Science spin 29

ISSUE 29 July 08 €3 including VAT £2 NI and UK

SCIENCE

SPIN

qI R I S H

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

G O L Dr

Biodiversity — Origin of life Letters to an Irish scientist

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Vincents, Fairview, a history. Aidan Collins. Price including P+P €35 Hardback.

Wexford, a town and its landscape.

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SCIENCE

As in the Bronze Age, Irish gold is still going into jewellery.

Gleninsheen Gorget in the National Museum of Ireland.

SPIN

UPFRONT

2

Controlling pine weevil

Science education

Awarding science and conference in Tullamore.

9

Publisher Duke Kennedy Sweetman Ltd 5 Serpentine Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. www.sciencespin.com Email: tom@sciencespin.com Editors Tom Kennedy tom@sciencespin.com Seán Duke sean@sciencespin.com Business Development Manager Alan Doherty alan@sciencespin.com Design and Production Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo Proofing and web diary Marie-Claire Cleary marieclaire@sciencespin.com Picture research Source Photographic Archive www.iol.ie/~source.foxford/ Printing Turner Group, Longford Contributors in this issue: Lenni Antonelli, Fionnula Finnerty, Frank Gannon, Marie-Catherine Mousseau, Claire Mulhall.

Articles published in Science SPIN may reflect the views of the contributors and not the official views of the publication, its editorial staff, its ownership, or its sponsors.

Scientific letters

Claire Mulhall on a project to make 2,000 letters from a world famous scientist available on the web.

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Frank Gannon challenges the assumption that universities are supposed to be drivers of economic development.

11

An ocean of opportunity

Lenny Antonelli writes about a biodiscovery programme.

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Tom Kennedy reports how Irish mines yielded clues to the origin of life.

15

Keeping lungs healthy

Research at NUIM aims to reduce the incidence of lung disease in Ireland. .

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Irish gold

24

The Colossal Squid

Fionnuala Finnerty describes the recovery of one of the ocean’s most elusive creatures

26

Helping the body heal itself

A Faustian bargain

Pools of creation

Natural enemies protect coniferous forests.

Tom Kennedy reports that adult stem cells could keep our joints on the move.

28

Mapping Ireland’s offshore Seán Duke writes that harvesting data gives us a clearer picture of what lies offshore.

32

Healthy combination, maths and medicine

Seán Duke reports that maths allow doctors to make better use of existing scanners.

33

Wexford A book to celebrate town and landscape.

Marie Catherine Mousseau writes that adding value makes it worthwhile to mine Irish gold.

19

Geological Survey of Ireland Suirbhéireacht Gheolaíochia Éireann

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UPFRONT Techno-threads

WEavINg a bit of science into fashion, Technothreads continues at the Science gallery TCD until July 25th.

On every Thursday during the exhibition visitors can bring their own clothes and have them transformed into LED light creations.

Full details at:

www.sciencegallery.com

Dr Brian Kelly, co-founder of the award winning company, Celtic Catalysts.

Shape changers

IN bIO-rEaCTIONS, a change in molecular shape can make all the difference between a drug that cures and one that produces unwanted side effects. by helping pharmaceutical companies to overcome that problem researchers have created one of UCD’s most successful campus spin off companies. The company’s CEO, brian Kelly, and Prof Declan gilheany had been working on catalysts, and they found that these often determined whether the molecules in a final product turned to the right, or to the left. Realising the significance of this to the synthesis of drugs, Prof gilheany and Dr Kelly set up Celtic Catalysts in 2000, and as a specialised niche player, the company has gone from strength to strength. The company has alliances with a number of major pharmaceutical companies, and there are plans to expand from 17 to 30 people, most of whom will be PhD level researchers.

In recognition of the company’s success, Celtic Catalysts has been presented with NovaUCD’s Innovation award for 2008. Twenty four knowledge-based companies, including Celtic Catalysts, are currently based at NovaUCD.

Marine research

There is a big future in research at sea, and most of the Earth’s surface remains to be explored. Ireland, with its enormous marine territory provides an ideal platform for marine research.

Transition year students thinking of taking up marine science are being offered a place on board the national research vessel, Celtic Voyager.

In a special programme developed by the Marine Institute, marine biologists and fisheries scientists will demonstrate what they are doing and how they work.

Students with a genuine interest in marine science should apply to the Marine Institute before 12th September 08 to secure a place.

To find out more, or to download the application form, visit www.marine.ie

INVESTING IN RESEARCH; INVESTING IN PEOPLE. Established ten years ago, the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) is the most significant Government investment ever in research. Contributing in a strategic way to developing Ireland’s reputation as a global centre for new thinking and ideas, it has also helped establish career paths for researchers.

In the past decade, the number of PhD graduates annually in Ireland has doubled while we have significantly increased our patent numbers and our publications record. PRTLI has provided the infrastructure that underpins this activity. The thirty Centres of Excellence established under the Programme include - Geary Institute (Social Sciences), (UCD); Institute of Neuroscience, (TCD); Boole Postgraduate Library, (UCC); National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology, (DCU); Environmental Change Institute (NUIG); Centre for Sustainability (IT Sligo).

www.hea.ie

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SPIN

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ng u o Y T B ist & t n e i c S logy Techno ion Exhibit

UPFRONT

Astronomy is to be a key theme for the forthcoming BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. 2009 marks the 400th anniversery of Galileo’s development of the telescope, a discovery that sparked off the exploration of space.

The sponsor and organiser, BT, has a team of ten people working on the exhibition, which the company’s CEO, Chris Clark, said is one of the finest showcases in the world for science, technology and mathematics. “We believe that our investment in, and commitment to this exhibition encourages schools throughout the island to have a passion and interest in those very skills that will help Ireland advance and thrive,” he said.

Now entering its 45th year, the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition had a record breaking 1,416 projected entered last year.

The 2009 event will be at the RDS in Dublin from 6th to 10th January 2009.

For more information visit www.btyoungscientist.ie or call 1800 924362. From NI, call 0800 9171297.

Science week

9th to 16th November 08

Shaping our world

THIS year Science Week, with the theme “Shaping our World” promises to be bigger and better than ever. The national programme of events is being extended to include a big science and research exhibition at the RDS, and a number of special presentations around the country are being planned for adult and specialised audiences.

Council members of the recently formed Irish Science Open Forum, ISOF, have been asking institutions to create additional events to highlight the best in Irish research, and these will be incorporated into the Science Week programme.

The ISOF EXPO in the Main Hall of the RDS will have a strong focus on science and research careers, and the show is expected to provide a much needed interface between researchers in the institutions and industry. Science Spin will also be publishing a special Science Research Handbook to be launched at ISOF EXPO giving an upto-date picture on the rapidly developing Irish science scene.

Marine Institute

Foras na Mara

A special website for the ISOF EXPO has gone live at:

www.isofexpo.ie

more details will be posted on the Science Spin site

www.sciencespin.ie

and the full Science Programme is going up on

www.scienceweek.ie

Everyone with an interest in science is welcome to join the ISOF list for occasional email alerts. Simply send an email stating that you are interested in the Irish Science Open Forum to tom@sciencespin.com

www.marine.ie Marine Institute Rinville Oranmore Co. Galway telephone 353 91 387 200 facsimile 353 91 387 201 email institute.mail@marine.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 3

Foras na Mara

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UPFRONT Taste

Filtering of water through sand is a traditional way of getting a good clean supply. However, as gayle newcombe at the Applied Chemistry Unit of the Australian Water Quality Centre in Salisbury, South Australia, found, changing filters too often can spoil the taste. Fresh filters allow earthy tastes and odours to pass through, and although these pose no threat to health, they are not appreciated by consumers. Reporting her findings in The Journal of Environment and Waste Management, gayle said that these tastes usually come from common earthy molecules, geosmin and methylisoborneol, both of which are non-toxic.

Working with Brigid McDowall from the School of Chemical engineering at the University of Adelaide, gayle found that when sand is allowed age, it acquires a biological film, and these bacteria absorb and break down the odour molecules. the researchers found that 26 year old sand filters had well-established, active biofilms, capable of removing odours within two weeks. By comparison, after several months, fresh sand removed less than two-thirds of the odour molecules.

Biofilms are an important part of sewage treatment, and as the Australian researchers show, their role at the beginning of the water cycle is also quite significant.

Chasing comets

in itS second swing by earth, the rosetta space craft, launched in March 2004, has completed almost half its 7.1 thousand million km journey to meet up with he Churyomov-gerasimenko comet. the latest swing by earth in november, gave the craft an extra sling-shot boost back out into distant space. Before completing its journey, rosetta, provided it makes it through the asteroid belt, will return once more in november 2009 for its third and final swing around Earth. All going well, Rosetta will enter an orbit around the comet in 2014 and release a small lander to investigate the icy nucleus. the 21 kilogram lander is equipped to carry out a number of experiments and it has a drill to dig out subsurface materials. Data from the lander will be transmitted via the orbiter to earth.

WELCOME BACK In June NUIG gave a welcome back to former students, and among them, the ‘fifty year club’ from 1958. In that year University College Galway had just 175 graduates. Fifty years later 4,700 are to graduate from NUIG.

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UPFRONT Greelanders

From left, Prof Timothy O’Brien, REMEDI Director; Michael Coleman, Ballincollig Community School; Stephanie Forman, Wellcome Trust; Aishling Murphy, Ballincollig Community School; and Prof Frank Gannon, Director General, Science Foundation Ireland.

Debating science

In May, secondary school students converged on the Science Gallery at TCD to take part in a series of debates on some of the most contentious issues in science.

The debates, co-ordinated by the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) in association with science and discovery centres throughout Ireland, was sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. after several well argued debates, for and against a number of motions, such as “this house proposes that the procurement and use of embryonic stem cells for scientific research is unethical,” the students from Ballincollig Commnity School, Co Cork, were declared winners. Other national finalists came from Gort Community College, Co Galway; St Colman’s College in Newry; and St Mary’s Adademy CBS in Carlow. The panel of judges, including scientists and science communicators, were impressed both by debating skills and understanding of the issues involved.

The debating competition was open to all senior cycle secondary students throughout Ireland. Prof Frank Barry, Scientific Director of REMEDI commented that the debates made students much more aware of what researchers are doing in Ireland. It is important, he said, for research centres to communicate with the public, and this is a two-way process, and science should be open to informed debate.

Salmon

ThE NuMBER of salmon surviving at sea is in decline, and no one knows why. according to Dr Ken Whelan, a leading expert in the species, we now know a great deal about salmon in rivers, but what happens to them during their long migrations at sea remains a mystery. The only thing we can be certain of, is that remaining alive at sea has become more difficult. “An increasing number are dying at sea,” he said. “On both sides of the Atlantic, the North Atlantic wild salmon face extinction.”

Dr Whelan is involved in an international scientific mission to find out what is going wrong, and possibly come up with a solution. During the SaLSEa project research vessels from Ireland and other atlantic countries, will conduct a series of surveys to track migration. Genetic tracking, developed by researchers at Ireland’s Marine Institute as a superior method of tagging, is already being employed in the project. using this method, salmon stocks, right down to the level of an individual, can be traced back to their river of origin.

Speaking at Killybegs as the Celtic Explorer was about to set sail, Minister, Eamon Ryan, commented that we need scientific advice, and if that advice ends at the estuary, we are not going to solve this problem.

Details about the SaLSEa project are at www.salmonatsea.com

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a TufT of hair, preserved in permfrost, has yielded evidence to show that the present day inhabitants of Greeland were not the first to arrive there. Prof Eske Willerslev, from the university of Copenhagen, came across the 4,000 year hair at Disco Bay in north-west Greeland. The hair was in good enough condition for mitochondrial Dna recovery. an examination of this indicated a material connection to people on the aleutian Islands, 300 of which span the 1,900 km between alaska and the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia.

While this tells us nothing yet about the paternal ancestory of the original Greelanders, Prof Willerslev believes that a more complete analysis of the Dna will become possible in a follow up project. apart from revealing early movement of people, Prof Willerslev has shown that the Inuit population came from a more recent immigration.

Barking deer

a SMaLL species of deer, Muntiacus reevesi, introduced to Britain over a century ago, could become established in Ireland. Known as ‘Barking Deer’ from the sound they make, they are native to southeast asia, occurring from India and Sri Lanka to southern China, Taiwan and Indonesia. according to zoologist, Dr Ruth Carden, who works with the Irish Wildlife Trust, the Chinese Muntjac deer has become established in the southeast of Ireland. foresters are concerned because the deer can cause serious damage to young trees, and once established they are difficult to eradicate. One of the reasons for this is that the deer breed throughout the year.

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UPFRONT

Breaking up

MILLIONS of years ago the Earth would have looked a lot different. Instead of Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas, there was one great land mass, Gondwana.

