theGIST Issue 4

INTERVIEW

LUNAR MI S S I O N ON E

SOLVE C R I ME WI T H T H E N UM BE R 1

NOT SO STUPID INVESTIGATING N E A N D E RTH A L BEHAVIOR

CREATIVE C OM P U T E R S

TH E N E W ART T YPES

CAN TROPHY HUNTING SAVE CONSERVATIONISM? O R A R E WE P U T T I N G O U R H E A D S I N T H E L I O N ' S M O U T H ?

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

08

THE EDITORIAL

THE EDITORIAL T

rophy hunting. What are your first thoughts? The editors at theGIST immediately imagine arrog­ ant gun­wrangling animal haters, shooting what they like, when they like, and taking heads as trophies to show their friends back home. Re­ minding us of a time gone by, where the wealthy would be free at the weekends, so why not go out and kill something? For these people conser­ vation would be the last thing on their minds. Or would it?

The feature article in this issue has made us rethink our position.

We’re still not comfortable with the idea of hunting as a sport, but on page 6 James D. Burgon presents a case that leaves us a lot less decided.

Pragmatically at least, it seems that

trophy hunting may be able to have a positive impact on conservation ef­ forts. Provoking prolonged pondering for anti­hunting conservationists.

Continuing the pondering theme on page 12, Yulia Revina and Stephanie Boyle ask a simple ques­ tion with not such a simple answer ­ which is more useful: basic or ap­ plied research? With governments making researchers compete more and more for funding, and putting an emphasis on science that will have useful applications, never has an an­ swer to this question been more im­ portant. But what if your research doesn’t have an immediate use, and the government won’t fund you, what do you do then?

Bold as it may seem, one answer

is to ask the public themselves for the money. Lunar Mission One has managed just that, by securing over £600k from members of the public keen to make this trip to the moon a reality. On page 9 Sean Leavey speaks to Professor Graham Woan about the project.

Science is often about questions.

Why does this happen? When will it stop? What will happen next? In this issue we try to answer some of the tough ones. Can trophy hunting help conservation? When is science use­ ful? Which science should we fund?

But before you read on, you should ask yourself one question ­ do you want to know?

12 Basic vs Applied

19 Landing on a Comet

CONTENTS 4 The Universe's Favourite Number Timothy Revell

6 Hunting for a Conservation Solution James D. Burgon

9 Lunar Mission One Sean Leavey

Yulia Revina & Stephanie Boyle

14 Creativity Rewired Ida Emilie Steinmark

16 What the Neanderthals Gave Us Teodora Aldea

Lynne Sinclair

22 Suicide on a Molecular Level Jessica Mclaren

24 Power to Gas Lorna Christie

THE TEAM Editors-in-Chief Timothy Revell & Ida Emilie Steinmark Artists and Layout George Bell, Erin Kate, James Marno, Jessica Mclaren, Timothy Revell, Yulia Revina, Ida Emilie Steinmark

Submissions Editor Eloise Johnston Specialist Editors Kevin Donkers, Rebecca Douglas, Jo Foo, Olivia Kirtley, Timothy Revell, Barry Robertson, William Rooney, Ida Emilie Steinmark, Paul Walker

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Head of Copy-Editing Charlie Stamenova Copy Editors Jessica Bownes, Nina Divorty, Matthew Hayhow, Nia Linkov, Rebecca Muir, Barry Robertson, Charlie Stamenova

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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

THE UNIVERSE'S FAVOURITE NUMBER

AND HOW IT HELPS US CATCH CRIMINALS T

he universe has a favourite number, and the secret service use this fact to check bank accounts for fraudulent activity. Don’t believe it? Read on....

Let’s run a little experiment. Take the first 25 articles on theGIST web­ site. Write down every number that appears in an article and take the first digit. We won’t include dates because they have been too heavily influenced by us humans, and not the universe.

After listing all of these numbers, what would you expect the distribu­ tion to look like? Perhaps you would expect to see an even spread of 1s, 2s, 3s...etc. In fact, the universe

seems to fundamentally prefer the number 1. The articles featured more 1s than any other number, fol­ lowed by 2s, decreasing in frequency all the way down to 9.

When Frank Benford first dis­ covered this strange phenomenon, now known as Benford’s law, he thought that he must have made a mistake. “How can the universe have a favourite number?” he thought, and so went on a mission to collect data. He collected lengths of rivers, population sizes, molecular weights, physical constants, baseball statist­ ics, and any other set of numbers that he could get his hands on.

Frank was so obsessed with under­

*Our sample is pretty close to the figures that Benford’s law suggests. If we kept counting articles, we would have got closer and closer to the theoretical distribution. The articles used were the first 25 feature articles on Sunday 7th December.

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standing the universe’s preference that by the time he came to write his first paper describing the phenomen­ on, he had collected over 20, 000 ob­ servations. Startlingly, nearly all of them followed the pattern that around 30% of the numbers started with a 1, and around 5% of numbers started with a 9. Meaning that there were 6 times more 1s than 9s!

Fundamentally, the universe seems to prefer the number 1. But the great thing is that this fact can be used to catch criminals.

Suppose that a group of gangsters were using a restaurant as a front for their criminal activities. To make their illegal income seem legitimate, every evening they create a series of fake customers that all pay different amounts of money to the restaurant.

They then pay the fake customers’ bills using money that was earned il­ legally. To an outsider, these transac­ tions look like any ordinary cash payment between a customer and the restaurant. Unless, that is, you use Benford’s law.

Bank accounts follow Benford’s law almost exactly, but the gangsters aren’t aware of this. Just like most people, when they choose “random” numbers to cook their books, they make sure that they are dispersed evenly, representing 1s just as often as 9s. Unfortunately for the gang­ sters, when a forensic accountant comes along and analyses the res­ taurant’s books, they realise that they do not obey Benford’s law and this immediately flags up the fraudulent activities.

Evidence obtained using Benford’s

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

law can be, and has been, used as admissible evidence in court. In fact, this same technique can be used in all sorts of other areas, wherever fraudulent activities may be present, be that clinical trials that are sus­ pected of being tampered with or elections that are suspected of being rigged. It has even been suggested that before Greece joined the Euro, their finances were manipulated, as they didn’t follow Benford’s law, so that they would meet the criteria for being part of the monetary union.

Whatever the situation, if the uni­ verse’s preference for lower first di­ gits is not upheld, foul play may be afoot.

But why does the universe have a preference at all?

One of the simplest ways to under­ stand Benford’s law is to imagine a town with a population of 100 people. For the town to reach 200 people and change the first digit of its population size, it would have to double, or in other words increase by 100%. But for the town to increase from 200 to 300 people only requires an increase of 50%, making it a lot easier. This means that populations tend to stick around in the low hun­ dreds, thousands, and millions, and quickly move past the higher num­ bers. So when someone like Frank Benford looks at a collection of town population sizes, he finds a prefer­ ence for town sizes beginning with the number 1. What’s so magical about Benford’s law is that this same argument seems to apply to all data, not just populations.

Benford Number 1. Credit: Erin Wallace

Many people find Benford’s law pretty surprising, which is exactly why it is useful for catching fraud.

The reason why it is so surprising is that we humans are just not very good at telling whether something is random or not. So presented with the vast collection of the world’s data, our intuition tells us to expect the same number of 1s as 9s, but this just isn’t the case. To top it off, our intuition is so strong that even when shown otherwise we often choose to ignore the evidence.

In the early days of the iPod, the Apple team introduced a mathemat­ ically perfect shuffle feature. Once shuffle was activated, you could be

absolutely certain that your playlist would contain your favourite music in a truly random order. Unfortu­ nately, the shuffle feature was math­ ematically random, not intuitively random. This led to users around the world complaining about the randomness of the shuffle function, Apple to reprogram the feature, and Steve Jobs to say the famous line: “we're making it less random to make it feel more random.”

Benford’s law tells us that the universe has a favourite number, and it should be the favourite num­ ber for gangsters too. To paraphrase some handy advice from Steve Jobs,

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“gangsters, make your books more random, by making them feel less random.”

CONTRIBUTORS Author Timothy Revell is a PhD student in computer science at the University of Strathclyde. He tweets at @timothyrevell.

This piece was specialist edited by Barry Robertson and copy-edited by Charlie Stamenova, Nina Divorty, Matthew Hayhow, Nia Linkov and Rebecca Muir.

