theGIST Issue 6

W I NNE R T h e Gu a r d i a n Student Media Awards Best Website

MATCH MATHS

NUMBERS' NEW ROLE IN SPORT

UNDYING ANIMALS

WHAT'S THE SECRET?

BODILY SACRIFICE IN PURSUIT OF THE ULTIMATE PAIN SCALE

SEEING DOUBLE

WHY YOU PROBABLY DON'T HAVE A TWIN

WELCOME

We at theGIST would like to thank the Chancellor's Fund for funding this magazine.

Gifts to the Chancellor’s Fund are directed to where the need is greatest, supporting mainly student centred projects which would otherwise fall out-with core funding. To find out more about the Chancellor’s Fund or to give a donation, please see their webpage: www.gla.ac.uk/about/givingtoglasgow/chancellorsfund/

Over the last 10 years the Alumni Fund has awarded in excess of £2 million in funding to support Strathclyde students From an international student project to bring solar lighting to a community in The Gambia to helping people access education through a scholarship award

Realise your potential and make an impact with the Alumni Fund www.strath.ac.uk/alumnifund

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WELCOME Written by the editors

EDITORIAL

Over to you W

hat a journey it has been. It has been over two years since five GISTers sat in Queen Margaret union, wondering what would happen with this group. Most of the old GISTers had taken off, and only a small handful of us were left. We had no idea that we were about to embark on a massive adventure.

Now, looking back, it's crazy to think of where it all started.

Witnessing the progress has been truly humbling. Since that day in the QM, over 300 articles have gone up on the GIST's website, we have pub­ lished four magazines, held two

multi­disciplinary conferences and put out brilliant podcasts and videos.

All celebrating science, all powered by theGIST's wonderful contributors.

And the effort of the GISTers hasn't gone unnoticed: during the past two years we have won a string of awards, the latest from the Guardian in November 2015. That is an amazing achievement, but we are not surprised when we look around: we have grown from a handful of people to over 100 contributors, all kickin' ass at the forefront of science communication. Thank you for your time, your passion, and your friend­

ship. Without you, this would be nothing.

The future direction of theGIST will be determined by 2016’s board mem­ bers. Some things will surely change, but we are certain theGIST will con­ tinue to be exciting and entertaining.

Good luck, future GISTers, and farewell.

With much love Your editors, Ida Emilie Steinmark & Timothy Revell

In this issue

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NEWS

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

p22

COMMENT

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

Editors­in­Chief: Timothy Revell and Ida Emilie Steinmark Submission Editors: Michaela Mrschtik Head of Copy­Editing: Rebecca Baird

Layout: Teodora Aldea, Constreie Miruna, Timothy Revell, Ida Emilie Steinmark Art: George Bell, James Marno, Emily Breen

Glasgow's largest science magazine

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NEWS

WHAT'S NEW Private panda powers

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hen pandas are born they're the tiniest, pathetic­looking little things. Not only are they small and helpless, they're also born with next to no immune system. Yet grown panda bears are massive majestic creatues. How does this compute? Well, researchers from the University of Strathclyde have now helped to work out how giant panda cubs are able to survive despite be­ ing born with an underdeveloped im­

mune system. Bear cubs are thought to be the least developed babies pro­ duced by mammals (excluding mar­ supials and monotremes), and the cubs of giant pandas require the most nurturing after birth.

Pandas raised in captivity have been observed suckling even up to two and a half years after being born! The five year project focused on the analysis of milk samples from the mothers in order to determine

which proteins and other small mo­ lecules were present. It was dis­ covered that a larger number of immune factors were present in the milk for the first 30 days of nursing, after which associated protein levels decreased and then became con­ stant, indicating that drinking the mother’s milk helps to build up the cub’s immune response in the first month of life.

Written by Debbie Nicol

HA! Only some jokes stick D

o you blame your best friend’s bad influence for your occasion­ al outbursts of troublesome, sarcast­ ic humour at the family dinner table? As luck would have it, new re­ search from the University of Strathclyde can (somewhat) back you up in your accusation. The study, carried out on school children aged 11­13, examined four different types of humour in order to determ­ ine whether or not a similarity in

sense of humour between best friends could evolve over time. Or, in other words, whether or not your best friends' twisted jokes are in fact contageous.

Interestingly, of the four humour types studied (self­enhancing, ag­ gressive, affiliative and self­defeat­ ing humour), only affiliative humour, which enhances relationships between people, was shown to be passed on from one friend to the oth­

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er. That means if that only wit which brings you closer to you friend is the kind that rubs off on you. It also means that the next time you’re in trouble for re­telling one of your friends’ dark jokes, you can claim to have absolutely no responsibility for finding it funny.

Written by Debbie Nicol

NEWS

IN GLASGOW? Next-generation wifi

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he ever increasing connectivity of the world requires wireless communication with annually doub­ ling bandwidth rates. However, we have reached the physical limit of transmitting data via microwaves, and further improvement may only be possible via higher carrier fre­ quencies. The Terahertz (THz) re­ gion is a plausible candidate, with light­like wave behaviour, relatively little interference from vapour and

dust, and bandwidth to rival fibre optics.

Traditionally, THz emitters were associated with tremendous physical challenges, but nanotechnology ad­ vances allow the fabrication of semi­ conductor devices based on the experience gained from telecommu­ nication lasers. Resonant tunnelling diodes are an example of a device that generates THz by trapping and releasing electrons inside a sandwich

of selectively grown crystals. Re­ search at the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde has produced an emitter at 353 GHz measured at one metre. Applications of such emitters will include faster smartphone data transmission, subcutaneous cancer detection, automotive range finding, and computer vision, to name a few.

Written by Edwin Cloverdale

Bigger, better, older?

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ould you give up a few years of your life if it meant you would be stronger or more attractive than those around you? Quite a few spe­ cies would probably say "well yes, thanks".

Trade­offs such as these are at the heart of evolutionary biology. Within a species, a larger body size offers competitive advantages but often with the penalty of a shorter life.

