVERLESS CARS WITH MR LIYOU ZHOU Shiloh Akintaju (LVI)

Liyou Zhou is a Robotics Software Engineer for Wayve a robotics company developing driverless cars. Liyou built his knowledge base in this field during his MEng studies at the University of Cambridge and an internship at ‘Arm’, another market leader in driverless car technology. ‘HOW DID YOU GET INTO TECHNOLOGY AND WHAT HAS YOUR JOURNEY LOOKED LIKE THUS FAR?’ My interest started when I was in school, I found myself looking at car magazines in the back of the class and thinking how cool it would be if I could work on these cars one day! After doing STEM based A Levels I did a degree in engineering and ended up in a technology-based job.

‘WHEN DOING SOME RESEARCH I CAME ACROSS SOME KEYWORDS LINKED TO SELF-DRIVING CARS, SUCH AS ALGORITHM LEARNING AND AI, BUT HOW ARE THEY DIRECTLY USED IN SELF-DRIVING CARS?’ Self-driving cars have a few components. At the beginning you have a camera that takes photos of its surroundings 20 times per second which is then sent to the car’s internal computer, this is then ran through a machine learning model. This model mimics what happens in our brains and has many interconnected layers similar to neurons; this model can be shown many pictures of a certain item and start to recognise them, e.g., trees or roads. However, you cannot inspect the inside of the neuron network and understand fully what it is doing, similar to how you cannot dissect a brain and see how the neurons are exactly connected; you can only infer from the input and output of the network what its behaviours will be. After this, the car’s trajectory is outputted which consists of waypoints where the car should move to. At this point a controller, which runs 100 times per second, helps the car know what exactly it needs to do in terms of steering or using its brakes to move in the desired direction by giving signals. The cars have been converted to have a drive-by wire 22

system which allows the signals to be received by the different parts of the car and actually move them.

‘SOME OF THE COMPONENTS YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT SEEM VERY COMPLICATED, IS THERE ANY SPECIFIC WAY TO TRAIN THEM OR MAKE THEM?’ The neuron network is where the most complicated things happen and recently there has been a large amount of research going into how to train the network when looking at what photos or sequences you should show it. In our company we show it images where the car’s driving is different from a human driving. For example, we will have a situation where a safety driver is sitting in the driver’s seat monitoring the cars behaviour, when the car does something that may cause an accident or not be the right course of direction the safety driver will intervene and do something different from what the car wants to do. Then we use this as a good training example to show the neuron network where the human decision and the networks decision differ and how it should use this to learn to be more like the human instead of what it originally plans to do. This feedback loop allows the network to become smarter and for us to collect more data. We train the network almost every day.

‘FOR A PROCESS AS LONG AND COMPLICATED AS THIS I ASSUME THAT YOU HAVE LOTS OF PROTOTYPES GOING ON AT ONCE?’ What we currently have is a passenger vehicle SUV that we use to collect data and we are looking to convert a van in the future to do the same thing. We want to demonstrate that, just like a human being, using the neuron network and machine learning model we are able to drive both types of vehicles. It can learn to generalise itself so it does not care what type of vehicle it is, but just that it has the basic interface such as a steering wheel just like how a human would approach it. This is important as we want to show that in the future we are able to adapt this technology to any type of vehicle; in the future we could even have self-driving buses and lorries. I believe there will be a lot of interesting applications in long-haul trucking as human operators cannot be fully attentive for long periods of time, whereas the autonomous driver can keep its eye on the road for a long amount of time. There will be applications in grocery deliveries as there is a lower risk as you are not carrying people but items or foods instead. The future of autonomous driving has already started with everyday examples of delivery bots in London, the level of autonomy will work up from vehicles where it

can easily be applied to such as buses, which run the same routes every day, to vehicles that are harder to adapt to such as private hire vehicles in cities.

‘A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE VERY SCEPTICAL WHEN IT COMES TO DRIVERLESS CARS AND THERE IS ALSO AN ESSENCE OF FEAR AND UNCERTAINTY TOO; WHEN LOOKING AT ALL THE FUNDING GOING INTO SELF-DRIVING CARS ONE COULD ASSUME THAT IT IS A VERY EXPENSIVE PROCESS. WOULD IT BE REALISTIC TO THINK THAT THESE METHODS COULD BECOME A PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE?’ When introducing new technology there will always be people who are sceptical and often people’s perception of the risks involved will be biased due to their own experiences. For example, when entering a car driven by a human there is still the risk of getting into an accident, but you have grown to understand and accept this risk. However, when posed with the same vehicle but just self-driven the same person could say that the risk it too high to even get into the car. In my opinion, this is the wrong attitude to face the car with as you have not been able to have enough experiences with the car to come to that conclusion. We have had people try out our selfdriving cars where the car has been able to perform very complex manoeuvres on the road and then they will say that the car is amazing! They say that the car seems 100% safe and that they want to use it every day, but this is also not the right attitude either as you have only been exposed to the scenarios where the car has worked well but there will undoubtedly be times where the car does not work. Through slowly increased exposure to self-driving vehicles, I think people will be able to home in on what the exact risks with autonomous driving and this type of technology.

‘SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES HAVE A LOT OF POSITIVES AND ADVANTAGES THEY COULD ADD TO ONE’S LIFE, DO YOU THINK THERE ARE ANY DISADVANTAGES THAT PEOPLE SHOULD LOOK OUT FOR?’ I think there is a time and place for self-driving cars and that you should employ them when and where they make sense. For example, during the pandemic when there was a shortage of drivers then selfdriving vehicles would be a very good solution for that scenario. I think that to avoid any negatives the technology should be used in appropriate places in order to benefit our modern lifestyle.

‘DUE TO THE FACT THAT SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES ARE A NEW CONCEPT FOR MOST PEOPLE, THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT OF DEBATING POINTS AROUND THE TOPICS OF DRUNKDRIVING OR ACCIDENTS AND WHO THE RESPONSIBILITY WOULD FALL ON. ARE THERE SEPARATE RULES AND REGULATIONS THAT ARE SPECIFIC TO SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES?’ This is where I believe that people, like our legal department for example, are currently engaging with the lawmakers of the UK; we even have cases where we invite Members of Parliament to try our cars. This is a key area where legislation needs to keep up with the technology. From my understanding the UK and Germany are quite advanced in their autonomous driving legislation and as self-driving cars continue to increase in popularity, the lawmakers are paying more attention into how companies like ours can experiment with making these autonomous vehicles, instead of laying down hard and fast rules of what we can and can’t do.

‘THANK YOU SO MUCH LIYOU FOR ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS ON AUTONOMOUS DRIVING AND WHAT REALLY GOES ON BEHIND THE SCENES! ONE LAST QUESTION, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO SOMEONE MY AGE WHO WANTS TO GO INTO THIS FIELD?’ I think that if you say you want to work in autonomous driving and actually end up going directly into that the chances are quite slim! In my opinion, especially in the field of technology, I think it is better to pursue in the general direction of STEM subjects and go from there. No one can predict the future of autonomous driving, and the technology would have probably progressed so far by the time you would be looking to enter that it could be completely different. There are so many different aspects to this field and so many people who all have diverse backgrounds themselves that are all helping us to push this technology. There is the part of developing the technology, but we need a diverse number of talents to work in this industry and if autonomous driving progresses as we think it will then the amount of people needed working in this field will be huge! So, STEM is one area of this field, but I doubt that whatever you pick going forward you cannot not be involved in this growing industry.

ROYAL ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS WITH CLAIRE WHITLAM Ella Spry (LVI) ‘WHAT/WHO INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME A ROYAL ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER OFFICER (REME)?’ My grandfather was a Mathematician and an Engineer in the Royal Airforce, and my father was an Army Officer, so they had told me lots of stories about what it was like to work in the army. When I was younger I had grown up around army bases and followed my dad around, so I understood the army lifestyle, especially the family side of it.

‘HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE WHAT A ROYAL ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER IS?’ The REME provides all the mechanical and electrical support necessary for the Combat Arms, for example, the Infantry, the Calvary and the Army Air Corps. This encompasses a large range of jobs, from repairing and fixing battle tanks, weapons and helicopters, to recovering vehicles that have been in explosions under fire or precuring equipment for the military. The actual role in battle is to enable the army to fight by providing logistical and technical support.

‘DID YOU ALWAYS ENVISION YOURSELF BECOMING AN ENGINEER AND WORKING WITH THE ARMY?’ When I was 14, I did some work experience with the Army Air Corps, working with some military helicopters. I was fascinated by the helicopters and by the soldiers repairing them so methodically, as every last detail had to be engineered to withstand the huge vibrations. I went to a school which was specialised to accommodate and teach the kinds of technical skills necessary to become military engineers, so from a relatively young age I was sure I wanted to become an engineer in the military.

‘WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE TRYING TO BECOME AND ENGINEER?’ Don’t worry about becoming an expert in one field or another. The basic engineering principle can be applied to many areas and as long as you are prepared to ask others and learn from people who are experienced you can have an impact. Sometimes fresh eyes on a project or a different approach to problem solving is what is needed, not necessarily the relevant technical experience.

‘WHAT DIFFICULTIES IN YOUR CAREER DID YOU FACE, AND HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THEM?’ One of the challenges I faced as a young officer was always being taken out of my comfort zone and always moving jobs every couple of years, everything you do is a bit of a leap of faith and you really need to trust yourself and be really flexible and adaptable. Additionally, managing the careers of my soldiers and all the pastoral issues that come with it was a challenge.

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT QUALITIES OF A ROYAL ENGINEER?’ It is important to have an overall technical understanding, but also to listen to people who have more technical, hands-on experience. The ability to be open minded and adaptable and being prepared to learn all time is crucial in this kind of environment.

‘WHAT WAS YOUR MOST DANGEROUS OR MEMORABLE PROJECT THAT YOU UNDERTOOK IN THE MILITARY?’ I did a seven-month tour of Helmand Province, Afghanistan as a company intelligence officer for the Royal Welsh, an Infantry Regiment. I was based in a small checkpoint just outside Lashkah Gar, and it was my job to gather and collate intelligence and make assessment on the threat we faced. I analysed the movements and patterns of the enemy and tried to understand their intent. I often patrolled on foot with the soldiers to meet local elders to try to gain HUMINT (Human Intelligence). At times it could be a highly stressful environment and we were living in very austere conditions. We partnered with the Afghan National Police, and although they were not used to working with women in military roles, they welcomed me and I ended up forming a great relationship with the Chief of Police for our area.

‘DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WORKING IN MALE DOMINATED FIELDS SUCH AS ENGINEERING OR THE MILITARY?’

Unfortunately, the main thing you have to deal with is initial prejudice, I hope that today in the army people are more progressive, they were definitely quite progressive when I was working there, however wherever you work there will always be ‘bad eggs’. I encountered one at the very start of my career who discriminated against me for being young and female. I wish I had spoken out earlier because people don’t tolerate misogyny and it would have stopped much sooner. However, I was good at my job and let my personality, drive and ambition shine through and most importantly I had my soldiers best interests at the heart of what I did. Eventually the ‘bully’ backed off. He later went on to admit his behaviour towards me was his ‘biggest regret’ in a very long career.

‘HOW IMPORTANT WOULD YOU SAY PROFICIENCY IN MATHEMATICS IS IN AN ENGINEERING FIELD?’ It is extremely important, especially when you are studying engineering. Everything I did was basically a form of mathematical modelling, even things like material properties or design. However other subjects can provide you with skills that translate over to an engineering job, for example history helped me to write concise reports. Once I was in the Army, I didn’t use maths as much, although I think it helped to shape my way of thinking and my problem-solving skills.

‘HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THE CHANGE OF LIFESTYLE AFTER RETURNING FROM ACTIVE DUTY?’ Firstly, I caught up on a lot of sleep, as you do not have a day off when on operations. Additionally, you must have patience and tolerance of the people around you, as it can be really difficult to hear people talking about mundane things when you have come back from a warzone. Finally, it is so important to stay in contact with your military friends, so you have people who have gone through similar experiences as you to talk about it with.

PURDUE PHARMACEUTICALS AND THE AMERICAN OPIOID EPIDEMIC Isabelle Wessely (LVI)

Pain is a funny thing. We feel it emotionally, physically, and mentally. Everyone feels and copes with it differently. Whether you have selfproclaimed yourself as someone with a ‘high pain tolerance’ or have meekly admitted that stubbing your little toe may end up with you curled up on the floor in excruciating pain, there is one thing we can all agree on… pain is subjective. There’s a scale used in medical practices, it goes from 1-10, 1 being feeling normal and having no pain at all, and 10 being you think you are being torn limb from limb by a Great White Shark. This scale was implemented by the American Pain Society who declared “pain as the 5th vital sign”[1] alongside blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature (all which are quantifiable). Yet, no one picked up the obvious issue of a simple 1-10 scale that anyone could falsify or drastically understate. Can you imagine a toddler with a sprained wrist claiming their world was burning down they were in so much pain, when in reality it really isn’t that painful (probably a 3.8 on the scale). Arthur Sackler was someone who wanted to cure pain. Sackler floated through New York’s high society easily, becoming a high-rise philanthropist in little to no time, he got the Sackler name plastered on the galleries in the MET in New York, the Royal Academy of Arts and Harvard University, just to name a few.[2] He was a trained psychiatrist, hence his interest in medical research. But most importantly he set up Perdue Pharmaceuticals with the intention to ‘cure pain’. When you ask people what the worst recreational drug is, the majority will say Heroin. This is because of its manically addictive nature that makes it pretty much impossible to overcome an addiction. Unknowing to many, heroin is comprised of a revolutionary type of pain killer called opiates which are derived from the seeds of poppies and practically take your pain from a 10 right down to a very manageable 3. However, the addictive nature that heroin has occurs because of the effect they have on neurotransmitters[3]. Naturally, Sackler thought it would be a good idea if Perdue focused on eradicating pain using opioids, so they set out on the journey of making their first pain killer: Valium.