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HUNTING FOR A CONSERVATION SOLUTION

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Credit: Earth Touch via Flickr.com

LIFE SCIENCES

LIFE SCIENCES

illing animals to save them sounds counterintuitive, yet this is essentially what proponents of conservation hunting suggest. The idea that trophy hunting (the act of pursuing and killing an animal for sport) can have a role in conservation (the act of protecting wildlife) has been hotly debated for decades. Pro­ ponents and opponents cite argu­ ments from economics to morality, often laced with ideology. Do anim­ als have an intrinsic right to life or do they need an economic value? To paraphrase Star Trek’s Spock, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one?

In mid­2014, the embers of this

fore he could shoot any.

While sport hunting in the USA is often contentious, the real battle is being waged in Africa. With its rich megafauna, Africa has always attrac­ ted trophy hunters, with their main goal to bag the Big Five: lion, ele­ phant, rhinoceros, leopard and Cape buffalo. And here is where some of the big contention lies. Apart from the Cape buffalo, which is of least concern, these animals range from near threatened to critically en­ dangered on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list. What justification could be given for hunting such vulnerable animals? Surely it is against the

debate were fanned into a social me­ dia wildfire by the activities of a Texan cheerleader, Kendall Jones. A self­proclaimed conservationist, she sparked controversy by posting pic­ tures of her African trophy kills on Facebook. In the months that fol­ lowed, an outpouring of condemna­ tion flowed. It is an easy issue to get emotional over.

However, Kendall Jones is not alone. The same credo was echoed by American hedge fund investor and philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones II when he received an honorary doc­ torate from the University of Glas­ gow in November and delivered the second annual Andrew Carnegie Lecture: ‘The Business of Conserva­ tion’. A keen hunter himself and a proponent of the role of hunting in conservation, he told us about one of his heroes, former United States president Theodore Roosevelt.

This “conservation president” was instrumental in protecting over 930,000 km2 of public land in Na­ tional Parks (NP). Roosevelt’s love for nature was almost religious, speaking of Yosemite NP as "…a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man." But he also loved to hunt, and the disgust he felt at the ecological destruction of his homeland was allegedly sparked by the loss of the great bison herds be­

principles of conservation?

The argument is straightforward for many– an animal is a resource or a pest. With increasing demands on African land, from urban develop­ ment to agriculture, it is difficult to justify the large swathes set aside for conservation. However, if these an­ imals have a “use” then there is an incentive to protect them.

In 2007, sport hunting was legal in 23 African countries. This drew in over 18,500 tourists and $200m(US), maintaining thousands of rural jobs [1]. These hunting estates reportedly covered 22% more land than Nation­ al Parks in these contries, at 1.4 mil­ lion square kilometres, and, when

managed correctly, quotas were low; typically 2­5% of the male population.

Hunting incentives have even driven the recovery of species, like the growth of southern white rhinoceros in South Africa from fewer than 100 individuals to over 11,000 [2].

Hunting can also benefit local res­ idents. A study of 150 big game hunters [2] revealed that 86% prefer some of the fee going into local com­ munities and half are willing to pay an equal price to shoot a problem an­ imal, which would be killed regard­ less.

Human­animal conflict is increasing with land demand; wheth­ er it is park rangers killing crop­eat­ ing buffalo or cattle ranchers poisoning lions, if they are going to die anyway, could it make sense to take the more lucrative option? A buf­ falo hunting licence can cost $2000, for a lion the fees range between $10,000 and $60,000.

While hunting may seem like a reasonable (if distasteful to some) conservation initiative, concept does not always translate into practice.

Recent studies on North American predators (e.g. wolves) have shown that low levels of hunting increase livestock predation due to behavioural disruption. There are concerns about possible negative impacts on the so­ cial and genetic structure of popula­ tions if the best males, the longed­for trophy, are removed [2]. Over­exploit­ ation, inadequate redistribution of revenue, corruption and ethical con­ cerns over canned hunting (where semi­captive animals are released in­ to an enclosure for a guaranteed kill) are regular criticisms [2].

Perhaps the most damning con­ demnation of sport hunting in Africa is a social issue. Many African species are endangered due to colonialists be­ ing overly trigger­happy when they first arrived. Now it seems that native people are being evicted from their Credit: Lord Mountbatten via Wikimedia Commons

K

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LIFE SCIENCES

ancestral lands to provide rich West­ erners with hunting estates. For ex­ ample, there has been an ongoing battle over the intended forced evic­ tion of Masai people in parts of Tan­ zania.

Then there is the ever­present spectre of poaching (illegal hunting).

The desire for bush meat, traditional medicine and decorative trinkets is pushing many species close to extinc­ tion. However, it is important to realise that hunting and poaching are separate issues and should not be conflated. Perhaps a legitimate source of these “products” could even help reduce unchecked poaching pressure.

Opponents of hunting often claim that ecotourism offers an alternative.

Enjoy the hunt? Why not finish by shooting a photograph rather than a bullet? Granted, the revenue from each individual tourist is less, but it is affordable to the masses. In 2002, Africa Geographic drew up a hypo­ thetical comparison between a hunt­

ing and photographic safari in Bot­ swana’s Okavango Delta [3]. In it, they hypothesised that ecotourism could generate greater revenue ($1.55 million vs. $448,000 per year), more employment (76 permanent staff vs. 2 permanent and 12 season­ al) and better wages ($6.40 vs. $4.80

graphic safaris are not viable, but hunting can thrive. You might get the odd professional photographer, but it will not draw the numbers needed to compete. Nine out of ten hunters are even willing to preferentially hunt in areas unsuitable for ecotourism.

Also, without strong legislative safe­

per day). If it holds true, it is a very exciting idea and could replace hunt­ ing as economic incentive to con­ serve wildlife.

However, ecotourism only works in open scenic locations with charis­ matic animals. In dense forests or politically unstable regions photo­

guards, estates could be turned over to developers or agriculture if hunt­ ing is abandoned.

For many conservationists, myself included, it is hard to connect to anyone who hunts for sport. There is a huge gulf in ideology, morality and ethics. In our ideal world sport hunt­ ing would be forsaken, but this is not our ideal world. As we live through a period of unprecedented biodiversity loss, maybe we need to take a more pragmatic approach to conservation. Perhaps for now the unwavering need to become com­ promising. When handled correctly, hunting seems to offer a viable con­ servation opportunity, and maybe those in opposition need to focus on how best to regulate it rather than condemn it. Some will never be able to accepthunting as a conservation solution, but perhaps for now the needs of the many must be put above the one, or even the few.

References [1] Pickrell, J. (2007). Trophy Hunting Can Help African Conservation, Study Says.

National Geographic News.

[2] Lindsey, P. A. et al. (2006). Potential of trophy hunting to create incentives for wildlife conservation in Africa where alternative wildlife-based land uses may not be viable.

Animal Conservation.

[3] League Against Cruel Sports. (2004). The Myth of Trophy Hunting as Conservation.

CONTRIBUTORS Author James D Burgon is studying for a PhD in zoology and evolutionary biology at the University of Glasgow. He tweets at @JamesBurgon. This piece was specialist edited by Jo Foo and copy-edited

by Nina Divorty, Matthew Hayhow and Charlie Stamenova.

Hunting unchecked. Credit: Burton Historical Collection, DPL (Restored by PawełMM), via Wikimedia Commons.

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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

LUNAR MISSION ONE THE INTERVIEW

L

unar Mission One (LM1) is a mission to the Moon. “So what?” you might say. Indeed, we’ve already been there numerous times in the last half century. There is a differ­ ence with this one, however: the mis­ sion will be funded directly by members of the public and private companies, rather than governments, and the mission intends to go to the Moon’s until now unexplored south pole.

Although the Moon was the first body in the Solar System that we left Earth to visit, there are still many unanswered questions about how it formed, what it is made from and its feasibility as a host for a manned base in the future. That’s why scient­ ists behind LM1 feel it is time we went back, and they’re not intending to wait until governments decide it is time to do so.

