autumn 2015
FACT OR FICTION?
J U RA S S I C WORLD LUCID D RE A M I N G
WHAT'S THE PO I N T ?
GLASGOW'S N EW AN I MAL H OU S E
T H E L I FE I S S U E T H E D E FI N I T I ON OF L I FE T H E D E FI N I T I ON OF L I FE LIFE-SAVING VIRUSES L I V E S OF T H E D E A D
TRULY E V I L?
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
All is full of life W
e are delighted to present to you: The Life Issue. Perhaps the most important topic we have ever discussed. Without it you would be, well, um... dead. On page 10 we ask the fundamental question: what is life? By looking at the ultimate, yet seemingly insufficient definition, we learn about what counts as life and confusingly, what doesn’t. But we’re not just satisfied with learning about what life is, we also want to know how we can change it, play with it, improve it. The potential benefits to humanity are
astounding, but what happens if things go a little bit Jurassic World? To find out what is actually possible we’ve factchecked this blockbuster on page 12. As an inescapable part of life, we have death, and as it turns out, even in death we can discover stories about life. Before you judge us as wannabe psychics, let us calm (and excite) you with the prospect of reading about the science of finding out stuff from ancient skeletons on page 15. Sadly, we can’t bring up death without mentioning our own
impending doom. Our very existence is threatened by the spread of multiresistant bacteria, arrogantly shrugging off our antibiotics and making the protection of our own life one of the most pressing problems for scientists to solve. Luckily, we can suggest a possible solution that is already being used in Poland and Georgia on page 18. So don’t despair entirely instead indulge in the wonderful ways science can inform us, change us and even protect us. C’est la vie!
the editors
In this issue
p4
NEWS
p10
FEATURE
p18
FEATURE
p6
FEATURE
p12
FEATURE
p20
COMMENT
p8
COMMENT
p15
FEATURE
p22
FEATURE
EditorsinChief: Timothy Revell and Ida Emilie Steinmark Submission Editors: Michaela Mrschtik and Peter McGinty Head of CopyEditing: Rebecca Baird
Layout: Teodora Aldea, Misael Silva, Yulia Revina, Ida Emilie Steinmark Art: George Bell, James Marno, Jessica McLaren, Erin Wallace
Glasgow's largest science magazine
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NEWS
What's new Pesticides rethunk
P
Image credit: Ben Seese via Flickr.com
concerns about the safety of pesticides have forced the scientific community to search for alterna tives. The Glasgow researchers will investigate insect hormones and seek to change insect behaviour to keep them from infesting crops for example by controlling the chemical messenger insects use to spread the message of located food. This should allow pest controllers to redirect in sects rather than kill them off.
Another important aspect is se lectivity. High selectivity would en able farmers to target harmful insects and spare useful ones, such as pollinating bees, which are essen tial to agriculture. It is hoped this approach will result in more intelli gent forms of pest control. Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark
A new RNA attack?
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hen a virus travels inside a mosquito, it will generally not cause any damage to its host be cause of a special defence mechan ism involving its RNA. Groups at the University of Glasgow are now using a new model virus to study the mechanism and hopefully translate their findings into something of clin ical value. In general, viruses manage to ex ploit its host’s resources and organ
ism in order to replicate and thrive, making it dangerous to many anim als including humans. Yet carrier hosts like mosquitoes go by un harmed because of an immune de fence called RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi causes the viral RNA to be copied by the host, and chopped up into pieces that can be used to find and eliminate the intruder. The Glasgow researchers are look ing at the model Semliki Forest Vir
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us to gain further insights into this and many other arthropodborne viruses. Understanding and possibly recreating the mechanism could en able us to protect the population from viruses through novel vaccines or other treatments. Written by Teodora Aldea
Image credit: Ty via Flickr.com
esticide use is becoming increas ingly controversial, and so re searchers from the University of Glasgow are trying to find a more benign form of pest control as part of a large EU project. Their approach is to alter their behaviour rather than killing them. Pests are still a major worry due to growing global demand for crops and the climate change driven spread of insects into new areas. Yet
NEWS
in Glasgow? Satellite binoculars
A
Image credit: Free Intel Press via Flickr.com
eye on protected marine environ ments. SAR systems work by send ing out radio wave pulses towards a target and detecting the boomer anging echo; as the SAR moves over the target, the signals can be com puted to give a high resolution im age. The technology is not hindered by rain or clouds, and might often detect changes faster than onground observers. Strathclyde scientists are now
reaching out to the energy industry with their space age ideas. If imple mented, it could aid in the monitor ing of existing wind turbines and in the localisation of suitable areas for new farms around the globe. Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark
Cattle disease app A
n app created by the company of a former University of Strathclyde student enables rural farmers and inexperienced vets to quickly and reliably diagnose an animal. Whilst being trialled in Ethiopia, the app has received the stamp of approval from an independent study. Farmers in hardtogetto areas will often be faced with an ill animal, like a cow, without proper
access to veterinary care. The app developed by Cojengo, a company started by Craig Taylor who graduated for the University of Strathclyde in 2008, now allows them to reliably find the cause the for the given symptoms and a suitable medication. This could save the lives of many animals as well as protect the living of the farmers who depend on their cattle. An independent study conducted
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by researchers at the University of Prince Edward Island found that the app was effective in dealing with 80% of common cattle diseases and that shows a 70% agreement rate with trained veterinarians.
Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark
Image credit: Lukas via Flickr.com
ccording to researchers at the University of Strathclyde, bird’s eye perspective can give you more than just an overview. They claim that advanced technology on satel lites could improve the currently timeconsuming upkeep of renew able energy. For some time, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems, present on some satellites, have helped track il legal logging and kept a watchful
SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Rebecca Baird
In your dreams Rebecca Baird uncovers the mysterious world of lucid dreaming
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hat if you could live your wild est dreams? You can fly up to the moon and dance around the stars. You can go to Hogwarts with Harry, Ron and Hermione. You can kiss That Girl. You can even go back in time all you need to do is go to sleep. Lucid dreaming is, quite simply, the awareness that one is dreaming whilst in a dream. Depending on the dreamer’s degree of lucidity, they might simply know they are asleep, or they may be able to manipulate parts of their dream world, allowing them to do literally anything they can possible imagine! Flying, tasting fire, and even having sex with a love interest are all very common lucid dreams. The idea has been the sub
Image credit: Erin Wallace
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SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Rebecca Baird
ject of literature and academic dis cussion since the times of Ancient Greece and is still prevalent today; from the philosophy of Aristotle to Veronica Roth’s popular novel Diver gent, and even The Matrix, the idea of lucidity in a state of altered con sciousness is one that has never been far from the collective conscience of society. One of the earliest modern ac counts of lucid dreaming is that of Frederik van Eeden, a Dutch writer and psychiatrist1 who recorded his
was achieved by using a polygraph to record specific predetermined eye movements and fist clenches which would signal lucidity. Since, by defin ition, luciddreamers can remember instructions given in their waking life, the subjects of LaBerge’s experi ments were able to signal lucidity physiologically via the polygraph, and then give a subjective account of their lucid experiences when awakened. When the data had been taken, the polygraph results and subjective accounts were given to a
own dreams in an attempt to under stand the science of dreaming. In his 1913 paper, “A Study of Dreams”, he first describes lucid dreaming as fol lows: “I had a full recollection of my daylife, and could act voluntarily, though I was so fast asleep that no bodily sensations penetrated into my perception.”2 van Eeden had origin ally hoped that his observations would prompt scientific research into the phenomenon he experienced, but at the time his findings were met with scepticism, and discarded until many years later in 1980, when a young Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. stu dent at Stanford University, re searched lucid dreaming in order to earn his doctorate in psycho physiology.3 He believed that lucid dreaming was a real scientific pro cess, and through designing and car rying out psychophysiological experiments, he built up some very strong evidence to support his the ory.