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HO Sackler took it upon himself to be the first of many things, most importantly, he was the first person to publicly advertise a medication[4]. But, he needed a group of people to direct the adverts at, so, who did he target? Women. All of the advertisement budget went towards targeting women. If you were a woman and had a headache – take Valium. If you were a woman and were stressed – take Valium etc. He single-handedly stripped all purpose of the drug (to release tension) and made it into the common vitamin. He did this even though it contained opioids. Which is an openly known narcotic, and, if abused, could result in a crippling addiction. Sackler knew what he was doing, but, despite the warnings, America faced a spike in opioid related overdoses and unsurprisingly, Perdue refused to take responsibility. Instead, they made money like crazy. So of course, the natural thing to do would be to continue making these drugs and refuse to acknowledge the publics struggling. OxyContin was created in 1996 and intended to be a ‘non addictive’ opioid pain killer. Perdue Pharma claimed that because of the ’12-hour effective range’ [5] the drug wasn’t addictive.

REFERENCES [1] Hirsch, R. (2017) The opioid epidemic: It’s time to place blame where it belongs, Missouri medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Available at: https://www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC6140023/ (Accessed: February 2, 2023). [2] Keefe, P.R. (2017) The family that built an empire of pain, The New Yorker. Available at: https:// www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2017/10/30/ the-family-that-builtan-empire-of-pain (Accessed: February 2, 2023). [3] Heroin drugfacts (2023) National Institutes of Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Available at: https://nida.nih.gov/ publications/drugfacts/ heroin (Accessed: February 2, 2023). [4] Bonner, R. (2021) The Sackler family, its fortune and its dangerous drugs, The Sydney Morning Herald. The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com. au/culture/books/ the-sackler-familyits-fortune-and-itsdangerous-drugs20210507-p57ps8.html (Accessed: February 2, 2023). [5] Van Zee, A. (2009) The promotion and marketing of Oxycontin: Commercial Triumph, public health tragedy, American journal of public health. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Available at: https://www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC2622774/ (Accessed: February 2, 2023) .[6] Falls and fracture consensus statement supporting… – NHS england (no date). Available at: https:// www.england. nhs.uk/south/wpcontent/uploads/ sites/6/2017/03/fallsfracture.pdf (Accessed: February 2, 2023).

The marketing plan for OxyContin was sophisticated, they conducted more than 40 national pain management conferences between 1996 and 2001 in which physicians and pharmacists would attend a holiday where they would get lectured at all day by so called ‘pain experts’ about OxyContin being revolutionary. Perdue also made detailed prescribing patterns that could tell you if a singular zip-code in Wyoming was prescribing OxyContin like skittles, as well as doctors who weren’t prescribing enough[5]. Even more worrying, sales grew from $48 million in 1996 to $1.1 billion in 2000[5]. Perdue also vigorously promoted OxyContin for use in the ‘non malignant pain market’ because this market was much larger than the previously targeted cancer-related and chronic pain market. This change in strategy saw the prescriptions rise from 670,000 in 1997 to around 6.2 million in 2002[5]. However, something that Perdue blatantly ignored was the fact that opioids are not recommended for acute cancer related pain because the advantages do not outweigh the side affects. This high availability was at its worse in 2004, when OxyContin was the leading drug of abuse in America[5]. Another reason behind this devastating epidemic was the misrepresentation of the risk of addiction.

The entire promotional campaign, from videos to the ‘partners against pain’ website claimed that the risk of addiction of OxyContin was extremely small. This risk was apparently less than 1% according to the sales representatives, however, recent studies show that addiction when using opioids from long-term treatment see an addiction risk of up to 50%[5]. The quantities of OxyContin given out ranged from 5mg pills to a 60mg pill. This increase in dosage came about because of the new ‘personalised prescriptions’ that were being pushed out to physicians in which, if a patient presented with an 8 on the highly subjective pain scale, you could skip the initial recommended dosages and go straight for a 60mg pill. To put this into perspective, the legal amount of opioids to be prescribed in the UK per pill is 2.5mg and a maximum of 60mg per day[6]. This gross miscommunication of the addictiveness of the drug resulted in physicians believing Perdue Pharma and wanting to help their patients pain, however, unknowing to them, they were putting their patients in danger. The addiction had been recorded as horrific, yet nothing had a comparison when it came to the withdrawal symptoms, which were nothing less than torturous.

CRYPTOGRAPHY PUZZLES

EASY: “3 15 13 5, 23 1 20 19 15 14, 3 15 13 5. 20 8 5 7 1 13 5 9 19 1 6 15 15 20.”

MEDIUM:

Easy: “Come, Watson, come.The game is afoot.” (quote from Sherlock Holmes) ANSWERS:

“ABB AAAA A BA/BABB BBB AAB/AAAA AB AAAB A/A ABAA AA BB AA BA AB B A BAA/B AAAA A/AA BB ABBA BBB AAA AAA AA BAAA ABAA A/,/ABB AAAA AB B A AAAB A ABA/ABA A BB AB AA BA AAA/,/ AAAA BBB ABB A AAAB A ABA/AA BB ABBA ABA BBB BAAA AB BAAA ABAA A/,/BB AAB AAA B/BAAA A/B AAAA A/B ABA AAB B AAAA/.” (hint: see A as dots and B as dashes)

Medium: “Jericho went back to his desk and manipulated the original crib under the new cryptogram. Again there were no letter clashes. The golden rule of Enigma, its single, fatal weakness: nothing is ever itself – A can never be A, B can never be B… It was working.” (quote from Enigma by Robert Harris)

HARD:

Hard: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (quote from Sherlock Holmes)

Gbofzel tbkq yxzh ql efp abph xka jxkfmrixqba qeb lofdfkxi zofy rkabo qeb kbt zovmqldoxj. Xdxfk qebob tbob kl ibqqbo zixpebp. Qeb dliabk orib lc Bkfdjx, fqp pfkdib, cxqxi tbxhkbpp: klqefkd fp bsbo fqpbic – X zxk kbsbo yb X, Y zxk kbsbo yb Y… Fq txp tlohfkd. (hint: the cipher is a type of salad)

ELEMENTS EMOJI QUIZ

Platinum Nitrogen Calcium Carbon Copper Iron Potassium Beryllium Titanium Lodine Gold Tungsten ANSWERS

BIOPRINTING: THE FUTURE OF ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION Alice Boyle (LVI) HISTORY OF BIOPRINTING In 2021 alone, 421 people died in the UK waiting for an organ transplant, hoping to be chosen from a list of over six thousand people [5]. As a result of this, scientists have been investigating the possibility of bioprinting, a method of 3D printing tissues out of bio ink which is a polymer that has characteristics allowing it to support living cells. The concept of three-dimensional bioprinting was first introduced by Charles W Hull in 1986 and was most notably later considered by Professor Anthony Atala in 2000. He was leading a project in which he had created a spatial scaffold, used to produce the first synthetic organ. The main challenge Atala faced during his project was organ rejection, so his team extracted cells from the receiver organ and used them to colonise the scaffold. However, the first bioprinter was not created until 2003 by Thomas Boland. Boland was a scientist located at the University of El Paso, and he modified an office printer to allow him to research the possibility of printing with biological molecules. One particular advancement occurred in February 2021, where a team of researchers at the University of Alberta, Canada, managed to successfully create custom shaped cartilage for use in surgical procedures [4]. Roughly 40% of individuals with non-melanoma skin cancer have lesions on their noses and many will require surgery to remove them, meaning they are often left with facial disfiguration. Traditionally, cartilage for reconstructive surgery was cut from a patient’s rib and reshaped to meet the required size and form. However, the cartilage undergoes a period of remodelling as it adjusts to its new environment, during which it warps to resemble the curvature of the rib. Therefore, the team of researchers identified how to produce custom shaped cartilage using 3D bioprinting. A specially configured hydrogel was used to produce the cartilage by the researchers, as it could be mixed with cells harvest from a patient [2]. The specific shape required was captured through 3D imaging and once printed, the material was cultured in a lab over multiple weeks to produce functional cartilage.

PROCESS The process of bioprinting consists of cells being layered over each other to form larger structures, such as bones and blood vessels. The first part of the process, ‘pre-processing’ describes the preparation that occurs before the actual structure is printed. For the bioprinter to print a

structure that is suitable for the patient, a digital reconstruction of the tissue needs to occur on a computer. An MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is taken along with photographs, to create a 3D image of the structure on a computer. The second aspect of bioprinting is processing. This is when the tissue is physically produced by the bioprinter. Similar to an office printer, there are multiple methods of printing the structure such as inkjet-based printing or extrusion-based, which is where bio ink is extruded through narrow nozzles to create the 3D structure. The last step is postprocessing, which includes modifying the printed structure so that it can perform its desired function. The print is often left in a specially designed chamber which helps cells to mature properly and at a rapid pace, therefore producing a tissue structure that can be used for human benefit [3].

FUTURE OF BIOPRINTING In 2018, a cardiac path was produced from human cells by BioLife4D, a 3D printing company. This small cardiac patch is able to assist in healing a damaged part of the heart before the rest of the cardiac tissue is affected, as it acts like a scaffold so that the muscle can strengthen. Since bio printed tissue is often partly composed of stem cells, it can restore scarred or unstable tissue and there is also hope that this characteristic could be used to prevent organ transplants being required. The next era of bioprinting is being developed to fulfil the complex stimulus responsive geometry that is present in the human body. 3D bioprinting is currently not able to allow for the transfer of electrical impulses, such as those in the brain and cardiac tissue. This has led to the concept of 4D bioprinting, where ‘time’ has been integrated so that printed structures are able to change their shape of function with time when an external stimulus is imposed. The objects produced by 3D bioprinters are not able to mimic the dynamic nature of tissues, as the structure is often changed during tissue regeneration and repair. If a material were able to respond to external stimulus or internal stimulus within the cell, it would more effectively replicate tissues within the body and there would be an increased possibility of the materials being used widely within medicine [1].

REFERENCES 1.Costa, P.D.C., Costa, D.C.S., Correia, T.R., Gaspar, V.M. and Mano, J.F. (2021). Natural Origin Biomaterials for 4D Bioprinting Tissue‐Like Constructs. Advanced Materials Technologies, 6(10), p.2100168. doi:10.1002/admt.202100168. 2.Lan, X., Liang, Y., Erkut, E.J.N., Kunze, M., Mulet‐Sierra, A., Gong, T., Osswald, M., Ansari, K., Seikaly, H., Boluk, Y. and Adesida, A.B. (2021). Bioprinting of human nasoseptal chondrocytes‐laden collagen hydrogel for cartilage tissue engineering. The FASEB Journal, 35(3). doi:10.1096/fj.202002081r. 3.Rana Khalid, I., Darakhshanda, I. and Rafi a, R. (2019). 3D Bioprinting: An attractive alternative to traditional organ transplantation. Archive of Biomedical Science and Engineering, 5(1), pp.007-018. doi:10.17352/ abse.000012. 4.Rees, V. (2021). Five of the latest developments in 3D bioprinting. [online] Drug Target Review. Available at: https://www.drugtargetreview. com/article/91312/five-of-the-latestdevelopments-in-3d-bioprinting/. 5.Statista (2021). Patient deaths on organ transplant waiting list 2019 | Statista. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/ statistics/519829/patient-deaths-onorgan-transplant-waiting-list-unitedkingdom-uk/.

ENDOCRINOLOGY WITH PROFESSOR STIMSON Georgina Boucher (LVI)

Professor Stimson is a Professor of Endocrinology at the University of Edinburgh with a focus on obesity and metabolic diseases. Prof. Stimson is still active as a researcher and clinician providing him fabulous oversight of the trends in medicine and their applications.