Between November and December 2014, the LM1 project successfully raised over £600,000 via the crowd­ funding website Kickstarter. The project offered members of the public the ability to buy a ‘place in space’ by offering the chance to have a strand of hair or their name included in an archive on board the Moon­bound craft. The money raised will go to­ wards research and development of the concept and also towards man­ agement of plans to raise more funds from other sources. theGIST spoke to Professor Graham Woan, an astro­ physicist involved in the project based at the University of Glasgow. theGIST: LM1 is billed as a mission primarily to drill 20­100 m under the surface of the Moon at its south pole.

What might we learn from drilling below the surface that we didn’t learn from surface rocks brought back by the Apollo missions?

Graham: The Moon has had a pretty violent early history, and we know from Apollo that the surface layer, or regolith, consists of rubble and dust from billions of years of im­ pacts. Below a depth of about 10 m there is fractured bedrock and this is the primary target for LM1. The in­ tention is to study core samples from this layer to explore the history of the site and the Moon as a whole. The south pole contains a massive impact crater called the Aitken Basin, prob­ ably the most spectacular feature of the Moon, and the impact will have brought material up to this level from deep inside the Moon ­ maybe several tens of kilometres.

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theGIST: The recent Rosetta mis­ sion to land on comet 67P was watched by the world with fascina­ tion. It showed that there are many challenges to landing on a foreign body and drilling its surface. How do you intend to mitigate this risk in LM1?

Graham: The drilling is probably the greatest technological challenge of the mission, both because of the planned depth (maybe 100 m) and uncertainties about the loose materi­ al close to the surface. For shallow drilling down to a few centimetres, such as on comet 67P, you can live with a conventional twist drill or core cutter, but the technology has to

Credit: Kenneth Spencer via Flickr.com

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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

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change for deep drilling. theGIST: Why is the intended landing site the Moon’s previously untouched south pole?

Graham: The lunar south pole is probably the most interesting area on the Moon. As well as the Aitken Basin it contains regions that are al­ most perpetually in sunlight, and other regions that are perpetually shielded from both the Earth and the Sun. These dark regions are some of the coldest places in the sol­ ar system ­ about 30 kelvin (­243°C).

The illuminated rims of the south

cing side. theGIST: LM1 plans to have in­ struments on board to undertake ra­ dio astronomy. Can you explain what radio astronomy is?

Graham: Stars and galaxies gen­ erate light which we can study with optical telescopes. It came as something of a surprise to astro­ nomers in the early 20th century that celestial bodies also generate radio waves, and you can map the sky in radio in just the same way as with light. The things you 'see' are very different though: some are very

polar craters have a near permanent supply of solar energy and have a decent line of sight to the Earth, helping communication and opera­ tion. As far as other missions go, there have actually been rather few lunar landers since Apollo, and only one (the Chinese Chang'e 3 mission about a year ago) since the mid 1970s. We have only had good maps of the pole relatively recently, so the earlier missions played safe, and landed on the well­mapped Earth­fa­

spectacular such as jets of material from supermassive black holes, and some more prosaic such as the dif­ fuse glow of cosmic rays moving through the galaxy. theGIST: What might the Moon of­ fer as an environment that the Earth doesn’t as a site for radio as­ tronomy?

Graham: For some years the Moon (and especially the far side of the Moon) has been identified as a good place to carry out very low fre­

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quency radio astronomy. This type of astronomy is impossible from the Earth because the radio waves bounce off our ionosphere before they reach the ground. The far side of the Moon is good because it has very little ionosphere (if any) and is shielded from the Earth.

Deep astronomy at these wavelengths has never really been done before, so who knows what we will see. One of the primary ob­ jectives is to detect signals from the first atoms in the Universe, and see the structure of the uni­ verse at this early stage, between the big bang and the formation of the first stars. theGIST: For Earth observation, does the Moon offer an advantage over, for instance, small satellites in Earth’s orbit?

Graham: I don't think the Moon has a great advantage for Earth observation over satellites. The Moon is, after all, a satellite!

However there are niche applica­ tions where it helps to stand back from the Earth a long way, and studying the magnetosphere is one of those. theGIST: The Kickstarter has raised £600,000 so far for the mis­ sion. The eventual mission cost is estimated to be in the region of £500m! Is it worthwhile trying to raise such a small amount from the public when, should one get involved, a governmental organ­ isation could easily cover that ex­

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

tra 1% of the budget?

Graham: The Kickstarter funding is just that ­ the funds needed to start the project on a professional basis, and those involved at this stage are the real pioneers. There will still be the opportunity to re­ serve space in the archive during the planning stage, but the main income is set for several years further down the line. This is a new way to fund space exploration, based on the per­ sonal involvement of those members of the public who think it's a good idea. It's incredibly democratic ­ there is no place in it for "wasting taxpayers’ dollars" because it's all private money from enthusiasts. To put this in perspective, Americans spend $2bn each year just on Hal­ loween trick­or­treat sweets, which is twice what we are looking for over a 10­year period worldwide. theGIST: As you mentioned, the campaign is letting some donors send small objects to the Moon, such as strands of hair. Others will be al­ lowed to upload memories to a ‘vir­ tual’ time capsule to be preserved for the far future. These will be sent down the borehole after drilling has been completed. How will these items be preserved? Will electronic storage, much like old video cas­ settes and the occasional USB stick, become corrupt over time on the Moon?

Graham: The storage medium for the digital data is another area of Glasgow involvement in LM1. Con­

ventional storage media like USB sticks are too heavy and would not survive for millions of years on the Moon. We need something that will hold data in a compact form for maybe a billion years. Professor Doug Paul, director of the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre in Glasgow, is advising on the substrate we use to do this. Front­runners are silicon or diamond, and part of the next phase is to find the best choice. One scen­ ario might have data etched as pits on diamond wafers, and then fusing these wafers into solid diamond cyl­ inders. Reading this would be a chal­ lenge, but finding it would be a challenge too! We can assume whatever finds it will be pretty smart. It's important to realise how long a billion years is ­ we were amoebae a billion years ago. The lun­ ar borehole is actually a fantastic place to hold an archive over deep time. It is cold, thermally stable, shielded from damaging cosmic rays and unaffected by erosion, plate tec­ tonics, water and all of the other nas­ ties that we find on Earth over geological timescales. theGIST: Further in the future, are government agencies such as NASA at threat when we have private com­ panies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Planetary Resources and Lunar Mis­ sions Ltd starting to branch out into their traditional territory?

Graham: I would say that may well be the case. If, say, SpaceX can offer successful launches and satellite de­

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velopment at a fraction of the cost of the agencies, then the agencies will clearly lose sales. The space agencies have complicated remits and are sub­ ject to the plans of governments.

Sometimes this works to their ad­ vantage (the Apollo programme is a classic example), but it can also hold them back and science is often the first thing to be cut. theGIST: Finally, do you have an es­ timate for when we might see the mission being launched, if the project can find the remaining funding to un­ dertake it?

Graham: It's a 10­year project, so 2024/5. It seems like a long time, but the public will be involved every step of the way and it promises to be a very exciting run­up.

Thanks to Graham for his fantastic answers! If you would like to learn more about Lunar Mission One, or would like to buy a ‘place in space’ for a strand of your hair, then visit ht­ tp://www.lunarmissionone.com/.

CONTRIBUTORS Author Sean Leavey is studying for a PhD in physics at the University of Glasgow. He tweets at @SeanDSS. This piece was specialist edited by Rebecca Douglas and copy-edited by Jessica Bownes, Nia Linkov, Barry Robertson and Charlie Stamenova.

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SOCIAL SCIENCES

THE BIG QUESTION ...

Credit: A K M Adam via Flickr.com

I

Credit: Yulia Revina

magine you are reviewing two ap­ plications for research grants. The first project investigates a cell in­ volved in the olfactory system (the system used for your sense of smell); whereas the second project aims to develop a new treatment for spinal cord injuries. Based on this informa­ tion, which one would you fund?

Before you decide, it’s good to know that these two projects fall into two different ‘categories’ of research.

The first project falls into the basic research category, while the second is known as applied research. The two types are often seen as distinct from one another, but what exactly is the difference?

In short, the main differences between them are the goals and mo­ tivation behind the research. Basic research is often defined as the quest for new knowledge, motivated by curiosity, and implies work which does not have any immediate prac­ tical applications. This is in contrast to applied research, which is usually designed to build on existing re­ search and either refine applications that have already been developed (think software updating), or create something new and practical (think a new treatment plan, a new busi­ ness strategy, etc.).