This supercontinent eventually began to break up, and various theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain why this happened. Dr Graeme Eagles from the Earth Science Department at the University of London now believes that the supercontinent cracked in two because of its enormous weight.

Dr Eagles and, Dr Konig from the Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, looked at megnetic and gravity data along some of Gondwan’s first fracture zones, and they concluded that the supercontinent first divided into two big plates. Only 30 million years later did these two plates start to split into the Southern Hemisphere conteninents we see today.

According to Dr Eagles, the previous view, suggesting that Gondwant was broken into a series of pieces by an upsurge of hot magma, was unnecessarily complicated. The thick crust of Gondwana, he said, would have been so unstable that it would eventually collapse under its own weight.

In a recent issue of the Geophysical Journal International, Dr Graeme Eagles pointed out that some of the old assumptions about break up will have to be changed. Furthermore, the positions widely assumed over the past forty years for India and Sri Lanka in Gondwana, he said, are wrong.

Right, an image of gravity anomalies as they are detected by satellite crossing over the oceans formed by the break up of Gondwana.

Below, the drift apart of land masses over millions of years brought Africa away from Antarctica.

Botox boost

WITH proper targeting botox has the potential to be used a variety of disorders. In its natural state the neutotoxin protein, causing botulinism, is one of the most poisonous substances known, but the qualities that make it so deadly could also make some therapeutic drugs more effective. Botox acts by blocking nerve transmission to muscles, causing them to relax, so in tiny doses, it can be used to prevent spasms.

In Ireland, Botox is being produced

by Allergan in Westport, Co Mayo.

With genetic engineering it is now possible to produce the drug cheaply

under controlled conditions, and it is also possibe to modify its properties.

For the past 25 years, Oliver Dolly, an SFI Research Professor, and director of DCU’s International Centre for Neurotherapeutics, has been conducting research on this neurotoxin. A surprisingly wide range of troublesome conditions involve nerve-muscle control, among them migraine, overactive bladder, and cerebral palsy. Over 100 applications are now known, and Prof Dolly’s research aims to develop more refined versions of the drug. Under the Higher Education Authority’s PRTLI funding the Botox project at DCU has received a major, €12.5 million boost.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 6

This funding is likely to make a good return as the research has considerable commercial potential, and DCU is likely to establish a campus company to exploit the opportunities.

Prof Dolly said he would like to see the drugs being produced in Ireland for the international market.

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UPFRONT Solid foundations

John McCloskey from the University of Ulster made the point that geologists need to become better at explaining what they do.

An important step in fostering an all island approach to science was taken during June when geologists met for a day long conference at Stormont. Participation from institutions north and south brought home the message that geology knows no boundaries and as the recent meeting to launch a geoparks group shows, there is a lot to be gained through co-operation.

Peadar McArdle, Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland, in presenting a comprehensive account of where the geoscience sector stands now, made the point that geology is actually a unifying science —apart from being shared across political boundaries, it embraces a whole range of disciplines, and it provides a foundation for economic development.

A report on the meeting, organised jointly by the GSNI, GSI and RIA will be in the next issue of Science Spin.

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UPFRONT Precious stones

A pArt-time diploma course in gemstones has been started at NUi Galway. the course, aimed at adult learners, gives a broad introduction to the study of precious stones, and covers the lab techniques used in identification. According to course director, Dr martin Feely, the course is particularly useful to jewellers, but it is open to everyone. During the course students

examine over 200 different kinds of gemstones, ranging from diamonds to rubies, emeralds and sapphires. there is also an associated diploma course in geology, which involves practical field work. Dr Katheryn Moore, from the Dept of earth and Ocean Science, said this course has proved very popular with secondary school teachers.

Application forms and further information on both courses are available from the Adult and Continuing Education Office on 091 492062 or by emailing: adulteducation@nuigalway.ie

Did you register your interest in the Irish Science Open Forum?

Don’t be left out, do it NOW. Email tom@sciencespin.com

Age

HAviNG decided to donate her body to science, a Dutch woman, reaching the grand old age of 111 began to wonder if she was past giving the researchers anything of value. the medics, glad to see that she was in good health, responded that she had nothing to worry about, they could wait, and in fact, the longer she lived, the better for them.

This generous old lady made it to 115, and what came as big surprise was that her brain exhibited no obvious signs of decline. According to prof Gert Holsteige from the University medical Centre in Groningen, this throws into doubt the widely held assumption that Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia will inevitably devlop with age. ironically, at birth she was small, and not expected to survive, yet until the end of her life, she remained alert and interested in everything. Even at 112, she had no problems with memory or attention. Dr Holstege reported that by the time of her death, her mental performance was above average compared to most adults aged between 60 and 75. The only abnormalities found, described as neurofibrillary tangles, were so mild as not to cause much of a problem.

Reporting the findings in Neurobiology of Aging, Dr Holstege and his colleagues, explained that the woman had lived independently until she was 105, and she had then only gone into care because of failing eyesight.

Thin ice

We usually think of ice forming in six-sided crystals, the classical snowflake patterns, but if the temperature goes down enough the molecules create an amorphous sheet. Konrad Thurmer, and Norman Bartelt, two scientists at the Sandia National Laboratory in California, became interested in this behaviour, and they found that if molecules of water are sprayed onto a platinum surface at close to zero degrees K, they do not have the mobility to crystalise. the molecules, staying where they

land, form what the researchers refer to as amorphous ice. By raising the temperature, just above 120ºK something unexpected happens — instead of forming six-sided crystals, they form hexagonal structures.

Only when the temperature goes up to 160ºK do they take on the familiar hexagonal shape. this was not the only discovery.

At just one nanometer thickness, the molecules grouped into islands, but when the thickness went up to 4 or 5 nanometer, the island structures appeared to pivot around each other, creating a corkscrew shaped patchwork of merging ice sheets.

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Tutors, Martin Feely and Padraic Lavin (left and second from left), reviewing gemstones with students.

Disease blockers

vACCiNAtiON is effective in preventing some viral diseases, such as polio, but once an infection breaks through our defences, there is not a great deal we can do. With Hiv the situation is worse because we don’t as yet have an effective vaccine.

One possible line of attack is to concentrate on viral rNA, at a recent conference organised by the european Science Foundation, Jens Kurreck, from the University of Stuttgart, explained that this is a defence strategy adopted by plants. When under attack, plants can respond by producing a very effective blocker in the form of non-functional rNA. these small interfering rNAs, referred to as siRNA, make it difficult for the virus to function properly.

Oddly enough, this response appears to be confined to plants, and so far, no sirNAs have been found in animals. if they could be found, said Jens Kurreck, it might be possible to reinforce them. if they do not occur in animals, he added, it might be possible to genetically engineer sirNAs from plants so that they could be used in humans.

While there are enormous challenges, sirNA treatment is under active development. two clinical trails are ongoing, said Jens, one involving respiratory Syncital virus, and the other is being tested on patients infected with Hiv.

Science education Tullamore, 23rd October 08 Discover Science and Engineering is delighted to announce their sponsorship of the Atlantic Corridor’s Science Education Conference in Tullamore on Thursday October 23rd 2008.

This international conference to share best practice in science education will be of interest to all those involved not only in science based industries, science education but all stakeholders interested and involved in sustainable socio-economic development.

Respected scientist and broadcaster Professor Lord Robert Winston, is the keynote speaker for the conference. His TV programmes such as The Human Body and Child of Our Time have brought science to life for the general public. You can read more about the speakers in the news section of www.atlanticcorridor.ie.

Atlantic Corridor is inviting secondary science teachers from the Midlands to attend the conference and contribute to the debate. If this is relevant to you and you are interested in attending please contact tscreeney@atlanticcorridor.ie.

The conference will facilitate a debate on Irish science education, and the growing development of the Irish Midland region, as a quality location where sciencebased industries and research are set to play an increasing role in the region’s development.

www.atlanticcorridor.ie

AWARDING SCIENCE EXCELLENCE

Above, Adam MacCathmhaoil (5), Gaelscoil Dhun Dealgan at the Dublin event. Right, NASA astronaut Mike Foale, Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain and Mayor of Navan Christy Reilly at the Navan event.

The Award of Science Excellence 20072008 was even bigger and better this year!

With 653 schools receiving awards, the ceremonies were amazing!

Held during the first two weeks of June, at 8 different locations, the 20 ceremonies were fun filled for all who attended!

The fun interactive science show had both teachers and pupils on the edge of their seats! There was plenty of booms, bangs and poofs!

Thanks to all the local universities, institutes of technology, discover centres and industries that set up fun and interactive science activities.

Molly Cool had so much fun meeting with all you budding young scientists, and loved stepping in for photos!!

Congratulations to all those who received an award and we hope next year we will be even busier giving out awards!

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SPIN

George Francis FitzGerald, above, and a letter from Lord Kelvin.

Scientific letters Dr Clare Mulhall reports on a project to make 2,000 letters from world famous scientists available on the web.

G

eorge Francis FitzGerald (1851-1901), Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin and Secretary of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) from 1881 to 1889, is one of the great underappreciated physicists in the history of science.

He died prematurely at the age of 49 and left remarkably few publications. Upon his death, messages poured in from around the world praising his important contributions to science, particularly in the field of electromagnetism. Yet because his greatest ideas often appeared in the form of useful suggestions contained within letters sent to other scientists rather than through his own publications, scientists and historians have been slow to recognize the crucial role he played in late nineteenth-century physics.

FitzGerald’s best known contribution is the FitzGeraldLorentz contraction, which later became an essential part of Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity. FitzGerald, however, considered this only a minor piece of work.

Recent research has shown the crucial role that FitzGerald played in the development of Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism and Joseph Larmor’s electronic theory of matter. Bruce Hunt describes FitzGerald as one of the ‘Maxwellians’ who transformed Maxwell’s ill-understood and partially complete Treatise into the now standard theory of electromagnetism. FitzGerald was a central figure in this process, though his greatest contributions came through advice shared in correspondence with men such as Oliver Lodge, Oliver Heaviside, William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and Heinrich Hertz. FitzGerald’s

crucial role in Larmor’s development of an electronic theory of matter is highlighted by Jed Buchwald who writes, “The electron was not so much a new theoretical discovery for Larmor as it was his adoption of the ideas FitzGerald had frequently suggested during their correspondence...”

FitzGerald’s correspondence, however, is not only essential for understanding the development of electromagnetic theory and other areas of physical science; it also opens a window on science and technology in finde-siècle Dublin. FitzGerald’s life saw the introduction of electricity to Trinity College Dublin, the first automobiles to arrive in Ireland, the first X-ray photographs, early experiments on flight and wireless telegraphy (in which he participated), the rise of technical education, the professionalisation of physics and the attempt to reconcile the new sciences with religion. As Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin and head of the Engineering School, commissioner for education in Ireland and an examiner for the University of London, FitzGerald was active in all of these areas. His letters will therefore undoubtedly be of great value to scientists and historians with a wide variety of interests.

The RDS Library in Ballsbridge holds over 2,000 of FitzGerald’s letters the majority of which he received from leading scientific thinkers of the period. The letters were sent to FitzGerald during his lifetime and shortly after his death. These letters are currently being digitized by the RDS and will be made available on the web through the RDS Library catalogue by October 2008 (www.rds.ie/ library).

For further details of this project, please contact Dr Claire Mulhall, RDS Science Department at science@rds.ie.

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SPIN

Universities — a Faustian bargain?

Frank Gannon challenges the assumption that universities should become drivers of economic rather than centres of intellectual development

here was a time when the role of universities in society was well defined. Their primary task was higher education, to fill their students’ open minds with new thoughts and insights.

This community was encouraged to reflect not only on the fields of their expertise, but on everything that caught their interest, and to think afresh and challenge long-held beliefs.

Depending on their philosophical context, some universities were also engaged not just in reflection, but also in experimentation. Today, universities still have to fulfil all of these tasks, but, in addition, they are increasingly expected to drive economic development. Is this a distortion that undermines the traditional role of universities, or is it their next evolutionary step as the cultures in which they thrive develop into ‘knowledge-based’ societies? As with many complex questions, the answer is not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

But it is necessary to ponder on it, as some universities now seem to take the new relationship between the academic and the nonacademic realms for granted, and this could have negative consequences in the long term. When research was performed in small laboratories with minimal reagent costs, it was easily catered for by internal funds, which were often taken from the university’s own resources allocated for the practical training of students. The outcome of this research was also appreciated mostly within the university and had little impact on the world outside and beneath the ivory tower. This comfortable time has gone, for a variety of good reasons.