‘WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO CHOOSE ENDOCRINOLOGY AS A SPECIALTY? AND FROM THAT DECISION, COULD YOU QUICKLY RECAP YOUR JOURNEY TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE TODAY.’ I suppose when you do your undergraduate medical degree, some people go into medicine actually knowing exactly what they want to be, I was not one of those people, I think they are in the minority, I went in with an open mind. You have your blocks and you can get a bit of a flavour and certainly, I really enjoyed the endocrinology module more than any other. Maybe I am a logical person but I like the process of a hormone being secreted by a tissue and moved around the body to bind to a receptor in another tissue and then mediate a transduction effect which then feeds back into other circuits in the body. That’s the theory really and then only when you become a junior doctor and you get to actually experience some of that do you really practice. A lot of people are interested in different specialties in undergrad and then once you are in a clinic or have a good mentor that is quite key. A lot of people actually choose a specialty because of someone around them who inspires them, I had a very good, interesting teachers in my early jobs in endocrinology as well and that properly cemented my interest down that road and when I went on to my PhD I had an excellent mentor there as well. That’s why I like it. I really like that it’s a multi system disease. You know, cardiologists focus just on the heart and do a phenomenal job but I like the fact that in just one standard endocrinology clinic I can see calcium disorders, thyroid, pituitary hormone deficiency, I get a wide variety which I think is really interesting and keeps you interested. It isn’t just following a flow chart with diagrams, you really have to think about your patients. Its predominantly an outpatient specialty too and so I get to see my patients all the way through and really build a rapport with them, have a journey with them and take them through it. I grew up in Glasgow and went to school there and decided to do an undergraduate medical degree in Edinburgh. Following completing that, I went and did general doctor training in Fife for 3 years in a district generals hospital, not a sort of teaching hospital which I think was very helpful because there aren’t really many adult seniors, so you had to make decisions quickly. I got a bit fed up when I kept asking people why has that happened? And they were like, you don’t need to know that, just prescribe the drug. I was then interested in doing a PhD and found Brian Walker who was a top

international endocrinologist in Edinburgh and he was a top expert in glucocorticoid reaction. He offered me a PhD in looking at glucocorticoid metabolism and obesity and so I undertook that and it lasted 3 years. Often, at my age, what happened was you had to do a research degree to get a registrar speciality training and there was a big queue to do that. You do not need to do that now and so people miss out on the interest of research. The government tried to shorten training and increase consultant numbers. I really enjoyed that so much that I took a lectureship afterwards. That allowed me to train as an endocrinologist spending 80% of my time doing clinic work but 20% of my time researching, which is not massive but it allowed me to develop ideas and get pilot data and then I applied for a clinician scientist fellowship with the research council and I was fortunate to get that. When I finished my clinical training, they then paid my salary and I got an independent fellowship, and so they would not let me spend more than 20% of my time doing clinic work. They are paying your salary, they want you to do research. You put in a big project that you want to conclude and they give you that. It was a fascinating 5-year intermediate fellowship and allowed us to develop a lot of techniques particularly in the world of brown adipose tissue and thermogenesis and obesity and start unpicking some of that physiology. I went on from that to a SHO Senior Fellowship and that runs up until now. I got an honorary consultant position in the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh along with my chair a while back.

‘HAS ANYTHING MADE YOU DOUBT YOUR DECISION?’ Oh, I think when you take a PhD you can tell if a research career is not for you but it doesn’t tell you if you can do one. What I learned is that if my boss gave me a nice protocol and he came up with the ideas, I could then follow that through and we could get good results, but it does not tell you if you can come up with the ideas yourself that a funding body will get behind, you have to convince the founders that your paper is important. So yes, there were times absolutely that I doubted and lots of times having chats with my wife when there were stable consultant jobs with 10-year positions, lifelong security. But when I told her I did not want that, and I wanted to do a fellowship with a 15% acceptance rate that would need me to change again in a couple years. You do doubt yourself. There is always doubt. It takes a strange person to not have doubts at all, somebody once said to me, ‘if you don’t fear your next job it probably is not the right job for you’. Its not bad to embrace a bit of fear sometimes. 33

‘AS A YOUNG GENERATION, ARE THERE THINGS WE COULD DO WITH OUR DIET/LIFESTYLE TO AVOID PROBLEMS I.E. THYROID OR DIABETES TYPE 2 RELATING TO YOUR SPECIALTY?’ Sadly, we can’t change our genetics and so some people are much more predisposed to get problems in later life. But yes, we can definitely do lots in our environment to reduce that. Diabetes is the classic, the genome wide association study (GWAS) shows all these genes and they can predict your odds/ radios of getting diabetes and obesity as well. But if you work against your genes you can minimise those chances to stop getting the conditions. Diet is a difficult one, it is difficult to do proper randomised studies of diet over 30 years to show outcomes and effects. We know that a Mediterranean diet is probably better. I myself think it is mainly common sense with diet. Reducing your processed food intake, eating a decent amount of fibre is key and having a balanced diet and moderating that. I think exercise is obviously key to improved health. In general it is lifestyle changes that are important especially on a public health basis, at the moment potentially ¾ of certain groups of adults are at least overweight and so actually we do not particularly want to give pharmacological treatment to ¾ of the population. It’s about better education but with that I suppose, the body has a memory, if you gain weight, your body changes its set point and it wants to defend that weight so if you lose weight again you have to eat fewer calories to maintain that weight than if you never gained the weight in the first place. Because your body reduces its metabolic rate, and your hunger hormones change so there are lots of changes. It’s not helpful to say to never gain the weight in the first place but it is one of these things that you have to be aware of. There is research coming up all the time, like time restricted feeding which is fascinating saying that if you eat the same amount of calories spread out over the day, actually eating the calories in a shorter span, it is probably better for metabolic health. 50 000 years ago we did not have such a plentiful food supply so actually we were eating and then fasting, which is probably beneficial for metabolism but again, translating that to years down the line, finding out how that actually impacts is very difficult, so I think that is why we don’t know that much. Overall, I think following a good diet and exercise is a key thing for us. Climate change as well is showing findings that people who have activated brown adipose tissue actually are protected from 34

cardiometabolic disease, so there may be an argument that dialling down the central heating might not only save planet but also be better for cardiometabolic protection as well.

‘SHOULD WE START RANDOMISED GENETIC SCREENING TO SEE IF WE ARE AT A HIGH CHANCE OF DEVELOPING DIABETES?’ These panels for diseases can identify problems but a lot of the time they are a little bit difficult if you start non-discriminately testing. The normal ranges for blood tests are 95% that’s what they are based on, bell shaped curves, so 2.5% of population will be below and 2.5% above normal range so if you do the maths, 95% of people will have normal tests for one but this suddenly starts to drop dramatically and when you get them doing 20 blood tests, probably more than half will show an abnormality for one thing. There is a concern with genetics at the moment, there are loads of ideas and snips of these little nucleotide polymorphisms that alter disease risks but there are loads of variants of unknown significance. The understanding of how these snips will work together to form disease risks is not fully understood. I think randomly screening is probably too much in its infancy. In Aberdeen there is a Professor Ewan Pearson who does huge amounts of diabetes research and genome - wide studies and his work can do genetic analysis of patients and he can work out which diabetic treatment they will respond better to according to their genetics. A lot of the time you can use simple anthropometric measurements: age, weight, sex to work out who will respond, but I think we are coming to a point where we will have personalised medicine and can actually do genetic studies to see what treatment you will respond better to. I am positive about that but less so about unfettered screening but it may well hold.

‘IMMUNE MODULATOR FOR TYPE 1 DIABETES HAS BEEN APPROVED IN THE US, DO YOU THINK THE UK WILL BE QUICK TO FOLLOW? IS THERE A CURE FOR DIABETES IN SIGHT?’ There is a bit of concern about it, type 1 diabetes is a lifelong condition and generally they are identifying people at very high risk, so with family members with it and who have specific auto antibodies. So, there are three measured antibodies in type 1 diabetic patients. They will probably offset the disease for a few years and they will have to take the immune modulator. There are no interventions

without side effects and giving an immune modulator, some people will never develop the disease and so you will be treating some people unnecessarily, some you will delay it by say 2/3 years and you could argue how much benefit is those 3 years if they are going to be living with the condition for 50 years. I think we need to get better, at the moment we are just delaying it. These drugs have promise but there is a lot of redundancy in the immune system that’s why we have survived against infections for millions and millions of years. If one system goes, another will come in and so I think sadly, there is not massive promise for that drug in particular to be widespread. But, I think it’s a very interesting path of research and maybe combination approaches, where you can preserve the beta cell function and stop the immune system attacking it without immunosuppression and causing infections elsewhere. It is interesting to see that even people with longstanding type 1 diabetes have little beta cells and some people will form more and turn over more but the immune system destroys them, but if we can stop the immune system destroying them, they can develop enough to stop the severe complications of diabetes. At the moment I think technology is the best way to sort out type 1 diabetes. I think the hybrid closed loop solutions that are coming in are fantastic. It’s not a cure but in essence it takes the patient out of the equation in some sense because it will communicate with a sensor and give you more insulin when your blood sugar levels are high. And there are even bihormonal artificial pancreas pumps that will have insulin and glucagon so you can have tight control because of technology. This is the best solution I think for the next 20 years but in the future there may be further solutions.

‘HAVE YOU WORKED ABROAD AND IF SO ARE THERE ANY ASPECTS OF PUBLIC HEALTH THAT WE SHOULD BE ADAPTING IN THE UK?’ Only my elective as an undergrad, I went to Bangladesh for 3 months. I was interested to see life out there and they gave me a clinic to run and that was eye opening. I had never been to the subcontinent before but that was shocking because I was basically a med student and people were charged to see me in clinic and when you worked out that was their daily salary, it was humbling. I’ve never worked abroad, it can be very important to look at other ways of doing things.

‘AS THE COUNTRY OVERCOMES COVID, ARE THERE ANY INTERESTING PHENOMENA THAT ARE WORTH RESEARCHING OR THAT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN RESEARCHING RELATING TO YOUR SPECIALTY?’ COVID has been a big problem but we did not do much research into it. We looked at the data for our type 1 diabetes clinic and found that ironically the diabetic control increased in COVID for patients. Probably because people were locked down, making food more, not having restaurant trips frequently. But, when you look at the socioeconomic distribution, it was people of the lower socio-economic status who had much worse control, it was higher social economic status groups that actually did improve, and it was this that further highlighted the health inequalities. I think in diabetes we had type 1/type 2 patients were 3 times more likely to die of COVID and a lot of that is due to vascular disfunction and the micro and macro vascular problems that occur. So, obesity was a big thing, increased risk factors for COVID.

‘AS A RESEARCHER, HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THE SETBACK OF DEAD ENDS? AND WHAT SHOULD ONE LOOK OUT FOR WHEN RESEARCHING?’ Everyone gets dead ends in research, research stories have a lifetime. You may prove that something does not matter at the end of the day, or you have found a beautiful target but it is actually impossible to manipulate therapeutically or sometimes, it’s interesting physiology but there is no therapeutic potential. You have to understand that things you view as dead ends are not actually dead ends. I think the surprising results can be the most interesting and take you down avenues that you would have never been to unexpected results. There was around 30 years of research into brown adipose tissue in mice suggesting one thing and so when we got a different result, we though there was a technical problem and so we started to develop other techniques to analyse that, and it showed our findings were a real phenomenon and then we discovered that the human biology was very different to the mouse and so actually that initial research was irrelevant. Then we needed to figure out new therapeutics on the human itself. We could have given up at the beginning but you need to use setbacks as a stimulation to unpick things.

MINI LIVERS AND REGENERATION Georgina Boucher (LVI)

On average, the wait for a liver transplant is 3 to 4 months. This new technique aims to be able to use one donor liver to treat not one, not two but 75+ patients at once (Bardsley, 2022). This is because of the liver’s ability to regenerate. Function of the liver The liver is most commonly known to be the part of the body that stores converted glycogen from glucose. As well as this, the liver works to produce proteins that carry fats through the body, process blood, produce bile, break down toxins the list goes on. (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2019) The problem is that humanity abuses the organ in forms of alcohol, medications and obesity. Specifically for alcohol, every time you drink your liver has to filter the alcohol and this kills some of the liver cells. Over a long time period this might lead to alcoholic-related liver diseases (NHS, 2017). Using alcohol in large quantities over a short period of time might also have a negative and long-lasting effect on the liver. This is caused by a build up in fats and scarring in the liver (Michalopoulos, 2007). As a result of this, the liver is one of the most frequently transplanted organ.

REGENERATION In liver transplants, up to 60% of a living donor’s healthy liver can be removed and replaces the recipient’s diseased liver. When the liver does not have enough tissue, chemical signals are sent out to encourage cell division causing regeneration of new tissue until desired mass is achieved. Consequently, both the donor and the recipient’s livers regrow in the months after a transplant (Stanger, 2015). From this concept, alongside the problem of not enough donor livers, the idea of mini livers was born.

LIVER ZONATION In order to tackle the multitude of functions of the liver, there is a partition of the hepatic lobule because of the segregation of hepatocytes (these are the cells that make up 80% of liver mass) into 3 zones. Scientists needed to know in what zone did different processes such as regeneration occur. WNT genes (an acronym used in genetics standing for ‘Wingless/Integrated’) are found on 19 proteins in hepatocytes and have been proven to be involved in the process by activating the regeneration to repair damaged liver cells that can still be redeemed. Generally WNT genes are involved in proliferation, migration, polarity, and death in vertebrate species (Miller, 2001). Scientists used a process called molecular cartography to identify where 100 liver function genes acted and how strongly active they were in order to see which zones they were in. This is a process with extreme sensitivity and specificity at sub cellular resolutions which helps to detect molecular interactions while preserving the tissue. This study found that 2 of 19 WNT genes were located in zone 3, functionally present in endothelial cells lining the blood vessels for metabolic process. When these 2 WNT genes were removed, there was reduced function in the liver and meant that only liver cells in zone 1 were seen to be active. Alongside this, when they were eliminated, cell division and regeneration did not occur.