judging scientist who was unin formed of the point of the experi ment. For 90% of the cases, the judge was able to select the correct thirty second timeframe within the study where lucidity had been reached, based on the correspondence between observed and reported events.4 Also, in 2009, a study was conduc ted at the Neurological Laboratory in Frankfurt which revealed that brain activity was greatly increased during lucid dreams. An EEG study recor ded frequencies in the region 40 Hz in people reporting lucid dreaming – around ten times greater than the normal dreamstate range. Further more, increased activity in the front al and frontolateral areas of the brain (the areas associated with self awareness) was reported during lu cid dreams, compounding the evid ence for lucid dreaming as a neurological state.5
Yeah, right. In your dreams! Lucid dreaming has been supported by science in a number of ways, but the experiment which cemented the reality of this phenomenon was LaBerge’s polygraph experiment, the results of which were published in 1983. In order to prove that lucid dreaming was real, LaBerge needed to have lucid dreamers communicat ing their lucidity in real time – this
Can anyone lucid dream? The answer is yes – potentially! One of the main techniques currently used by experienced lucid dreamers to induce lucidity was developed and formalised by The Lucidity Institute: this is known as Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD). The key to MILD is to try to recall a nonlucid, ordinary dream as quickly and com pletely as possible after awakening. Then, when going back to sleep, one
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walks through that dream again in one’s mind, fixating on something that makes it obvious that this dream is not reality – a trigger. When they see it, they acknowledge that it means they are dreaming, and continue with their fantasy.6 Many people enjoy having control of what is seen as one of the most unpredictable states of conscious ness; others simply like being able to manipulate their dream world. However, if you need a concrete reason to try lucid dreaming, how about this one: lucid dreaming can help to overcome emotional trauma, repressed feelings, and even beat phobias.6 Imagine that your disability didn’t stop you from interacting socially with people your age, or your reli gious beliefs didn’t inhibit you sexu ally. Imagine a completely selfindulgent, private world where all of your issues could be resolved without any reallife consequence. That’s the world that lucid dreaming provides us with. It is a therapy all of its own, like writing an angry let ter and never sending it, or having a conversation with your own reflec tion. By learning to lucid dream, people have the tools to develop a clearer mind and achieve greater emotional health through dealing with situations that might be im possible to face in waking life. Al though the dream world may not be real, the memories, emotions and be nefits of lucid dreaming most defin itely are. Rebecca is an undergraduate studying English and Creative Literature at the University of Dundee. This piece was specialist edited by Laura Kane and copy-edited by Charlie Stamenova. References/search terms: 1 Wikipedia: Frederik van Eeden 2 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 26, 1913 3 lucidity.com/vanEeden.html 4 Wikipedia: Stephen LaBerge 5 www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com 6 www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html
SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Wilf Gardner
House of Ill Repute
In defence of Glasgow's new animal holding facility
Image credit: Gwen Seemel via Flickr.com
Y
ou have probably heard about the controversial plans passed by the University of Glasgow to in vest £5million in a brand new ‘anim al house’ the nickname given to the various oncampus locations where laboratory animals are held and used in experiments, primarily by the Col lege of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences (MVLS)1. Many students may not have been previously aware of the existence of these facilities at the University. They are unsign posted, tucked away from view, and the work in them carries on dis creetly alongside other, more public, scientific research. There is good reason for this. Although security concerns relating to animal rights activism have cooled in recent years, the threats are still very real, and the University rightfully takes the safety of its employees and students incredibly seriously2. However, this caution is highly
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damaging to public understanding of the work conducted on animals with in the college of MVLS. The secretive air that surrounds animal research blends seamlessly with misinforma tion and rumour to produce suspi cions of unethical practice occurring behind closed doors. Many people may not realise that the UK’s re searchers work under some of the strictest regulations in the world2. Institutions, supervisors, projects, and each individual working with animals must be independently li censed, a process that includes edu cation on ethics. The University’s policy on animal research references its commitment to the three R’s reduction of animal numbers used, refinement of proced ures and replacement with alternat ive experimental methods3. However, it keeps its more detailed cards close to its giant, Hogwarts like chest, and was the subject of negative press when it was revealed that the numbers of animals used in procedures at the University of Glasgow has risen sharply in the past decade4. The decision to fund the new building was followed quickly by a petition on change.org, imploring the moneyspenders to reverse their de cision and reinvest the funds in al ternate technologies. Another petition calls for an outright ban on the use of animals at the University of Glasgow. The EU has recently rejected the signatures of 1.2m people who demanded the end of animal testing in Europe5. Read ing the comments left by the signees of the Glasgow petition around 3,500 it was obvious that a huge problem was the lack of understand ing about animal testing, a problem compounded by many research insti tutions’ lack of interaction with the public. The assumption that many people outwith biological science make is a
SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Wilf Gardner
logical one: by now we surely have surpassed using animal models. The sad, simple truth however is that this just isn’t the case. The University of Glasgow does fund re search into rival techniques, as does the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust and any other biomedical funding body you can think of6. Animal experiments are only licensed when there are no feasible alternatives2, and these al ternatives are becoming more and more sophisticated and useful: math ematical models of diseases; pro gramming languages for detailed analysis of gene expression in hu mans; entire organs bioengineered to be grown and experimented with on a lab bench, without an animal in
imals we use. And with this in mind, the injection of money into the University's animal research is a good thing for the most commonly overlooked of the three R’s refine ment. While animal testing is the ne cessary evil that it currently is, we must do our best to make the experi ments conducted are as good as pos sible, so that animal lives are not wasted and any suffering is minim ised. Many current facilities at the University of Glasgow are not state of the art. They aren’t bad, but a de signedforpurpose facility will allow the technicians who look after the an imals – with great dedication and care to perform their jobs more effi ciently. A key feature of the new facil ity is the idea of a complete barrier.