Cobwebs started to accumulate in some rooms of the tower, and the word ‘academic’ gradually changed from being a badge of honour, given to a member of a select club, to a negative adjective, used to dismiss arguments as being irrelevant. Particularly in the life sciences, those scientists who avoid research needed to solve the long list of social problems are now deemed to be irresponsible. Concomitantly, industry has changed as well. The era of pharmaceutical companies developing new therapeutics simply by generating numerous test molecules, and using relatively standard screening

T

systems to identify the useful ones, is reaching its end. It does not come as a surprise that academic research, which previously seemed to belong to another world, is becoming an important component of industry’s plans. Some academic scientists have been ready to jump on this bandwagon, indeed they have welcomed it and championed the change. They have immediately gained a better reputation, because their work is no longer just some narcissistic activity, but now has a value for society and, of course, for themselves, too. And with this growing interest from industry, the pace of science has accelerated, as the additional funding from the private sector has fuelled the expansion of research enterprises. Those scientists who did not jump aboard find that funding for their projects is becoming more restricted. Students, who are always a great barometer for the status of their seniors, choose the larger, buzzing laboratories. Research on esoteric topics is becoming not only old fashioned, it is even starting to become extinct.

Given the long history of fundamental research, which has produced practical and unpredicted outcomes, this is not only regrettable but also a retrograde step. But the forces that are irretrievably turning the academic world into a service for industry are relentless. Government funding for academia is increasingly tied to predicated outcomes and research that stimulates economic growth. Industry also expects universities to enrol on its team and to become outreaches of its own research activities. And many scientists willingly—and with the best academic and social motivation—define their research in such terms. The close proximity between fundamental research and new developments in industry now means that the gap between the two entities has become a short jump.

Furthermore, research within industry

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is now indistinguishable, in some cases, from the best ‘academic’ research.

Fusion or confusion? One might think that the heads of universities would be leading a major debate on the consequences of these changes. But there is no Cardinal Newman or Alexander von Humboldt yet. The presidents, chancellors and rectors are mostly engaged in the opposite course of action, that is, maximizing income from almost any source at almost any price. In fact, they have no choice. Government funding is increasingly scarce and has been kept at a level that is inappropriate for the current expansion in terms of the quantity and sophistication of research. Universities need expensive investments to ensure that the best staff available can be attracted and retained.

And if their professorial staff are viewed as inferior, then the consequences are negative in terms of attracting students, who are the ultimate raison d’étre of their existence. So the heads of universities read with concern the press releases of their competitors, and establish their own PR machines. It does not stop there.

Spin-off industries are now another measure used to assess the performance of a university, and this creates further problems. As these enterprises can be partly owned by the university, in some cases their staff and students develop conflicting careers as they go back and forth between being an academic and being an industrialist. Even industry gets confused when start-up companies are nourished with the invisible support that the university provides, through access to equipment and discussions, to stimulate new ideas. It can be a wonderful win–win situation for academia, but it can also mean unfair competition, and can be the wrong road to follow. So let us be careful, and strike the right balance between doing what is best in the short term, while protecting the universities in the long term.

Frank Gannon is Director General of Science Foundation Ireland.

This article first appeared in European Molecular Molecular Organisation EMBO reports, volume 4 number 3, 2003

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An ocean of opportunity Ireland’s offshore is a national treasure – as one of the least explored biospheres on the planet. Scientists believe that these waters could contain a treasure trove of materials and compounds that could yield new drugs, new functional foods (foods that claim a health-promoting or disease preventing property beyond the basic nutritional function of the food), new biomaterials (materials used and adapted for a medical application, such a hip replacement), and new bioremediation agents (these agents are microorganisms used to clean up pollution, for example, oil spills). A national biodiscovery programme has been set up to locate and harvest all such useful biological materials, writes Lenny Antonelli.

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hile almost a third of pharmaceuticals are based on compounds from plants and animals on land, there is a dearth of marine-based drugs by comparison, even though the oceans are the planet’s richest habitat. The seas remain largely unexplored, and the creatures that live there are often difficult to collect or cultivate. But, technological advances are changing this, and considering terrestrial organisms have played such a vital role in the advancement of healthcare, what pharmaceutical treasures could be hiding in the oceans?

A new national research programme in marine biodiscovery (the hunt for useful or ‘bioactive’ compounds in marine organisms) is aiming to find out, whether our oceans do indeed contain useful compounds that could be developed into new drugs. Research in the field is still in its infancy worldwide, with only a handful of marine-derived drugs on the market.

Ziconitide, the synthetic form of a compound extracted from the venom of tropical marine cone snails, is a powerful yet non-addictive painkiller.

Zidovudine, the first drug ever approved for the treatment of HIV, is based on compounds extracted from the sponge Tethya crypta more than 40 years ago.

But these are the exceptions rather than rule – there are few drugs derived from marine sources.

Research, however, is growing rapidly. “There are quite a number of marine compounds in various stages of clinical trial,” said Eoin Sweeney of the Marine Institute. These include ecteinaisdin-743, a compound derived from the Caribbean sea squirt Ectenascidia turbinata, and a potent pharmaceutical that has been effective against drug-resistant tumours in clinical trials. Another compound, aplidine, inhibits enzymes essential to the growth and formation of tumours, and was isolated from the Mediterranean sea squirt Aplidium albicans. “The percentage of marine derived compounds in novel drugs is going to increase markedly,” Eoin Sweeney said.

Research

Seanettle At NUIG scientists are looking for novel compounds in seaweeds, sponges, and jellyfish.

While new drugs are a long-term target of Ireland’s Marine Biodiscovery Programme, it aims to benefit other fields too, including functional foods, biomaterials, and bioremediation (the use of organisms to clean up pollution).

Eoin Sweeney described the new research venture as a “complex programme, involving everything from marine biology to molecular medicine.”

The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources underlined the importance of this emerging research sector when it provided €7.2 million to NUI Galway, University College Cork and Queen’s University Belfast for biodiscovery research in September last year under its Beaufort awards scheme. The Marine Institute has also funded three biodiscovery PhD studentships.

One of these projects is being supervised by Dr Christine Loscher, an immunologist at the International Centre for Neurotherapeutics at DCU, whose PhD student is investigating whether extracts from marine sponges and algae exhibit anti-inflammatory properties. “We’re growing immune cells from a mouse and exposing them to an inflammatory stimulus, then seeing

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Sponges, left, are a rich source of bioactive compounds. Sugars from Chondrus crispus, right, can fight infections. if the marine extracts can change the cells’ response to the examine exactly how marine organisms produce bioactive stimulation. compounds, while at QUB the biomedical application of such At the moment we’re working with extracts that have compounds is the main focus. a huge amount of potential,” Dr Loscher said, citing Professor Lokesh Joshi will be heading up the biodiscovery arthritis treatment as one possible benefactor of any future programme at NUI Galway. A biologist who has held posts at breakthroughs. She described the extracts she’s working with the University of Arizona and Cornell University, Professor at the moment as “very crude,” but said that as the project Joshi has previously worked on therapeutic compounds in progresses, the aim will be to isolate individual molecules plants. “The marine environment is Ireland’s treasure and with specific biological effects. “What you want is something the least explored biosphere on the planet. It’s our ocean of that is able to increase or decrease what opportunity,” he said. “We ought to look you’re interested in, but leave everything and learn from nature to discover novel else alone. Some of these extracts have biomaterials and biotherapeutics.” very specific effects.”

Professor Joshi said that some marine One of the chemists who will be organisms have “tremendous plasticity assisting Dr Loscher is UCD’s Professor and regenerative ability” and that a Pat Guiry, another recipient of Marine greater scientific understanding of Institute funding. His work has focused the molecular mechanisms of how on purifying algal material collected regeneration takes place in such

by NUI Galway and separating it creatures could have potential human into various fractions. One such applications. fraction appears to inhibit potassium The potential uses of compounds ion channels, which play a role in a from Irish marine organisms stretch variety of diseases. “It’s still an impure beyond pharmaceuticals though. sample, we don’t know what the active Mike Guiry mentions one researcher, compound is,” Professor Pat Guiry said, Dr Pamela Walsh, who has patented “but we know which fraction to target.” a method for using the hard red If their target compound turns out to be algal species Corallina in bone a new one, Prof Pat Guiry said it will replacement therapy. The Irish marine at the very least be a ‘lead compound’ environment is also a potential source – a starting point for potential drug of neutraceuticals, foods with health development. benefits that is – the seaweed Chondrus One of the keys figures behind the crispus, full of infection-preventing biodiscovery programme, Professor sugars, is just “one example of many,” Michael Guiry – no relation to Pat – is according to Prof Mike Guiry. director of the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute at NUI Galway.

Supply NUIG’s Beaufort award of €3.2 million Sea nettle Biodiscovery, or bioprospecting as it’s will enable it to appoint specialised also known, isn’t always popular. There biodiscovery researchers, including a has been a variety of high profile cases in which compounds principal investigator, two postdoctoral researchers and four derived from terrestrial plants have been commercialised PhD students. “That’s only the beginning though,” Prof without any compensation for indigenous people who had Michael Guiry said. been using the plants medicinally for generations. Such Research at NUIG will focus on looking for new compounds problems won’t arise for marine biodiscovery – the biggest in seaweeds, jellyfish and sponges. “Sponges have been a very challenge is likely to be finding a sustainable supply of rich sources of bioactive compounds,” Prof Michael Guiry biological material. “Some of the species are in very short said, “but we’re not sure if they come from the sponge or supply,” Prof Mike Guiry acknowledged, saying that its associated organisms.” Meanwhile, research at UCC will

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Marine Biodiscovery Programme “We’ve been working on the notion of a marine biodiscovery programme with Eoin Sweeney and the Marine Institute for years,” said Prof Mike Guiry, director of the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute at NUI Galway, “but we’ve only recently gotten things together.” The programme is being coordinated by the Marine Institute, and involves researchers in a variety of disciplines at third-level institutions throughout the county, as well as international collaborations with the National Cancer Institute in the United States and the University of London.

The programme is aiming to develop active partnerships across academic institutions and knowledge-based industries to strengthen Ireland’s ability to use its marine resources sustainably. If it’s to be successful, the programme will require active co-operation among marine biologists, chemists, geneticists, pharmacologists and biomedical scientists. “It’s very important we get different types of people to work together,” Prof Mike Guiry said.

Eoin Sweeney said that Ireland is ideally suited to such a programme, with its rich marine biodiversity and strong biomedical sector. What are the programme’s goals? “We’re not hinging the whole programme on having an anti-cancer drug in five years’ time,” Eoin Sweeney said, citing the fact that drug development is a painstaking process that can take up to 20 years. Prof Mike Guiry explained: “The ultimate idea is to understand how bioactive compounds are made, so we can make them better, and make them in the lab.”

In the long term, the programme aims to contribute to the development of new drugs and therapies, to develop and enhance relevant industries, and to make Ireland a world leader in the research, development and commercialisation of marine bioproducts. Prof Mike Guiry believes the programme can help to develop knowledgebased industries in Ireland: “The pharmaceutical and biotech industries are interested in being in places where this sort of research is going on.”

sometimes potentially useful species can’t could be a long-term solution. even be found again in the vastness of the Of course the vast majority of marine environment. Indeed, fifteen years bioactive marine compounds won’t make passed between the first collection of the it to market. For every new pharmaceutical deep-water sponge Forcepia - a source on the shelves, thousands of other of cancer-fighting lasonolide compounds potential drugs will have been abandoned, - and its relocation. either because they are too toxic or simply As well as this, target compounds are ineffective. But the challenges that lie sometimes only present in tiny quantities, ahead for marine biodiscovery are just that and might only be produced in response to Bright orange deep sea Forcepia sponge – surmountable obstacles that research has anti-cancer compounds. certain environmental conditions. Ideally, programmes, such as our own biodiscovery researchers would be able to produce research programme, will aim to tackle. synthetic versions of natural compounds in the lab, but Prof There is a literal ocean of potentially useful compounds out Mike Guiry concedes that some compounds – he cites those there. “The oceans are by far the greatest reservoir of life derived from sponges as an example – can simply be too forms,” Eoin Sweeney said, “and we believe it’s going to be complex for this. an interesting mine of resources in the future.”

Aquaculture

The marine pharmaceutical company PharmaMar is developing techniques for farming the sea squirt that produces the tumour-fighting ectenaisdin-743 compound. Such harvesting or farming can be difficult or impossible for some species, and only becomes commercially viable once there is high demand for a product. Genetic engineering, by inserting genes responsible for producing useful bioactive compounds into easy-to-grow laboratory species,

Corralina officinalis has potential for use in bone replacement.

Lenni Antonelli is a freelance journalist and marine science graduate from NUIG.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 14

Pools of creation Acidic brine

Pb, Zn, Fe, Ba, Mn

Tom Kennedy reports how evidence from Irish mines revealed how life colonised a hostile Earth. e often think of life as emerging from some warm slimy pool, and in many respects this is a fairly accurate impression of how it all began. However, the slimy pool might not have matched our expectations, for it was probably a mineral rich hollow at the bottom of an acidic ocean.