MINI LIVER INCUBATOR Now knowing that WNT genes (Miller, 2001) in zone 3 of the liver are critical for regeneration, the process starts with isolating the hepatocyte cells

(containing WNT genes). These can either be from a matched donor liver or from the patient’s own liver if there is enough healthy organ left. These hepatocytes are then injected into lymph nodes. The lymph nodes act as bioreactors meaning that inside the lymph nodes, the hepatocytes receive the liver’s distress signals of not enough mass and divide until desired mass is achieved (Houser 2022). At this point, the lymph nodes have gradually disappeared and all that is left is a highly vascularised miniature liver that supports the role of the original liver.

POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES One of the positives of this method is that it dramatically reduces the number of donor livers and potentially other organs and therefore decreases the waiting time for a transplant. As many people currently die before a liver transplant, this is a major advantage of this technique. Once approved, there is no saying that regular transplants will still occur as this solution overall has more benefits. The procedure itself can also be done on older patients because the injection of hepatocytes is an outpatient keyhole surgery. It has less risks and easily administered using an endoscopic procedure (using an ultrasound). However, it is still in the phase of clinical trials and may take time to be allowed in hospitals around the world. Alongside this, if the hepatocytes have been taken from a donor liver, there is a chance that immunosuppressive drugs will be required for life to prevent rejection of the new liver.

REFERENCES Bardsley, D. (2022). Scientists look to grow ‘mini livers’ for patients with organ damage. [online] The National. Available at: https:// www.thenationalnews. com/health/2022/11/14/ scientists-look-to-growmini-livers-for-patientswith-organ-damage/. Houser, K. (2022). First-of-its-kind trial will attempt to grow mini livers in people. [online] Freethink. Available at: https://www.freethink. com/health/mini-livers. Itoh, T. (2021a). Figure Showing Zonation of the Liver and the Different Functions That Occur in Each zone. [Online image] The truth lies somewhere in the middle: the cells responsible for liver tissue maintenance finally identified. Available at: https:// cellregeneration. springeropen.com/ articles/10.1186/s13619021-00090-8#rightslink [Accessed 13 Apr. 2023]. Johns Hopkins Medicine (2019). Liver: Anatomy and Functions. [online] Johns Hopkins Medicine. Available at: https:// www.hopkinsmedicine. org/health/conditionsand-diseases/liveranatomy-and-functions. Michalopoulos, G.K. (2007). Liver Regeneration. Journal of Cellular Physiology, 213(2), pp.286–300. doi:10.1002/jcp.21172. Miller, J.R. (2001). The Wnts. Genome Biology, 3(1), p.reviews3001.1. doi:10.1186/gb-2001-3-1reviews3001. NHS (2017). Liver disease. [online] nhs. uk. Available at: https:// www.nhs.uk/conditions/ liver-disease/. Stanger, B.Z. (2015). Cellular Homeostasis and Repair in the Mammalian Liver. Annual Review of Physiology, 77(1), pp.179–200. doi:10.1146/annurevphysiol-021113-170255.

COULD WE REGENERATE OUR TEETH IN THE FUTURE? Kimberly Gan (LVI)

‌ hat if I told you that people who lose teeth through accidents or W decay could simply grow new teeth? You would probably think this is science fiction, but it is rapidly becoming scientific fact. There are many different species of animals that can repair broken or lost teeth. Sharks, for instance, have numerous rows of teeth and continuously grow new ones to replace those that are lost through hunting (EndoCare, 2018). Unfortunately, although humans can heal our own skin and bones, we have not evolved to be able to restore our own teeth.

84% of dentate adults (those with at least one tooth) in the UK have a filling, and 74% of British adults have had at least one tooth removed (Napitu, 2020). These procedures are normally performed due to tooth decay, which is caused by the build-up of plaque (forms when bacteria in the mouth mixes with sugary or starchy foods). There are currently three tooth replacement options after a tooth extraction: dental implants; dentures; or fixed bridges. A dental implant is a titanium screw placed in the jawbone that can replace the root of a tooth when it fails. However, one of the problems with implanted teeth is that they do not form a proper root and the friction caused by eating can cause wear on the jaw bone, causing the implant to be easily dislodged (NHS, 2022). Dentures are removable false teeth which fit over the gums, but this puts pressures on the gums and bones which can result in a gradual decrease in bone density and volume. It causes extreme discomfort and is very unhygienic if not cleaned properly. Fixed bridges replace a missing tooth with a false tooth that is bound to the natural teeth on either side of the gap. Unfortunately, the healthy teeth on either side of the bridge will have to be shaved and capped, which results in losing some healthy tooth enamel. The false tooth can also lead to irritations in the gums which can potentially cause infection. Regenerative dentistry focuses on the reconstruction of soft and hard tissues (such as the pulp or enamel) by incorporating tissue engineering approaches. It relies on the use of stem cells and it has the potential to eliminate the use of dentures and implants. Stem cells are cells in the human body that are able to produce a range of different types of specialised human cells, for example muscle cells (Narang, 2012). Human adults have several different types of stem cells in the body (e.g. bone marrow and skin). However, these adult stem cells can only develop into a narrow range of cells, e.g. bone marrow stem cells can only produce red and white blood cells.

Our most powerful stem cells are in embryos. These embryonic stem cells are called pluripotent because they can produce every type of cell that exists in a human body. This includes ameloblasts and odontoblasts that form the different layers in our teeth such as enamel and dentin (Bioengineer, 2013). A problem with using embryonic stem cells is that they are limited in supply. Another problem is that there are many ethical issues – collecting embryonic stem cells involves the destruction of a 6-7 day old human embryo from aborted foetuses, which many people would find ethically unacceptable. Luckily, there is another way to obtain pluripotent stem cells, which are called induced pluripotent stem cells. The term “induced” refers to their production in the laboratory through the reprogramming of normal adult cells (such as our blood or skin cells) and turning them into stem cells. Reprogramming involves using growth factors to switch on genes that were switched off when the cells became specialised (Ferris, 2018). These adult cells are harmless to remove and it avoids many ethical issues associated with embryonic cells. There would also be an unlimited supply. Another advantage is that these pluripotent stem cells are patient-specific, so they can be transplanted back into the patient without the risk of immune rejection. The procedure of regenerating a patient’s tooth would require combining these induced pluripotent stem cells with epithelial gum cells from the patient. The two types of cells would be grown into tissues in a laboratory until they combined to form bioengineered tooth germs. These could be implanted into the lost tooth sites of patients, and would result in the regeneration of functional replacement teeth with strong roots, eliminating the need for implants or painful dentures (Zhang, 2014). Scientists have already managed to regenerate whole teeth in mice, rats, a pig and a dog. It can only be a short time before this becomes a reality in humans.

REFERENCING Bioengineer. “Bioengineered Tooth.” BIOENGINEER.ORG, 31 Oct. 2013, bioengineer. org/bioengineeredtooth/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2022. “Could Bioengineering Teeth Be the Future of Dentistry? – EndoCare.” EndoCare, 21 Sept. 2018, www.endocare. co.uk/bioengineeringteeth-future-dentistry/. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022. “Dental Treatments.” Nhs. uk, 27 Jan. 2022, www. nhs.uk/live-well/healthyteeth-and-gums/dentaltreatments/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2022. Ferris Jabr. “Instead of Filling Cavities, Dentists May Soon Regenerate Teeth.” Scientific American, Feb. 2018, www.scientificamerican. com/article/instead-offilling-cavities-dentistsmay-soon-regenerateteeth1/. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022. Napitu, Amanda. “UK Dental Facts, Figures and Statistics for Kids and Adults.” Dentaly. org, 2020, www.dentaly. org/en/dental-factsstatistics/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2022. Narang, Sumit, and Nidhi Sehgal. “Stem Cells: A Potential Regenerative Future in Dentistry.” Indian Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 18, no. 2, 2012, pp. 150–154, www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/pmc/articles/ PMC3491285/, https:// doi.org/10.4103/09716866.100749. Accessed 4 Dec. 2022. Zhang, Yanding, and YiPing Chen. “Bioengineering of a Human Whole Tooth: Progress and Challenge.” Cell Regeneration, vol. 3, no. 1, 2014, p. 3:8, https://doi. org/10.1186/2045-97693-8. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022.

GENDER EQUALITY IN ENGINEERING WITH MISS JENIFER ADAMS Louise Alldis-Kervella (LVI)

Miss Jenifer Adams studied engineering at university before continuing into the field as a professional. Jenifer currently works at Renishaw, a large manufacturing company that specialises in precision measurement equipment. She is a driving force in her company for gender equality and speaks in this interview about her experiences of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. ‘WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO ENGINEERING AND WHY DID IT APPEAL TO YOU?’ From a young age, I have always been really fond of problem solving and understanding how things work. I found myself always trying to think of the most efficient way of doing something. I found that I was drawn to the STEM subjects rather than the more creative or literature-based subjects. With my mother and my grandfather both being engineers, I feel as though it has been in my family for a long time. It’s was just a natural progression, from a young age.

‘AS WELL AS YOUR DESIRE TO WORK IN ENGINEERING, WHAT HELPED YOU TO OVERCOME ANY LACK OF SUPPORT YOU HAD WHEN YOU WERE STUDYING FOR YOUR A LEVELS?’ I luckily had a lot of support from my parents, but I also think that going to a mixed school made me mature as I had to shift my mindset in terms of internalised prejudice against being a girl in a heavily male dominated classroom or field. At first it was quite difficult but I soon realised that I wasn’t inferior

to my peers and that I shouldn’t let my doubts limit myself. I didn’t want to become part of a statistic about women in STEM or the lack of women in STEM. I wanted to be on a level playing field and work as hard as anyone else could, knowing that, maybe I was the minority, but I shouldn’t let that stop me from doing what I want to do, trying to be positive and looking at my opportunities.

‘HOW DID YOU OVERCOME THE CHALLENGES OF ENTERING SUCH A MALE DOMINATED INDUSTRY?’ I would say being confident, acting as if you have no self-doubt even if you’re not sure you know the answer. Trying to make your best case, explaining your ideas and not letting the fact that I’m a woman come into the scenario.

‘DO YOU EVER FIND THAT YOU ARE TREATED DIFFERENTLY IN YOUR JOB BECAUSE YOU’RE A WOMAN?’ Luckily, because I am at such a progressive company and am surrounded by women, I do not feel that I am treated differently currently. But when I was

at school, I felt that I was in an environment that catered more to men - especially in relation to motivational and encouragement methods, in particular moving from a small girl’s school to a mixed school. I would say that my greatest challenge is actually my own internalised prejudice. As I find that it can be ingrained in you and I don’t want to allow myself to be the limiting factor.

‘WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE PART OF YOUR JOB?’ I would have to say the dynamic and fast-paced nature of the job. I knew from the start that I didn’t want to have a job where I just did the same thing every day and luckily my job is so reactive; I am constantly responding, and thinking, and communicating. I coordinate a lot of different people in different departments, which is also one of my favourite parts as I love working with others.

‘WOULD YOU SAY THERE IS ANYTHING YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR JOB?’ Obviously it is a double-edged sword because with it comes a lot of pressure and stress. As a person, I care a lot about my work, so can be quite emotionally invested. But overall, I would say that there is not anything I dislike about the company or the role; I think that for me, it is perfect.

‘HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK-LIFE BALANCE AND HOW YOU COPE WITH STRESS?’ It takes a while to adjust, due to the regime and workload, but I found that planning and prioritising things helped. Work is not the be all and end all of your life, but I sometimes let it become a very big priority of mine, and I shouldn’t because it is not sustainable. So, I think it is really important to have that work and home life balance.

‘DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR WORK HAS AN IMPACT ON THE WIDER WORLD?’ Yes, I do. It’s not something that you would use yourself, but it’s something that is used in industry and by companies to make many things. My work is at the forefront of medical research, for example making hip implants and ventilators for hospitals – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also used in aerospace. I think that the company I work for care about what they do and want to do a good job with their products, so that they can be used in a variety of fields.

‘ARE YOU CLOSE TO A BREAKTHROUGH?’ I’m hoping for many breakthroughs in my life, but I’m trying not to chase a potential breakthrough because I’ll never be satisfied if I’m always hoping for something more. Instead, I look back, and would say that my biggest breakthrough is working hard on my placement and getting offered a job by bypassing the grad scheme. I really wanted to prove to myself after my A Levels that I wasn’t intellectually incapable and that I could overcome the disadvantages of my education. Moving forward, obviously I’d like to progress in this field and become a manager but I don’t really have a set goal. I try not to because then I don’t appreciate how far I’ve come.