sight. However, despite all the accep ted flaws of animal models – and ethics aside, there are many they still provide the most complete test ing ground for medical therapies. Currently, a computer simulation, or tissue grown ex vivo, can supple ment data gleaned from animal re search, but cannot yet provide the answers that a full organism does. We need these answers before a treatment is given to humans. It may be argued that consenting hu mans could provide an option after early stages of research, but the numbers would have to be huge to ensure the research was of a high standard. The cost of attracting such numbers, in addition to protecting researchers from insurance claims, could potentially put huge strain on institutions for which funding is already precious7. Furthermore, this form of testing would surely preclude research into more serious afflic tions: would you sign up for spinal cord injury testing? To the many who believe animals should be treated as equals by humans, this may seem arrogant and selfish but the fact is as plain as it is unfortunate: if we want modern, effective medicine, we must be selfish. Of course, we cannot be so selfish that we don’t do our best for the an
Particularly important when working with animals with compromised im mune systems, a barrier facility en sures a sterile environment, where nothing enters or leaves without some form of anticontamination pro cedure. This ensures the safety of an imals on procedure and improves the reliability of the experiments. The current facilities have a quasibarrier, upheld by strict regulations and the diligence of staff and students, but the system is a clear target for that allimportant refinement. This kind of information, which helps explain why money is continu ally spent on animal research despite the aim of reduction, is too hard to come by. This needs to change. Or ganisations like Understanding An imal Research provide one source of public outreach but universities need to play a bigger part. Media reports on animal testing are often onesided and sensationalist, and researchers and institutions finding a proactive voice would do wonders for the de bate. Of course, there are some on the other side who don’t want open de bate either if you believe testing on animals for human gain is wrong then you are unlikely to be swayed by hearing about it in more detail. But for the general population, who sur veys suggest generally accept the
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need for animal testing, discourse would ensure a wider understanding of what goes on in research, why funding is important, and what lengths are gone to protect the anim als involved. Animal testing regrettably will remain a cornerstone of biomedical research for years to come. Alternate technologies for investigating dis ease are improving at a fantastic rate, and the goal of eliminating the need for in vivo experiments is be coming more realistic all the time. But for now we rely on animal test ing. Neither blocking its funding nor remaining tightlipped about its de tails will do any favours for re searchers, patients, the general public, or the animals involved. In order to keep the standards of bio medical research high, we must util ise the best experimental models we have. For now at least, that means continuing to fund in vivo research as well as investing in new technolo gies. The University is making pro gress, signing the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK and providing figures for the number of animals used8. This is a start, but transparency should be el evated in our list of priorities, so that the good work done at this and other institutions involving animals, and the steady movement away from the necessity of animal research can be fully appreciated by all. Wilf is a neuroscience student at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Sarah Neidler and copy-edited by Graham Kerr. References/search terms: 1 glasgowguardian.co.uk 2 www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk 3 www.gla.ac.uk: animal research policy 4 glasgowguardian.co.uk: animal experimentation 5 speakingofresearch.com: UK regulations 6 www.gla.ac.uk: masters biomedical science 7 www.theguardian.com: science policy 8 www.gla.ac.uk: openess animal research
LIFE SCIENCES Written by James Burgon
I
’ve been thinking a lot about life lately. Not in the philosophical, selfreflection kind of way, but in its most literal sense. What even is life—do we really know? What about those “things” seemingly on the edge—viruses, maverick cancer cells, and aspiring artificial intelli gence? Join me on a whirlwind tour d'Horizon of life, as we find out what is alive, what isn’t and what… may be.
Life, what is it anyway? Seven pillars support our under standing of life, though they are a continual source of debate1. The first is organisation; living beings are composed of interacting parts that combine to form a whole: the most basic unit widely accepted is a single
cell, a microscopic sac of fluid con taining structures called organelles. Next is homeostasis, maintaining one’s internal environment through chemical or behavioural means. Then comes metabolism, the ability to take in external energy and convert it into a usable form—be it light or pizza. This leads to the fourth, growth. Fifth is the ability to react to stimuli, which leads inexorably onto the sixth, adaptation, be that moving somewhere cooler when you are hot or evolution. The last pillar is repro duction, the ability to produce new independent organisms, either asexually or through the everpopu lar means of sex. This definition seems clear, but unfortunately life gets a little fuzzy around the edges. Some problems are perhaps more philosophical: an indi
IT'S ALIVE! ... maybe Renee Prisble via Flickr.com
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vidual ant will largely fail to meet all seven requirements, but the colony will, so which is the unit of life? However, other situations are more problematic.
The viral variable Whether through movies, coverage of outbreaks like Ebola, or lying in bed beset by illness, you will have experi enced viruses—but are they living beings? These small fragments of ge netic material (DNA or RNA), wrapped up in a protein coat and oc casionally a lipid (fat) overcoat, ex hibit some of our key pillars: they reproduce copies of themselves, ad apt, evolve, and contain genetic ma terial, surely a signature of life? But they are simple to the extreme. Viruses are obligate parasites; they invade living cells and hijack their internal machinery, turning them into little virus factories. While parasitism is common across the tree of life, viruses are different: without a host cell, they are little but a few molecules—is this life? Debate has raged, but ultimately most agree: without a host cell viruses cannot ex hibit the key requirements for life, so they are not alive…but they are pretty close—viruses are on the edge of life2. Perhaps viruses resemble our earliest ancestors, a kind of prelife, or maybe they are descended from it. Like many other parasites maybe viruses used to be more complex and just lost the bits they didn’t need. Another possibility is that they are derived from small transposable ele ments, fragments of genetic material shared between single celled organ isms. No one knows their origin, but we do know that viruses are just too simple to be alive.
LIFE SCIENCES
Tenacious tumours Cancer occurs when a cell in your body develops a mutation and starts uncontrollably reproducing, creating a tumour that sucks up resources while invading and destroying sur rounding tissue. It is a horrible dis ease fostered onto you by your own body. But, what happens if your can cer is not… well, yours? In 1996 a strange disease was ob served in populations of Tasmanian devils, characterised by large cancer ous tumours around the mouth: Dev il Facial Tumour Disease3. Even though cancer is considered to be distinctly personal these tumours were hopping from one devil to the next, annihilating populations across the island. Devils are not the only ones suf fering from transmissible cancers. As early as the 1970’s American soft shell clams have been beset by a shellfish leukaemia that can quit its dying host and set up home in a new one, and Syrian hamsters are afflic ted by a transmissible cancer spread via the bite of a mosquito. Perhaps the most outstanding is the Canine transmissible venereal tumor, a free living immortal cell line that is any where between 2002500 years old3. What else is this but a living parasit ic organism? It meets all of our re quirements, and while dependent on other organisms to survive this is no more than any other cellular para site. Only four transmissible cancers are known, and by their existence they are making us question the definition of life. Why there are so few is debatable, but we could be witnessing new species emerging from the very cells of their prey.
up approach and create truly unique, synthetic, biological life? Currently not, but with technological advances we should not rule it out4. Perhaps more interesting is the possibility of waking the ghost in the machine—can life exist beyond the biological? Artificial intelligence pushes this boundary. While abstract thinking is needed, machines argu ably could (or do) exhibit many of our pillars—but as we build them these criteria seem illsuited for a nonbio logical concept of life. For machines to be considered alive we need them to do something different—we need them to think. The father of modern computing, Alan Turing, proposed a test to find out if a machine could do so5: a human interrogator has five minutes to talk to a hidden inter viewee electronically, after which they must decide: human or ma chine? If the interrogator cannot dis tinguish the computer from the human you have a selfaware think ing machine. While technology continues to rap idly improve, no computer has come close to passing the Turing Test—but what if one did? Would it be life? Is thought enough? British neurologist Sir Geoffrey Jefferson stated that machines could never be alive, they could not share our emotions—joy, despair and love were beyond them; Turing responded that he could say the same about anyone6. He was one of the first to accept what we are—biological machines. He could no more understand what went on in Sir Jefferson’s mind than a self aware robots processor—hence the simplicity of his test. I think there fore I am; I think, therefore I am alive?