It might also come as a surprise that some of the best evidence to support this view came originally from lead and zinc mines in Ireland.

Geologists had often speculated about the origins of the rich mineral deposits at Tynagh and Navan, and as a young doctorate student, Michael Russell, who is now a Senior Research Fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, was not too sure that the explanations he had been given were right. He decided to investigate, and as he explained at a recent Planet Earth lecture at TCD, what he found around the Tynagh mine whetted his appetite to find out more, but being just a mere student, he was not allowed to go in and have a look. If he wanted to know how the minerals had got there, he could go away and read the published

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papers. “I did not know what frothing at the mouth was untl then,” he remarked, but he was persistent, and eventually he returned to confirm the view that these amazingly rich deposits were the product of chemical reactions around warm mineral rich springs. The deposits had accumulated about 360 million years ago on the Lower Carboniferous ocean floor, and significantly, reducing bacteria had been intimately involved in driving the mineralisation process.

As Michael Russell and his colleagues found out more, it was realised that the seepage of minerals to feed the bacteria had not come from the big ‘black smokers’ we see in the mid Atlantic, but from springs of a much lower temperature. Apart from larger size, a metre or so, against a few millimetres for the vents, the smokers spew out material at 400ºC, while the mineral rich water would have come out of the vents at about 90ºC. Size and temperature are not the only differences, and more important is how and where these vents occur. Hot smokers occur close to ridges, where hot magma is welling up towards the surface, but the vents had a different origin. Sea water, seeping down into the Earth’s crust, would have been

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 15

heated by radioactive decay, and over a leisurly residence time of 1,000 or more years, minerals would have been dissolved out of the rocks. Alkaline, mineral rich fluids emerged through springs at the bottom of an acidic sea, causing dissolved compounds to precipitate into mounds of carbonate, silica, clays and iron-nickel sulphides.

Over time, as heat was extracted, pores and fractures would open, allowing the circulation of water to go deeper into the crust, and further enriching the emerging solutions.

In time, explained Prof Russell, the circulation would have gone down about 15 km into the Earth’s crust.

Below this, the temperature is so high that rocks can’t crack and this creates a barrier. Engineers, working on heat mining projects, have been frustrated by the discovery that such a barrier exists. The deeper they go, the harder it is to keep spaces open. Once they get down to about 273ºC rocks are so plastic that they flow into the voids.

The ancient Iapetus suture, a great crack, would have given access to deeper levels, and it is from these, rather than granite or other intrusions, that we got our abundance of minerals.

Life

Looking at these Irish mines made Prof Russell realise that not only are many minerals a by-product of life, but those hot springs may well have fed the original pools of creation.

Going back in time, such springs would have existed, and like the much later Carboniferous examples, they would have provided the mineral feedstock for life. In fact, argued Prof Russell, go back far enough and these pools would have provided the only safe haven in an extremely violent environment. The early Earth spun rapidly, a day only lasted four or five hours, the Moon being closer, caused massive 100 metre high tides, a constant rain of meteorites pelted the planet, and the dense dust filled atmosphere was acidic. The energy being produced by radiation and gravitation within the early Earth, said Prof Russell, would have been five times greater than it is now, and that temperature gradient would have dissapated through convection. There would have been an abundance of hot springs and with little Sunlight coming through, the Earth’s surface would have been close to freezing.

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The Earth was hostile, yet it could support life. The essential ingredients were there in the form of carbon dioxide, ferric iron, and hydrogen. “Hydrogen,” said Prof Russell, “is the fuel for life, in fact it is the only fuel that life uses.”

The Earth was like a great battery, with hydrogen forming the negative electrodes, the oceans formed the electrolyte, and the ferric oxyhydroxides formed the positive electrode. Life would have gained chemical energy by using the hydrogen coming out of the springs to reduce the ferric iron dissolved in the acidic seawater.

In spite of the enormous rise in complexity, all life is still driven by this energy stripping process. Most of the energy needed by present day life comes through photosynthesis, but in those dark times, sunlight was simply not available, and strangely enough, it would actually have been harmful.

Reduction is a chemical reaction, but the processs eventually leading to life are believed to have been started by the facts that precipitating iron sulphide minerals can form a boundary enclosing a space, and that iron and sulphur atoms can combine to form a catalyst.

After watching his son play with a “chemical garden” kit, in which metal salts react with sodium silicate in solution to form hollow plant like towers, Prof Russell suddenly realised that a similar reaction must have occurred naturally around the warm vents. Indeed, as he found, the Tynagh mines in Galway had yielded 350 million year old pyrite lined bubbles and spires. The iron sulphide membranes would have been produced as warm, alkaline water, rich in sulphide ions, met acidic seawater, rich in iron. Within these ‘proto cells’ the alkaline environment could have been maintained, so a constant stream of hydrogen+ ions would have been drawn in through the semi-permeable boundary from the acid surroundings.

This semi-permeable membrane enclosed structure, the result of ordinary chemical reactions, is very close to the pattern we see in living cells, and the connection is reinforced by the fact that catalyst building materials to drive reactions were readily available. Natural reactions between the various minerals would have already produced catalysts, such as Ni3Fe, and organics such as cyanide and formaldehyde would have been among an array of chemical products.

Iron and sulphur atoms can combine to form a box like structure that acts as an electrochemical catalyst, and we can be fairly certain that such catalysts became active at a very early stage in the emergence of life. Not only that, but those iron-sulphur catalytic boxes are still with us as enzymes in all living cells.

As Prof Russell observed, the template was there, and his belief is that the transition into life occurred through attachment of organic chains, and these would in turn have been the building blocks for RNA. While this might seem like a giant step, those building blocks in the form of

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a phosphate, ribose sugar, and a nitrogenous base, may already have been readily available. They may even have come from adenosine triphosphate, better known as the ubiquitous energy carrier, ATP. Not alone is it remarkable that such an essential driver of life may have been around for so very long, but it is possible that ATP predates RNA. By stripping off one phosphate, energy is released to give ADP, and knock off another phosphate to get a monophosphate building blocks of RNA. Prof Russell explained that the RNA might have been assembled on an iron sulphide template, and the polymer in turn could have attracted amino acids.

Thus, the process of assembly could have got a start, and eventually, in an organic take over, the RNA could have broken its dependence on the iron sulphide template.

The channelling and harvesting of energy would not have happened without the help of enzymes.

Hydrogen and carbon dioxide can exist side by side without reacting at all, but the rise of enzyme assisted metabolism, said Prof Russell, “quickened, by many orders of magnitude, oxidation and reduction reactions on our planet.”

Life, as Prof Russell observed, produces enormous amounts of waste, and many of the minerals we value so highly today, were, in fact, deposted as unwanted by-products.

The essential steps that brought chemicals to life, said Prof Russell, may have come about much faster than we expect. Geological time, he added, is vast, but it is characterised by long periods when little or nothing happens. The transformation, be suggests, could have been quite abrupt, and while it probably involved an extremely rare combination of events, there is no reason to think that emergence of life is unique. The rusty redness of Mars, he suggested, could well be taken as evidence that life is not confined to Earth.

Rock around Ireland A guide to Irish geology

In this colourful book Peadar McArdle, Director of the Irish Geological Survey explains how all the rocks we see around us came to be there. Words and photographs help us to explore and understand Ireland’s varied landscape. From granite hills we cross a limestone plain to the western coast and some of the most ancient rocks in the world. From the black columnar basalt in the north Peadar brings us south to red sandstones, formed when Munster was the edge of a desert. There is a wealth of information here for everyone with an interest in rocks and the Irish landscape.

Rock around Ireland available NOW from independent bookshops and direct from Science Spin. 112 pages A5 landscape, full colour. Price €15 (£12 in NI) A case-bound edition of Rock around Ireland is also available, price €20. (£15 in NI) Rock around Ireland is a companion volume to Colour, what we see, and the science behind sight, in which Margaret Franklin and Tom Kennedy explain how we live in a colourful world.

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Keeping lungs healthy Dr. Shirley O’Dea, at NUIM’s Department of Biology and Institute for Immunology has been looking for ways to reduce Ireland’s high incidence of lung disease. hirley O’Dea is a lecturer in the Biology Department at NUI Maynooth and heads a research group in the Institute of Immunology at NUIM. Shirley’s career in science began with a BSc degree in Biochemistry at University College Dublin from 1987 to 1991. During her degree, Shirley had an opportunity to spend a summer working in a research laboratory at SmithKline Beecham in Surrey, England.

Working with research scientists on a project developing toothpaste for hypersensitive teeth enabled Shirley to begin to apply her scientific knowledge to addressing health problems and sparked an enduring passion for research. During her final year at UCD, Shirley began to learn about the way that cells in the body communicate and cooperate with each other to form a healthy, functioning organism and decided to carry out a PhD in the area of cell signalling. A PhD project investigating growth factors in lung cancer cells was available in the National Cell and Tissue Culture Centre (NCTCC) at Dublin City University and Shirley successfully applied for the position.

During her PhD, Shirley learned about lung cell biology and cancer and discovered a mechanism that allows lung cancer cells to grow more aggressively than normal cells.

Lung cancer is the biggest cause of cancer deaths in Ireland and in many other countries. Despite this, we are still learning about how this disease develops and treatments for lung cancer have improved very little in the past few decades. The NCTCC at DCU was also involved with BioResearch Ireland (BRI) which was aimed at commercialising research in Irish universities. Through the NCTCC and BRI, Shirley became familiar with issues such as protecting intellectual property developed in Universities and ways in which research could be commercialised.

The countries of the European Union are trying to raise the standards of science in Europe in order to improve the health, living standards, education and economic status of European citizens. Since 1984, millions of euro have been invested in hundreds of

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large and small projects under the EU Framework Programmes aimed at generating a ‘knowledge society’ that can compete with the United States and other emerging scientific hotspots such as China. The Marie Curie Fellowships were set up to increase the mobility of European researchers by providing salary and research costs to work in leading laboratories in other countries.

Funds are also available to allow researchers to return to their countries of origin to bring back their expertise and also to avoid a ‘brain drain’ from less-favoured regions. Following her PhD, Shirley was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship to study respiratory disease in the Pathology Department at Edinburgh University Medical School. Edinburgh is a leading centre of research into respiratory diseases and Shirley was able to learn about a broad range of diseases that affect the lungs.

In order to provide the body with the oxygen it needs for normal activities, the lungs inhale 15,000 litres of air each day. The air is drawn into the airways where harmful substances are filtered out before the air reaches the delicate gas exchange regions deep in the lungs.

Although they are continuously exposed to these airborne substances, healthy lungs are remarkably successful at protecting themselves from harm and can rapidly repair damage if it does occur. However, certain environmental or genetic factors can mean that damage is not properly repaired and disease occurs. In recent decades, lung diseases such as asthma, cancer, emphysema and cystic fibrosis have become significant health problems worldwide and particularly in Ireland which has the second highest death rate from lung disease in Europe (twice the EU average). Traditional therapies have had limited success and novel approaches are essential if current trends are to be reversed. In order to develop new therapies, we need to improve our understanding of lung repair and disease processes. During her work at Edinburgh University, Shirley developed methods to grow lung cells so that they could be studied in laboratories and also studied gene therapy approaches to treating lung diseases.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 18

NUI MAYNOOTH Ollscoil na hÉireann Má Nuad

After five years at Edinburgh University, Shirley returned to Ireland to work as a Senior Research Scientist in the Institute of Immunology within the Biology Department at NUI Maynooth. She was subsequently awarded a Science Foundation Ireland Investigator Programme Grant to investigate mechanisms involved in regeneration of healthy lungs after injury and during disease. She was then appointed to a permanent lectureship position in the Biology Department. To date, grants totalling over € 1.8 million euro from Science Foundation Ireland, EU Framework Programme 6 and Enterprise Ireland have been awarded to her research group.

Focusing on the microenvironment within the airways and the communication that takes place between components, Shirley’s research group is studying the cells and the biochemical signals involved in lung regeneration following damage and trying to understand what has gone wrong with these cells and signals during disease.

The ability to enhance lung regeneration following injury or during disease would help to reduce disease symptoms and improve lung function. The group has discovered new signals involved in lung disease and is looking at ways to re-programme these signals to improve repair, reduce disease symptoms and restore lung function. Shirley’s group has also filed a patent describing a novel method of delivering therapeutic molecules to lung cells.