Unfortunately, the two research directions are seen by some as un­ equal in terms of importance. The two types are indeed different, but is one really more important than the other? In this article, we’re going to look at what each type of research has given us, and why we think they are equally important.

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Basic research is often said to be “curiosity­driven science”, where the end goal is simply to gain new know­ ledge. From the offset, it does seem like this type of research doesn’t guarantee a successful or useful res­ ult, and it is this uncertainty that can cause controversy when funding is given to such projects.

For example, many people say that exploring our universe is not a good way to spend public money, while others disagree. For example, the re­ cent NASA Rosetta mission cost around €1.4 billion, and when you look at any internet forum on the topic (we looked at the scienceogram blog, for example), you see praise: “Rosetta is a monumental achieve­ ment and nobody can predict, with accuracy, what terrestrial benefits might accrue.” and criticism: “1.4 billion euros. What could have been done with this money to help the sick and hungry on earth? I re­ main very much unconvinced that this was the best use of so much money...”

Clearly, it’s much harder to see the immediate benefits and justification for spending so much taxpayer money on something that is travel­ ling to a comet approximately 317 million miles (510 million km) away from Earth.

However, there are a range of in­ ventions stemming from basic sci­ ence that have been beneficial. These include things like CAT scanners (first used to find imperfections in space components), ear thermomet­

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ers (first used to detect infrared en­ ergy to monitor the birth of stars), solar energy, smoke detectors, scratch resistant lenses and cord­ less tools to name but a few [1].

To go back to our hypothetical funding question: what has re­ search into olfactory cells given us?

Well, in October 2014, it was repor­ ted that a paralysed man had re­ ceived a transplant of olfactory cells grown in a lab directly into his spinal cord, and six months later he was able to walk again. [2]. This treatment was an unforeseen spin­ off from a basic research project finding that showed that nerve cells in the nasal cavity are continually being damaged and thus need to be replaced, suggesting that putting them into the spinal cord could provide a pathway for fibres to grow back.

As you can see, it’s often very hard to see what value research has or will have from the outset, which is why it’s vitally important that we fund this kind of research, despite the often uncertain economic re­ turn.

Applied research focuses more on applying existing knowledge to de­ velop more practical applications; often developing technology, im­ proving treatments, or answering general questions important to our everyday lives (such as what is causing increasing poverty or how can cyber security be increased) One of the best known applied re­ search areas is genetically modified (GM) crops. GM crops are those that have had their DNA manually

SOCIAL SCIENCES

BASIC VERSUS APPLIED RESEARCH? an opinion piece

altered with the aim of introducing better features into the crop species.

For example, crops can be engineered to be resistant to pests in the areas in which they grow, to improve the growth overall, or to improve the shelf life of the crop.

There are downsides (that is a whole discussion in itself), but overall GM crops have had a massive eco­ nomic benefit for the countries that use them; according to the Interna­

steam engine. George Porter (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) pointed out, "Thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to science” [3]. But why is this?

When it was invented, there was no formal understanding or scientific explanation for how the steam en­ gine actually worked. Thus, the de­ velopment of the steam engine inspired much research spanning over a century, and eventually lead to

tional Service for the Acquisition of Agri­Biotech Applications (ISAAA), the global market value of the GM crop now comes in at around 160 bil­ lion US dollars, a staggering amount of money. Their use has also helped alleviate poverty in some of the poorest regions of the world, by al­ lowing approximately 15 million small farmers grow larger quantities, and more robust crops. In terms of environmental benefits, their in­ creased use has saved 443 million kg of active ingredient of pesticides, re­ duced CO2 emissions by 19 billion kg (equivalent to taking ~9 million cars off the road), and saved 91 million hectares of land, all in 2010 alone.

Based on facts like these, it seems that applied research really does give you value for money.

There are also advances from ap­ plied research that have paved the way for new basic research ideas, the most famous example being the

the second law of thermodynamics.

As we can see, applied research is often easier to look at and see the ob­ vious benefits and, as such, often in society ­ and increasingly in aca­ demia ­ applied research tends to be valued higher, which dictates where the funding goes. But is this the right call?

This question of importance is an ever pressing issue nowadays, partic­ ularly when everyone is competing for increasingly limited grant fund­ ing. Due to heavy competition, there is pressure for research groups to provide research with obvious impact on society. Even when applying for grant money, researchers have to in­ clude an impact section, which demonstrates how their research will have a positive societal impact.

However, what should impact really mean? If we try defining impact as a “useful outcome” then that could ap­ ply to both basic and applied re­ search: basic being a long­term outcome whereas applied is short­ term.

Instead of focusing so heavily on impact nowadays, we think that a much more useful way to view sci­ entific research is not through divid­ ing it into two distinct categories and demanding applicable outcomes; we should instead, as a society, aim to blur the lines between basic and ap­ plied research and emphasise the be­ nefits of both. After all, who can say in advance what will be applicable, what will have impact, and what will reap the benefits of funding?

We hope we have shown that both categories of research are equally im­ portant, not entirely distinct from one another, and both can contribute to ‘knowledge’ and ‘application’ in their own way.

Finally, you still have to make your funding decision: olfactory cells or spinal cord treatment. Which are you going to fund?

References [1] NASA - What Have We Done For You Lately? Nasa Connections to Everyday Life.

[2] Walsh F. Paralysed man walks again after cell transplant. BBC News Online. 2014 [3] Christopher Llewellyn Smith. Joint Institute for Nuclear Research: What’s The Use of Basic Science?

CONTRIBUTORS Authors Stephanie Boyle and Yulia Revina are studying for PhDs in psychology at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Ida Emilie Steinmark and copy-edited by Matthew Hayhow, Barry Robertson and Charlie Stamenova.

Credit: Yulia Revina

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13

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS Credit by Saad Faruque via Flickr.com

CREATIVIT Y REWIRED Y

ou sit, laptop on desk, tapping your fingers lightly on the key­ board. You need a new idea, and preferably before bedtime. Unfortu­ nately, you have none – the one you did have an hour ago was, object­ ively as well as subjectively, com­ pletely rubbish. Staring at your screen, you wonder why there isn’t an app for this, like a digital inspira­ tion board tailored to your problem.

As you sit there, dreaming of a fu­ ture full of intelligent, inventive sta­ tionery, you have no idea that this exact issue is under avid investiga­ tion with visions even more far­ reaching than your own. Welcome to the field of computational creativity.

Whilst the human assisting creat­ ive computer is on top of the list for some research groups, others have taken on a possibly even more daunting task: to make their ma­ chine a creator in its own right. Both research directions require novel ex­ ploration of computing and creativ­ ity, and the picture they paint is, to say the least, astonishing.

One of the research projects focused on user­assisting creative computers

14 08

is the Concept Invention Theory pro­ ject, or CoInvent, focusing on cre­ ativity in mathematics and music [1]. The focus is a software which will consist of a general creative framework and components which will be specialised to a specific task, such as a music generator to trans­ late code into sound. They are aim­ ing to eventually make software that is able to aid humans in their creat­ ive work, but to do this, they must solve one of the biggest computation­ al challenges: how can a computer formulate original ideas?

Dr Daniel Winterstein [2], an arti­ ficial intelligence expert based at the University of Edinburgh and in­ volved with CoInvent, calls the pro­ ject ambitious. The idea is that an original concept can be made and evaluated by blending together two already­established ones. Winter­ stein says that a successful system would be genuinely creative, able to surprise its makers with new ideas.

However, ‘concept’ here doesn’t mean what we usually take it to mean. Human concepts are fluid, messy and subjective ­ computers need their concepts to be unambigu­ ous and definable. They are much more rigid and more amenable to computer reasoning, like “simplified black­and­white version of human

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concepts”, Winterstein explains.

Unfortunately, successfully blend­ ing concepts isn’t an easy task for computers. Let’s say a computer has been installed with Concept A (string) and Concept B (hook) and is looking at Project 1 (Make Washing Line). Both concepts contain a range of information which can be ar­ ranged (or ‘blended’) in different ways (just imagine all the ways you could use string and hooks!). This is where it becomes difficult; how does the computer know which of the many, many combinations of Con­ cepts A and B is a good combination, actually offering a solution to Project 1? This is especially difficult as we can’t specify which solution to search for it. The whole point is that it must come up with it itself.