This is a puzzling trend, as you

might expect a larger mouse to out­ live a smaller one ­ after all, a bigger mammal like a cat will live longer than most mice! So what can resolve this conundrum?

Scientists recently tackled this question by selectively breeding wild sparrows so that their body size was steadily increased and explored whether this increase was reflected in the DNA of the birds. Larger spar­ rows were found to have shorter te­

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lomeres, the components of chromo­ somes known to shorten with age ­ it's almost as if the larger you are, the quicker you age, all the way down to the DNA level. We now have a clearer idea of how body size is limited in natural populations ­ and as such why bigger isn’t always bet­ ter.

Written by Kalina Boytcheva

GENERAL SCIENCE Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark

6 REMARKABLE SCIENTISTS YOU

Think you’re well versed in important scientists wo for your list that you maybe haven’t considered.

INGE LEHMANN GEOPHYSICS

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ven if you are always on the look­out for female scientists to inspire you, chances are you haven’t heard about Inge. Growing up in Copenhagen in the end of the 19th century, she was the student of Hanna Adler – coincidentally Niels Bohr’s aunt – whom she later de­ scribed as one of her main intellectu­ al influences. Inge contributed to

CHRISTOPHER B CHETSANGA BIOCHEMISTRY

LUIS E. MIRAMONTES CHEMISTRY

science in a massive way, being the first to argue that Earth has a solid core based on reflections of waves travelling through Earth’s layers, in 1936. In 1971, computer calcula­ tions confirmed her theory. She died in 1993 at the fine age of 104.

iochemist Christopher had his breakthrough in the US after finishing his education in Canada.

While occupying a position at the University of Michigan, he made his first important discovery in DNA re­ pair: the enzyme formam­ idopyrimidine DNA glycosylase, which removes damaged parts of DNA. Then, after moving back to his

native Zimbabwe, he discovered a second repair enzyme, DNA cyclase, which fixes certain broken chemical structures after they have been torn by x­rays. These two enzymes are so crucial that he was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work. He is 80 years old and still resides in Zimb­ abwe.

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liberation. Like any student, he had to share his invention with his su­ pervisors, but Luis managed to use his early breakthrough to kick­start his career: he went on to patent a string of chemicals in a range of chemical fields, and has since been awarded many prizes. He died in 2004, in his home country of Mexico, aged 79.

ometimes the most remarkable things can come straight out of the conical flask of an undergradu­ ate’s chemistry project. This cer­ tainly applied to Luis, who managed to synthesise norethisterone for the first time during his bachelor's de­ gree. This was the foundation for the first contraceptive pill; arguably the main catalyst for women's sexual

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GENERAL SCIENCE Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark

OUGHT TO KNOW

rth knowing about? We have six

CHIEN SHIUNG WU PHYSICS

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nown as the ‘Chinese Madam Curie’, Chien­Shiung’s story is one of achievement despite discrim­ ination. Originally from Shanghai, she travelled to America in 1936 to begin her career in research. She unfortunately suffered from two­fold prejudice, being Asian and female, and had to move between several universities before she was accepted

on par with her fellow scientists. In spite of these set­backs, she became an important asset to the Manhat­ tan Project, and later experimentally proved a theory about parity conser­ vation which would go on to develop the Standard Model and win her col­ leagues a Nobel Prize. She died in New York in 1997.

VITAL BRAZIL MEDICINE

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primarily on Brazilian animals, whose venom killed many rural Brazilians every year. He became the first to find a serum which worked against different snake venoms, massively improving the chances of survival for bitten people.

Dying in 1950, he should be re­ membered as one of the great fath­ ers of immunology.

SOFIA KOVALEVSKAYA MATHS

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oing into the dense forest of 19th century Brazil was an im­ mensely dangerous activity due to the risk of a venomous sting or bite from a snake, spider or scorpion.

Thankfully, young doctor Vital ded­ icated his life to finding anti­bodies which could work as cures for differ­ ent bites. He pioneered research into anti­venom treatments, focusing

oung Sofia from 19th century Russia was a gifted child. Un­ fortunately, she wasn’t able to con­ tinue her education in Russia where women were banned from universit­ ies. Determined to pursue mathem­ atics, she entered into a fake marriage and moved to Germany where she attended University of Heidelberg. Moving to Berlin to do

her PhD, she had to recieve private tutoring as she wasn’t allowed to at­ tend lectures. She was the first fe­ male in Europe to earn her doctorate in mathematics. Her doctoral disser­ tation, as well as her later work, majorly contributed to the field of partial differential equations and ri­ gid body motion. She died at 41 years old in Sweden.

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LIFE SCIENCES Written by Firstname Lastname

Fritz Ahlefeldt-Laurvig via Flickr.com

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER ANIMALS THAT CHEAT DEATH F

ew would call the naked mole rat beautiful. The hairless, small rodent with pale, wrinkly skin and imposing front teeth is often con­ sidered one of the ugliest animals on earth. Looks are however not all that counts: naked mole rats have ex­ traordinary qualities that go beyond what meets the eye.

Naked mole rats can live for up to 32 years, longer than any other ro­ dent species, and about 15 times longer than mice or rats. What’s more, they do not develop cancer ­

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ever. These features intrigued scient­ ists, and some are now trying to work out how to use the naked mole rat’s secrets to prevent cancer and slow ageing in humans (without making us all hairless, pale, and wrinkly).

The naked mole rat’s secret started to be unravelled several years ago.

Their small size, similar to a mouse,

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enabled researchers to study the an­ imals in a laboratory environment.

Here, they used modern molecular biological techniques to dissect the inner workings of naked mole rat cells ­ and what they found was re­ markable.

When naked mole rat cells were grown outside of the animal’s body, they behaved very differently to mouse cells. Instead of growing in a neat, tightly packed layer as most other cells grown in laboratories do, naked mole rat cells stopped grow­

LIFE SCIENCES

ing before they could fill a cell cul­ ture flask. And unlike other animal cells, they secreted a substance that made their growth media go all gooey. As it turned out, this secretion was the key to the naked mole rat’s anti­cancer defence.

The goo was created by a com­ pound made up of a long chain of sugar molecules, called hyaluronan1.