In September 2007, as part of an EU grant programme, Shirley hosted the British Association for Lung Research meeting on gene and stem cell therapies for lung disease at NUI Maynooth. The meeting was attended by about 100 scientists and clinicians from the UK, US and mainland Europe. Each year, her laboratory also hosts secondary school students from local schools for work experience placements. Two of these students also returned to Shirley’s laboratory to do work towards their Young Scientist project. The students subsequently came runner up in the group section of the BT Young Scientist, finishing in third place overall with their project ‘Bioengineering a Biological Airway – A possible treatment for respiratory airway diseases’. They also received the special award from Science Foundation Ireland for best project in the Biological and Ecological Sciences category.

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Irish gold Marie-Catherine Mousseau writes that adding value makes it worthwhile to mine Irish gold. s all Irish people know, every leprechaun possesses a crock of gold, and will give you his treasure only if you are lucky enough to catch him and wise enough never to let him out of your sight. Prehistoric inhabitants of Ireland were obviously very lucky and wise, at least judging by the 47kg of gold contained in Bronze Age (2,000 – 400 BC) artefacts in the National Museum in Dublin. That’s right, Irish gold has a history spanning over two thousand years, back to the ancient Celtic Kings. But what has happened since the Celts and what is the current interest in gold in modern Ireland?

For the many years that followed, nothing much has happened… It looks like the Irish luck ran out a bit since those ancient times, as if the source and skills had been lost. This is not completely true though; in the late 18th, early 19th century a gold rush in Wicklow yielded some 400kg of nuggets from river beds. But these were just easy pickings.

So far there hasn’t been any identifiable purpose-built gold mine in Ireland.

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Tyrone gold

That was until last year. In January 2007, after modern prospecting techniques discovered recoverable gold at Cavanacaw near Omagh in Co Tyrone, the first modern gold mine came into production.

“This is Ireland’s first for two millennia”, announced Galantas, the Canadian company who owns and operates it.

Back then the media grabbed the story eagerly, displaying titles such as” Irish gold ‘yields local prosperity’, “Ulster’s Gold Rush”, or sentences such as “The discovery of gold in

Ireland’s County Tyrone is heralding an “economic boom” for the area”, and “Omagh’s fortunes have been turned around by the mine.”

The BBC also cast an excited eye on what was happening there. It announced that Galantas expected to produce 30,000 ounces of gold a year – which alone would net close to 15 million pounds. Deposits were claimed to hold 14 tonnes of Irish gold. And, last but not least, what the company had planned to do with the gold excited the imagination even more.

While most was to be sold as gold concentrate, a small part of what the company billed as “rare Irish gold” was to be used to make a range of branded 18-carat jewellery – Galantas Irish gold jewellery.

“The gold forms an enduring link between our past and present”, stated the company. Galantas is actually

A gold nugget from the Goldmine River in Co Wicklow, and the Gleninsheen Gorget, one of the many gold objects from Ireland’s ancient past.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 19

the Gaelic for “elegant thing”. Chief Executive Roland Phelps told the Independent at the time: “By being the only mine in Ireland, we will have a de-facto monopoly on Irish gold and in those circumstances, a monopoly is a beautiful thing.” “We employ local people, we source as much of our material as possible locally and we are here for the long term.”

In September 2007, an international meeting of geologists was held in Dublin by a society that promotes the science of mineral deposits geology (SGA). Back then I spoke to the president of the SGA who organised the meeting. Prof. Hartwig Frimmel, a German geologist who spent many years in South Africa and has an expertise in gold mines was to take advantage of his trip to Ireland to go and have a look at the Northern Ireland Gold mine.

His comments at the time were a bit less enthusiastic: “The gold mine at Cavanacaw, which I visited — the only gold mine in Ireland at the moment — is an incredibly small operation. It is hard to believe that they make money there.”

Nine months later

So what’s the story now, nine months later? Was the Irish gold just a gigantic hype or is there really something potentially lucrative?

And how is the Irish gold jewellery doing?

Considering the figures, it looks as if Prof Frimmel might have been quite realistic. The most recent figures, for the three months to 31 March 2008, show revenue of $621,787 as opposed to operating costs of $720,228. The maths are simple, costs are greater than income; obviously not much money made so far…

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However, Roland Phelps does not seem to be worried. On the contrary, he sees the current evolution as perfectly normal: “we are still in the process of ramping up to full production; this is not unusual for a mining company, particularly when it is going in an area where there is no history of mining, and where everybody has to be trained to deal with processes that they are not used to dealing with.” He continues: “we had to start from scratch, to deal with start up issues as any start up business; we had a successful public enquiry and all the environmental safeguards in place.” In that regard he’s happy with the investments he has made so far. “We don’t use cyanide, we don’t use mercury, we use a very safe extraction method to separate the metallic particles which is called froth flotation” (see box). And he is also proud of the other side of his business which he is developing – Irish gold jewellery. Rightly so it seems. After a successful pilot study and market tests, Galantas Irish Gold launched its product line earlier this year in 10 Goldsmiths around the country and in the UK and also fulfilled an order with Weir’s in Dublin.

The Irish heritage

A company that does both mining and manufacturing is very unusual.

“Most mining companies, and all the big ones, don’t care about the manufacturing; they just want to produce the gold and sell it,” says Prof Frimmel. But this obviously doesn’t apply to the Omagh mine where around 10 per cent of the gold produced is used to manufacture the jewellery. “It makes perfect sense for Ireland to market it that way,” comments Prof Frimmel. Roland Phelps explains how this idea came about. “I started to do the same for another gold mine I used to operate in Wales”. According to him, the Welsh, like the Irish, are proud of their heritage and are thrilled to be able to own a piece of jewellery crafted with gold from their own land.

The Welsh gold mine is closed now, and there is no other gold mine in the UK; that’s why Roland Phelps turned his skills to Ireland. And as he points out, more than 40 million people in North America consider themselves of Irish extraction — 40 million people

The Bigger Picture Cavanacaw near Omagh may contain the only operating gold mine in Ireland, but outside this area there are other deposits containing gold that might be of interest for mining companies in the future. Dr. Hartwig Frimmel, professor in Geodynamics & Geomaterials Research in the University of Würzburg, gives us the Irish picture in terms of gold prospects as compared to the worldwide picture.

In addition to the Omagh gold mine, there are at least three other projects that are being explored.

1 mine and 3 Irish gold projects Cavanacaw (Omagh) mine 2008 figures • Actual grade around 7g/t • Cut off grade ? (open pit) • Ore resource: 1.6 MT v 7x1.6M ≈ 11 tonnes of gold

Ore reserve (what is actually proven as opposed to just expected): around 370,000T (0.37MT)

Clontibret project

2007 figures • Actual grade: 2.4g/tonne • Cut off grade: 1g/tonne • Ore resource: 8.7 MT v 2.4x8.7≈ 20 tonnes of gold Prof Frimmel’s opinion: The cut off grade is very low (which means it would not be costly to mine it).

So it should be economic. It has come back into the news with the announcement that mining could begin within the next two years.

that might feel that a jewel crafted in this rare Irish gold would strengthen their Irish connection. “And it is not just the gold,” Roland Phelps is keen to stress. “It is also well designed and marketed.” A large part of the Galantas 18-carat Irish gold jewellery is in fact manufactured in Italy — “the main production centre for top-end quality.” (see box).

Northern promises

So far Roland Phelps has been very excited by his move to Ireland.

“Ireland has a very interesting gold history and it is amazing from a mineral perspective,” he says. “Up

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 20

Curraghinalt project

2005 figures • Actual grade: 15.45 g/t gold.

• Cut-off grade: 6 g/t (underground) • Ore resource: 500,000 tonnes v 15.45x0.5 ≈ 8 tonnes of gold Prof Frimmel’s opinion: 15 g/t is a very impressive figure, clearly above the cut-off grade threshold – even in a global comparison that is a very high gold grade. However, the total ore resource is very small. Thus for now it looks like they could make some money out of this but only for a very short time.

Cregganbaun project

2003 figures • Grade: 6g/t • No cut off grade determined (underground) • Ore resource: 500,000 tonnes v 06x0.5 =3 tonnes of gold Prof Frimmel’s opinion: Very small and underground. Not a very promising prospect at this stage.

to now there hasn’t been much prospecting for gold in Ireland, and there is a real reason for that.” The problem is that there is very limited bed rock exposure. This is because of the glaciation, which left many areas being covered with glacial tills (sand gravels). “And when it’s not covered by glacial tills it is covered by bog!”, Roland notes.

However, about two years ago his company brought in from the US a special method to explore gold under the bog and gravels. “It’s like a big metal detector on a hoop”, he says. “And it gave us very exciting signatures.” Indeed, they were able to detect what they call “coincidence

anomalies,” that are signatures pointing to something unusual in the ground. These anomalies turned out to be associated with a significant likelihood of finding gold in related veins. On the basis of that information, they first bought a license in an area including 14 promising veins. “And at the moment we are only mining one of the veins,” he points out.

The method they brought in was so successful that the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland (GSNI) convinced the government to use it over the whole of Northern Ireland.

As a result, their knowledge of what is underground has improved dramatically and Galantas have now just tripled their zone of exploration which now covers an area of more than 600 km2. Within this area, they have focussed on more than 50 identifiable gold bearing targets.

“We detected tremendous anomalies so we’re very excited about all the opportunities for gold in Northern

Ireland — it might be big,” Roland says. “I would be surprised if in the next five years we don’t end up with a major discovery,” he concludes.

“Northern Ireland is only just becoming known,” he adds. Roland Phelps acknowledges the key contribution of the Geological Survey which played a major part in adding to this knowledge. “Maybe I’m dreaming, but there might well be half a dozen gold mines in Ireland in ten years time — and we hope to operate some of them!”

Roland Phelps believes in it, as shown by all the money — his own money — that he has put into the venture. “There is a risk, but potentially high rewards,” he commented, adding that a business that contains most risks can give the highest rewards, which no doubt applies to the mining business in general.

However, let’s be realistic. For now with less than 14 tonnes in the

Omagh-based Cavanacaw gold mine (see box), Ireland is still very far from becoming a major gold producer in a global context. “If you consider that the global annual gold production in 2007 was 2450 tonnes of gold, you get a feeling for the significance of the Irish deposit,” remarked Prof Frimmel.

That’s right, but wouldn’t this very rarity make the Irish gold all the more attractive? Roland Phelps told me a recent story from the jewellery shop in Omagh. A woman entered admitting she didn’t have the money to buy a piece of Irish Gold jewellery; “but please could I just touch it, you know, for luck?” she asked.

The fact is, Irish gold has lost none of the fascination it used to generate.

Leprechauns beware, your worries may well be just beginning!

The Irish gold jewellery business To manufacture the Irish Gold Jewellery, Galantas goes through the same steps as any jewellery retailer, except they have the extra step of producing the gold.

Two income streams

l The majority of their production is sold as gold concentrate to smelters l A small amount of gold is sent off to a special commercial laboratory, which extracts the gold from the concentrate separately and returns it to Galantas. This is the gold to be converted into jewellery.

Extracting the Gold

In the Omagh mine the ore is graded around 7g/tonne. This means you get 7 grams of gold out of one tonne of rock. In fact Roland Phelps points out that you need to move far more than one tonne of rock to get those 7 grams… The gold in the ore is actually not visible to the naked eye (like in most gold deposits, gold starting to be visible only when the grade reaches 30g/t).

A good thing in relation to the Omagh mine is that it is close to the surface, so to extract the ore they use open pit techniques. This means that the extractions costs are reasonable and the cut off grade – the grade at which it is financially worth mining that ore – is relatively low.

Froth flotation

Roland Phelps explains the process they use to extract the metal from the ore: “we take the ore, crush it

and grind it to the consistency of flour.

We mix it with water and bubble air through the mixture of this finely ground ore and water. All the metallic particles — the gold, the silver, the iron, the lead — attach to the air particles when they rise to the top of the tank in a froth. Then, we just scrape off the froth and squeeze the water off, before putting it in bags and send it to the smelters*. We are left with a clean sand which is an inert material that causes no harm. So it is actually a very clean process. ” The smelters are large commercial installations that take concentrates from all over the world, and melt them for extraction of the metals.

The smelter for the Omagh mine is in Canada.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 21

Refining

At this stage the gold remains alloyed with silver and trace impurities and needs to be refined, or purified. There is not enough gold to have a refining facility in Ireland, so the refining is done in different places around the world including Morocco. When referring to the Moroccan facility, Roland Phelps can’t find words strong enough to express his admiration: “The Moroccans are very good at it; they have an excellent facility, extremely efficient and well equipped, well run, well managed with excellent environmental protection in place.

In short it is superb, one of the best facilities in the world — it knocks many western companies into a cocked hat!”

some hand-made special pieces crafted elsewhere (e.g. Dublin, or Cardiff), depending on which person is the most appropriate for the job. However, as Roland puts it “if you want the quality with numbers you have to go to Italy to have it done.”