The quest for creative computer assistants shouldn’t be interpreted as a slur on human creativity; hu­ mans are still awesome, Winterstein reassures. For now, the project isn’t thinking beyond tools which can either give inspiration or fill in de­ tails as a smart­aid. In the future though, it might prove useful in areas that humans tend to find par­ ticularly difficult. Particularly in maths­heavy areas such as chip­ design and quantum computing, there may be potential for creative

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

Meanwhile in London, Simon Colton of Goldsmiths College wants to cre­ ate an artist. As a professor of com­ putational creativity, he is focused on making his project, an ‘emotion­ ally aware’ computer called Painting Fool, as truly creative as possible [3]. Its software allows it to pick up on emotional cues through its cam­ era, such as smiles and frowns, and paint portraits accordingly, includ­ ing appropriate colour schemes and painting styles. It can also scan news sites and pick out theme words, then Google images repres­ enting those words, which will then be incorporated into art pieces; all done sensitive to the emotional con­ notations of those words.

That all sounds intriguingly close to what we’d call “a real artist” ­ ex­ actly what Colton ultimately wants to achieve. You might argue, however, that what makes a true artist isn’t necessarily just the ‘mak­ ing of new things’ but the inner life that inspires it. A range of objections regarding original inspiration and the subjective interpretation of the real world can be made ­ objections which are welcomed. Finding prob­ lems in the current state of com­ puter creativity doesn’t simply point out flaws with the machine, but with the working definition of creativity.

This highlights another aspect of the field, a reciprocal relationship with other creativity research.

Colton believes that the computer

angle is a special opportunity to study creativity. In his paper “Seven Catchy Phrases for Computational Creativity Research” (it is indeed catchy and easy to read, give it a go!)

[4], he argues that computational creativity researchers shouldn’t just sit back and wait for the philosoph­ ers and psychologists to tell them how to approach creativity. Instead, he says, “there will be ever­decreas­ ing circles of research where we in­

fluence research on natural creativ­ ity, then it influences us, and so on until we pinpoint and understand the main issues of creativity in both artificial and natural forms.” Or put more simply: by attempting to actu­ ally create creativity, this new field could help elucidate currently un­ known mechanisms.

The thought of creative computers might make some people shiver with dystopian views of a streamlined and grey future. It’s easy to feel challenged and anxious by a new frontier. However, we can’t possibly predict the exact positive and negat­ ive effects of such a paradigm shift ­ like we usually can’t with new, re­ volutionary technology. All we have to do is to remind ourselves of what life was like before the internet, be­ fore mobile phones, and how we thought about their imminent intro­ duction to our world.

Computing has changed how we think about a lot of things, and there seems to be no reason to think the same won’t be the case for creativity.

In the past, conversations about the advantages of creative computing might all have started with a hesit­ ant “sure, if that were possible ...”.

Today, we have at least one group of people asking “hmm, I wonder how you’d code that.” And, that’s a really exciting thing. What if your com­ puter could surprise you?

[1] Http://www.coinvent-project.eu/ [2] @winterstein [3] Painting Fool: www.thepaintingfool.com [4] Simon Colton’s paper: http://ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/ under Teaching

Credit by Serge Kij via Flickr.com

systems to help out in a big way.

The CoInvent group plans to showcase a simple demo in spring 2015. With it they hope to challenge the status quo. Winterstein sums up his vision, “Currently, computers support creativity, but, with some exceptions, they do so in a very mechanical way. The computer is a predictable tool, and the creative in­ spiration must come from the per­ son. What if the computer could surprise you?”

CONTRIBUTORS Author Ida Emilie Steinmark is studying for an BSc in chemistry at the University of Glasgow. She tweets at @iesteinmark. This piece was specialist edited

by Timothy Revell and copy-edited by Becca Muir, Jessica Bownes and Charlie Stamenova.

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15

LIFE SCIENCES

WHAT THE

N E A N D E RTH A L S GAVE US GAVE US

A Romanderthal. Credit: James Marno.

E

ver grunted at your mailman?

Ever bashed your head against the table in frustration when the in­ ternet went down? Ever eaten your sirloin steak with your bare hands because you only live once? Ever been called a Neanderthal for doing these things?

The word "Neanderthal" is a widely used insult, to the extent that even the Oxford Dictionary defines a Neanderthal as "an uncivilised, un­ intelligent, or uncouth man". We’ve grown so accustomed to these dis­

16

tant ancestors of ours being por­ trayed as crude, scruffy savages, driven by instinct, not evolved enough to be capable of reasoning and empathy. This kind of view ori­ ginated in the 1800s, when the first Neanderthal remains were dug up in the Neander valley in Germany and scientists didn’t quite know what to make of this unfamiliar, similar­ looking specimen.

Premature public opinion was di­ vided on the issue: on one side, there were people like Thomas Huxley,

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who was a passionate supporter of evolutionary theories emerging at the time. Huxley found many similarities between Neanderthal features and those of modern humans, surmising that the two species might be closely related. On the other side, geologist William King advocated that, judging by the physical differences between a human skull and a Neanderthal skull, one could only assume that the Neanderthal was more closely related to apes like chimpanzees or gorillas than to modern humans. In his 1859

LIFE SCIENCES

paper, The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal, King systematic­ ally compared a human skull with a Neanderthal skull and reached the conclusion that the Neanderthal must have been a “brute”, “incapable of moral and theositic conceptions”.

At a time when evolution was still a radical concept, shyly making a name for itself, it seems sensible that the latter opinion would have been favoured over the preposterous

Asia, but vestiges have also been found in surprising places. For ex­ ample, archaeologist George Ferenti­ nos and his colleagues [2] have found Neanderthalian tools and artifacts on remote islands in the Mediterranean Sea, suggesting that Neanderthals might have been bright enough to figure out how to navigate the seas long before humans.

Tools, adornments and wall carvings offered us for decades a

Today, Neanderthals are con­ sidered the most closely related spe­ cies to humans. We share a lot of features with them, but new findings have led scientists to believe that we might also share a lot of history (yes, that kind of history). Comparative ge­ nomics data suggests that, after mi­ grating from Africa about 120,000 years ago, humans got intimately ac­ quainted with Neanderthals [3] ­ in­ timately enough that as much as 7%

idea that humans had evolved over many millennia. As decades passed, however, evidence supporting the former theory kept piling up ­ linking Homo neanderthalis more closely to Homo sapiens evolutionarily, but still giving insufficient insight into the day­to­day life, intelligence and mor­ als of our distant relatives. Today, Neanderthals are very present in our collective psyche, much more so than other hominid species, to the point where the term “Neanderthal” has seeped into our everyday language and is even sometimes used as an in­ sult.

Paleontological and archaeological information to date can be used to paint a pretty good picture of the life and times of Neanderthals. Thanks to carbon dating, we can now trace their emergence as a species to around 200,000 years ago and their extinction to about 40,000 years ago ­ probably due to extreme changes in weather patterns [1]. We’ve also found out a great deal about the tools they used and the places they dwell­ ed in. It is well established by this point that Neanderthals mostly in­ habited the mainland of Europe and

plethora of clues about the past of Neanderthals, but one scientific ad­ vance in particular would soon come in and revolutionise the study of evolution. The ability to quickly and cheaply sequence genomes and the computer programs that we use to compare genomic data proved to be invaluable in the study of our ances­ try. It is what propelled us from measuring skulls and assuming we come from the same place to accur­ ately quantifying the number of DNA bases we share with other hominid species. It has brought us surprising discoveries, such as the fact that some Neanderthals had a defective version of the protein melanocortin 1 receptor, which is involved in pig­ mentation. In modern humans, this malfunctioning protein is consistent with pale skin and red hair ­ a very different picture from what most people would imagine when thinking of Neanderthals. It has also been found that humans and Neander­ thals both share the gene FOXP2, which is involved in speech develop­ ment in humans. This hints at the possibility that Neanderthals used some form of primitive language.

of the present day genome of non­ Africans is thought to originate from them. So what exactly might we have inherited from them?

One group of researchers from the University of Harvard have recently published some interesting findings related to genes which have probably been passed on to humans. By com­ paring various human and Neander­ thal genomes, they were able to determine that we have inherited genes involved in keratin formation, which is important for the structure of skin, hair and nails. The inherit­ ance of these genes would have given the migrant humans traits which helped them survive in the colder, non­African environment and settle there for good. Other inherited genes, however, weren’t as beneficial to us as the ability to withstand the cold.