Hyaluronan is a common ingredient in many organisms’ bodies, including humans, and it works as a con­ necting and filling agent between cells in tissues. The difference between our hya­ luronan and that of the naked mole rat is its size: Hyaluronans found in the animals were exceptionally large, consisting of sugar chains about 5 times longer than in humans or mice. The long chains of hyalur­ onan could stop the growth of cul­ tured naked mole rat cells before they touched one another and, in this way, prevent the formation of tightly packed, cancerous tu­ mours. By interrupting the cellular hyaluronan factory, researchers could coax formerly cancer­resistant naked mole rat cells into growing more densely in culture. When the scientists injected these hyaluronan­ low naked mole rat cells into mice, they readily formed tumours ­ something that they had never done before.

Perhaps the opposite strategy ­ increasing long­chain hyaluronan production in humans ­ could be used to prevent cancers. This idea is still in the early stages, and several hurdles need to be overcome to test it. Researchers first need to work out if long­chain hyaluronan pro­ duced by human cells has similar ef­ fects on cancer formation as the naked mole rat version of the mo­ lecule, and then find a way to either boost its production in our bodies or introduce it from outside. As it turns out, some forms of hyaluronan are already used for treatments on hu­ mans, just not in cancer therapy.

Hyaluronan is a common ingredi­ ent of anti­ageing creams. As a nat­ ural component of our epidermis, it helps to keep skin elastic. The naked

mole rat may have evolved a way to keep its supply high because of this property: the animals live under­ ground and their elastic skin is well suited for their constant burrowing through narrow, subterranean cor­ ridors ­ cancer resistance and longevity may just have been an ad­ ded benefit of this adaptation.

While the naked mole rat’s evolu­ tionary cousin, the blind mole rat, does not share it’s high hyaluronan levels, these digging animals are also long­lived and protected from cancer. When blind mole rat cells are grown in the laboratory, they are happy to grow into a dense, tight cell layer. They are, however, not happy for long: nearly all cells in the cul­ ture quickly die a sudden and con­ certed cell death.

The simultaneous nature of their demise hints that a signal in the li­ quid surrounding the cells may be responsible for this peculiar beha­ viour. A signalling molecule, found enriched in the media of densely grown blind mole rat cells, causes this phenomenon: interferon beta [cite]. While this compound is part of the anti­virus defense system in hu­

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mans, it causes blind mole rat cells to self­destruct when they grow too densely, which could be key to pre­ venting the formation of tightly packed cancers in the species.

Naked mole rats and blind mole rats have found different ways to beat cancer and gain longevity, but a shared feature ­ their underground life ­ may be closely tied to this de­ velopment. Both animals are natur­ ally shielded from potential predators by their lives in un­ derground tunnels. Free from the danger of being eaten, the next biggest enemies they needed to battle were age and age­related diseases, such as cancers.

While cancer­fighting adaptations would give highly hunted animals, such as mice, little advantage, they could enable ‘protected’ anim­ als to procreate longer ­ and therefore create more offspring that share the longevity and cancer­ protection of their par­ ents.

VMrapids via Wikimedia Commons

Written by Michaela Mrschtik

Low tumour rates and longevity are not limited to mole rats, and can­ cer protection is particularly ex­ traordinary in giant animals.

Cancers develop when a single cell in an organism goes awry and starts to grow uncontrollably. Within a spe­ cies, the more cells you have the more likely you are to develop cancer, for example within humans as height increases so do cancer rates3. But across species the story is a little dif­ ferent.

Elephants and whales, with their massive bodies made up of trillions more cells than ours, should be much more likely to develop cancer than us, but strangely they are not. In bowhead whales, the longest lived animals with life spans of more than 200 years, cancers have never actu­ ally been observed at all. On the oth­ er hand, one in three humans will develop cancer in their lifetime. This peculiar phenomenon is called Peto’s paradox4.

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LIFE SCIENCES Written by Michaela Mrschtik

Working out exactly why Peto’s paradox holds is still an open ques­ tion, but the key seems to be that for big animals to become big in the first place, they have had to develop ways to protect themselves from cancer.

And the better we understand these protections, the more likely we are to be able to find ways to use them ourselves.

New research suggests that in ele­ phants, one protective mechanism in­ volves the well­described “guardian of the genome”, a protein called p535.

While humans have two copies of the p53­making gene ­ one from each parent ­ elephants have around 40. p53’s normal function is to stop cells from dividing or eliminate them when their DNA gets damaged. In human cancer, both copies of p53 are usually mutated in malignant cells, which allows them to keep multiply­ ing without triggering their inbuilt

suicide switch. A mutation in all cop­ ies of p53 genes of elephants is very unlikely, resulting in high cancer protection.

The research mentioned here shines a light on some of the perks of evolution. By comparing different species, we could uncover some of the evolutionary paths that lead to longer and healthier lives, and these newly gained insights might be use­ ful in our own fight against cancer and age­related disease. No one knows what wonders still await us in the treasure trove of nature, but some of them may well be success­ fully used in human medicine in the future. Perhaps, some day, we will value the naked mole rat for helping us further our understanding of can­ cer – and for giving us a better means to fight the disease or prevent it altogether.

Michaela is a PhD student in cancer research at the Beatson Institute. This article was specialist edited by Rowan Hookham and copy­edited by Andrew Denman.

References [1] www.nature.com: simple molecule prevents mole rats from getting cancer [2] www.rochester.edu: an extra protein gives naked mole rats more power to stop cancer [3] www.theguardian.com: taller people more likely to get cancer say researchers [4] www.nature.com: massive animals may hold secrets of cancer suppression [5] the-gist.org: why elephants neve seem to get cancer

Whales get remarkably old for their size which should lead to a higher rate of cancer.

Image credit: George Bell.

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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Timothy Revell

BALL PARK FIGURES HOW MATHS IS TRANSFORMING SPORT

t’s the final innings of the game.