The life artificial
It’s life Jim… but who knows what that is?
In 2010 controversial American ge neticist Craig Venter and a team of scientists made headlines with claims of creating the first “synthetic biological organism”. This new life was a selfreplicating, synthetically created version of the bacterium My coplasma mycoides4. However, they used a topdown approach, essen tially synthesising a tweaked version of a known organism. While they did create something that we recognise as life, it was more reengineering than creating. Can we take a bottom
Life can be messy, but that makes it all the more fascinating. Biology is a big, sprawling tangle of complicated half rules and exceptions, but under pinning it all is a concept of life. We tend to think we know what this is, we have our seven criteria and sort of intrinsically know that there is a clear boundary between living and nonliving—but the detail dissents. Our seven pillars are more like guidelines than requirements, and our definition of life remains murky, challenged, and perhaps not wholly
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Image credit: Renee Prisble via Flickr.com
Written by James Burgon
biological. Whether it’s the halflife of viruses, autonomous tumours or the awakening of a consciousness code, the green of life is ringed by the grey of… maybe. James is a PhD student in evolutionary biology at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Michaela Mrschtik and copy-edited by Mark Connor. References/search terms 1 Life's Working Definition: Does It Work? Astrobiology Magazine. 2007. 2 Villarreal, L.P. Are Viruses Alive? Scientific American. 2008. 3 Young, E. Selfish Shellfish Cells Cause Contagious Clam Cancer. National Geographic. 2015. 4 Coghlan, A. Craig Venter close to creating synthetic life. New Scientist. 2013. 5 Sharkey, N. Alan Turing: The experiment that shaped artificial intelligence. BBC News: Technology. 2012. 6 Abumrad, J. and Krulwich, R. The Turing Problem [audio]. Radiolab. 2012.
LIFE SCIENCES
The science of
Jurassic World
FACT OR FICTION? Image credit: Benton MJ (2010) Studying Function and Behavior in the Fossil Record via Wikimedia Commons
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LIFE SCIENCES Written by Nina Divorty
I
magine a world where creatures can be brought back from extinc tion and genetically modified to make them bigger, scarier and more impressive than before. Where sci entists happily tinker with dinosaur genomes, chopping and changing the DNA code to delight audiences who travel from far and wide to witness the spectacle. It’s the stuff of science fiction. Or is it? The Jurassic Park franchise and its most recent installment, Jurassic World, are based on complex ideas about cloning and genetic modifica tion. When the world first saw Jur assic Park in 1993, this seemed a futuristic dream – just believable enough to accept in movie theatres, but in the lab or the lecture theatre? Surely not. But at that time, science was already making huge advance ments in genetic engineering, and in the intervening decades we have achieved many amazing feats of bio logy and genetics. Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996, the human gen ome project was completed in 2003, and the first organism with a fully synthetic genome was created in 2010. In the last year, a new tech nique for editing genes in live cells has made waves throughout the bioscientific community ‘CRISPR’ technology can be used to cut any DNA sequence and paste it back to gether to insert, delete or change pieces of the code1. So how much of the science in the Jurassic World universe is fiction, and how much is based on fact?
Source DNA: suspended in amber In the original Jurassic Park, In Gen’s scientists extract dinosaur DNA from blood consumed by mos
quitoes preserved in amber. While physically possible, since bloodsuck ing mosquitos certainly existed at the same time as dinosaurs, the practicalities of extraction would make cloning very difficult. Even if the fragile DNA structure had sur vived millions of years of harsh con ditions, it would be very hard to prevent contamination by the mos quito’s own DNA, or that of more modern organisms. Even attempts to extract insect DNA from relatively recent amber samples have had highly variable and not very convin cing results. Either the DNA is so fragmented it cannot be correctly pieced together, or the sample is con taminated with DNA from other spe cies.
Are there alternative sources of dinosaur DNA? A welltimed paper claiming to find blood cells in dino saur fossils was published in the week before Jurassic World was re leased2. Although these samples, found by luck during a study on bone fossilisation, are unlikely to contain intact DNA, blood and other soft tis sues in betterpreserved specimens might. At the very least this finding shows that fossils needn’t be formed under special circumstances to pre serve soft tissues. Time will tell whether we are really able to extract DNA from these, but for the moment, getting our claws on dino DNA is still a scifi fantasy. Verdict: FICTION
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Filling the gaps: a dinosaur hybrid InGen does not go so far as to claim extraction of complete dinosaur gen omes through their amberdrilling technique. In the first movie, they merge multiple genomes of the same species together and then fill the gaps in the code with frog genes. In Jurassic World, [spoiler alert!] genes from additional species are added to make the finished product more “thrilling”. What could go wrong? Though ultimately a bad move in the film, creating a hyperintelligent, murderous beast that can camou flage and avoid thermal imaging (oops!), this technique of comparing similar genomes to fill in unknown
sequences is commonly used in ge netics research. The gapfilling concept is demon strated nicely by recent attempts to sequence the woolly mammoth gen ome3. Fragments of the mammoth genome from specimens preserved in permafrost were matched up with Asian elephant genomes to identify genes that differed between the two species. Some of these mammoth specific genes have even been suc cessfully inserted into elephant cells grown in a Petri dish. This is a huge step towards being able to ‘deex tinct’ the mammoth using elephants as a vehicle, but there is no way of knowing whether the added genes will translate to mammothlike
LIFE SCIENCES Written by Nina Divorty
traits unless a whole organism can be produced. Of course, mammoths are much younger than dinosaurs, and this technique would be significantly harder in the absence of such a close living relative. Mammoths and ele phants are more than 99% genetic ally identical, and only 5 million years of evolution apart. The young est dinosaurs lived more than 66 million years ago. Dinosaurs are
now thought to be a lot more closely related to birds than to fish, reptiles or amphibians, so emus (one of the most ancient bird species) or even chickens might be our best template. If we did find a source of dinosaur DNA, and enough samples from the same species could be assembled in to a nearcomplete genome, we might one day get to the stage we are currently at with mammoths. Verdict: FACT
Genetic safeguards The most obvious flaw with John Hammond’s questionable business model is the almost total lack of health and safety consideration. Most people wouldn’t resurrect giant carnivorous monsters without giving at least a little thought to how to