‘LOOKING BACK, WOULD YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY WITH YOUR PATH INTO ENGINEERING?’ Yes. Obviously, I have had quite a good run of experience and opportunities on my way here but that was only because I accepted the help and guidance from my parents and tutors. And I do think that if I could go back and do it again, I would be a bit less stubborn, a bit more proactive and accept the help and the guidance of my parents in finding work experience and doing courses that would help my future development. I would sometimes be quite reluctant to apply for work experience, but it made all the difference, it really bulked up my CV, so I would be more driven to do that.

‘WHAT WOULD BE YOUR ADVICE TO A SIXTH FORM GIRL INTERESTED IN PURSUING A CAREER IN ENGINEERING?’ I would just accept the fact that I don’t know best and that I should accept help from others. It is really important to try to find experience and situations that you can then talk about which would make all the difference between you, and someone else applying for a job. Another piece of advice would be to not let your perception of yourself hold you back because the likelihood is that other people aren’t thinking those things about you. Try to be excited about being out of your depth. When I was younger, I always used to be overwhelmed and upset that I didn’t know how to move forward, and I would give up easily. If you just change the way you approach things and think about something, everything you learn from that point onwards is going to be in the right direction. It does take time: you can’t just know everything, so just try to be excited by what you don’t know because there’s so much to learn. 41

STEM CAREERS WITH MS LARA HELLMAN Yuchen (Rebecca) Gao (UV)

Ms. Hellman is a Staff Product Manager at a multinational US-based software company called Ivanti, responsible for a portfolio of large enterprise-level solutions that IT departments use to manage, secure and improve the experience their colleagues have of their desktops. This was not always her intended career path, having studied Cellular and Molecular biology as an undergraduate. Thankfully, a module in coding during her Masters changed all that. ‘WHAT MADE YOU DISCOVER YOUR PASSION FOR STEM?’ I always loved television about nature and science growing up. I didn’t have any real ambition on what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I remember watching the six o’clock news when I was a teenager and thinking how I would love to be on the news having just cured cancer, like wouldn’t that be amazing to be that person interviewed? And I think that was the kind of passion that drove me towards my pathway trip for the next few years.

‘WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO AT UNIVERSITY WHEN YOU WERE IN SIXTH FORM?’ Again, I didn’t necessarily have any particular mission other than knowing that I wanted to cure cancer. So, I guess I fell in love with biology and it was just the thing that I was most interested in. So, that’s what I chose to do.

‘DO YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC TOPIC IN BIOLOGY THAT YOU REALLY LIKE?’ I studied a multidiscipline degree. I really love learning about cellular and molecular biology, especially about protein folding.

‘WHAT DO YOU DO AS A STAFF PRODUCT MANAGER?’ Well it couldn’t be more different, so I did a degree in biology and didn’t really know what to do with that. I really wanted to get into the Human Genome project but the careers advisor at the university talked me into doing a computer science at Masters

because he was like, ‘well you know it can’t hurt to have some computer science on your CV’. After that, I just I fell in love with coding, like I have said I will always be inspired by biology and I think it’s one of the areas of science that we still have so much to learn and discover. But coding was different, it was so logical and it just made sense. You tell the computer what to do and it will do it. If it didn’t work, then there is a bug so you find the bug and fix it. After my Masters, I still did not know what to do but I had good customer services skills from various jobs I’d done, so I ended up in IT support for the company which I’m still a part of, I’ve been here 15 years! But I kind of moved around all sorts of different roles, now, I’ve ended up in Product Management because I have those communication skills. I have the soft skills but I’ve also got a technical knowledge and it really suits me because I always describe my job as kind of a translation roll between product manager and customers. I communicate between the two sides, finding out what went wrong and what the customer wants. No two days of my job are the same and that’s exciting! It keeps me going certainly, knowing that tomorrow will be a whole new day. Next Monday I will be working for a new manager right from the start and literally today I’m changing departments and working on a new product set. Ultimately, I am the communicator at the centre of the web and my team is what shapes our products!

‘WAS YOUR UNIVERSITY DEGREE APPLICABLE TO YOUR JOB?’ What I learned at university was a whole heap of really useful soft skills, like how to manage time and how to write a business case and things like that, but none of the technical knowledge I gained at university is relevant anymore. Everything I know about my products, I have learned on the job,

everything I know about the way that customers purchase and marketing is what I have learnt through real-life working.

‘WHAT IS THE MOST INTERESTING CHALLENGE YOU HAVE FACED IN YOUR CAREER?’ Well, before the pandemic we had a global customer conference where we would get about 2000 people in a room and we would talk to them about the things we were doing and our products going forward. Back in 2018, I had to get on stage in front of those 2000 people and present the products I had been working on the past 18 months. That was scary, it was a challenge and I remember standing there on stage under these lights, it was intimidating. Nobody really knew what our new project was and it was a complete surprise, so the whole audience was like, wow! They didn’t know this was coming and they were really excited because we’ve done all kinds of promotions and stuff to make it easy for them to buy it.

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE FUTURE OF BIOINFORMATION?’ Well, I haven’t kept up on it on a very deep technical level. But I think that there is potential for engineering human experiences via chemical stimulus, so like being able to give people hormones and other chemical therapies in order to alleviate problems and issues they may have. There is also massive potential for gene therapies and indeed, gene editing in the next 10 to 20 years!

‘WHAT IS IT LIKE WORKING IN A SOFTWARE COMPANY?’ Fast, I think that is the obvious one. I work in a corporate environment so we have around 70 products available we are a BT, so we buy and sell to other businesses and we specialise in software that actually helps IT departments. So, if you have a technical problem I expect you have to log a call with the helpdesk or something like that and it’s our software that they log that call with and it’s also our software that they used to apply patches to your machine to make sure that you’re secure and it’s also our software that discovers that your machine is even on the network! So, we have 70 or so products that does all of that kind of thing. The reality is that for every discipline service there are 10 vendors in the marketplace and we are all very feature similar, so it’s fairly cut throat and as soon as a new idea or a new technology launches we are in a race to be the best at delivering the expectation.

And so it’s very frequent that I will be working on something and one of our competitors will get there first, so we will just stop and we will pivot onto doing something else. It can be frustrating as you are already very invested in the project but you just have to move on.

‘DO YOU HAVE TO STUDY IT AT GCSE, A LEVEL OR INDEED UNIVERSITY TO GO INTO COMPUTER SCIENCE?’ No, I don’t think it is necessarily, Like I said, I did biology, biology, biology and biology then a Masters in computer science and by the end of it I was perfectly qualified to become a Software Engineer. That’s certainly the way that a lot of people I know have got into it. In fact we have an intern programme, so a lot of software engineering degrees have a third gap year where they go and work for somebody like us and that’s often how people get their foot in the door in a company.

‘DO YOU DO A LOT OF MATH IN COMPUTER SCIENCE?’ No, that is a common misunderstanding. It is the logical side of math you need. You do not need to know how to differentiate things!

‘WHAT FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS EXCITE YOU? WHAT IS THE NEXT PROJECT YOUR WOULD LIKE TO WORK ON?’ Well you can’t have failed to hear about Chatbot GPT being launched and the wealth of things that are now available to us as a result of those sorts of technologies. So, it is all about AI now, we’ve got four or five different projects kicking off for various bits of product for integrating AI to help with automating loads of tasks.

‘WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A PASSIONATE STEM STUDENT?’ Do what you are interested in and do not force yourself to do something you do not like as ultimately, it is a waste of time!

PRECOGNITIVE DREAMS

Louise Alldis-Kervella (LVI)

The average person dreams for up to 2 hours a night (Shoen, 2021) during which time the brain creates images and narratives that can be vivid and emotionally evocative. Dreams allow the brain to organise knowledge and form connections, which subsequently facilitates memory recall, playing an indispensable role in maintaining physical, emotional, and mental health.

With the intermingling of fragments of recent experiences, memories and a little creative input from the hippocampus, emerge precognitive dreams, where a dream seems to predict the future. According to dream researchers a third of people would experience these types of premonitory experiences (Larson, 2020).

WHAT ARE THEY? With the development of new technologies, researchers are now able to observe and monitor brain activity during sleep by attaching electrodes to different regions of the head, producing an electroencephalogram (EEG) (NHS, 2019). This has revealed that sleep can be categorised into nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, with each stage having unique brain wave characterisations.

The dramatic change in brainwave activity throughout sleep (Learning). Our most vivid dreams occur during REM sleep, which begins more than 1 hour after first falling asleep; these are comprised of strange, hallucinogenic, emotion-filled narratives, which often link to personal experiences and memories. For the duration of this stage in the sleep cycle, parts of the brain are up to 30% more active than in our waking state, with heart rate and blood pressure increasing markedly. It is at this stage in the sleep cycle, when the prefrontal cortex (the rational and logical thinking part of the brain) is non-active, that precognitive dreams will occur (Marks, 2021). To be categorised as precognitive, dreams must conform to certain criteria (Shoen, 2021): • The dream must be recorded or shared with others before it is fulfilled in reality. • The dream must have various unique details so that it is unlikely to be achieved by chance. • Dreams that can be self-fulfilled or influenced by existing knowledge are not premonition dreams.

HISTORICAL EXAMPLES Although there is no fixed scientific evidence of precognitive dreams, there have been countless examples recorded throughout history. For example, in 1966, a landslide of waste from a coal mine slid into Aberfan, a village in South Wales, destroying the local school and killing 144 students and teachers. Shortly after the landslide, John Barker a psychiatrist, who was researching what happened to people when they believe they are soon to experience death, came to the village. 76 accounts of premonitions of the Aberfan landslide were collected with one of the most preeminent being that of the parents of a 10-year-old girl killed in the accident. A day before the accident, she had recounted to her mother how she had dreamt that her school was no longer there and covered in ‘something black’. (Knight, 2022) (Shoen, 2021). Another example is that of David Booth, an office manager in Cincinnati, who had dreamt 10 consecutive nights of a terrible accident in which an aeroplane veered off the runway. Concerned, he decided to report his nightmares to the Federal Aviation Administration. Booth had his final nightmare on the 24 May 1979, and the day after, 25 May 1979, the American Airlines Flight 191 crashed only a few minutes after taking off, resulting in many fatalities. Booth was investigated several times throughout the investigation despite not being a suspect; the authorities were intrigued as to how he

foresaw the event. It transpired that the company was guilty of a short-term repair, which triggered the disaster (Larson, 2020).

healthline.com/health/howlong-do-dreams-last#howlong-dreams- [Accessed 27 Mar. 2023].

One of the most notable examples in history is when Abraham Lincoln described a recent dream to his wife and some friends: he dreamt of walking through the white house and finding his corpse lying in the East Room (exactly where he lay after his death), a mere two weeks before he was assassinated (Lynch, 2018) (Shoen, 2021).

Learning, L. Introduction to psychology, Lumen. Available at: https://courses. lumenlearning.com/ waymaker-psychology/ chapter/stages-of-sleep/ (Accessed: April 17, 2023).

EXPLANATIONS FOR PRECOGNITIVE DREAMS Although this area of science remains largely unknown, researchers have proposed several possible explanations for the phenomenon that is precognitive dreams (Shoen, 2021): • Selective recall – there is a far higher probability of someone recalling a precognitive dream than one that did not predict the future. • Tolerance for ambiguity – dreamers may interpret their dreams in different ways, those who have a higher tolerance for ambiguity are more likely to have a precognitive dream. • Paranormal beliefs – those with paranormal beliefs are more likely to make connections with events that may not seem to have any correlation; one is more likely to notice premonitions when you actively search for them. A mixture of these three factors can cause a dream to seem precognitive once they relate to an event which has occurred in the waking state, or it could just reflect what is currently occurring within one’s life (Wamsley, 2020).

Lynch, P. (2018). 10 Premonitions of Doom from History That Actually Came True. [online] History Collection. Available at: https://historycollection. com/10-premonitions-ofdoom-and-from-historythat-actually-came-true/2/ [Accessed 27 Mar. 2023]. Marks, H. (2021). Dreams. [online] WebMD. Available at: https:// www.webmd.com/sleepdisorders/dreamingoverview#:~:text=There%20 are%20many%20 theories%20about [Accessed 27 Mar. 2023]. NHS (2019). Electroencephalogram (EEG). [online] NHS. Available at: https:// www.nhs.uk/conditions/ electroencephalogram/. Shoen, S. (2021). Can Dreams Predict the Future? [online] Sleep Foundation. Available at: https://www. sleepfoundation.org/ dreams/precognitivedreams. Wamsley, E.J. (2020). How the brain constructs dreams. eLife, [online] 9(9). doi:https://doi.org/10.7554/ elife.58874.

It is possible that precognitive dreaming may never be proven or disproven by science. It is therefore essential that scientists continue to research using larger sample sizes of people who have experienced these premonitory experiences in order to further understand how and why they occur. Could precognitive dreams all just be down to coincidence, depending on how we interact with the world? Or is it our subconscious trying to interact with us? So, the next time you wake up after an odd dream, think twice before dismissing it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Knight, S. (2022). The vision collector: the man who used dreams and premonitions to predict the future. The Guardian. [online] 23 Apr. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/23/ the-vision-collector-the-man-who-used-dreams-and-premonitionsto-predict-the-future [Accessed 27 Mar. 2023]. Larson, J. (2020). How Long Do Dreams Last? Research, Explanations, and More. [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.