Splitting

What they get from Morocco is a gold and silver mixture that then has to be split in a specialist refinery. Galantas has never revealed where this refinery is. “It is one of our commercial secrets,” Roland Phelps says.

“There are very few refineries that can keep the gold separate.”

He adds casually that in fact he used to do the split himself!

Assay

Adding alloys

After the gold is split between gold and silver, they end up with gold that is 100% gold, i.e. its assay is 9999 gold (also called 24 carats).

Roland Phelps indicates that only certain ceremonial pieces are made from 24 carat gold. “If you had a chain of 100 per cent gold and wore it everyday, it would fall apart from his own weight,” he explains. “It is of a beautiful colour but too soft to use on a daily basis; you need to add other elements to harden it.”

Roland Phelps points out that 18 carat gold is 750 parts gold and 250 parts of other metals and those other metals give it its colour and its metallurgical properties.

Colour: To get the right colour you need to use specific kind of alloys.

Most gold is sold in its yellow form; white gold is more difficult to get, because “gold wants to be yellow,” as Roland puts it. To obtain a white colour, most companies mix the gold with nickel. However, nickel causes allergies in some people so Galantas chose to use palladium, more expensive but not allergenic.

“This means we can use more of it

Irish gold formation

Irish gold occurs in quartz veins.

According to Prof Frimmel, this gold looks like what they refer to in other parts of the world as “orogenic gold deposit”. This means that the gold was introduced into the rocks during a mountain building process: when mountains form as a result of tectonic activity, cracks open up in rocks allowing hydrothermal fluid from deep levels of the crust to circulate and eventually form those quartz veins containing gold.

Prof Frimmel comments: “Irish gold is nothing unusual. One third of all the

Open pit mining for gold in Omagh.

and get a better colour,” Roland Phelps explains.

Metallurgical properties: Depending on the jewellery pieces you are manufacturing, you also need particular elements within your 250 parts to get the correct metallurgical properties — for casting you want it to flow, while for drawing a wire you want something that can be readily annealed. “Our contractors produce these alloys for us that are the correct types for what our manufacturers need,” says Roland.

Manufacturing

The majority of their manufacturing takes place in Italy, because according to Roland it is the place where you have the best quality in the right quantity. “We use the same manufacturers who are also manufacturers for many of the top brands,” he points out. They also have gold deposits around the world would be orogenic gold deposits”.

Prof Frimmel adds: “What you’ve got in Ireland are very small deposits.

For a big company small deposits are of no interest, but for a small mining company some of these deposits could be interesting, especially as the gold price as tripled in recent years (in the 1980s and 1990s the gold price was very low). What’s more, it is worthwhile spending money on more exploration because of course there’s always the possibility for new discovery — and I think that is really what it is all about.”

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 22

The assay is the measurement of the gold content on the finished piece of jewellery. The law says you cannot choose your own standard. It’s illegal to sell a piece of jewellery without an assay office mark.

The assay offices for UK and Ireland are either in Dublin, in Edinburgh, in London or in Birmingham. Galantas use whichever office is suitable for their particular goldsmiths.

In the UK you can attach the following marks, which are the two most common classifications: l 9 carats – 375 part gold l 18 carats – 750 part gold Roland Phelps explains that there are also two other carats available, which are 14 carats (mainly in the US) and 22 carats. But these are not commonly used in the UK and according to him 22 carats is not as hard wearing as the 18 carat. “So we pitched out at the top end – 18 carats, which is both hard wearing and has good gold content.”

The customer knows nothing of this process – and as Roland Phelps points out, probably doesn’t care as long as it is well made, welldesigned and lasts.

So it seems that Roland Phelps and Prof Hartwig Frimmel both agree on the potentials. A few weeks ago, after giving a lecture in Austria on the gold worldwide picture, Prof Frimmel was quite amused by an indignant postlecture comment: “When talking about global players in gold production, how come you didn’t mention Ireland?!”

Well, it’s true that the critics sounds a bit inappropriate for now; but who knows, let’s all hope that in a few years time he might have to take it more seriously!

Global Picture Worldwide amount

Gold known to exist on earth (mined or in deposit): 320,000 tonnes* Gold ever mined 145,000 tonnes Last year global mine production amounted to 2,450 tonnes

End-use of gold* Jewellery 67 %, Investment 19 %, Industry 13 %

World’s leading gold producers 2007 % of global production*

1 China leader with 276 tonnes of gold (11.3 %) 2 South Africa (10.6 %) 3 Australia (10.0 %)

The Geits gold mine in Tanzania, and below, as in ancient Ireland, most African gold ends up being worn as jewellery. Photos: Anglo Gold Ashanti.

Why is gold so precious?

• Gold is indestructible and doesn’t get oxidised – it can remain nice and shiny for thousands of years • Gold is rare, but not too rare. Platinum or iridium are also indestructible, but they are rarer than gold.

• Gold is inert, non toxic, non-allergenic • Gold is quite soft, so it is easy to work on • Gold is highly conductible, a useful property in industry such as computer industry (USB keys are packed with gold)

4 USA (9.8 %)

6 Russia (5.9 %) 7 Indonesia (4.6 %) 8 Canada (4.1 %)

JEWELLERY

5 Peru (6.9 %)

Price

On the 13th of March 2008 the price of gold reached $1000 per troy ounce (31.1035g) for the first time in history. * Dr Frimmel’s calculation for world.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 23

An adult large pine weevil, Hylobius abietis.

Controlling pine weevil with natural enemies he large pine weevil, Hylobius abietis, is the most important pest of replanted coniferous sites in Ireland and throughout northern Europe. If left unchecked, it can kill every young tree on a site. Pine weevil is the only forest pest against which chemical insecticide is routinely applied in Ireland and, in accordance with the principles of Sustainable Forest Management, there is a real need to develop an ecologically sustainable management strategy for it. The weevils develop in the stumps of recently cut conifers and emerge as adults which attack newly planted trees, both conifer and

T

The entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema carpocapsae.

broadleaf. Weevils feeding on the bark can kill a young tree within days.

The traditional approach is to treat each seedling with insecticide. An alternative, being investigated in the ABATE project funded by COFORD and coordinated by Dr Christine Griffin, is to use natural enemies to kill the developing weevils in the stumps.

Researchers at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology led by Dr Paddy Walsh are investigating ways of enhancing the efficacy of a parasitic wasp, Bracon hylobii. This native parasitoid kills and multiplies on pine weevil larvae. However, levels of natural parasitism are too low to reduce weevil numbers sufficiently.

Michael Moran at GMIT developed an efficient way of rearing large numbers of parasitoids for inoculative release.

The idea is that, once released, the wasps should multiply quickly in the field. Michael has studied natural populations and found that the wasp has several generations with new adult wasps produced from April to November. His experiments have shown the importance of energy-rich food in prolonging the life of the adult wasps; ensuring an adequate supply of nectar on sites could be an important component of a strategy to enhance the success of these native weevilkillers.

Another candidate for suppressing pine weevil populations is a group of entomopathogenic or insect-killing nematodes. Like parasitoids, these microscopic worms kill and multiply in insects. They occur naturally in soil in a variety of habitats throughout Ireland, including coniferous forests.

Nematodes are already marketed for the control of several insect pests worldwide. One advantage over chemicals is that nematodes actively seek out insects. Nematodes applied to the soil surface around stumps can kill weevils inside stumps and half a metre deep in soil. Since they only attack insects, nematodes pose no risk to fish, birds or mammals including humans. The project has made a number of key findings regarding the efficacy and environmental safety of nematodes used against pine weevil.

One important finding by Dr Aoife Dillon is that the indigenous species Heterorhabditis downesi consistently performs better than any other species trialled, reducing the number of adult

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 24

weevils emerging from stumps by an average of 70% compared to 37% for the “industry standard� Steinernema carpocapsae. As a result of Maynooth’s findings, commercialisation of Heterorhabditis downesi is being assessed by a number of biological control companies. Use of nematodes as an alternative to insecticides is being seriously considered by the forestry industry. In 2007 and 2008 Coillte treated a total of 220 hectares, and the outcome is being monitored by the ABATE team.

Obviously, it is important to consider the environmental safety of a widespread application of any organism, and this is a prime consideration of the ABATE project.

Results so far are encouraging: nematodes have not been detected outside the treated area, and numbers of applied nematodes on site decline to undetectable levels once the weevils have exhausted the resources of the stump. Aileen Foster is monitoring the non-target insect species emerging from nematode-treated stumps and early indications are that numbers and biodiversity are not reduced compared to untreated stumps.

The project has shown that nematodes are a promising environmentally sustainable way of reducing pine weevil numbers, and may offer a realistic affordable alternative to chemical insecticides.

For further information contact Dr Christine Griffin christine.griffin@nuim.ie Dr Paddy Walsh Patrick.Walsh@gmit.ie or Dr Aoife Dillon aoifebdillon@gmail.com

A parasitic wasp, Bracon hylobii,which attacks pine weevil larvae developing within stumps.

SPIN

SCIENCE WEEK Shaping our world

ISOF EXPO 13th to 15th November 2008 RDS Main Hall

A major exhibition on applied research, bringing industry, the colleges, and the agencies together at one venue.

ISOF EXPO will enable participants to interact at stands, in break out areas, and face to face workshops.

Manufacturing companies engaged in R&D will be invited to meet potential employees and researchers, and one of the highlights of the exhibition will be a working laboratory.

In support of the exhibition the ISOF Council is planning science and research events throughout the country as part of the Science Week programme, and Science Spin, is publishing a research handbook Organiser

SDL Exhibitions Ltd 18 Main Street, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14. Tel: 01 490 0600 Enquiries to Deirdre Quinn. Direct line 01 405 5547 E-mail: deirdre@sdlexpo.com

www.isofexpo.ie

The ISOF Council invites scientists, researchers, and staff in organisations to include proposed activities, such as workshops or lectures, in a countrywide programme of events suitable for a scientic or general audience during the week of this exhibition.

To register your interest in ISOF, the Irish Science Open Forum, simply email tom@sciencespin.com to receive an occasional alert on activities.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 25

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Recovering the squid. Photo: Ministry of Fisheries, New Zealand.

The

Colossal Squid

Fionnuala Finnerty describes the recovery one of the ocean’s most elusive creatures.

I

t sounds like something from a science-fiction movie but on April 30th this year the thawing out and public autopsy took place of the world’s largest known invertebrate, a 495kg colossal squid (who remains as yet unnamed). The colossal squid is a bit of a recluse usually found in the icy, black waters of the Antarctic about 1km from the surface. The squid is mysterious and elusive. The first colossal squid was discovered in 1925 in the stomach of a sperm whale after he had been guzzled for dinner.

The sperm whale is a predator of the colossal squid and most sperm whales bear scars on their backs believed to have been inflicted by the hooks of the colossal squid.

Approximately, eight colossal squid carcasses have been discovered since then most of them semi-digested inside sperm whales. Little is known about the colossal squid to date because of it’s habitat.

The colossal squid is a type of mollusc called a cephalopod as are it’s similar relations the giant squid and

the octopus. The colossal squid is believed to be the largest of the squid species. It is the only known member of the genus Mesonychoteuthis, from Greek Meso (middle), onychos (claw) and teutis (squid).

This colossal squid was caught accidentally by the crew of a New Zealand fishing boat the “San Dr Tsunemi Kubodera, Kat Bolstad, Mark Fenwick, Dr Olaf Blaauw and Dr Steve O’Shea in the tank getting to grips with the colossal squid.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 26

Aspiring” near Antarctica in 2007.

It was only just alive and the crew thought that it would die if they released it. The squid was frozen by the fishing crew and stored in a massive freezer below decks. It was transferred to New Zealand for thawing and further scientific evaluation in Te Papa Tongarewa museum in Wellington.

The scientists in Te Papa were then posed with a bit of a problem — how to thaw a 495kg frozen squid?

If they thawed it out naturally, there was every chance that the outer layers of tissue would commence decomposition before inner core was defrosted.

They then considered building the world’s largest microwave in order to thaw it out but as the skin of the colossal squid is very soft, it was considered too risky.

After sifting 462 suggestions from the public, they came to a decision to thaw it out in a bath full of saline and ice in order to control the rate of thawing using saline to prevent decay of tissue. The SPIN

thawing began on the 29th April and lasted for three days. Once thawed the scientists had just four hours to record all the anatomical information and measurements necessary before the squid would need to be fixed in formaldehyde to prevent decomposition.

On defrosting, the scientists went about the painstaking process of measuring and cataloguing the details of the colossal squid. It was necessary for them to be very careful as the tissue was very friable. It required six people to turn the squid over. The scientists clambered around in the icy tank in order to gently tease the squid into its correct shape and carefully unfurl its tentacles. This process was filmed and was broadcast on the web worldwide. The Te Papa website had over 100,000 hits a day from over 180 different countries.