Oakland A’s are looking to make American League Baseball history by winning a record­breaking 20th game in a row. First they mounted an incredible 11­0 lead, but they now seem to have thrown it all away. The scores are tied at 11 ­ 11. Kansas City are right back in it. But only the A’s are left to bat. Scott Hatteberg steps up to the plate. The ball is pitched. Hatteberg begins to swing.

The ball crashes into Hatteberg’s bat and the ball flies out of the stadium.

Hatteberg has won victory for the A’s. He walks round the bases, soak­ ing up a gigantic round of applause, making baseball history, and ending the game 12 ­ 11 with a home run.

The A’s lost their 21st game, but managed to win the American League West, making the season a huge success. What makes the result so incredible is the way that it was achieved. At the start of the famous 2002 season, Oakland A’s had a tiny budget in comparison to other teams, and so coach Billy Beane had to think outside of the box. Beane star­ ted by appointing the inexperienced economist Peter Brand as his assist­ ant and began to look at baseball mathematically.

By using statistical analysis Beane and Brand were able to find undervalued traits that were actu­ ally better indicators of success than the traditional ones. By looking at factors like the number of times a player makes it to first base, they were able to build a cheap team that was undervalued by the “experts”, but that the mathematics said would

do well. This approach allowed the A’s $44 million team to compete with teams like the New York Yankees who spent a whopping $125 million on player payroll in the same season.

Beane and Brand threw traditional wisdom out of the window in favour of cold, hard, sexy (in my opinion) mathematics. When asked if they should have trusted their eyes more than the statistics, Beane replied “I don't buy that because I've seen ma­ gicians pull rabbits out of hats and I know that the rabbit's not in there.”1

Working out exactly how to analyse data from sport is a pretty difficult task, and when done badly can add to the misconceptions in the game.

There is a commonly held view that

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players and teams have “hot­ streaks.” Once things are going well traditional wisdom says that it’s likely to continue that way — win­ ning a fifth game is easier if you’ve won the previous four. And plenty of research has shown that players from many different sports believe that hot­streaks do exists, as after a series of successes they are way more likely to attempt difficult plays or shots.2 But for the last 30 years, science has said that hot­streaks are nothing more than a myth.

In 1985 a group of psychologists looked at basketball statistics and strongly concluded that hot­streaks do not exist.3 They found that the probability of a player with a 50% shot success rate, was no more likely to have a series of successful shots than would be expected with random chance. When flipping a coin, land­

Matt Swaim via Flickr.com

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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS

Matt Swaim via Flickr.com

Written by Timothy Revell

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ing 5 heads in a row doesn’t mean that you are on a hot­streak, and nor does 5 successful shots in basketball.

As the researchers put it, hot­ streaks were just a “misconception of random sequences,” and thousands of popular articles have now been written explaining why the huge number of plays and fans that be­ lieve in hot­streaks are just plain wrong.

Or are they? In 1997, two statisti­ cians based in Cambridge looked for

happen equally often, but they don’t.

Instead the hot­streak LWWW is roughly 50% more likely to occur than the tepid­streak WWLW. Tennis and basketball are two dif­ ferent games, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if it turned out that hot­ streaks existed in one sport and not the other. But more papers came to light challenging the original hot­ streak research, and the final nail in the coffin happened in 2003, when computer scientists put fake data full

enough. At the moment, mathem­ aticians are a little confused. Wheth­ er hot­streaks actually exist is still a mystery, but the opportunities to find out have grown massively.

the hot­streak fallacy in tennis, but found no fallacy at all.4 Instead, they found that winning a set was more likely if the player was on a streak.

The three possible ways to win a tennis match 3 sets to 1 are LWWW, WLWW, and WWLW. If hot­streaks didn’t exist then we would expect each of these three sequences to

of hot­streaks through the original analysis. [5] But the analysis wasn’t sensitive enough to spot the hot­ streaks. The original method was equivalent to seeing a magician and proclaiming that they don’t have a rabbit, purely because their hat looks empty. But using Billy Beane’s wis­ dom, they just weren’t looking hard

blobs, they can log every passage of play ready to be analysed in real­ time. Sport statistics are no longer just individual aspects, such as goals scored or winning percentage, they reveal exactly how every event oc­ curs. Computers are being taught to recognise everything from individual players to whole passages of play

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Stadiums around the world now cap­ ture every sporting moment with high­definition motion tracking cam­ eras. By turning players into digital

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Timothy Revell

using a technique called machine learning.

Instead of writing computer pro­ grams that recognise patterns in the data, researchers write programs that can learn. The more data the programs analyse, the better they become. By systematically reviewing tiny pieces of evidence, the com­ puters build up an overall picture of a sporting event and identify its characteristics. As one blob moves across a pitch, thousands of calcula­ tions are made allowing the com­ puter to determine exactly how its motion fits into the bigger picture.

Picking up subtleties that would pre­ viously have gone unnoticed.

In football, for example, the num­ ber of tackles that a defender makes has always been an indicator of the quality of the player. But a great de­ fender, doesn’t necessarily make any tackles at all, instead they position themselves in such a way that passes cannot be made, or shots can­ not be attempted. It’s impossible for a human to quantify all of these indi­ vidual moments, but computers are beginning to learn. By calculating the probability of a goal being scored based on a defender’s position, the

off­ball impact of a player can be rig­ orously assessed.

On average, a player only has the ball for 53 seconds each game, and so their off­ ball ability is perhaps the most im­ portant of all. When thinking about spending £20 million on a player, the science of blobs really matters.

Converting moving things into di­ gital blobs and using machine learn­ ing to examine the motion can describe situations ranging from ants to traffic flow, to humans in a city. By spotting the patterns in the data, machines can learn how to aid and replicate fundamental move­ ments in the world around us. The ambition of the science of blobs it to use these patterns to improve our lives. Sport is just the beginning.

the second half he decided to take out a pen and paper, and make one of the first serious efforts to statistically analyse football.

Watching Swindon Town play can do funny things to anyone (trust me I’m a life long supporter), but in 1950 Wing Commander Charles Reep just couldn’t take it anymore.