control them. In Jurassic Park, In Gen uses the ‘lysine contingency’, mutating a gene to prevent the dino saurs from producing the amino acid lysine. This would apparently cause them to slip into a coma and die if not supplied with lysine by the keep ers. Unfortunately, lysine is actually an essential amino acid in animals, meaning it can’t be made by the body. All animals must obtain lysine from food. It can be found in most protein
rich food sources, such as the cows and goats (and the occasional hu man) fed to the dinosaurs in the film. Would real scientists be reckless enough to create artificial life without a reliable means to control it? Using the methods we have now, it should be relatively easy to engin eer selfdestruct mechanisms into cloned organisms. One approach is similar to the lysine contingency, but much more sophisticated. Scientists have genetically modified bacteria to make their proteins from an unnat ural amino acid that is completely absent from the environment4. These bacteria truly do rely on a supple ment provided by their ‘keepers’, and die if it is withdrawn. Kill switches that respond to certain chemicals can also be engineered into the genome. One lab has made bacteria that,
when exposed to an otherwise non toxic sugar, will degrade its modified DNA5. This can be used either to eradicate all unnatural DNA, or to degrade whole chromosomes and kill the organism. Of course, these tech niques are currently only possible in bacteria, and getting them to work in a complex organism like a Trex would present new challenges. These are just some of the ways scientists are trying to make genetically modi fied technology safe to release into the environment. Verdict: FICTION On the whole, the science explain ing Jurassic World’s dinosaurs is crude and exaggerated. Ultimately though, the concepts behind it are rooted in fact, based on real research happening at the cutting edge of ge netic engineering. It’s easy to forget as we watch the Indominus Rex wreak havoc on Isla Nublar, but sometimes the truth is almost as strange as fiction. Nina is a PhD student in pharmacology and cardiovascular science at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Euan Wilson and copy-edited by Rebecca Laidlaw. References/search terms: 1 Nature News: CRISPR technology 2 Nature Comms: Bertazzo et al. 2015 3 Nature News: Mammoth genome 4 Nature: Mandell et al. 2015 5 Nature Comm: Caliando et al. 2015
1929: German scientists insert body cells into egg cells 1952: Twentyseven tadpoles cloned from Northern Leopard frogs 1963: The world's first cloned fish is born in China 1996: Dolly the sheep is born in Scotland after 434 cloning at tempts 2000: Cloned piglets see daylight. Beijing Genomics Institute now clone 500 pigs a year 2003: Afghan hound, Snuppy, becomes the first cloned dog 2012: A Pashmina goat, Noori, is cloned in Kashmir Image credit: George Bell from the Comic Writers & Artists Society at the University of Strathclyde
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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Firstname Lastname
Image credit: Jessica Mclaren
Dead men tell true tales Teasing secrets from dead, cold hands... Ida Emilie Steinmark tells the story WWW.THE-GIST.ORG
PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark
R
amsgate, Kent. You’re standing in a muddy field, drenched to the skin, looking down on an ancient skeleton. Its bones lie spread out on the ground, the skull grinning up at you. The rain soaks your sweater; questions seep into your mind ... Back at the lab, you turn your back to your new friend (whom you’re now affectionately calling Archie), and write on the white board:
carbon12 and carbon14. When something dies, it stops taking in carbon, and while the nonradio active carbon12 remains unaltered, carbon14 slowly decays, allowing the ratio between the two to change. By comparing the ratio found in living tissue with Archie’s, you calculate
traditional kind that they’d be able to present to a scary man in a uniform asking for “Papiere, bitte!”. No, this one is way better: it’s in their teeth. Archie, bless him, died with a string of nice pearls on his jaw. You pull one out and hold it up to the light. This little thing his first mol
how long ago Archie died1. The result of your calculation: three thousand years. You lean back. You, the bone whisperer. Archie died about 1000 years BC, smack in the middle of the Bronze Age. You ima gine each bone giving you a tiny high five.
ar carries the secret to his life’s whereabouts... It gives you the same humble feeling as when you look up at the stars and feel small. You’re holding Archie’s first memory in a pair of pliers. Archie’s tooth contains an element called strontium, in a ratio of two of its isotopes. When Archie was little, he drank strontium through water like we all do and his teeth used it in their coating. The strontium ratio in the water, and therefore inside Archie’s teeth, reflects that of his
Date Birth Sex Death
The bone whisperer Though nonarchaeologists rarely get excited by dating methods unless it involves Italian food, you appreciate it. Time is so vast that almost any event, any person, loses its meaning without a date stamp. The allim portant context requires dating, and Archie, you think, deserves context. To date him, you feed pure carbon, converted from his bone, into a mass spectrometer which will give you its concentration of carbon14. In living tissue there is a set ratio between
Ancient passports You always enjoy telling nonarchae ologists what they don’t know: that most corpses carry passports. Not the
The sub-pubic angle is the angle found in the pubic arch. Image credit: Grey's Anatomy via Wikimedia Commons
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PHYSICAL SCIENCES & MATHS Written by Ida Emilie Steinmark
then geological region2. Like a blue print of his childhood playground. You run the mass spectrometer again, waiting for it to break the sample down into its constituent parts. But the results show that his childhood strontium ratio doesn’t correspond to the area in which he was found. Maybe Archie was a mi grant?
Pelvis is king You’ve phoned your friend Taylor to drop by. Her white coat flaps behind her totally not in line with safety regulations. “Where’s the fella?” she asks. You nod in the direction of Archie, whom
you’ve laid out as best you can. She leans forward and squints her eyes. Let the sexing begin. “Pretty skinnyboned,” she says. “But the pelvis is pretty obvious. See this bit? It’s called the subpubic angle, right where the two main bones meet. His is around 90 de grees, not exactly childbearing hips. Also, the skull has a very ridged brow and sticks out a bit at the back. I’d put my money on male.” “What about age?” you ask her. She tilts her head. “Well he’s got long bones and the skull is fused, so he’s an adult. He has his third molar, and it’s in good condition. 25, 30 years, maybe?” You nod. “That’s what I thought. I compared the pelvis to a reference, so my estimate is between 20 and 35.” You smile at your agreement, and she fistpumps you on her way out. “That’s a nasty hole, that is,” she says and nods towards his head be fore the door slams behind her.
Putting it bluntly It is a nasty hole. Several, in fact. You bend your knees to level your line of vision and look closely. Brutal. You decide to get to the bottom of this. Was it simply a terrible fall? Could someone have killed him?