MATHS PUZZLES MATCHES PUZZLE Remove a single match from its position in the equations below, and place it in another position, so that the equation is correct. (This is not a trick questions, so moving a match to mean not equals is not allowed).

MISLABELLED BOXES There are three boxes: - One contains 2 black marbles - One contains 2 white marbles - One contains 1 black marble and 1 white marble The boxes are labelled BB, WW and BW. However, each box is labelled incorrectly. You may take one marble at a time out of any box, but you are not allowed to look inside. What is the quickest way to determine the contents of each box?

WHAT DID SEVEN DO? Eight nines, of course! And so here are eight 9s in a row: 99999999 Place the arithmetical symbols ‘+’ and ‘x’ between some of these 9s in such a way that the total value of the expression is 9999.

FINALLY, A PUZZLE FROM NRICH WHICH IS A GREAT WEBSITE FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ENJOY PROBLEM SOLVING: The picture below shows a 4 by 4 Latin square. If you haven’t come across Latin Squares before, have a look and see if you can spot what is special about it.

You don’t need to use both symbols, and you can use as many of the symbols as you like. If there is no symbol between two digits, adjacent digits combine: thus ‘9+9 9 9’ would be ‘9+999’. You can use brackets to be clear which operations must be done in which order. (Taken from Alex Bellos Guardian puzzles)

In a Latin Square each symbol or colour occurs exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. Can you find the 6-digit number N? N: 2N: 3N: 4N: 5N: 6N:

HOW HAS EVOLUTION AFFECTED THE HEALTH OF THE HUMAN RACE? Clothylde Debray (LVI)

Looking at evolution, one often thinks of the past and how we got here. One only has to look at the plethora of books on offer covering the story of human evolution, from single-celled organisms to the emergence of the anatomically modern-day Homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago to see that this retrospective analysis has been carried out many times over. However, how humans will evolve throughout the future tends to be overlooked, perhaps this is due to the ongoing fear of the inevitable effects of climate change and overpopulation or simply because of a lack of knowledge on the subject. Diet has changed dramatically over the past century which has ultimately induced the obesity epidemic of the 1980s that has been increasing significantly. Today, 36% of the English population are overweight and 28% are obese(Anon., n.d.) , while 69% of adults in the US are overweight or obese(Henderson, n.d.). The debate as to the precise nature of how our evolutionary past contributed to obesity is surrounded by “the thrifty genotype”. This hypothesis suggests that obesity in industrialised countries is a throwback to our ancestors having undergone positive selection for genes that favoured energy storage as a consequence of the cyclical sequences of famine. These genes are now proving detrimental in an age

of overabundance, leading to modern day diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Moreover, metabolic syndromes including type 2 diabetes is at its all-time high. (Anon., n.d.)predicts that one in ten adults will be living with type 2 diabetes by 2030. The question arises whether humans can adapt to this change and the problems due to the rapid changes in the environment, when the stem of the issue is coming from an environmental factor as well as an evolutionary one. Modern day society is increasingly eliminating physical activity from our daily lives; a survey from Australia revealed that the ’Baby boomers’ are the nation’s most active generation, racking up 364 hours of physical activity each year, in comparison to people aged 40 and under who are averaging 281 hours of activity each year and due to the outcomes of COVID-19 these trends continue. In addition to trends in nutrition, modern jaws today are home to an outdated number of teeth as our teeth are the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution as well. Fossil, genetic and developmental evidence indicates that teeth originated from specialised fish scales which lends to their strength and elasticity(Kahn, et al., 2020). The dental problems that are most common today – from impacted wisdom teeth to cavities, are largely the result of a clear discrepancy between the foods that our ancient ancestors had evolved to eat and the processed, sugar heavy foods that only became available relatively recently. Our teeth simply do not fit in our jaws anymore due to the imbalance caused by an oral environment our ancestors never had to cope with because of their plant and meat heavy diets. In addition, as they began hunting, they breathed through their mouths while they ran long distances. It is believed that over time repeated mouth breathing even when sleeping led to humans faces, including jaws, to become smaller in order to help stabilise the head. This gradual decrease in jaw and head size has in turn reduced airway development in humans(Bostron, 2009). Looking into the future, the possibility of evolution is heavily debatable. Because humans have no active predators there’s no selection pressure on the species. On the other hand, there are constant environmental changes that could lead to evolutionary change that our species may not be ready to face.

REFERENCE LIST: Anon., n.d. Diabetes UK. [Online] Available at: https:// www.diabetes.org. uk/about_us/news/ number-people-livingdiabetes-uk-tops-5million-first-time [Accessed 19 december 2022]. Bostron, N., 2009. The future of Evolution, Oxford: The Univeristy Oxford. Henderson, n.d. American Diabetes Association. [Online] Available at: Henderson (no date) Genetics of diabetes, Genetics of Diabetes | ADA. Available at: https:// diabetes.org/diabetes/ genetics-diabetes (Accessed: April 11, 2023). [Accessed 11 April 2023]. Kahn, S. et al., 2020. The Jaw Epidemic: Recognition, Origins, Cures, and prevention. BioScience, 70(9), pp. 759-771.

ENERGY PROVISION AND SUSTAINABILITY WITH MR MARK FUTYAN Alice Boyle (LVI)

Mark Futyan studied chemical engineering at Cambridge before progressing into a career in energy provision and sustainability. Mark is the former CEO of the renewable energy company Anesco, having previously worked for Centrica, parent company of British Gas, where he most recently held the position of Distributed Power Systems Director. ‘WHICH COMPANY ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING FOR?’ I have just changed, so for the last three years I have been CEO of Anesco, which is a renewable energy business, and I am now, rather than running it full time, on the board and I am joining other boards on a part time basis.

‘WHY DID WORKING IN THE RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR APPEAL TO YOU?’ Well, it was a combination of things, partly it was that there are few more important things you can do with your professional life at the moment, just with the huge number of global challenges and that climate change dominates as one of the challenges that our society faces and to have the opportunity to use my skills to be able to make a contribution to that was an important factor. Also, I am an engineer by trade and I have spent my whole career in the energy sector so taking the skills developed from my studies and built up over my career, renewables was an obvious place to deploy it.

‘THERE ARE MANY STUDENTS WHO ARE INTERESTED IN ENGINEERING AND THE ENERGY SECTORS. WHAT WOULD YOUR ADVICE BE FOR THEM?’ I would hugely encourage anyone who’s got the interest to follow that. I think that engineering in general is a great career path because if you are so inclined and you like maths, physics and chemistry, and those are the things you take to naturally, then the demand for those skills is huge and to have a career in which you can do what you enjoy at the same time as being incredibly in demand allows you to obtain a good job with a good salary.

‘WHAT ARE THE MAIN STRATEGIES CURRENTLY IN YOUR BUSINESS FOR ACCELERATING PROGRESS TO NET ZERO?’ Our business is actually all about net zero. Many

businesses put net zero on the side and they have a different vision, whereas my business is 100% about the energy transition. We have 3 different strands within it, one of which is deploying solar PV, e.g. big solar farms for generating zero carbon power. Secondly, battery storage that enables that roll out of solar and wind as they are both intermittent and the third is energy efficiency, so we are trying to bring down energy consumption in homes so that we use less energy in the first place. All of those things are really important components of the transition to net zero.

‘A LOT OF PEOPLE SAY THAT WIND FARMS AND SOLAR PANELS HAVE A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES. DO YOU THINK THAT THERE IS A BALANCE THAT NEEDS TO BE STRUCK?’ I think that every development has a negative impact somewhere, but it is about what is the most important and how do we balance what matters most. Looking at the solar farms that we build, most people cannot see them as they are in a low-lying field and in terms of the impact on biodiversity, our developments actually have a net biodiversity gain as they create better habitats due to the shadowed areas and the long grass. You can see wind farms, but it is important to consider what is the lesser evil as nuclear creates a waste problem and fossil fuels cause carbon dioxide emissions. You cannot have heat, light and transport which we all need, without some trade off and I would argue that what we are beginning to see with rising temperatures and sea levels, that not emitting carbon dioxide is important.

‘DO YOU THINK IT IS POSSIBLE TO REACH NET ZERO WHILE STILL PRODUCING AND USING OIL AND GAS?’ No, frankly. The only way you could do it was if you had carbon capture. You could use gas and coal for energy production as long as you store all the carbon produced without releasing it into the atmosphere.

However, you can’t realistically do that in homes, so it would be necessary to have a large central chemical plant to do it, and to get to net zero would require no carbon emissions unless they are offset. It may be possible to release a little and then have carbon sequestration where you suck some out of the atmosphere but that would need to be saved for the really hard to treat sectors, such as shipping and steel production which are hard to use renewables for.

‘DO YOU THINK THAT COP27 WAS USEFUL IN HELPING COUNTRIES MOVE FORWARD TO REACHING NET ZERO?’ I think that all of the COPs have such great expectations, and they always disappoint. COP27 was the recognition that there would need to be some cross compensation. The developing economies that were suffering from the impacts of climate change, and had not contributed to them, would need to have a transfer of wealth from the wealthier nations that had benefited. That was a first that had been debated so many times before and for the first time had been recognised, so it was important to have that global consensus. However, there wasn’t really much new from the Paris agreement. It has been quite a long time since then and we had agreed on the 1.5 degree goal and 2 degree maximum, which is absolutely right, but we are not really on track to meet that goal so that is the challenge.

‘IN TERMS OF ON A NATIONAL AND GLOBAL SCALE, WHICH RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS ARE HAVING THE MOST IMPACT?’ For me, it is not a competition between the different strategies, we need all of them. We need nuclear, onshore and offshore wind, solar, hydro and biomass. We are going to need a combination of all of those things to fuel the system and everyone thinks about power, but it is also about heat and transport. Power can fuel all of those, so if you have clean power, it can fuel electric vehicles and electric heating in homes. In terms of where the power comes from, it comes from all of those strategies and different ones will be more effective in different places. The North Sea is brilliant for offshore wind, so that is why we have a lot of offshore wind in the UK and our other North Sea neighbours, but is it not as effective in calmer waters such as the Gulf of Mexico. Solar is by far the cheapest and most effective way to generate in the Middle East and North Africa, but not ideal in northern Scandinavia. It is necessary to pick the

technologies which are most suitable and all of the strategies have a role to play.

‘THERE ARE DEBATES BETWEEN PEOPLE BUYING SOLAR PANELS NOW OR WAITING 5 YEARS UNTIL NEW TECHNOLOGIES HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED. DO YOU THINK PEOPLE SHOULD INVEST NOW OR WAIT UNTIL THE MARKET HAS IMPROVED?’ I guess it is as much about cost per what you generate, and if you look over the last ten years, the cost has absolutely plummeted by a factor of 1/10 of what it was 10 years ago, so suddenly it really makes sense to instal solar panels. The pay back on the investment is a decent one. Now will they continue to fall if you wait a bit longer? I think in the short term prices have actually gone up due to the many reasons surrounding the global supply chain and Brexit and COVID-19, so now isn’t actually the best time to buy them. It’s quite hard to call, so if you wait ten years they will almost certainly be cheaper but then you miss ten years of carbon free generation. I would say if you are thinking about installing solar panels even in the not so sunny UK, I would do it now because it still makes sense to do so.

‘WHEN YOU ARE INSTALLING THESE STRATEGIES ON A LARGER SCALE, IS IT POSSIBLE TO ENSURE THAT NO ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE OCCURS?’ The environmental damage is really quite manageable. I have been involved in other larger projects, like gas terminals and nuclear power stations, and there it is much more difficult as you are using a lot of concrete and heavy construction. I think with solar farms, it is quite contained and you literally don’t damage the field at all as you are just putting in a steel structure to hold the panels up and then you put the panels in. There is no local pollution and although there is a little bit of oil on sight for the transformers, you can easily contain it, so really the environmental impact is at worst neutral and at best positive.

‘IS THAT THE SAME FOR WIND FARMS, AS THEY OBVIOUSLY REQUIRE MORE CONSTRUCTION?’ In the case of onshore wind farms, you have a very large area and they are very spread out so most of it is untouched land, so the environmental impact is not that great.

I think the main concern is around bird populations and the impact on migratory birds and whether they get caught in the blades, but an interesting statistic is that 1000 times more birds are killed by domestic cats than by wind turbine blades, so if we are so concerned about bird populations, we maybe shouldn’t keep cats and we need to work out where are priorities are.