The researchers also found that many disease genes affecting hu­ mans today, such as type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, lupus and biliary cirrhosis originate from the Neanderthals, although it is unclear whether they had the same effect on their bodies. Not all genes made it to the human gene pool though, most

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17

LIFE SCIENCES

likely because they got removed systematically or they had adverse effects when transferred between species.

For instance, some Neanderthal genes which were ex­ pressed in the testes could have caused infertility in humans, mak­ ing it impossible for them to be passed on to the next generation.

Other studies have previously found that humans could have also inherited genes responsible for skeletal structure and lipid meta­ bolism, which could have given us an invaluable evolutionary advant­ age in the early days of Eurasian colonisation. All these pieces of in­ formation we have acquired have picked at and diminished the opin­ ion that this species was savage and incapable of communication or technological progress. So far, we’ve

gathered a whole genome sequence and quite a few pieces of the puzzle; enough to spark speculation about one day cloning Neanderthals in or­ der to further study them. De­extinc­ tion has been discussed for a while and the topic raises several technical and moral problems, but whether the world is ready to even consider it in the case of hominids is an entirely different issue, best left for the more distant future.

Meanwhile, we can still investigate Neanderthal genes to try to find out more about these fascinating beings.

Who knows what else there is to be discovered? Luckily, we have fast genome sequencing technology on our side, as well as a deeper understand­ ing and appreciation of the species to begin with. Hopefully, we will get to the point where we can literally paint

a picture of a Neanderthal. And if you ever get called a Neanderthal again, you will then know that it is not an insult, but quite an accurate portrayal of human ancestry.

References [1] Higham T et al. The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappear-

ance. Nature. 2014 [2] Ferentinos G et al. Early seafaring activity in the southern Ionian Islands, Mediterranean Sea. Journal of Archaeological Science. 2012 [3] Lohse K, Frantz LA. Neandertal admixture in Eurasia confirmed by maximum-likelihood analysis of three genomes. Genetics. 2014

CONTRIBUTORS Author Teodora Aldea is studying for a BSc in molecular biology at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by William Rooney and copy-edited by Charlie Stamenova.

Gilbraltar where some of the first Neanderthals were found. Credit: José Rambaud via Flickr.com

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MATHS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES

ROBOT ON A COMET:

YOUR GUIDE TO THE ROSETTA MISSION O

n 12th November 2014, the Rosetta spacecraft’s landing component, Philae, touched down onto the surface of comet 67P, after having arrived at it 3 months earlier.

It has been a long mission, with the spacecraft launched more than 10 years ago. It has cost the European Space Agency (ESA) over €1 bn, but will provide new and ground­break­ ing information about comets and the evolution of our Solar System.

After probes were successfully sent out to Halley’s comet in the 1980s, the ESA decided that a more in depth exploration of comets was needed. It is hoped that the Rosetta spacecraft and lander will enlighten scientists about the nature and history of comets and the Solar System. The names of the robots tell how import­ ant the mission is considered by the ESA: The spacecraft itself is named after the famous Rosetta stone, in­ scribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs whilst the lander, Philae, gets its name from the obelisk used to de­ cipher it.

The Rosetta mission has made history being the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and to have a success­ ful landing upon it. It will also be the first spacecraft to orbit the Sun to­ gether with a comet.

Having already met many of its primary mission objectives, Rosetta will study the effect the Sun has on the comet and its activity from it’s orbit around the comet.

Given the name Churyumov­Gerasi­ menko after its discoverers, comet 67P was the second choice of the mis­ sion’s team of scientists after the launch was delayed. The team were looking for a suitable, active comet, orbiting the Sun regularly and on a plane close to the Earth’s orbit (known as the ecliptic). Most import­ antly, its orbital path would have to be appropriate for the mission’s timeline so that the spacecraft would be able to meet up with it within a reasonable time [1].

Comets can be thought of as lumps of dirty ice with a solid centre called the nucleus. On approaching the Sun, a comet heats up so that the ice melts into gas and dust that expands into an atmosphere. Comets have two tails, one straight and one curved, both of which away from the Sun. Comets are thought to be leftovers from the formation of planets or debris from collisions between proto­ planets in the Solar System and could provide more information on planet­ ary evolution.

The spacecraft is propelled by an Ariane 5 rocket and is made of two separate parts: the orbiter and the lander. The European Space Opera­ tions Centre (ESOC) in Germany con­ trols the spacecraft and its components while the collected data is sent to the European Space Astro­ nomy Centre (ESAC) in Spain.

The orbiter is the Rosetta probe it­ self, an aluminium box with a com­

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munications dish on the side and wings made of solar panels spanning 32 metres. It has 24 thrusters avail­ able to adjust its position. At the launch, more than half of Rosetta’s 3000 kg mass was propellant. The or­ biter carries instruments for eleven remote experiments including analys­ ing dust and particles from the comet, and sensors to image the comet. One experiment in particular, the Ultravi­ olet Imaging Spectrometer (ALICE), will collect light in the ultraviolet re­ gion so that the composition of comet 67P and its corona can be determined.

Scientists may also be able to use this data, never collected with such high resolution or sensitivity, to uncover the history of the comet and its forma­ tion.

The launcher, Philae, was designed to stay attached to the main spacecraft until it was suitably aligned with comet 67P. At this point, it was com­ manded to release itself and push off toward the comet. Its three legs were designed to absorb the impact and so reduce damage and bouncing. The harpoon was then fired into the comet’s surface to hold Philae down because it can easily escape the comet’s weak gravity. Philae holds ten instruments, including the sampling, drilling and distribution component (SD2), designed to collect material from various depths of the comets sur­ face.

Since launching from French Guiana in March 2004, Rosetta has passed by Earth three times, Mars once and circled the Sun almost four times. It

19

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

20

MATHS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES

has travelled a huge distance and at its furthest point, it was 800 million kilometres away from Earth [1].

To save on fuel, the mass of which must also be propelled by even more fuel, a technique known as gravity assists or flybys is commonly used in spacecraft missions. It has the effect of a slingshot where the craft is ac­ celerated to high speeds. The space­ craft accelerates as it is attracted to the planet and slows as it flies away.

If the planet is moving in the same direction as the craft, and if the craft was originally travelling at a speed greater than the escape velocity of the planet, then it will slow to a speed greater than it was initially.

Rosetta used this method numer­ ous times throughout the journey to comet 67P. The first Earth gravity assist took place in March 2005, fol­ lowed by Mars in February 2007 and Earth again in November 2007. The spacecraft then passed the asteroid Steins in September 2008, returning for a third gravity assist with Earth.

After flying by the asteroid Lutetia, Rosetta was put into deep space hi­ bernation until January 2014, where it was finally approaching the comet and was awoken.

For the first time in history, a robot was going to land on a comet. A small area of the comet, known as Agilkia, had been chosen as being the safest place for Philae to land after six weeks of investigation as Rosetta or­ bited and closely observed it. Scient­ ists were under pressure to choose a landing site before the comet came too close to the Sun and became too hot and active[1].

Philae was due to launch itself onto the comet on 12th November 2014. It would approach the nucleus of the comet at close to a walking pace, and once having touched down, the harpoon would deploy and the ex­ periments would begin.

Initial data sent to Earth from Rosetta confirmed that Philae had landed and its instruments had star­ ted taking readings. However, as this data was analysed it was found that Philae had actually touched down onto the comet three times. The Rosetta scientists believe that the ro­ bot had twice bounced off of the sur­ face and eventually returned. This was not due to a miscalculation from the scientists commanding Philae but a fault with the harpoon that had failed to deploy and anchor Philae to the comet.

All of the experiments are fully op­ erational and it seems that the only downside to the imperfect landing is its positioning – in the shadow of a cliff which limits the light needed to recharge Philae’s batteries for further experimentation and communication.

result shows that the water is un­ likely to have come solely from comets such as 67P, but from a vari­ ety of sources [1].

From now on, Rosetta will be put in the best and most efficient positions for the sensors and experiments to be carried out. The spacecraft and comet are currently approaching the Sun and are due to reach the perihelion of the comet’s orbit (the point where it will be closest to the Sun) on 13th Au­ gust 2015 [1]. By December 2015, all the objectives will have been com­ pleted and Rosetta’s mission will be over as the spacecraft continues trav­ elling through space.