Throughout the game he became so increasingly frustrated with slow play that in

Reep calculated from Swindon Town’s 147 attacks in the second half that 99.29% of all attacks in football fail (meaning that we must have scored, COME ON YOU REDS). After analysing a few more games he concluded that since most goals are scored with fewer than three passes, teams should get the ball up the field

Timothy has a PhD in computer science from the University of Strathclyde. This piece was specialist edited

by Artur Balabanov and copy­edited by Sarah Neidler.

References [1] How computer analysts took over at Britain's top football clubs - The Guardian [2] Check out e.g. Perceived hotness affects behavior of basketball players and coaches by Attali [3] The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences by Gilovich and Tversky [4] Heavy defeats in tennis: Psychological momentum or random effect? by Jackson and Mosurski [5] The Story of The Hot Hand: Powerful Myth

as soon as possible.

The Wing Commander then took his ideas to relegationfearing Brentford towards the end of the 1950-51 season and essentially created the long ball game (ie hoofing the ball up the field whenever you can). With Reep's help, Brentford scored 20 out of a possible 28 points and managed to avoid relegation.

His analyses may have been basic, but those that took it on board certainly Reeped the benefits.

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LIFE SCIENCES Written by Debbie Nicol

SUFFERING FOR SCIENCE YOU MUST BEE KIDDING ME O

n a dull day, Ig Nobel Prize­ winning research never fails to amuse, and the works recognised by the 2015 awards were certainly no exception. For those unfamiliar, the Ig Nobels parody the highly respect­ able and arguably more serious No­ bel Prizes, aiming to shed light on research that makes people “laugh and then think”.1 A particular high­ light this year was the announce­ ment of the Ig Nobel Prize in Entomology and Physiology, jointly awarded to Justin Schmidt and Mi­ chael Smith for their research into the development of numerical pain scales.

Pain research in its various forms is highly useful for the advancement of analgesics and pain monitoring protocols, which are essential fea­

tures of good­quality patient care.

Described as such, it sounds almost as if the work of the award winners should be more deserving of a Nobel Prize than an Ig Nobel. The delight, however, is in the detail.

The pain scales created cannot ex­ actly be applied to monitoring a hos­ pital patient’s pain. Both researchers developed their independent scales for the quantification of pain result­ ing from insect stings. The Schmidt Sting Pain Index expresses the pain felt after receiving a sting from one of 78 different Hymenoptera species (a group of insects including ants, bees, wasps and sawflies) relative to the sting of the common honey bee.

Smith’s scale, on the other hand, al­ lowed the author to demonstrate for the single test subject involved that

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the location of a sting has consider­ able influence over how much pain is felt by the unlucky individual.2 This may seem somewhat intuitive, con­ sidering that certain areas of the body are known to be more sensitive to external irritants than others, but the work was unprecedented in the scientific literature.

Whilst the nature of the work is in itself interesting, the humour recog­ nised by the Ig Nobel committee be­ comes apparent when considering the inspiration for Smith’s study. A blog post that appeared on the Na­ tional Geographic website in 2014 about the now Ig Nobel prize win­ ner’s research states that he [Smith] initially thought of the experiment when, during some routine work with honey bees, one of the bees “flew

LIFE SCIENCES Written by Debbie Nicol

up … [his] shorts and stung him in the testicles”.3 It is not only this unfortunate mis­ hap that makes readers of Smith’s resultant paper crack a smile. As

mentioned briefly, there was only one test subject in the study – Smith.

Whilst he notes the inability to gen­ eralise the results to a larger popula­ tion, the researcher defended the small sample size in terms of minim­ ising the number of people that would be required to be stung for the experiment. Another benefit of the limited number of participants was that the initial research proposal was not required to undergo scrutiny from Cornell University’s Human Research Protection Program as there was no policy in place prevent­ ing self­experimentation. Addition­ ally, descriptions of the manner of administering certain stings were particularly comical (“Some locations required the use of a mirror and an erect posture during stinging (e.g. buttocks).”), as was the wording of the acknowledgements (“Painful ap­ preciation to Justin Schmidt, …”).

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ustin Schmidt and Michael Smith are not the only scientists who has at­ tempted to quantify pain using a numeric­ al scale. The Scoville scale was developed

by Wilbur Scoville in the early 20th cen­ tury, and is used to compare the mouth­ burning properties of chilli peppers. The scale was originally created to assess the pharmaceutical properties of peppers, ex­ tracts of which have ironically been found to be painkillers.

The pungency (or 'heat') and flavour of a particular chilli pepper vary with spe­ cies, and cultivation method. This means that if two jalapeño peppers are grown in two different regions, one could make you gasp desperately for water to cool your mouth whilst the other provokes no re­ sponse at all. Naturally, this becomes a problem for food manufacturers who source their peppers from more than one site, as they cannot guarantee that their

The design of the study was highly logical, with no aversion to measur­ ing the pain felt after stinging more intimate areas of the body. Overall, 25 locations on the body were as­

sessed, with stings applied in triplic­ ate to each area over the course of 38 days. The pain felt after each sting was rated relative to an initial calib­ ration sting on the forearm. The work was carried out before Smith performed his usual work with the insects in order that no accidental stings could offset his calibration.

The bees selected for stinging were guard bees, which monitor the en­ trance to the hive, as it was reasoned that these bees would be more likely to sting under natural conditions than others of different position. In­ terestingly, results from the three “stinging rounds” were very consist­ ent, with nostrils, lips and penis shaft being the most painful loca­ tions on which to experience a sting.

The side of the body to which the sting was applied did not have any effect on the pain encountered. When considering the results, it is obvious

foods will deliver the same kick every time. Prior to the development of the Scoville scale, there was no way by which to measure the heat response produced by a particular pepper.