The plan is that the colossal squid will be displayed in Te Papa Tongarewa museum suspended in formaldehyde when the scientists are finished studying it.

The colossal squid has been recorded to have sharp beaks made form a material similar to human fingernails. They also have long tentacles. The tentacles were measured at 4.2m in length in Te Pap‘s specimen.

The colossal squid’s tentacles possess two rows of sharp, swivelling hooks and two rows of tiny suckers. The beak and hooks are lethal weapons for catching and holding large fish like the Patagonian tooth fish (thought to be the preferred diet of the colossal squid).

Many squid are cannibalistic so the giant squid may actually eat

Left, the tentacle hooks capable of leaving scars on large whales. Right, the eye lenses.

Photographs: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa/Norm Heke each other if necessary. The scientists also used an endoscope to see what the squid ate for its last meal but details of stomach content have not been released yet.

The eyes were measured at greater than 11 inches in diameter, larger than a dinner plate each. The tentacles were measured at 4.2m in length. On closer examination, it was discovered that the eyes had two rows of bioluminescent (light-emitting) organs. The small light emitting organs are all that the colossal squid’s prey would be able to see of the large animal. Colossal squid hunt in total darkness at depth.“The prey might well look at [the squid] and think, Well, I can’t be bothered with those two tiny little specks of light. And all of a sudden this great big thing lunges in and latches on to it with vicious hooks,” said Dr. Steve O’ Shea, a squid expert from New

Zealand. The light from the glowing organs also help conceal a squid as they venture closer to the surface. “The body of the animal is translucent, [but] these very large eyes are anything but translucent.

“If you are a predator approaching from below, you’ve got two silhouettes of the eyes. So those rows of photophores then beam down light of an equivalent intensity to that from above, so the eyes are rendered invisible.” O’Shea said. “It’s a very successful cloaking device.”

The colossal squid is thought to eat prey that also glow. You might think that this would give it’s position away, a glowing stomach in a transparent animal, but evolution may have solved this problem. The squids mantle, a covering layer just beneath the head is lined with a dense, dark red pigment that would block any light from within.

Despite the advances made in the last couple of weeks, providing scientists with a new wealth of information on the colossal squid, there still exist many questions that need to be answered.

Another interesting piece of information that been ascertained is that the beak of this colossal squid was measured at 42.5mm which is smaller than some of the beaks recovered previously from the innards of sperm whales (up to 49mm), so it is possible that even larger specimens remain lurking in the deep.

Fionnuala Finnerty is a graduate entry medical student and contributor to The Irish Medical Times.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 27

Researchers aim to improve techniques for culturing adult stem cells.

Helping the body heal itself Tom Kennedy reports that adult stem cells could keep our joints on the move and cut down on knee and hip replacements. he body is quite good with minor repairs, and many wounds, if clean, can be left to heal. However, when damage is severe or extensive, the natural repair systems are unable to cope, and the aim of researchers at REMEDI is to overcome these limitations. At REMEDI, the Regenerative Medicine Institute, scientists from a range of backgrounds have been looking at how gene and cell therapy can be used to enhance and promote natural repair processes.

In some instances simply providing a supporting structure can give tissues a chance to grow back, and in many other cases topping up with adult stem cells

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According to Smith & Nephew over 100 million people around the world are suffering from osteoarthritis, and apart from being uncurable, the condition is progressive and painful.

Smith & Nephew had already started to work on culturing human cartilage, but as the company’s project manager, Nick Medcalf, commented, the agreement with REMEDI will accelerate this research.

REMEDI, he said, are widely recognised as world leaders in this field.

Getting a regenerative treatment onto the market, could come as a great relief, particularly to younger patients, who often have to endure years on painkillers before hip or knee replacements.

has the potential to make up for serious deficiencies.

Tissues vary in their ability to recover, and we are all familiar with the speed at which most surface cuts heal. However, some tissues, such as cartilage, are much less responsive, and as Drs Cindy Coleman and Elizabeth Hutson at REMEDI explained, this is one of the reasons why arthritis is such an enormous problem. Cartilage provides the cushion between all our moving joints, so we depend on it to keep moving. When cartilage deteriorates, we can end up so stiff and painful that joints have to be surgically replaced. In Ireland alone it is believed that one in six people is affected by arthritis, and with rising age, the number of patients for knee and hip replacement is set to rise.

In many cases failure of the cartilage tissue to repair itself leads on to osteoarthritis. The arthritis can be sparked off by a sports injury or by excessive weight bearing, and because the cartilage tissue is not good at self repair, the condition can gain the upper hand.

Different approaches are currently in place to deal with stiff and painful joints, such as injection of viscous lubricants, but as the researchers explained, these are just treatments to relieve symptoms and they are not a cure. To treat arthritis effectively, we have to have a better understanding of what’s going on, and one of the main problems is that cartilage tissue is not vascular. Although it releases distress signals to fetch potentially reparative stem cells, it is poorly supplied with blood vessels, so the lines of communication to tap into sources of stem cells are extremely weak.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 28

As the researchers explained, intervening to transfer stem cells could help to overcome that problem, and this is the focus of their CARA, Cellular Arthoplasty for Regeneration in Arthritis project. This project, put together by Dr Mary Murphy, senior researcher at REMEDI, is being run jointly with the global technology company, Smith & Nephew.

The project began when Smith & Nephew began looking at how to improve treatment of cartilage defects.

This is a big market segment for the company, and as Elizabeth Hutson from Smith & Nephew remarked, the stem cell approach being taken by REMEDI was a perfect match for their own aims.

The company, she said, has research facilities in York but, like many other multinationals, Smith & Nephew has an open innovation approach involving close collaboration with centres of international excellence. So, instead of trying to do eveything in house, longterm, in-depth research is undertaken in collaboration with specialised institutes that have complementary skills. Agreements like this are good for business and good for research, because both partners have a lot to gain. Companies end up with larger numbers of better products and the researchers benefit from a substantial boost in financial support. “REMEDI”, she said, “was head hunted as one of

PhD student Sarah Bulman, and Drs Cindy Coleman, and Elizabeth Hutson aim to prevent the onset of arthritis.

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REMEDI

Scientific Director of REMEDI, Prof Frank Barry. the research groups that we wanted to work with.”

The joint research deal was signed last year, and in the following months Sarah, Elizabeth and Nick moved over from the company to join the research team in Galway. They all brought considerable industry and research experience. Nick Medcalf, for example, started his career working on the analysis to support the development of one of the world’s biggest selling drugs, Zantac, and he worked as a senior chemist during the start-up of a fine chemical company before moving on to work on scale up of processes for Smith & Nephew.

Cindy has a PhD from Thomas Jefferson University in development biology, and Elizabeth has a PhD in cell biology and tissue engineering of bone mesenchymal cells.

Within four years the researchers plan to have made considerable progress on solving some extremely difficult problems, not least of which concerns more effective culturing of adult stem cells.

The stem cells are harvested from adult volunteer donors and while this provides enough for research purposes such samples would be completely inadequate for general use. For this reason one important aim of the research is to discover how to bulk up the supply. Although great progress has been made over the past few years, one of the problems that the researchers aim to overcome is that after dividing a few times in culture, cells start to grow old and lose their ability to proliferate.

The researchers have been able to bulk up cultures to eight times their original volume, and as Dr Coleman said, the ultimate aim is to get the maximum yield from the minimum number of donors. However, as she added, “we need to know that they remain genetically the same, that they still have the same function.”

The Regenerative Medicine Institute, REMEDI, was established in 2003 with Science Foundation Ireland support as a world class centre for gene therapy and stem cell research. REMEDI,located at the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science at NUI Galway benefits from close proximity to a range of related disciplines. Under directors Prof Timothy O’Brien and Prof Frank Barry, REMEDI has become recognised as one of the world’s leading centres for stem cell research. Because stem cells, such as the mesenchymal cells taken from bone marrow, have not yet specialised, they retain a high degree of flexibility in how they will develop. It is this flexibility that gives stem cell therapy such high potential to cure rather than just treat certain diseases. Compared to whole tissue, stem cells are less likely to be rejected by the body’s immune system and given the right conditions, they have the ability to grow and develop into any other type of fully functional specialised cells.

The researchers are also looking at how these living cells can be introduced to the damaged site. With these mesenchymal stem cells there is unlikely to be any problem of rejection, and this is a major advantage. “They could be implanted or injected,” Dr Coleman said, and by taking up residence, they act as an influence on the surrounding cells. “It is believed that the cells themselves don’t do the repair, but it is thought that they help others to act, possibly by producing cytokines and growth factors which attract other cells to the site.” Being in residence for a couple of weeks may be enough to stimulate self-repair.

Apart from Cindy, and the Smith & Nephew team members, Sarah, Elizabeth and Nick, the others involved on the €6 million project at REMEDI are post doc researcher, Caroline Ryan, and research assistant, Caroline Curtin.

Project Manager, Nick Medcalf.

Close relations with the Merlin Park University Hospital are already helpful, and that collaboration is going to increase significantly as the project moves out from the lab and on into clinical trials.

Dr Caroline Ryan and research assistant, Caroline Curtin preparing cell cultures.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 29

Seán Duke reports that harvesting of data is giving us a clearer picture of what lies offshore. t seems crazy, but until recently, the only marine maps available for many areas of the Irish seabed were those compiled by the famous Captain Bligh – he of Mutiny on the Bounty – who mapped Dublin Bay and some other areas around the Irish coast in 1812, by randomly dropping lead lines. In the past few years, however, a huge effort has started to map the large Irish offshore territory, from its deep waters to its shallow near-shore waters, and its bays and ports. The data produced from this effort can be of great assistance to commercial fishermen, exploration companies and researchers. It is expected that 15 to 20 terabytes of data will be made freely available to the public.

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Mapping Ireland’s offshore

Benefits

Background

The serious effort to comprehensively map Ireland’s seabed began in 1999 with the establishment of the Irish National Seabed Survey.

This ran for seven years up to 2005, and it mapped many of our deeper waters. Somewhat counter-intuitively the deeper waters are easier to map, as the technology used, multi-beam sonar covers a greater area when applied to deep waters than it does close to shore. Following on from the Seabed Survey, was the INFOMAR project – Integrated Marine Mapping

along the east coast, from the Arklow Banks almost up to Drogheda. This effort was expected to take 20 years, but the Marine Institute, who are joint partners in INFOMAR with the Geological Survey of Ireland, the GSI, are putting a proposal to government that it be ‘telescoped’ into 10 years.

The funding for INFOMAR is expected to run at about €4 million per annum.

Top, two views of Waterford show the flexibility of looking at data. Above, the charted areas. for the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s Marine Resource. This began in 2006, and the goal is to map those areas that were not mapped by the Seabed Survey. These include 26 bays and three areas. The areas are off the Dingle Peninsula, off the south coast from Cork over to Hook Head, and

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 30

John Evans, Marine Institute, is the joint programme manager of INFOMAR, along with Koen Verbruggen at the GSI. There are a number of areas where the mapping of Irish offshore provides immediate and direct benefits for society. The first is safety, said John.

“They’re discovering a lot of shoals [areas where the water levels become quickly and unexpectedly shallow] that are just not marked on the charts, because the mechanism that was used in those 18th and 19th century chartings was basically that they dropped a lead line, they just did a point every here and there, and from that they deduced what the contours were.” With this approach the surveyors could miss large areas.

“What we are discovering is there are lots of areas where there are shoals.

They are quite a significant hazard to navigation.”

The information from INFOMAR is passed on to the UK Hydrographic Office, the body that is responsible for providing charts of British and Irish waters, and they update their charts.

This provides benefits to the leisure or commercial user of the seas, and it also provides vital information on the seabed topography for shipping that is entering important ports around Ireland, such as Limerick, Foynes and Dublin.

Ireland has legal obligations, explained John, under a UN sponsored agreement called SOLAS, the Safety of Lives at Sea. What this essentially means is that the government is responsible for ensuring that adequate maps of the seabed are available. At the moment, if there was a major oil spillage in an area of the Irish offshore that wasn’t mapped, the shipping company could claim that the accident was due to inaccurate seabed charts.

The legal responsibility, and the cost, of the clean-up would then shift from the company to the government, and the taxpayer, and the costs could be huge.

There is also a requirement on the Irish government to meet the EU Habitats Directive. This Directive requires Ireland to define areas that are deemed to be biologically sensitive, and this applies to the offshore as well as to land areas. INFOMAR enables researchers to draw up a physical habitat map for the seabed, which means that activities in that area must be monitored to ensure that no damage is being done. The new information provides the means to make decisions on how commercial activities, such as fishing, oil and gas exploration and aquaculture, should, if at all, take place, inside the biologically sensitive areas in our offshore.