Maybe a bear attack? You straighten up. You will find this out. For Arch ie’s sake. You ask a friend if you can use his CT scanner. You get the green light, and you carefully place Archie’s frac tured skull on a tray trolley, not un like those muffin and crispsfilled ones flight attendants push down narrow airplane aisles, and roll off. As Archie’s head disappears into the giant Xraying donut, you reflect on this whole livingdyingandbeing found thing. Maybe Archie wouldn’t have liked his final resting place to have been disturbed, but in reality, he would have been totally and ut terly forgotten without you. In a way, you have revived him, given him a
second chance of telling someone his story. He might be dead, but you’re bringing him back to life. An image takes shape on the screen. Three main holes of entry are visible. You ask the computer to com pare them they are almost indistin guishable, yet they have different angles of impact. Your friend, a pathologist, walks in to check on you, and you ask for a consult. “Definitely blunt trauma. See how they’re all the same? That’s the same weapon, no doubt about it,” he says, pointing. “The different angles sug gest he’s been hit again and again. Nothing else looks like it. Also, he died of it there’s no healing at all, no bone remodelling.” You lean to the side and look into the scanner room. Wee Archie, you think. Poor, wee Archie.
Case closed You’re back in front of your white board. You’ve written a summary of what you have learned about Archie: Died around 1000 BC. Found in a field in Ramsgate but doesn’t origin ate from the area; likely a migrant. Male, scrawny. Killed by three blunt blows, delivered to the head. Next to Archie is a big box. You’re
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meant to pack him away, write up your findings and put them into con text. Archie likely fits in with a bunch of other European migrants which were recently uncovered3. You like the idea of Bronze Age migra tion it’s so modern, in a way. Or maybe timeless, rather. Yet, you can’t help feeling sad. That feeling of being the bearerof news, the beareroftruth even, fades when you think of packing him away. Like filing him in an archive (and not under ‘A’ for Archie, but un der ‘R’ for Ramsgate). You know you’re being silly, he’s been dead for three thousand years! And archae ology isn’t really about “remember ing people’s stories” and “giving them a second chance”, now is it? It’s about the accumulation of human knowledge, about peeking into our own past, to know about ourselves. You sigh and decide the world is too cynical. After a quick glance out the door to make sure you’re alone, you crawl onto the table and place a foot on either side of Archie’s laid out skeleton. You fish out your phone and lean forward … “Say cheese, Archie!” Ida Emilie is a chemistry undergraduate at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Jessica Bownes and copyedited by Nina Divorty. References/search terms: 1 HowStuffWorks: carbon dating 2 pmc.ucsc.edu: strontium isotope analysis 3 Telegraph.co.uk: bronze age migration
LIFE SCIENCES Written by Michaela Mrschtik
Image credit: vinyleraser via Flickr.com
Going viral
Could viruses become the new antibiotics? Michaela Mrschtik investigates
I
t is the year 2050, and healthcare systems are strained. Most opera tions have been abolished; they are now considered too dangerous be cause they often result in deadly wound infections. Lung and bladder infection have become common chronic conditions with little hope for treatment. This year, 10 million people are dying from infections that were once curable. Even the ones that survive the flood of diseases are plagued by knockon effects of bac terial infections in humans and live stock – food shortages, particularly of meat, are rife. Life in this age is not easy, and too often it ends early. This scenario may sound like something taken straight out of a dystopian novel. Quite the contrary is the case: This vision of the future is not just science fiction, it could be come reality. The gloomy prediction comes from a Review on Antimicrobi al Resistance report, which describes on the potential impact of antibiotic (and antimicrobial) resistance in the
year 2050. The big picture: without working antibiotics, we may face a bleak future. Antibiotics revolutionised medi cine 70 years ago. These drugs are some of the cornerstones of modern medicine. Many treatments and medical procedures including oper ations, cancer chemotherapy and or gan transplantation are safe because of them. However, problems are developing: an increasing num ber of bacterial infections no longer responds to traditional antibiotic treatment. This is mostly our own fault. The misuse of antibiotics in livestock and overuse in the clinic has driven the rapid rise of antibioticresistant bugs. This coupled with the stagna tion of discovery and development of new antibiotics (only two new classes of antibiotics have been discovered since 19622), has left us with few op tions to fight bacteria that are resist ant to several classes of antibiotics. With the appearance of these mul
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tiresistant ‘superbugs’ we are racing to find new solutions to prevent fall ing back into preantibiotic times. We may, however, still have an ace up our sleeve: fighting the infection with an infection. Despite bacteria’s role in causing disease, these bugs can catch infec tions themselves. Viruses which at tack bacteria, called phages (short for bacteriophages), are among the most common organisms in nature3. Once they enter a bacterium, they can hi jack its biological processes and con vert their hosts into phage production factories which may kill the unlucky victims. Phages only in fect bacteria, and even though they can be found inside our bodies, they do not harm us. So why not use this magic bullet for therapy? Parts of the world already do. Phage therapy is not a recent discovery: it has been used for nearly 100 years. It was only discon tinued in Europe and the US in the 1940’s, after the discovery of the
LIFE SCIENCES Written by Michaela Mrschtik
therapeutic potential of the antibiot ic Penicillin. Research on phages has since continued in the former So viet Union (particularly in today’s Georgia) and in Poland, where phages are still used to treat bacteri al infections4. Like other viruses, phages are natural agents. They are not gener ated, but they are usually extracted from their habitats. Phages can be found anywhere, but they are en riched in places where bacteria thrive such as sewage, soil or our guts3 and therapeutic phages can be extracted from these reservoirs. Once collected, they are purified and tested to isolate the ones that de
extensive bank of tested phages, but this collection needs to be regularly updated to stay effective as local bac teria evolve and as new bugs arrive from abroad. To complicate matters further, bacteria are not completely helpless against phage attacks. They have evolved an immune system that can help them fight viral infections the nowfamous gene editing tool CRISPRCas9 is derived from this defence system7. If we use a single phage to treat an infection, bacteria may become resistant to the virus before it could eliminate all of them. This is the reason why phage ther apy is often administered as a cock
stroy diseasecausing bacteria. Phages that have bacteriakilling ef fects are then stored for later use. Phages usually have a narrow host spectrum, meaning that each virus can only infect one or a few bacterial species5. This specificity is both a blessing and a curse in the context of therapy. Our bodies are home to trillions of bacteria (yes, trillions they even outnumber the human cells in our bodies by approx imately 1:10) and their presence helps us in many ways. Antibiotics often wipe out most of our natural bacterial inhabitants, and this can have negative knockon effects on our health. Fecal transplants bac teria from the stool of healthy donors6 are recent attempts to counter this unwanted fallout of an tibiotics. As phages are very selective with their hosts, we could use phage therapy to keep our beneficial bac teria healthy while eliminating only the diseasecausing intruder. This also means that each infection has to be treated with its specific phage or a phage cocktail. If an infection has no phage mix readily available, it can take days or even weeks to pro duce one that will work on the dis easecausing bug. Often, this time cannot be spared when a patient is critically ill. To be prepared to swiftly deal with local infections, the Eliava Institute in Georgia has an