‘GOING BACK TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, ASIA, AND ESPECIALLY CHINA, ARE HUGE EMITTERS OF CARBON DIOXIDE. WHAT ROLE DO YOU SEE THEM PLAYING IN THE GLOBAL ENERGY SPACE IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS?’ Well China actually plays more of a central role than you might imagine. So, pretty much all of the worlds solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles are produced in China so it is actually at the very centre of the energy revolution. The fact that we have so much deployment now is because costs have come down, and the reason costs have come down is because of Chinese innovation and production that everyone else in the world is struggling to compete with. If you look at the carbon emission chart, you see that China is a climate baddie but if we are ever going to be successful in turning that ship around, China is going to play a big part in it. The reason China’s emissions are going up so much, is due to their economy having grown so much and although they are building more coal and gas stations, they are also building a lot of nuclear power stations and wind and solar farms. At some point, they need to stop building the fossil fuel stations and focus on the others, but I would say that China is going to be critical in whether this happens or does not happen.

‘IS THAT THE SAME FOR INDIA AND OTHER LARGE ASIAN COUNTRIES?’ Less so, I guess the two next big economies are India and Indonesia which will be the third and fourth largest economies in the world by 2050, so what they do will be critical. Now at the moment, they’re at a much earlier stage of development than China so as their economies develop and they become more industrialised and advanced, what energy mix they chose will become vital. At the moment it is mainly fossil fuels, but it is not that much in total, especially per person, and as people want more energy per person, that will have to change.

‘LINKING BACK TO YOUR ROLE WITHIN THE COMPANY, WHEN YOU ARE MAKING CHOICES ABOUT NEW STRATEGIES OR 50

IMPROVING STRATEGIES TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS, WHAT ARE THE MAIN INFLUENCES THAT ARE SHAPING THOSE CHOICES?’ We don’t really have any significant carbon emissions ourselves, and our footprint is not very big at all as we only have to heat the office and we have engineers who drive around for maintenance, but other than that we don’t have many of our own carbon emissions. So, what we are doing is we are putting out new infrastructure which can substitute for fossil fuels, in order to make a difference. So it is not about reducing our own, but about enabling the country to reduce its emissions. And in terms of our strategy, we are not sitting like a government at the centre, we are one pawn in the game that is a specialist in the field and we are aiming to find the best technology and striking the deals with the investors to bring in the funds to make it happen.

‘THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF CRITICISM OF OUR GOVERNMENT, IN TERMS OF THEIR ACTION OVER CLIMATE CHANGE. DO YOU THINK THAT IN COMPARISON TO OVER GOVERNMENTS, SUCH AS THOSE IN WESTERN EUROPE, WE HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO?’ It depends what time scale you are looking at. Actually, the UK has done more than most other countries to promote climate change. One third of the power generation in the country is renewables which is mainly due to government policies of the past. Our government in the 1990s and 2000s, the Tony Blair era, really put the right incentives in place to enable solar and offshore wind to happen, and that has then spread to other countries around the world. So, I think that we have been a global leader in renewable energy in the past. If your question is about now, as someone who is trying to run a renewable energy business in the UK, it has been absolutely impossible for the last few years because there has been a constant change in policies. We have just had a windfall tax in renewable energy profits, which is absolutely crazy if you are trying to get more people to invest in it, and we have had the banning of onshore wind and then it being allowed again. Brexit meant that we could no longer send our staff abroad or employ people from other countries to construct the projects, so it has been very difficult and planning has becoming more difficult and politicised. There are lots of different things that have made progressing to renewable energy much harder in the past few years, but if I take a longer view over what Britain has done, I think that there is a lot to be proud of further back.

GUESS THE ELEMENT GIVEN CHEMICAL SYMBOL, GUESS THE NAME OF THE ELEMENT: Rg 1. Rubidium 2. Argon 3. Roentgenium 4. Radium Gd 1. Gadolinium 2. Germanium 3. Gallium 4. Gold Bh 1. Berkelium 2. Bohrium 3. Bromine 4. Beryllium Sc 1. Silver 2. Silicon 3. Scandium 4. Samarium No 1. Nihonium 2. Niobium 3. Neodymium 4. Nobelium

NAME THE ELEMENT FROM DESCRIPTION: I am one of the few elements found at room temperature in the liquid state. In the past I was known by alchemists as quicksilver. What element am I? a. Helium b. Silver c. Mercury d. Nitrogen I am an element you see every day. Rocks containing me can be described as “ferrous”. The Earth’s core is made up of mostly me. What element am I? a. Uranium b. Iron c. Fluoride d. Calcium I am an element first discovered by Marie & Pierre Curie. I am named after the type of heat transfer experimented with by Becquerel. This heat transfer can be dangerous. I also give off dangerous radon gas in the right conditions. What element am I? a. Becquerenium b. Uranium c. Radium d. Rubidium

I am often considered to be one of the roots of the fall of Rome. My chemical symbol is an abbreviation of the Latin word for me. I am excellent for blocking radiation, but I can poison you all the same. What element am I? a. Titanium b. Yttrium c. Chromium d. Lead I am a grey-white metal that is highly ductile (meaning can be easily molded into wires, pipes, and the like). I also have the highest melting point of any metal found on Earth! What element am I? a. Nickel b. Copper c. Tungsten d. Platinum When I am mixed with chlorine, I am transformed into something you eat every day. I also burn with a yellow flame. What element am I? a. Bromine b. Potassium c. Sodium d. Flourine

NAME THE ELEMENT/COMPOUND BASED ON OBSERVATION: What is the reagent that would produce a creamcoloured precipitate when added to an aqueous solution of MgBr? What is the name of the solution that produces a white precipitate with acidified barium chloride solution? Hydrochloric acid Magnesium sulfate Potassium chloride Sodium carbonate What colour do Lithium, rubidium and strontium all produce in a flame test? This element has the atomic number 17 and is a member of the halogen family. It has a pale yellow-green colour in its gaseous state, and is a highly reactive nonmetal. It is commonly used as a disinfectant, and can be found in table salt. What is this element?

Oxygen Potassium Copper Calcium Hydrogen Carbon Chlorine Red B- Magnesium sulfate Silver nitrate C – Sodium C – Tungsten D – Lead C – Radium B – Iron C – Mercury Nobelium Scandium Bohrium Gadolinium Roentgenium ANSWERS

This element has the atomic number 6 and is a nonmetal that can bond with itself and with other elements to form an incredibly diverse range of compounds, including the basis for all known life on Earth. It is typically found in three different allotropes, including a shiny black solid used in pencils. What is this element?

This element has the atomic number 1 and is the lightest and simplest element in the universe. It is a highly flammable gas that is colourless, odourless, and tasteless. It is an essential component of water and is commonly used as fuel for rockets. What is this element? This element has the atomic number 20 and is an alkaline earth metal. It is a silvery-white metal that is highly reactive and can be found in various minerals, including limestone and gypsum. It is essential for the proper functioning of muscles and nerves in animals, and is commonly used in the manufacturing of steel. What is this element? When a sample of this element is heated in a flame, it emits a deep red colour. It has the atomic number 29 and is a soft, malleable metal that is highly conductive of heat and electricity. It is commonly used in electrical wiring, plumbing, and in the manufacturing of coins. What is this element? This element has the atomic number 11 and is a soft, silvery-white metal that is highly reactive. When a sample of this element is heated in a flame, it emits a vibrant lilac colour. It is commonly found in table salt, and is an essential nutrient for human health. What is this element? When a sample of this element is heated in a flame, it emits a bright blue colour. It has the atomic number 8 and is a nonmetal that is essential for respiration in living organisms. It makes up about 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere and is commonly used in welding and metallurgy. What is this element?

HOW DO “JUNK FOOD” CHEMICALS AFFECT THE HUMAN BRAIN Janice Li (LVI)

We all know about the numerous physiological impacts of fast food: how it can cause obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc. yet we still consume it anyway – why is this, and what effects does the chemicals within it have on our brain? Junk food is often described in nutritional terms as “high sugar”, “high fat,”, “high salt”, “high calories”, etc. Just as the name implies, it’s “junk” – it’s processed and pre-prepared food that has low nutritional value, meaning it lacks dietary fibre, proteins, minerals, vitamins and other vital forms of nutrition thus some people don’t regard it as ‘proper’ food.

THE ADDICTIVE FACTOR Food manufacturers spend years researching and developing the right combination of sugar, salt and fat (the bliss point) which optimises deliciousness to get us hooked and crave more of it. When we ingest these processed foods, the chemicals activate the relative taste receptor on our tastebuds (sweet/sour/salty/bitter/umami) which sends a signal along the brain stem to the cerebral cortex. This then activates the brain’s reward system, releasing dopamine, our “feel good” hormone, so we want to engage in more of this pleasurable behaviour and consume more junk food. However, if an individual repeatedly triggers the reward circuits, the dopamine receptors can start to downregulate and some may be removed to keep things balanced. When there are fewer

receptors, more dopamine (released from junk food) is needed to reach the same effect of pleasure, meaning they’re developing an increased tolerance. If the person doesn’t eat enough junk food to reach the level of desired pleasure, their dopamine levels will drop and they may start to feel unhappy when they don’t get that “fix”, also known as withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal have both been associated with addictive disorders so food addiction is sometimes said to work the same way as substance addiction.

IMPACTS ON COGNITION Cognition describes mental processes that take place in the brain: thinking, attention, language, learning, memory and perception; eating overwhelming amounts of junk food can have detrimental effects on it. The hippocampus is a complex brain structure in the temporal lobe of the brain and plays a major role in learning and memory. It’s also the site of neurogenesis, the birth of new neurons, which have high neuroplasticity, meaning it enables us to store experiences as memories, which are formed through connections between neurons constantly being reorganised in response to the dynamic environment we live in.

REFERENCES Oosthoek, S. (2020). Warning! Junk foods can harm a teen’s brain. [online] Science News Explores. Available at: https://www.snexplores. org/article/junk-foodscan-harm-teen-brains. Ryan, K. (2016). Five ways junk food changes your brain. [online] www.rmit.edu.au. Available at: https:// www.rmit.edu.au/news/ all-news/2016/sep/ five-ways-junk-foodchanges-your-brain. Youm, N. (2019). A Teenager’s Fast Food Diet Causes Him To Go Blind. [online] Gentside UK. Available at: https:// www.gentside.co.uk/ lifestyle/a-teenagersfast-food-diet-causeshim-to-go-blind_ art4135.html

This is essential for us to learn new things rapidly and make associations. However, research has shown that the hippocampus is particular sensitive to diet high in processed foods (Ryan, 2016) – junk food reduces neurotrophins (proteins) that prompt the growth of new neurons thus reducing neurogenesis and also reduces neuroplasticity. It only takes a week of a full junk food diet for it to induce some sort of cognitive deficit (e.g. memory loss, “brain fog”) and overtime as people age, they become more susceptible to developing a number of neurodegenerative disorders like dementia and Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, eating meals high in saturated fats aggravates brain inflammation, triggering oxidative stress, a process that causes cells to damage cell walls and DNA, therefore impairing concentration and creating progressive issues in the brain. In 2017, an animal study was conducted to see how high fat foods affected adolescent mice’s brains (Oosthoek, 2020). A group of mice ate a diet of which 63% of their calories came from fats while the other group ate a healthy diet. They were then tested on their working memory in a Y-shaped maze, which had one end blocked off at the beginning but was opened up later on. The healthy diet mice behaved as expected and chose to explore the new side when it was opened up as they have been to the other two sides and remembered. On the other hand, the heavy-fat diet mice explored all three arms randomly, showing they don’t remember which bits of the maze they have explored thus proving the effect of exorbitant amount of fats on cognition.

IMPACTS ON MENTAL HEALTH In recent years, mental health awareness has become more prevalent so there has been increased research in the impacts of junk food on it. Omega-3 fatty acids (e.g. from salmon, walnuts) is an example of a nutrient that is crucial to keeping our brain in top-tier shape. A deficit increases the risk of many mental health disorders like anxiety, bipolar, and schizophrenia, etc. Investigations (Oosthoek, 2020) have also proven children that take omega-3 supplements have improved attention and ability to control their hyperactive and impulsive behaviour, as well as reducing the risk of ADHD. Eating large amounts of these unhealthy foods can also interfere with normal neuronal firing, and can may lower levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite and mediate moods. The individual may consequently be more prone to developing common problems like depression and anxiety – statistics have proven that people who eat a lot of fast food are 50% more likely to show signs of depression than those who consume less. Additionally, neurogenesis may also be inhibited, once again leading to depressive states and selfperpetuating cycles, e.g. eating junk food brings us pleasure when we’re sad so we try to eat more but it has the reverse effect of making us sadder.

NTFS AND CRYPTO Astrid Davis (UV)

NFTs and crypto – a crash course – are they good? Are they bad? What are the positive and negative impacts? WHAT ARE NFTS? NFT stands for ‘non-fungible-token’ and it represents a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied and is recorded on a blockchain to certify validity and ownership. They can represent real world items like artwork and property. ‘Tokenizing’ these assets makes buying, selling, and trading more efficient. Some may even buy and sell NFTs in the form of game avatars, or event tickets.