After all the data from Rosetta and Philae’s experiments has been ana­ lysed by scientists, it is hoped that we will then know more about comets, the Solar System and perhaps even the origins of life on Earth.

References [1] European Space Agency. Science and Technology: Rosetta. http://sci.esa.int/ [2] European Space Agency. ESA Science: Rosetta. http://www.esa.int/

Having only been on a comet for a short while, the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) has already de­ livered results on the water compon­ ents of comet 67P. The water there is different from that on Earth – the ra­ tio of deuterium to single neutron hy­ drogen is more than three times bigger than that of the water from Earth’s oceans. It is thought that the water on Earth could have originated from comets and asteroids that had collided with Earth in the past. This

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CONTRIBUTORS Author Lynne Sinclair is studying for a BSc in astronomy and physics at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Paul Walker and copy-edited by Jessica Bownes, Nina Divorty and Charlie Stamenova.

Rosetta/Philae credit: ESA/ATG medialab

21

SOCIAL SCIENCES

SUICIDE

ON A MOLECULAR LEVEL

Image Credit: Philippe Teuwen via Flickr

S

uicide has long been a confusing paradox for researchers. On one hand, our desire to survive is embed­ ded in our genes. Pain is designed to make us withdraw from harmful situations. Our bodies are pro­ grammed to produce adrenaline, making us feel fear when we are in a dangerous situation so that we feel compelled to avoid it in future. So why do approximately 800,000 people die from suicide each year? Is there something in the brain that can override our protective mechan­ isms?

One of the most startling discov­ eries in suicide research is just how inheritable suicidal behaviour seems to be. Studies comparing rates of suicide between identical twins and siblings have found suicidal beha­ viour to be approximately 43% her­ itable [1]. Therefore, although the situations that an individual experi­ ences through life will have a consid­ erable impact on the development of suicidal behaviour, genetics also ap­

22

pear to have an important part to play. For this reason, a key area of research has been identifying which genes, when we possess an unusual copy of that gene, correlate with an increased risk of suicide.

Genes controlling serotonin levels have received the most attention from researchers, as many of these genes seem to increase the risk of an individual exhibiting suicidal beha­ viours. Serotonin is a neurotrans­ mitter, a molecule found in the brain, which has an important role in regulating emotion. If you have an unusual copy of the gene which makes an unusual serotonin recept­ or (which binds serotonin, helping it carry out its function), your risk of dying from suicide increases. Inter­ estingly, this unusual copy of the gene is found more commonly in those who complete suicide, rather than those who attempt it. What is even more interesting is that this finding perhaps explains the gender differences in suicide risk. While fe­

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males are more likely to attempt suicide (Four females for every one male), males are more likely to die from suicide (Three males for every one female). Several unusual vari­ ations of the serotonin receptor gene are only found on the X chromosome.

Since females have two X chromo­ somes, this acts as a protection mechanism, meaning that if they in­ herit a copy of this damaging gene, the other X chromosome can make up for this abnormality. Since males only have one X chromosome, if they inherit an unusual copy of a seroton­ in receptor gene, they will be more likely to experience suicidal beha­ viours. However, it is important to note that the connection between the serotonin receptor gene and in­ creased suicide risk has only been found a handful of studies so far. [1] Another line of research focuses on abnormalities in the stress hor­ mone cortisol. Dysfunctional regula­ tion of cortisol levels has been linked not only to depression and suicide,

SOCIAL SCIENCES

but also to factors such as the level of violence in a suicide attempt method. In fact, those who show im­ paired ability to suppress cortisol production were 4.5 times more likely to die from suicide in the fu­ ture, and were more likely to choose a violent method, such as hanging or jumping from a height. [2] An inter­ esting new discovery is that abnor­ malities in cortisol production appear to explain why individuals with a damaging upbringing are more likely to die from suicide. For example, the effectiveness of the re­ ceptors which regulate cortisol can be altered by environmental stressors like physical and emotional abuse. This expanding area of re­ search follows an “epigenetic” ap­ proach, i.e. looking at how environmental factors can interact with our genes, and has great ex­ planatory potential when it comes to explaining why individuals in ad­ verse environments are more prone to suicidal behaviours.

According to recent figures pub­ lished by the Scottish Suicides In­ formation Database Report, violent methods are found more commonly in young adults than older adults.

Additionally, younger adults who die from suicide are more likely to ex­ perience depression, yet it usually lasts for a shorter period of time [3].

Some of these differences could po­ tentially be explained by differences in the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie suicidal behaviour in both groups. A protein which is linked to suicide, but shows different patterns between adults and adoles­

protein expression of BDNF was de­ creased in a part of the brain, an area of the frontal cortex called brodmann's 9, responsible for regu­ lating how overwhelmed by emotion we feel. Since BDNF is low in this part of the brain, this means that neurons in this region may not be stimulated to grow in the same way that they would in healthy individu­

suicide. So far, these have been dis­ covered to be variations in genes controlling serotonin, cortisol and the BNDF protein. These changes in an individual genes appear to have some role in overriding the body’s natural protection mechan­ isms, and have the potential to ex­ plain some of the intriguing differences in the manifestations of

als. [4] Therefore, it is likely that this deficit in BDNF may impact on how these adolescents process emo­ tion. Adults, on the other hand, show deficits in this protein in a dif­ ferent brain area called the hippo­ campus, which is responsible for memory.

At the moment, researchers aren’t sure why there is this difference between adults and adolescents, or how significant it may prove to be.

One theory that tries to explain why these differences in brain chem­ istry exist, focuses on the link between depression and suicide.

Between 50­70% of adolescents who die from suicide have an affective disorder such as depression at the time of their death. [3] Adolescents who die from suicide are more likely to have experienced a shorter period of depression leading up to their death; up to one third have suffered for less than three months leading

suicidal behaviors between genders, age groups and those who have ex­ perienced trauma. . Now that vari­ ous underlying biological mechanisms have been identified, an important area for future research will also be to further examine how biological and environmental factors interact, via epigenetic mechanisms, to cause suicidal behaviours If we could understand fully, all of the genes, epigenetic mechanisms and molecules which are involved, and we knew which parts of the brain they operated in, then we could infer what parts of the brain are most affected. This wealth of new information would allow us to tailor mental health services to­ wards individuals, hopefully improv­ ing the outcomes for people at risk..

Therefore, with a greater under­ standing of all of the molecules in­ volved, and the individual significance of each one, this would give us more than just a glimpse in­ to what is going on inside the brain of someone contemplating suicide.

Samaritans 24-hour helpline: 08457 909090

Credit: Jessica Mclaren

cents who die from suicide, is Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BD­ NF). BDNF is a protein involved in the growth and survival of neurons.

A group of researchers conducted a post­mortem study, where they measured levels of BDNF in differ­ ent parts of the brains of adolescents who had died by suicide, compared to controls who had died from vari­ ety of other causes. They found that amongst the teenage sample , the

up to their attempt. [3] Since one of the hallmarks of depression is a de­ creased growth of brain cells in the hippocampus, it could be that their depression may not have lasted long enough to have had a chance to start to affect the growth of neurons in the hippocampus.

Therefore, there appear to be mul­ tiple small changes in gene function and brain chemistry that increase an individual’s risk of dying from

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References [1] 2014 Zai et al. “Genetic factors and Suicidal Behavior” [2] 2012 Braquehais et al. “Hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis dysfunction ...”

[3] 1993 Marttunen et al. “Adolescence & suicide” [4] 2008 Pandey et al. “Brain-derived neurotrophic factor ...”

CONTRIBUTORS Author Jessica Mclaren is a psychology undergraduate at the University of Glasgow. This article was specialist edited by Olivia Kirtley, and copy-edited

by Becca Muir and Charlie Stamenova.

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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

POWER TO GAS TACKLING RENEWABLE ENERGY Credit: clarkmaxwell via Flickr.com

A

fundamental breakthrough at the University of Glasgow could be an answer to the biggest question in sustainable energy development: how do we solve the problem of inter­ mittent energy provided by renew­ ables? The exciting new development opens up the possibility of using the excess energy from renewables to split water, and then store the hy­ drogen produced in the form of a ‘li­ quid sponge’, whereby the hydrogen gas can be released on demand and used as fuel. The research is a signi­ ficant advancement in improving the reliability of renewable energy sys­ tems, and is particularly interesting due to its potential application in the increasingly popular Power to Gas (PtG) systems.