tail, and not as single agent. Despite these limitations, tackling antibioticresistant bacteria with phage therapy could be a viable op tion. But there are two additional, entirely different hurdles to the therapeutic use of phages: regulatory issues and profitability. Phages are biological entities that are capable of evolving, which complicates their ap proval by drug regulation agencies in Europe and the US. Additionally, naturally occurring phages cannot easily be patented, which makes pharmaceutical forprofit develop ment of phage therapy in its current form unlikely. To get around these issues, re search efforts are directed towards generating engineered and there fore patentable phages that express therapeutic components. One recent example of this is the creation of a modified phage which has been equipped with bacteria’s own modi fied immune system the CRIS PR/Cas9 gene cutting tool used against the bugs to destroy antibiotic resistance genes in E. coli bacteria8. When an antibiotic resistant bacteri um is infected with this phage, its resistance can be disrupted, making it vulnerable to antibiotic treatment again. Routine use of modified phages as therapy is still far off. For now, if you do catch a multiresistant infection
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they are already everywhere, so you may want to start worrying your best bet may be to pay a visit to Po land’s or Georgia’s Phage Therapy Centres (in case you're already con cerned, here are their websites: www.iitd.pan.wroc.pl and www.pha getherapycenter.com). Increases in health tourists are already expected. Michaela is a cancer research PhD student at the Beatson Institute. This piece was specialist edited by Catriona Thompson and copy-edited by Rebecca Baird. References/search terms 1 http://amr-review.org 2 Not Exactly Rocket Science: antibiotic resistance teixobactin 3 Nature: Clokie et al., Bacteriophage, 2011 4 Abedon et al., Bacteriophage, 2011 5 Sulakvelidze et al., Bacteriophage therapy, 2001 6 TheGIST: transpoosions 7 TheGIST: CRISPR 8 IFLS, Justine Alford: engineered viruses
SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Firstname Lastname
People of truth? Image credit: Dylan Meconis vis Flickr.com
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SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Catriona Thompson
W
Image credit: Dylan Meconis vis Flickr.com
hat comes to mind when you think ‘scientist’? Most likely you’re thinking of a lab coat, crazy hair and multicoloured chemicals in test tubes. But do you normally think of misconduct? Recently it seems like science scandals of one sort or another are constantly in the news. In 2008, 95 out of the 1.4 million papers published were retracted1. Al though retractions are small in num ber, it is not uncommon to come across them on a day to day basis. Retracted papers and the reason for their retraction are published by Re traction Watch; the reasons for re traction vary from image manipulation to unreliable data. In April of this year Richard Hor ton, a medical doctor and editor of
Wakefield and the 12 other coau thors were found guilty of deliberate fraud which appeared to be for finan cial gain5. It took more than 10 years to retract their paper and within that time vaccination rates in parts of the USA and the UK dropped below the level needed to maintain herd immunity (the level of immunity needed for the whole pop ulation to be protected, even if some of them are not immune themselves). The Wakefield case has been called the “most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years” as it has been a high contributor to the falling vac cination rates and the continuously high vaccination scepticism6. The World Conference on Re search Integrity met in June 2015 to assess the latest scandals to hit the
The Lancet, published a comment in The Lancet in which he stated that ‘much of the scientific literature, per haps half, may simply be untrue’. He was not only referring to cases of misconduct but also to other aspects of scientific research, such as too small sample sizes or invalid analys is. He went on to describe how the scientific literature is sculpted by the quest to tell a good story and by au thors trying to shape their data to fit their hypothesis2. But is this really the case? In 2014 two papers published by scientists from the RIKEN institute in Japan were retracted from Nature. These papers put forward the idea that adult cells could be transformed into pluripotent stem cells, thus giving them the ability to differentiate into any other cell. Nature’s independent news team re ported that errors were found in the figures, parts of the methods section were plagiarised and attempts to replicate the findings failed3,4. An enquiry by the RIKEN institute con cluded that although some of the in accurate work published was the product of genuine error, there were cases of deliberate misconduct found. The stem cell retraction was an example of bad science which was quickly caught and retracted, but sometimes research misconduct can have very severe consequences bey ond the laboratory setting. In 1998, Dr Andrew Wakefield published fab ricated data showing a link between Autism and the MMR vaccine. Later,
scientific community. One topic un der discussion was the recent high profile retraction of a political sci ence paper from the journal Science by one of the coauthors. The study, published in December 2014, sugges ted that opinions on gaymarriage could be changed through canvassing (face to face interactions with the re searcher’s target audience in order to try to persuade them to his or her point of view, normally used in polit ical campaigns), with long term ef fects being seen in approval ratings if the canvasser is also gay7. However this paper was retracted after one lead author of the study came under scrutiny and failed to provide his original survey data. This latest retraction from Science was picked up by the global media prompting the New York Times to write an article entitled ‘Scientists who cheat’ and the Guardian to write a piece entitled ‘Fooling ourselves with science: hoaxes, retractions and the public’, bringing scientific mis conduct to the attention of the gener al public. Research misconduct is a very complicated issue and cannot be simply judged on paper retraction numbers. One reason for this is that the peer review system is not equipped to catch misconduct. Illus trating this is a systematic review by Dr Daniele Fanelli (University of Ed inburgh) published in PLOS One. It found that nearly 2% of scientists admitted to fabricating or falsifying data and nearly onethird admitted
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to questionable research practices8. When researchers are asked about incidences they have seen, fabrica tion and falsification of data increas e to 14%. These numbers appear high and it is important to remem ber the limitations of selfreports. Nevertheless, this study suggests that retractions, however public they may be, don’t provide the whole story. So does all this negative media coverage give scientists a bad name? Well, it is not all doom and gloom the public doesn’t necessarily think negatively of scientists. A recent study by the Royal Society of Chem istry showed that public perceptions of scientists are largely positive9. As well as this, a study by Pew Re search found that the majority of adults (76%) in the USA thought that science had made life easier for most people. However, they also thought that too few scientists were good at communicating their find ings10. These findings underline the importance of scientific engagement with the public, if for no other reas on than that the the public are some of the key financial supporters of sci entific research. The taxpayer pays for a large amount of research through government funding; they might enjoy finding out where their money is going. Furthermore, sci ence communication will help boost science’s image. It is hard to say how much these high profile cases will affect the im age of scientists in the future; however, it is important that we, as scientists, maintain our integrity and not give the public reasons to mistrust us. With scientific power comes scientific responsibility and we can’t let the public down! Catriona is a PhD student in microbial biochemistry at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by James Burgon and copy-edited by Mary Kristen Layne. References/search terms: 1 Harman, K (2010) Scientific American 2 Horton R. (2015) The Lancet 3 Nature Editorial (2014) STAP retracted. 4 Report on STAP cell research paper 5 Rao et al (2011) MMR vaccine and autism 6 Fine et al (2011) Herd Immunity 7 LaCour et al (2014) Science (retracted) 8 Fanelli, D (2009) Plos One 9 Nature Editorial: Misplaced Faith 10 Funk et al (2015) Views on science
SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Jennifer Hamilton
Psychopaths
Image credit: Irina Duarte via Flickr.com
Jennifer Hamilton reports from the edge ... WWW.THE-GIST.ORG
SOCIAL SCIENCES Written by Jennifer Hamilton
vs sociopaths “
I’m not a psychopath, Ander son. I’m a high functioning so ciopath. Do your research.” This remark, spit sneeringly by Holmes at a forensic team member, is one of the most quoted lines from the hit BBC show 'Sherlock'. But is there really any difference between psychopaths and sociopaths? The definition of a psychopath is generally agreed upon, but psycholo gists disagree about the meaning of the word ‘sociopath’. Some psycholo gists say that sociopaths and psycho paths are the same thing and that
ability to act normal. Psychopaths don’t feel empathy or guilt – making it hard to form meaningful emotional relationships – but after years of ob serving how everyone else shows emotion, they are able to fake it. Es sentially wearing a mask to trick so ciety. This means that psychopaths can seem completely normal and lead inconspicuous, everyday, “nor mal” lives2. For this reason, the ones that commit crimes are particularly hard to catch. From the definition in the previ ous paragraph, it would seem that
sociopath is just an outdated term, while others think that sociopaths are a product of their environment while psychopathy is caused by ab normalities in the brain although what these specific abnormalities are is still under debate. Whether they are the same condition or not, both are a subset of a psychological dis order called Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)1. This causes suf ferers to have no regard for the rights of others. People with ASPD have no problem with breaking the law or lying to friends and family be cause they feel very little remorse or guilt, or possibly none at all. Psychopaths have these traits, but they can be very hard to spot due to their high level of charm and their
Holmes is at least half right; his be haviour is too erratic to fit the profile for a psychopath. However, the TV and film industry definitely isn’t lacking in characters that could be thought of as psychopaths. Some are crazy serial killers the stereotypical psychopath, while others are the good guys. Ruthless, charming, fear less characters with dangerous ex ploits who always end up on top i.e. James Bond. Psychologists in the “sociopaths are different from psychopaths” camp believe that sociopathic beha viour is more dependent on a per son’s environment, especially during childhood, than on the makeup of their brain. They think that neglect or abuse during childhood can result
in sociopathic adults. They also be lieve that sociopaths live different kinds of lives from psychopaths; they tend to be more impulsive and errat ic and will make very little effort to hide their true nature. For this reas on, sociopaths don’t tend to lead nor mal, everyday lives within society which makes them much easier to identify1. They also tend to feel at least a small amount of empathy and guilt, although still nowhere near as much as normal people do. In general, ASPD is thought of as a ‘spectrum’ or ‘scale’, with both minor and extreme cases possible. Psychopaths and sociopaths fit somewhere on that scale but usually it is extremely difficult to define where. This is because there are so many different overlapping symp toms between the two, such as fear lessness, ruthlessness, egocentricity and so on. It is therefore hard to come up with an explicit definition for what a psychopath or sociopath is, which is why there is so much disagreement over the meaning of the word ‘sociopath’. In the quota tion at the beginning Holmes may claim to be a sociopath, but whether he is or not would seem to depend on your point of view. Jennifer is studying for a MSc in nanotechnology at the University of Glasgow. This piece was specialist edited by Margaret Laurie and Ida Emilie Steinmark, and copyedited by Kirsty McLean. References/search terms: 1 PsychCentral: J.M. Grohol, psychopaths vs sociopaths 2 Frontiers in Psychology: Lilienfeld et al, 2014
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with theGIST? We’ve made our first ever feature length documentary. At a whopping 8 minutes and 34 seconds it’s our most ambitious video project to date. In the film we spoke to researchers from the University of Glasgow about how they are using thermal imaging cameras to make the sci ence of stress less stressful, we met a beautiful charm of finches, and heard why Dominic McCafferty couldn’t quite believe the results he was seeing whilst studying pen guins. To check out the video head to www.YouTube.com/GlasgowGIST
GIST.org. We’ve redesigned the web site and you have not lived until you’ve seen our homepage slider. The way it glides from one post to the next is just… So. Good. On the website we’ll continue to bring you regular science and tech nology articles, podcasts and videos, but now looking just a little bit smoother. If the physical sciences are your thing, then no problem, we have a button just for that. If the life sci ences are you thing, guess what? We have a button for that too. And don’t worry social science enthusiasts, we even have a button for you. We have thought of everything.
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theGIST’s video “A Brush with Chemistry” was awarded runner up
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in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s one minute science video competi tion. The video looked at the chem istry behind brushing your teeth. It turns out that a regular brush in creases life expectancy and reduces heart disease. It took humans thou sands of years to start using tooth brushes, but thanks to chemistry only takes two minutes to use. So next time you are brushing your teeth watch our video. Twice.
Glasgow Science Festival This year theGIST was the official media for the Glasgow Science Fest ival. From ‘The Perfect Meal’ to a ‘Single Pixel Camera’ the science festival had it all. And if you missed any of it visit our website to catch up with our reports and videos: www.theGIST.org
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The back page Credit: Rebecca Douglas. Find solutions to previous puzzles at www.the-GIST.org
Down: 1. Insignia of the medical profession (7) 2. Small toothed gears (7) 3. Immature invertibrates (5) 4. Narrow rock fissure (4) 5. Meat eater (9) 6. Caught fire (7) 7. Nasal opening (7) 12. Study of logic, quantities, geometries, etc (5) 14. In the hand, between the carpus and the phalanges (9) 16. Water passes through semi permeable membranes via this method (7) 17. Milk sugar (7) 19. Rod shaped bactria (7) 20. Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (7) 23. Greek letter denoting units of resistance (5) 24. White powder, hydrated magnesium silicate (4)
Across: 1.Flow of liquids along tiny passages (9, 6) 8. Scalp condition (8) 9. The 7th planet from the Sun (6) 10. A salt of cholic acid (7) 11. Social media platform (7) 13. Sleeplessness (may change) (8) 15. Egg shaped (6)
16. Flattened at the poles (6) 18. Nectar loving insect (8) 21. Genus of shorttailed monkies (7) 22. Tuft at the end of an animal’s tail (7) 25. Examines minutely (6) 26. Plant used for candy (8) 27. Ratio used to measure percentage alcohol (8, 7)
Credit: George Bell and the Comic Writers and Artists Society at the University of Strathclyde
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Two lovely GISTers helping out at the conference in 2014. Image credit: Gabi Bilin
Science's role in society? We care about that too. Our annual conference Science for Society focuses on how science can and does influence our society. Last year, in 2014, we covered evidencebased policy, bringing together students, academics, policymakers and people from industry for a round of exciting, engaging discussion. This year, our title is 'Future Cities'. We want to explore what it means to be a smart city, what science can do to improve our urban areas and how it's already brought us closer to the future. As always, there will a student article competition with prizes to be won. Don't miss out on this onceayear opportunity! Keep an eye on theGIST.org and we'll let you know when you can register.
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