CRYPTO AND NFTS Normal money largely limits what you can buy and the conditions the payment needs to be in. The difference between a bank transaction and a transition using a crypto (cryptocurrency) is that cryptocurrencies function without a central authority that intervenes transactions between sender and receivers. With cryptocurrencies, all transactions take place directly between sender and receiver and are validated by nodes (computers) on the network. Therefore, in theory, this makes crypto incredibly difficult to cheat as every node on the network must validate every transaction. However, there are still some obvious flaws; this is because there is nothing backing crypto. Without a main central organisation to them, there are no regulations and there is difficulty in identifying stolen crypto or hacked networks. It means that crypto is also highly susceptible to routing attacks, when the routing table undergoes unwanted or malicious change in order to split the network into two or more components and therefore preventing the nodes within the component to communicate with the nodes outside it, the attacker forces the creation of parallel blockchains. I think that how cryptocurrencies work would be common knowledge worldwide if it didn’t require a high understanding of computing, networks and familiarity with economic conditions. Unlike a simple payment using cash or card, with crypto comes incredibly volatile investments, as well as the fact that it’s not backed by any real-world assets. The

validity of cryptocurrencies is based on the mutual agreement between users of the cryptocurrency.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS? Amongst those who are familiar with NFTs there also exists a strong negative reputation as they have detrimental effect on the environment. This is because, when it comes to NFTs, the main cryptocurrency used is called Ethereum. Before 15 September 2022, Ethereum ran on Proof of Work (PoW) which is “a blockchain consensus mechanism in which computing power is used to verify crypto transactions and add them to the blockchain”. This matters because PoW systems are somewhat environmentally disastrous as “the system requires computers in the network to perform complex, cryptographically rooted calculations to add blocks to the chain”. This amount estimated to sit between the annual energy consumption of Italy and the UK. Seeing as unlike much of the energy used in these countries for heating, electricity, food, and the production of other essentials; pixelated avatars, or the investment behind them, may not be crucial to one’s day to day life and are in fact, a non-necessity. However, before you may think I am being blind to the fact that NFTs are in fact the gateway into many useful investments, I still think that with this same logic, the same stigma should be around using Google, Apple, and Amazon’s services as Ethereum did not even crack the surface of what energy those company’s’ data centres consume. However, on 15 September, Ethereum switched to Proof of State (PoS) in a major update called ‘The Merge’ to make transactions more sustainable. PoS is in many ways alike to PoW, however with this switch comes two main changes; firstly, PoW is maintained by the jobs of thousands of crypto-miners and therefore an income for them, with PoS, there is no need for their work. Secondly, PoS is estimated to reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.95% which should remove the bad reputation of NFTs’ energy consumption. It was made clear by many that this was not a favoured change as some decided to keep Ethereum running on a PoW system even after it had made the switch, bringing question to the legitimacy of many digital assets. So, is crypto a good thing, or a bad thing? At what cost does a new revolution in digital currency come at? And can it change the world and climate for the better?

NUCLEAR FUSION WITH MR STEVEN NELTHORPE Tundun Are (LVI)

Mr Steven Nelthorpe works with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at their site in Culham, Oxfordshire as a Systems Engineer having previously fulfilled similar roles in commercial and military aerospace. His education background is in electrical engineering and mathematics. ‘WHAT DOES YOUR JOB AT THE UNITED KINGDOM ATOMIC ENERGY AUTHORITY ENTAIL AS A SYSTEMS ENGINEER WORKING WITH NUCLEAR FUSION?’ As a Systems Engineer I have multiple tasks but the main one I’m doing at the moment requires bringing teams together. We try and figure out what we want to build and what the design is. That’s mainly what my goal is. Systems engineering is all about trying to figure out what all these stakeholders need and require to carry out their job and then document that down. The second part of it is then figuring out how we’re going to test the design to make sure that we have what we need. At the moment I’m involved with a team called the confinement team. This team is involved with huge magnets. These magnets almost represent the gravity that’s on the sun. The teams I am working with research on and design certain aspects which need specific materials. One of my jobs is also to make sure that each aspect is not over designed. So, every time someone is saying they need to do this we ask ‘why?’. Is it just because they think it’s nice? Because everything costs money. So, what we are trying to make sure of is that the requirements are there for an actual purpose and they’re done in the most efficient way. The project I’m working on is called “step” as is going to be the first fusion reactor in the UK. They have already bought a site up north and they’re going to start building it as soon as they’ve got more of an idea of what they need to do, which will hopefully be in the next couple years.

‘YOU MENTIONED MAGNETS AS PART OF THE PROJECT. WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE MAGNETS USED FOR IN TERMS OF THE REACTION?’ For nuclear fusion atoms to be fused together instead of split. You take two hydrogen isotopes (Tritium) and you fuse them together. When you fuse them together you get energy. And that is how the sun works. It is so big and the gravity in the sun is ginormous - that’s what creates the fusion in the sun. What the magnets do is that they push the 56

atoms together and make a really big electrostatic force which is similar to the huge force on the sun.

‘DURING NUCLEAR FUSION, ALONGSIDE ENERGY AND NEW LARGER ATOMS, NEUTRONS ARE PRODUCED. WHAT HAPPENS TO THE NEUTRONS AND ATOMS AFTERWARDS? ARE THEY ISOLATED, USED FOR ANOTHER PURPOSE OR DISCARDED?’ We put lithium into to the ball of the reaction and the neutrons hit the lithium and we make Tritium. Tritium is the raw material (fuel) used in fusion, and it is quite hard to source as there is a very limited amount on earth. So, by also creating energy you can create the fuel needed as well.

‘FOR NUCLEAR FUSION TO WORK THE ELECTROSTATIC FORCES BETWEEN THE TWO NUCLEI MUST BE OVERCOME. WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES WHEN OVERCOMING THIS FORCE AND ARE THE MAGNETS PARTICULARLY USEFUL FOR THIS?’ The magnets create a big force that pushes all the atoms together to allow them to fuse and they also create the heat as well. The magnets create a current in a circle that pushes everything together and gets the reaction going. So, the faster it goes the hotter it gets and the fusion reaction occurs.

‘FOR A VERY LONG-TIME SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS HAVE INVESTIGATED AND RESEARCHED SAFE WAYS FOR NUCLEAR FUSION TO BE PERFORMED FOR THE PRODUCTION OF ENERGY. GIVEN THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE CHALLENGE, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE AND WHAT WILL HAVE TO HAPPEN FOR THIS TO WORK?’ The main problem we have at the moment is

controlling the heat because what happens is it can get really hot. Last year the UKAEA got the reaction going for 7 seconds. To get the fusion going is quite hard. Then as soon as you get it going, you’re producing a lot of heat. So, they had to switch the machine off because they couldn’t get rid of all the heat that was produced. So, one technical thing to consider is how to take away the heat. They are thinking about having liquid metal flowing around the reactor to take away the heat because that’s the only thing that would be able to deal with all that heat. Another problem is it only takes a small atom in the wrong place at the wrong time and everything falls out of place. So, dealing with it when that happens and trying to get it back to a stable situations is quite tricky.

‘GIVEN THE CURRENT COST OF LIVING CRISIS IN THE UK, ESPECIALLY GAS AND ELECTRICITY PRICES, THE NATION IS DESPERATELY SEEKING A SOLUTION TO THESE SOARING ENERGY PRICES. AS COMPLEX AS THE TECHNOLOGY IS, DO YOU THINK THAT NUCLEAR FUSION IS GENUINELY A CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE TO OUR CURRENT SOURCES OF ENERGY SUCH AS WIND FARMS AND SOLAR PANELS?’ Nuclear fusion is a long-term solution, so that is almost in 2040, so it is not really going to solve the problem that we have at this moment. Maybe if we had started looking at it a while back we would have it as a solution. But if it does get going it will change the world completely. It will be bigger than the internet because there will be free power for everyone. It will definitely be a huge change to technology. Scientists have been working on this for a long time but not to the level they’re investigating at the moment. Its almost likes a technology race. There are quite a few little private companies that have started up as well and some of them are on the UKAEA campus as well. Elon musk has a company on the UKAEA campus as well. He’s invested a bit of money into the technology.

‘ANOTHER HUGE CONCERN WHEN IT COMES TO NUCLEAR FUSION IS WHETHER THE TECHNOLOGY IS SAFE. DO YOU THINK THAT THIS CAN BE INTRODUCED SAFELY AND WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CONCERNS?’

will be an issue. To solve that a team is trying to design robots to go in there for the fixing and maintenance of the reactor, because of the harsh conditions that could be dangerous to humans. The radiation does need to be looked after. The shelf-life is only 5 years so it could actually be stored in a warehouse in safe conditions unlike the waste produced in nuclear fission that needs to be buried underground. The public perception of nuclear power is that it is dangerous, but there are two types. Fission and fusion. Fusion is not dangerous and can be conducted safely.

‘SYSTEMS ENGINEERING IS A VERY TARGETED PART OF ENGINEERING, COULD YOU PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOUR JOURNEY TO BECOMING A SYSTEMS ENGINEER AND YOUR CAREER PATH?’ In school I enjoyed Mathematics and Physics so when filling in my UCAS form I decided to apply for engineering. So, I looked at the best universities in Scotland and applied there. I did not too bad in my Scottish Highers so I got into Edinburgh University where I studied Electronic Engineering. When it came to looking for a job in my fourth year, I was looking for a job in power engineering to do with power stations, but I always wanted to travel or actually be involved with aircrafts because my father was in the RAF. I joined a company which is called BAE systems down near Blackpool who build military fighter jets. I didn’t know what a Systems Engineer was so when I showed up there, they had a pool of people and they divided us up and the team I got put into was the systems engineer team. So, it wasn’t actually my choice, I sort of got put into it and I ended up working on aircrafts and enjoying it. At one point I did think about moving into Software Engineering because there’s quite a lot of satisfaction in doing that. You’re writing a bit of code and you see it work whereas being a Systems Engineer is a long game, you don’t actually see anything coming back until further on in the future. The skills gave me the capabilities to move around and do different things and work on different projects. One main thing about being a Systems Engineer is that all engineering companies need them. As a systems engineer you’re not exactly an expert in anything, you have general knowledge about lots of things because you need to be the bridge between all the experts.

There is some radiation produced from nuclear fusion in the reactor. So, maintaining the reactor

KENKEN PUZZLES Instructions The goal is to fill the whole grid with numbers, making sure no number is repeated in any row or column. In a 3x3 puzzle, use the numbers 1-3 4x4, use numbers 1-4 etc… Heavily outlined areas are cages. The top left corner of each cage has a ‘target number’ and maths operation. The numbers entered into a cage must combine (in any order) to produce the target number using the maths operations stated (x, -, +, ÷). + n = numbers must add up to n etc… Cage with only 1 square is a ‘freebie’, just fill in the number you are given. Numbers cannot be repeated within the same row or column, but you can repeat a number within a cage as long as it is not in the same row or column.

EASY + 7+

DIFFICULT +-x 6+

105x

24x

168x

64x

20x

EASY

17+

21–7

17+

16+

+-x 7x

12x

21–20

21–11

26+

www.kenken.com

59 ANSWERS Photosynthesis The process, using sunlight, to convert carbon dioxide and water into nutrients Kinetic The energy stored in a moving body Anaerobic The type of respiration that does not require oxygen Iodine The chemical element with atomic number 53 Eutrophication Excessive richness or nutrients in a body of water which causes dense growth of plant life

A chemical bond formed by the sharing of electrons between atoms 2. Unit of radioactivity 3. Mass divided by volume 5. The type of respiration that does not require oxygen 6. A chemical reaction in which a more reactive element replaces a less reactive element from its compound 7. A number that cannot be made by dividing two integers

Irrational A number that cannot be made by dividing two integers

Covalent A chemical bond formed by the sharing of electrons between atoms

4. Instrument used for measuring electrical current 8. The number of organisms of the same species that live in a particular geographic area at the same time 11. The process by which dissolved substances are separated by running a solvent along paper 14. Energy from a source that is not depleted when used 15. The energy stored in a moving body 16. The Artery that supplies blood from the heart from the left ventricle to be distributed by branch arteries throughout the body 19. The process, using sunlight, to convert carbon dioxide and water into nutrients

Dependent The variable whose value depends on that of another

DOWN

Aorta The Artery that supplies blood from the heart from the left ventricle to be distributed by branch arteries throughout the body.

ACROSS

Population The number of organisms of the same species that live in a particular geographic area at the same time. Chromatography The process by which dissolved substances are separated by running a solvent along paper catalyst A substance that changes the rate of reaction without being changed by the reaction itself Annum – Synonym for yearly

Displacement – A chemical reaction in which a more reactive element replaces a less reactive element from its compound.

15 17

Ammeter Instrument used for measuring electrical current

pH Potential Hydrogen Parabola The graph of a quadratic equation

15 14

Density Mass divided by volume 11

Becquerel Unit of radioactivity Renewable Energy from a source that is not depleted when used

24 11 10 9

8 7+

4 3

2 7+

1 4

3 1

4 2

12x

4 3

3 4

2 8+

2 1

4 3

105x

24x

3 2

168x

6 1-

8 1

7 64x

1 2

17+

6 5 3

26+

4 20x

7 4

5 9+

6 1

5 1 3

8 5-

4 17+

1 3 4-

16+

STEM CROSSWORD

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