There are a number of compounds as­ sociated with pepper pungency, but the fa­ miliar sizzling of the palate is primarily due to the detection of the compound cap­ saicin on the tongue. At the time, taste­ testing was found to be a more accurate manner of measuring spiciness than any laboratory method. A small amount of the dried pepper was dissolved in alcohol, and a number of dilutions were prepared using sugar water. The increasingly diluted solutions were then given to five seasoned tasters, until three out of five can no longer feel the effects of the pepper. In principle, the more pungent the chilli pep­ per, the more water is required before the spiciness can no longer be noticed, and the higher the Scoville rating. The world’s hottest pepper is the aptly named ‘Caro­ lina Reaper’, and has a Scoville rating of

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that stings applied around a given site of the body produced comparable pain ratings – for example, stings to behind the ear and to the back of the neck were both giving a scoring of 5.3 (on a scale of one to ten, with one being the least painful and ten being the most painful). No concrete ex­ planation could be offered as to why some regions of the body (sometimes rather counterintuitively) experi­ enced more pain than others after Use the reference style for captions stinging occurred.

Now that it has been determined that different insects are capable of evoking different pain responses, and that the pain experienced is de­ pendent on the location of the sting, the question that is left is this: why is this so? The answer’s uncertainty provides plenty of room for us to let the laughter die down, wonder, and then experiment.

References [1] Ig Nobel Prizes website, available at http://www.improbable.com [2] Honey bee sting pain index by body location, M. L. Smith, PeerJ, 2014, 2:e338 [3] The Worst Places to Get Stung By A Bee: Nostril, Lip, Penis, Ed Young, Phenomena blog, National Geographic website, 2014 Debbie is a chemistry undergraduate at the University of Strathclyde. This piece was specialist edited by Kim Wood and copy­edited by Matthew Hayhow.

approximately two million Scoville heat units.

The Scoville scale is not without its limitations. With the advance of modern analytical techniques, taste­testing is per­ haps no longer the most sensitive method for quantification of capsaicin content of a chill pepper. Tasters can only complete a small number of tests per day before either becoming accustomed to the heat produced or burning their mouths. Fur­ thermore, the organisation of such panels considering the vast number of peppers that must be tested daily is a difficult task. Computational methods or analysis by high­performance liquid chromato­ graphy are now in widespread use by many companies to predict the heat of a chilli pepper based on capsaicin content, considered by some to be a more reliable and more efficient method. However, oth­ ers argue that using laboratory methods does not allow for the entire spicy sensa­ tion to be registered. The heated debate continues.

15

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Umair Iqbal

DRIVERLESS CARS I

magine if everyone could get around easily and safely, regard­ less of their ability to drive. Time spent commuting could be time spent doing what you want to do.

Deaths from traffic accidents could be reduced dramatically, especially since 94% of accidents in the U.S. involve human error” [1]. Google’s stated vision of driverless cars are no longer confined to the realm of Hollywood movies and science fic­

of driving your car.

Many of the technologies and cam­ eras have actually been available in some form for many years and even exist in cars today. However, the real magic happens when all this comes together. If we take Google’s Self­ driving car project as an example, it has a Lidar sensor on its roof to ‘see’ the road and identify lane markings, pavements and edges of roads [2].

This sensor works by sending out

tion, they may already be cruising on a road close to you. If you happen to live in California and see Google’s ‘Pod’ conducting road tests or live in selected UK towns and cities such as Milton Keynes, Bristol, Coventry and Greenwich where the ‘Lutz Pod’ trials are currently happening.

Autonomous vehicles have been tipped heavily as the future mode of transport. However, before you de­ cide to jump in and take a seat, you may want to learn more about the numerous technologies that power and drive autonomous vehicles.

Creating driverless cars is not an easy task ­ several different techno­ logies and sensors have to be finely tuned and coordinated in tandem to substitute for a real human behind the wheel. Firstly, a navigation sys­ tem superior to today's GPS. In ad­ dition, a system to recognise and eventually ‘predict’ dynamic condi­ tions on the road ahead based on previously captured data, and fi­ nally, an interface where all the sensors and systems are brought to­ gether into one seamless operation

several low intensity laser beams in­ to its surroundings and measuring the light that bounces off objects in its way, which is then returned to the sensor. This enables the device to create a 3D map of its surroundings.

It also allows it to calculate how far an object is from the car by measur­ ing the time it takes for the beams to return, with quite an impressive range of 200m.

There is a camera on the front windshield panel, to provide close­ range vision for the car to identify objects, such as pedestrians and oth­ er road users. Just as a driver needs to follow the rules of the road, as does the self­driving car. So this re­ markable camera can also detect and record information on road signs and traffic lights. Intelligent software can process this information and decide which action the car should take, all in a fraction of a second.

The real challenge for a driverless car is to react to unexpected obstacles or disruptions on the road.

To avoid collisions, there are four radars in each corner of the car’s

16 WWW.THE-GIST.ORG

bumpers which monitor distance.

This ensures the required gap is kept from the traffic in front and allows it to adapt to traffic speed. It is also an important safety feature, as it recog­ nises pedestrians walking near the vehicle. We can all relate to the nightmare of having to park a car ­ well fear not, as two ultrasonic sensors embedded in the rear wheels ensure the self­driving car can also park itself. The days of accidental bumps and scrapes are over.

The outside sensors of the car may be important for smooth self­driving, but it is the inside that’s vital in helping the car understand its loca­ tion. Autonomous cars could not rely on GPS systems alone for providing them with their location, as they have a error margin of several meters, which can mean the differ­ ence between driving behind or into the car in front. Instead, a variety of internal sensors measuring location points ensures that as the car travels, its internal map is updated with collected data. Currently, the Google self­driving car is pre­mapped before it goes out to drive, but it is possible to envision a scenario where a car can drive a new route it has never ‘seen’ before and be able to ac­ curately map it.

Even with all the sensors and oth­ er technologies in place, a driverless car needs to react to the conditions on the road like a human would. It is the difficult task of engineers and ar­ tificial intelligence specialists to pro­ gram self­driving cars to react to the dynamics and variability of the road.

The core of this challenge lies in ef­ fectively programming the car to re­ act to common road signs and signals. For example, if a cyclist ges­ tured to make a manoeuvre, then the self­driving car would slow down to

S

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Umair Iqbal

Umair shines light on the impressive technology hidden behind the self-driving cars of the future Image credit: Jaguar MENA via Flickr.com

allow the cyclist to turn. In the case of Google’s project, shape and motion signs have been programmed before­ hand into the system.