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In the UK, we still rely heavily on fossil fuels, and approximately 84% of our current energy consumption comes from these sources [1].

However, recently implemented policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% before 2050 [2] is promoting interest in renewable en­ ergy solutions, and encouraging the UK to think about how we can tackle the problems that come with certain renewable energy methods.

One of the major issues with re­ newable sources of energy is that their power output is not continuous.

Instead most renewable energy sources are intermittent, which means that their power generation fluctuates; you just can't get any power from a wind turbine without

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wind, and using a solar panel without any sun, just won't work.

This can also work the other way.

People use less energy to heat their homes in the summer, and use less electricity at certain times of the day.

This extra energy often goes to waste, and we currently have no reli­ able methods in place in the UK to store it effectively. This intermittency is the largest barrier in the way of a low carbon future, and one that drastically increases the unpredict­ ability of our electricity supply.

Power­to­Gas (PtG) technology uses electrolysis of water which is a process where energy is used to split water by passing a current through it, driving its decomposition into hy­ drogen and oxygen gas. This system

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHEMATICS

essentially converts electrical power generated by renewables into gaseous energy carriers such as hy­ drogen and methane. An energy car­ rier is a substance containing a quantity of potential energy (in this case chemical) that is later converted into a more useable form, such as electrical power. Methane and hydro­ gen are ideal gaseous energy carriers since they can be stored, transported, and delivered when and where

means that only a small proportion of hydrogen could be injected into our natural gas infrastructure. This is because the appliances we currently use that run on natural gas are thought to be sensitive to the propor­ tion of different gases in the supplied mixture. It’s likely that the mixtures of natural gas and hydrogen would have unexpected combustion proper­ ties, promoting safety concerns around the use of the technology in

they’re needed. This allows for the storage of large quantities of the ex­ cess energy produced by renewables.

The hydrogen gas generated by electrolysis can either be captured and stored, or taken away to be used in the chemical or transport indus­ tries. An alternative use is in a pro­ cess called methanation, whereby the hydrogen is combined with CO2 and converted to methane (known as synthetic methane), which can then be fed into the natural gas network.

Since the natural gas we use here in the UK is 82­97% methane by volume, the gas grid works as an ideal storage system for this energy, and this synthetic methane can be routed directly into our homes. [3] As with all new technologies, PtG comes with some challenges. Some energy is lost in the conversion of hy­ drogen into synthetic methane, which has sparked scientists and en­ gineers to investigate the possibility of injecting the pure hydrogen gas produced by PtG systems directly in­ to the natural gas infrastructure. In this way, the hydrogen would substi­ tute some of the natural gas we use in our homes, and would be delivered using the existing gas network. Al­ though this would be more efficient than converting all of the hydrogen into methane, current legislation

systems connected to our homes.[4] Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it does not exist naturally in its pure form on Earth. It can, however, be used as a fuel, making it an extremely useful energy carrier product in PtG tech­ nology. Currently, hydrogen is a valuable starting material for a number of industrial processes, in­ cluding the synthesis of ammonia and methane, and also as a combus­ tion fuel. One of the emerging applic­ ations for hydrogen fuel is for fuel cells in the transport industry. Spe­ cially designed engines burn pure hydrogen in oxygen to produce elec­ tricity, heat, and water. Since water is the only byproduct, hydrogen is an extremely clean fuel. In fact, NASA have used hydrogen fuel for pro­ pelling rockets into orbit since the 1970’s, and the crew on board space vehicles drink the pure water pro­ duced from the process. When used with pure hydrogen, the fuel cell within a vehicle has the potential to be up to 80% efficient and burns with virtually no pollution.

Despite the well known efficiency of fuel cells, we don’t commonly use hydrogen as a fuel because it is very difficult to store. Hydrogen is so light that the gas takes up a substantial volume, with 1 kg of gas occupying 11

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m3 at atmospheric pressure. For comparison, it takes two cubic feet to store 15 gallons of petrol in a stand­ ard car, but to store the volume of hydrogen needed to provide the same amount of energy as this gasoline, you’d need 176 m3. The most common storage method for hydrogen gas is the use of high pressures to signific­ antly reduce this volume, however this technique uses energy to com­ press the gas and this soon becomes uneconomical. Researchers in the Solar Fuels Team of the Cronin Group at the University of Glasgow have found a potential solution to storing large volumes of hydrogen, whereby the gas can be stored within a recyclable compound, silicotungstic acid [5]. Using this method the silicotungstic acid acts as a buffer to contain the hydrogen produced by electrolysis, therefore bypassing ex­ pensive pressurisation techniques for storage. The hydrogen can then be released on demand by pumping the compound over a catalyst, and could then in theory be pumped directly into the gas network. Despite being in its early stages, the work is prom­ ising in demonstrating how we can use chemistry to avoid having to store hydrogen under high pressure.

Although energy generation from PtG is yet to be implemented in the UK, the technology is a huge ad­ vancement in making renewables more reliable. As we cut down our use of natural gas and coal, we are going to have to use more renewable energy, and The University of Glas­ gow is helping to make that possible.

References [1] Department for Energy and Climate Change, Energy Trends, London, 2014.

[2] Committee on Climate Change, Climate change act, 2008.

[3] Dodds & McDowall, A review of hydrogen delivery technologies for energy system models, 2012.

[4] Rausch et al., Decoupled catalytic hydrogen evolution from a molecular metal oxide redox mediator in water splitting, 2014.

CONTRIBUTORS Author Lorna Christie is a PhD student specialising in inorganic chemistry at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Kevin Donkers and copy-edited by Jessica Bownes, Nia Linkov and Charlie Stamenova.

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THE NEWS PAGE

THE NEWS PAGE WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE WORLD OF YOUR FAVOURITE MAGAZINE

On November 8th 2014, we held our first ever conference entitled ‘Science for Society’. We had an excellent day discussing and debating how science should inform and shape politics.

We hosted both politicians and scientists, and heard about the challenges for science in politics.

James Burgon won our related article competition with his article "Where My Scientists At?", which can be read on theGIST website along with all the other entires.

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Our very own YouTube channel (youtube.com/GlasgowGIST) is full of science videos. Glasgow City of Science ran a 60 second science video competition, so we entered one of our favourites “The McGurk Effect”, and it won! The video features Timothy Revell illustrating an auditory illusion by making funny “bah” and “var” sounds, a little bit like the video on goats…

We’ve relaunched our podcasts (for the third time!). Now being lead by sweet sounding Josh Marsh, we’ve

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spoken about solar sails, suffering and science communication, amongst other things. If you want to get involved in any capacity the let us know, by emailing editor@the­GIST.org.

On Monday 02/02/2015, a new theGIST board was elected and sworn in. The new board is very excited to continue the growth and improvement of theGIST, and you can all expect to see a lot of interesting things happening over the next year. The old board would like to also say, thank you for all your support ­ we do appreciate it.

THE BACK PAGE

THE BACK PAGE FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT 1. Level high ground (7) 2. Layer of earth between coal seams (5) 3. Memory loss (7) 5. Wide angle (6) 6. Branch of physics concerned with motion of bodies (9) 7. Electrical flow measured in Amperes (7) 8. Photographed (6) 14. Object that absorbs all electro足 magnetic radiation falling on it (9) 16. Medicine that eats away at ex足 traneous growths (7) 18. Innermost membrane of an organ (6) 19. Warm blooded animals (7) 20. Eliminate from the body (7) 23. Layer of the Earth (6) 24. Toroid (5)

1. French mathematician (6) 4. External to the Earth (6) 9. Circle of light (4) 10. Suborder of diptera, includes mosquitoes (10) 11. Smallest Martian moon (6) 12. Spider web (8)

13. External combustion engines for small boats (9) 15. Prescribed food intake (4) 16. Baby hawk (4) 17. Plant matter and animal waste used as fuels (9) 21. Naturally occurring sodium

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chloride (4,4) 22. Hospital doctors (6) 24. Dry mouth (10) 25. Dreamless sleep state (1.1.1.1) 26. Varieties of common garden herbs (6) 27. Bloodsucking African fly (6)

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AWESOME COVER ART

BY JAMES MARNO