These may seem like very simple exercises, but the camera sensor coupled with radars have to work to­ gether in executing an action on the road. More importantly the room for error is virtually zero; gestures can­ not be misinterpreted as they could result in fatal collisions. The work of specialists in this field will form a crucial part of the human­like exper­ ience we would receive when driving in (or alongside) such a vehicle.

The vast array of connected sensors that drives the autonomous system creates room for vulnerabilit­ ies. With a computer steering the wheel, there is a certain danger of hacking attacks or viruses plaguing

the system with the potential to take control of a vehicle. The integrity and robustness of systems can only be fully determined once they are manufactured and have undergone testing to be made available to the public.

I return to the vision presented at the beginning of this article, of a world where any person regardless of physical abilities or the ability to drive can get around, and a world where accidents can be massively re­ duced, saving lives. Google’s testing is one such example of existing tech­ nologies already at our fingertips, which has overcome challenges that would simply have not been possible ten years ago. There are increasingly more organisations and researchers exploring this field and laws are cur­ rently being developed in California

to govern the use of autonomous vehicles. Therefore, it is only a mat­ ter of time until they are available in a showroom (or perhaps an online store) near you.

Umair is currently studying to­ wards an MA in Politics at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Rebecca Douglas and copy­ edited by Rebecca Laidlaw.

References [1] Google on “Why self-driving cars matter”, google.com/selfdrivingcar [2] To learn more about Google’s self-driving car project, visit: google.com/selfdrivingcar

Image credit: Michael Shick via Wikimedia Commons

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17

SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Kirsty McLean

DOPPELGÄNGER A REAL POSSIBILITY OR A TRICK OF THE EYES? T

he occurrence of doppelgängers has been used widely in paranormal and horror stories, where the‘double’ is often perceived as a portent of bad luck for those who see them – a ghost or devil out to torment the living person that they look like1. In more recent years the term has simply been taken to mean two people who look alike, and with increased use of social media worldwide the number of people claiming to have met their doppel­ gänger is on the rise. Speciality websites such as Twin Strangers have been created with the simple aim of making it easier than ever to meet your ‘double’2.

So what’s the likelihood of you running into your doppelgänger to­ morrow? Well, according to re­ searchers at the University of Adelaide, it’s a little less than one in a trillion3. In the study, they searched for duplicate faces using

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eight facial metric traits measure­ ments of facial features such as the eyes, lips and nose in an anthropo­ metric database. Anthropometry is the science behind facial and body shape and size4. Even when using just seven facial metrics, it was found that out of the 4000 parti­ cipants, zero facial matches were found. Descriptive traits are cur­ rently still used to assist with indi­ vidual identification e.g. by means of a facial composite (a police sketch)..

The issue with these traits is that they are subjective; after all, not everyone may describe my eyes as green or my jaw as square, whereas I would. The researchers at Adelaide therefore used metrics in their study as an objective way to measure whether two faces are deemed to be “duplicate” or not. It seems absurd, therefore, that so many people have claimed to have met their doppel­ gänger when the science suggests it's

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impossible – so what’s the catch?

Unsurprisingly, most scientists are unwilling to deny the possibility of doppelgängers, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t dubious about their existence either. Some people believe that the perception of doubles is of­ ten based on certain facial expres­ sions or mannerisms5. Once again, reference is made to the subjectivity of the matter; while one individual might see a resemblance or “double”, another person may see no similarity at all between the individuals con­ cerned. Moreover, there is of course the matter of family resemblance.

The way we look is influenced by our genes, making it much more plaus­ ible for us to look like our family than a complete stranger. I’m often told that I look like my dad, which as a twenty two year old woman is de­ lightful news. But, that’s not to say that genetics tells the entire story – the environment we grow up in also

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Written by Firstname Lastname

Use the reference style for captions

Image credit: Emily Breen

plays a large part, as do our personal experiences. A good example of this is long standing couples who look more alike over time. This phenomenon is founded on the principle that over time, partners tend to unconsciously mimic each other’s facial expressions in order to best empathize with one another. This in turn leads to their faces changing over time by means of matching laughter and frown lines, etc. so that they look more similar6.

Another difficulty with finding doppelgängers is the way that we look at faces7. While one individual might read a face in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, etc. another person may focus on the nose first of all. This dif­ ference in facial interpretation alters the impact of particular facial fea­ tures, and therefore changes our en­ tire perception of someone’s face.

Consequently, we all see each other in different ways – making it even more unlikely to be able to establish a doppelgänger at a glance.

This all shows just how difficult it really is to determine how much two people look alike based solely on physical features, and in actual fact, that’s why the science doesn’t match up with the real world. So who’s right? The science, undoutedly. After

all, when comparing faces we look at the expressions that people wear, their laughter or frown lines, and we also take into consideration how someone does their hair and whether they wear glasses or not. It is easy, therefore, to be fooled into thinking that two people look alike when they are of the same stature and have similar hair colours; this “verification bias” occurs when we shape the facts to fit our own mental picture.

So: are duplicates, look alikes and doppelgängers real? The science says no and I’m inclined to believe it, no matter what “evidence” look alike matching sites may provide. Indeed, taking a closer look at the apparent photographic “proof” after writing this article has shown that these doppelgängers share slightly differ­ ent facial features, whether it’s the way their eyes are set or the size and shape of their lips. This reiterates the idea that while we think we’re seeing a doppelgänger, what we’re really seeing is a stranger with whom we may share the same hair colour, face shape, or eye colour. It seems then, that doppelgängers are a simple trick of the eyes ­ the mind's way of making us see familiarity in every face we encounter.

Kirsty is a chemistry undergraduate at the University of Strathclyde. This pice was specialist edited by Charlie Stamenova and copy­ed­ ited by Nia Linkov.

References: [1] Google: listverse.com: disturbing-tales-ofdoppelgängers [2] www.twinstrangers.net [3] Google: Are human faces unique - A metric approach to finding single individuals without duplicates in large samples [4] www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/anthropometry/ [5] telegraph.co.uk: Could you track down your doppelgänger [6] M.A. Fugère., J.P. Leszczynski & A.J. Cousins. The Social Psychology of Attraction and Romantic Relationships, Palgrave, 2015.

[7] www.scienceline.org: do doppelgängers exist

19 WWW.THE-GIST.ORG

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Yayayamamamama via Flickr.com

SOUNDSCAPES WHAT'S ALL THIS NOISE ABOUT? W

alking around in Manhattan, New York, you can find a hid­ den gem ­ a beautiful park with green walls of plants and a stunning waterfall. It’s a little oasis in the middle of the city, engulfed by the quietness and gentle sounds of the flowing water and shaking leaves.

Built in the late 1960’s, Paley Park is a great example of a “sound­ scape”: a practise and terminology defined in the late 1970’s, by Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer and environmentalist. He was a pioneer of environmental acoustics, starting off by raising awareness of the im­ portance of the sound environment which surrounds us, be it in the city, or in the great outdoors. In develop­ ing the soundscape terminology he used an analogy to a physical land­ scape; he separated the background noises from the sound landmarks ­ “soundmarks” ­ like waterfalls or

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fountains, distinct elements of a soundscape.

In an urban setting, noise man­ agement has been quietly accompa­ nying our lives for decades. We’ve accepted the acoustic barriers placed on the sides of busy streets and mo­ torways as an integral part of the city landscape ­ yet we only really associate sound design and our sens­ itivity to it with concert halls and the interior architecture of our homes and offices. As a society, we’ve over­ looked the fact that growing cities don’t grow in silence. The need for the recognition of the importance of the acoustic environment around us grows with them.

Since Schafer’s pioneering work, there have been numerous global ef­ forts focusing on noise as a nuisance – creating sound maps of cities and introducing further improvements in approaches aimed at reducing noise levels. Initially lacking were initiat­

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ives, which would treat a soundscape ­ and in particular a soundscape of a city ­ as a complex phenomenon, as discussed by Lex Brown, a Griffith University professor with a back­ ground in urban studies and engin­ eering. Professor Brown’s expertise and suggestions on soundscaping come from his work on transport sys­ tems and the resulting noise pollu­ tion within cities, as well as his experience in urban design. He ar­ gues that the phenomenon of sound­ scape should be shaped by utilizing both noise management techniques as well as the preservation and intro­ duction of already­present sounds, masking the noise with the sounds we enjoy. Even though the idea of re­ cycling noise seems unusual, it has been employed already in Paley Park; attenuated traffic noises have become a backing track to the beauti­ ful sound of the waterfall.

Since the early 2000’s, awareness

SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Agnieszka Klawite

of the impact of the sound environ­ ment on our standard of living and our wellbeing has been growing. In 2007, a European initiative, COST ­ “Soundscapes of European Cities and Landscapes” ­ was commissioned, in which a number of work­groups com­ posed of international experts fo­ cused on addressing specific questions with regards to city sound­

scapes. How do we perceive them and how do they affect us?

Laboratory based and field studies have shown that our perception of acoustic comfort depends on both acoustic and visual factors and often the sound source itself matters more to us when deciding on comfort than simply the level of noise. For in­ stance, when hearing sound of a wind­turbine but being presented with a different image, i.e. a pleas­ ant landscape, people rate it as less annoying than when they are presented with the sound of a wind turbine together with an image of a wind turbine. Working Group 1 of the COST initiative focused on un­ derstanding how the whole environ­ ment, from the perception, architecture and social point of view affects people’s expectations and comfort of a soundscape. The task of this work group is at the core of why our sound environment matters, and how by altering it, we can enhance our quality of life.

Further initiatives such as the Soundscape Park Project in Belfast, a fully designed soundscape in the form of a sonic garden, have been created to help us better understand our experiences of soundscaping. A number of speakers strategically placed around a beautiful com­ munity garden do not only create an idyllic park with singing birds and fountains, but also, at given times, let you experience other sound­ scapes, such as being in the middle of a jungle!

Notably, there are numerous urb­ an parks around the world with dis­ guised audio systems ­ sonic gardens ­, carefully designed to create a calm oasis and a relaxing experience for the visitors, with the most long­ standing tradition of these found in Italy. Italian undertakings usually

involve temporary installations in parks, which repeatedly take place in city parks in Florence, Milan and Rome. They are rolled out not only by researchers but also business ven­ tures comprising of engineers, acous­ ticians and scientists in initiatives such as Architettura Sonora, which get involved in urban sound design projects all over the world. Sonic gar­

dens allow for exploration combined with research, prior to the installa­ tions ­ the noise pollution levels are assessed (if not known) and later, the installation introduces sounds that visitors yearn for when strolling around during lunch­time, after a busy day of work, or at the weekend.

Ultimately however, sonic gardens aside, the urban soundscape concept is being implemented without the need for artifi­ cial enhancement in the form of speaker systems.

This was seen in a 2012 joint venture between the City Council of Bil­ bao and a private com­ pany, Tecnalia, which resulted in the renova­ tion of General Latorre Square. The company reported that following restoration, the number of visitors doubled, and there was an over 40% in­ crease in people’s assess­ ment of the square as being calm and safe. Furthermore, according to the measurements, the new design also decreased the noise pollution levels by 3dB. The success story of the Bilbao project proves that smart sound design can greatly enhance visitors’ experiences and comfort, as it led to a transform­ ation of an unattractive public space into a sought­after and ap­ preciated place of relaxation.

With the boom of new tech­ nologies, breakthroughs in transportation, and exponen­ tially growing cities, we are trying to come up with an equation for a perfect living­ working environment and maintained emotional happi­ ness. In this frantic quest we must not forget about the im­

portance of the acoustic environment around us ­ especially the quiet spaces we need to be able to focus and work well, or just gather our thoughts and rest. Just because we can’t see noise doesn’t mean it isn’t driving us all mad ­and soundscap­ ing might just be the solution we’ve been looking for!

This article was written by Agnieszka Klawiter and copy­edited by Rebecca Baird.

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AWESOME COVER ART

BY JAMES MARNO