Another benefit arises in the case of a request from an individual or company that wishes to place an ocean energy device in the offshore. In the past, when marine maps were old and sometimes inaccurate, an individual wishing to place such a device in the sea, would have to use old maps to make decisions about where to place it. Today, with INFOMAR, advice can be given about where best to locate the energy device.

Elsewhere, in Galway the data produced from INFOMAR is facilitating the work of a project called Smart Bay, run by the Higher Education Authority and the Marine

Data from the Dingle peninsula in Kerry shows how the valleys and mountains continue out under the sea.

Institute. This project involves the wiring of Galway Bay with wireless and fibre optic cable – right around the entire Bay – to provide real-time water pollution monitoring.

Technology

A technique called multi-beam sonar was the prime technology used during the Seabed Survey. The sonar sends a swath of founds down to the seabed, and an arc of information bounces

back up from the seabed. However, when the sonar technique is used closer to shore, the job of surveying gets progressively harder using multibeam. The swath of sound being sent down to the seabed becomes smaller, and the lines that a ship has to sail during the survey, thus, become closer and closer, and, therefore, the surveying takes longer the closer to shore the ship is positioned.

For this reason, a new technology was adopted for INFOMAR, which,

Charting an undersea moraine. On the old charts, such features might not have been mapped.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 31

unlike the Seabed Survey, was mainly a project about surveying the near-shore areas. This technology is called LIDAR (light detection and ranging) and it is an area where Ireland is right up there with the best in the world. The technology involves the use of lasers, and it is highly successful in Irish waters down to about 15 metres depth.

In clear waters the technology is useful down to 40 metres. Normally, LIDAR is used to determine features on land, but in Ireland it has been used to map shallow waters.

The way it works is that a laser is attached underneath a plane, the plane flies over the area to be surveyed, and two beams are shot downwards.

One beam of light hits the sea surface and its reflected back, and the other hits the sea floor and is bounced back. The difference in relative time it takes for each beam to return back to the detector helps determine the depth of water, and the shape of the seabed. It is important to know exactly what the tides are doing when using this technique, and this is one of the reasons why tidal gauges have been installed in locations all around the

Irish coast.

LIDAR was used in the surveying off the Dingle Peninsula and Galway Bay out to the Aran Islands, for instance. One issue with LIDAR is that the data that comes back is not as good as multi-beam sonar data. There is no ‘backscatter data’ which is data that is used to determine the precise nature of the seabed sediments. This means that quite a lot of point sampling of seabed sediments must be done with LIDAR. The plane, owned by an Australian company, did about 10 days flying around the Irish coastline, and generated a huge amount of data.

Deficit

Up until recently, said John Evans, Ireland had a huge knowledge deficit in terms of what was known about our offshore waters. A key starting point in building up a marine research infrastructure was the arrival of the research vessel, the Celtic Explorer, which was commissioned in 2003.

This vessel gives Ireland, for the first time, a substantial research capability.

In addition, Ireland has been

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 32

aggressively targeting international research vessels present in our waters.

International law sates that Ireland, in such circumstances must be permitted to place a person onboard.

In addition, the Irish demand that the data generated from such research be shared.

“Ireland is really coming from a deficit position, we have been catching up over the last 10 years, and we are now in a position where we are doing things that other countries aren’t doing,” said John Evans. “We make the data freely available. It feeds into electronic charting systems that are being used by commercial fishermen, it’s being used by researchers, and we don’t know what [else] the data will be used for. The data will be there long after we are gone and it will be a national asset. There are probably 30 to 40 research projects running around the country that are either directly or indirectly using our data,” he concluded.

SPIN

A healthy combination

maths + medicine

Prof Finbarr O’Sullivan’s research will enable doctors to make better use of existing CAT scanners.

Powerful PET scanners are not widely available to doctors in Ireland, but maths can be applied to ensure we get the best from the scanners we do have, writes Seán Duke. n many developed nations such as the USA, it is almost routine now that expensive PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners are used as a doctor’s aid in cases of stroke, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The powerful scans produced from PET can help doctors define the precise nature of the patient’s illness, and from that starting point to chart the best course of treatment for a patient, and improve patient outcomes.

In Ireland PET is currently only available in the Blackrock Clinic and in Belfast. However, the application of mathematics to MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and CAT (Computerised Axial Tomography) scanners – scanners that are widely available in Ireland - can help doctors improve patients’ diagnosis and treatment without PET. It is a case of making the most of the medical technology we have, to help patients today, rather than waiting for the day when PET scanners are installed in centres all over Ireland.

Until that day, however, we can use mathematical methods to get the best from the technology we have.

In this case, we are talking about the statistical analysis of medical imagery. Recognising the value of this, SFI funded the ‘Statistical Methods in

I

Biomedical Imaging Project’, headed

by Professor Finbarr O’Sullivan, based at UCC, to the tune of €990,818 over a four-year period.

A unique element of this project is a study to develop, implement and test perfusion scanning using the CT and MRI scanners available in Ireland. Perfusion scanning is where doctors track blood flow, following, for example, a stroke, or in early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

Understanding blood flow in such cases is of crucial importance. If this can be done with available scanners it will represent a major advance. This work will also lay the groundwork for developing the mathematical expertise that will be required when PET becomes more widely available in Ireland in future.

Molecular imaging

Molecular imaging in medicine is done to try and better understand the molecular mechanisms of disease ‘in vivo’. These techniques are based on the injection of radioactive tracers into the body, and watching where various ‘labels’ go. MRI and CAT scans generate such images, but the more powerful technique is PET. This latter technique provides an understanding how tissues use glucose – which is

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 33

used for energy – by introducing a radio-labelled form of glucose into the body and watching where it goes. This provides important information on the metabolism of a disease.

Professor Finbarr O’Sullivan is Head of the Department of Statistics at UCC. He has been working on the statistical analysis of PET images in disease for at least 20 years, in collaboration with a group in Seattle USA who are interested primarily in using PET for cancer applications.

In cancer, CAT and MRI scans can determine where a cancer is, but they can’t describe the exact metabolic state a cancer is in – something a PET scan can achieve. The determination of cancer metabolism post-chemotherapy can, for example, help doctors decide what they should do next. They can determine which patients would benefit from more treatment and those who wouldn’t benefit.

The state of oxygenation of a tumour, for instance, can be a critical determinant of its metabolic state.

Those tumours that have low oxygen levels may have grown so fast that they cut off their own oxygen supply. In these cases, the tumour can hibernate, and be quite resistant to chemotherapy. Using PET, doctors have the information to decide to use more aggressive radiation treatment to deal with a resistant tumour.

In Ireland MRI and CAT scanners are used for imaging. The goal, said Professor O’Sullivan, is to set up statistical analytical methods which will enable doctors to extract the maximum amount of useful data from these machines as is possible. In order to do this, a cohort of patients was required, and Prof O’Sullivan turned to the geriatric population, as many of these people coming into a clinic would already be getting MRI or CAT scans in order to check for Alzheimer’s disease. For the study, the patients are required to remain for an extra two minutes in the scanner.

The aim is to determine ‘blood flow’ in patients with Alzheimer’s, stroke or cancer and to compare this to ‘normal’ patterns. This is being done to improve diagnostics, and to provide better information for the care of these patients.

A dynamic data set can be analysed to produce a ‘perfusion scan’. This is something akin to what a PET scanner might achieve, but using our available machines.

Prof O’Sullivan said that he was attracted to this project, not in order to get access to a particular data set, as he could get such data elsewhere, but to improve patient outcome, and pave the way for the introduction of PET scanners in Ireland.

The two centres that are participating in the statistical study are the Cork University Hospital and the acute care South Infirmary unit.

MRI scanning can already generate a slice by slice view through the body, and with SFI supported research doctors may be trace blood flow.

SPIN

Backing the bid for City of Science 2012

In June the ‘Irish Wild Geese’, those who work in Europe, gathered in Brussels to show their support for Ireland’s bid to make Dublin the ‘City of Science’ in 2012.

Addressing the assembly, Prof Patrick Cunningham reminded everyone how science has grown in Ireland. Investment by multinationalist in Irish research, he said, had quadrupled between 2005 and 2007, and during the same period research activities funded

by SFI had yielded almost a doubling of patents. Ireland, he observed, has become an attrtactive place to conduct research. There has been a rise in the number of non-nationals involved in Irish research, and they have come, said Prof Cunningham “because they like what they see.”

Ireland’s bid, said Dr Cunningham, is advancing well, and it has the backing of many Irish and international organisatrions. With a deadline for submission in October, the bid result will be announced in January 2009, and Dr Cunningham said that Ireland is likely to win.

Only one other candidate, Vienna, has been declared at this stage.

The bid is being made under the Chief Scientific Adviser’s office.

www.chiefscientificadviser.ie SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 34

At the Irish reception were Philippe Busquin, Member of the European Parliament and former EU Commissioner for Research with Zoran Stancic, Deputy Director General, DG Research.

In the background, CSA Prof Cunningham with Ireland’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU, Kenneth Thompson.

All the way from Waesfiord to Wexford

herever Billy Coford Colfer goes he seems to absorb every detail of his surroundings. While teaching in Wexford he even noticed how the slight variations in accent could reveal what part of the town people came from, and he must either have a great memory, or a room full of notebooks, to have been able to assemble so much material for this wonderful book. Everything from early origins as a seaport to growth of the modern town is contained in this one lavishly illustrated volume.

The region already had a long history of settlement before the Vikings started to arrive, but this is when the town began to take shape as a distinct centre for trade. Wexford indeed has the distinction of being one of Ireland’s Colfer tells original towns. As Billy Coford us the name, Waesfiord, was a Norse description of a broad shallow bay.

As we all know from our colourful, if somewhat biased schoolbooks, that the early Vikings were not much better than pirate robbers, stealing progressed to trade, and with trade came a shift in power. Again, local names give us some idea of how the society of the time adapted. Many of the surrounding townlands retain their Gaelic names, or at least they did, until rendered into English.

W

By the time the next invaders came, Wexford was well established as a busy port, and the citizens, reluctant to yield, burnt anything outside the town, and withdrew within the walls.

The Anglo-Normans also started playing with fire, setting three ships Colfer ablaze in the harbour. As Billy Coford tells us, Wexford’s crest, three burning ships, and a motto, Per Aquam et Ignum, recalls that dramatic event.

No doubt there are those who would have held out to the last man, woman and child, but the citizens, first and foremost, were traders, so a deal was made, and from then on, Wexford prospered as an Anglo-Norman town, and as such, is crammed with medieval remains, all of which Billy Colfer Coford describes in detail. He also describes how tension between settlers and older inhabitants never really died down. The Black Plague wiped out many of the settlers, tipping the balance in favour of the native Irish, thus setting off a long period of unrest, and indeed the sort of confusion that led eventually to uncertainty about identity. The unfortunate ‘old English’, like the Gaels, were all eventually just lumped together as disloyal rebels.

Wexford did not welcome Cromwell, so 2,000 of its citizens were put to the sword.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 35

Colfer describes, Wexford As Billy Coford experience its share of bloodshed and violence, but that is just one aspect of its history. There were shipyards, breweries, corn mills, tanneries, the big Devereux distillery, and perhaps best known of all, the iron works founded

by James Pierce in 1847. Many of the farm implements used in Irish agriculture until recent years bear the distinctive Pierce brand.

The author has done Wexford a great service by recording the town and its surroundings in such fascinating detail, and its not the first time that Billy Coford Colfer has helped readers explore the county. His previous book, The Hook Peninsula, also takes a similar close up approach to the the nearby Hook Peninsula.

Both books, like the matching volume, Atlas of Cork City, are part of an Irish landscape series published by Cork University Press.

Wexford, a town and its landscape, Billy Colfer Cofer. 256 pages, hardback. €49.

Tom Kennedy

In all good bookshops or order on line from Science Spin www.sciencespin.com SPIN

The house that Nikolai built

Archangelsk in the far north of Russia, known for its chilly isolation and for its low timber buildings can now lay claim to be the home of the world’s first wooden skyscraper.

The builder, Nikolai Sutyagin, who had set up a lumber and construction business, decided to build a small house.

Described in press reports as a worksholic, Nikolai began building, but he didn’t know when to stop. He just kept going, and going, and going.

Naturally, Nikolai’s growing construction began to attract a lot of attention, and when a television crew arrived from Russia Today, they recorded a mixture of bewilderment, amusement, and outright hostility to Nikolai’s masterpiece, especially from local authorites who claim that he had no right to build so high, and as a fire hazard they were determined to pull the building down.

Estimates on its size vary from 12 to 15 stories, and the wonder of it all is that such a tall structure can remain standing. When last reported on by Russian television, the structure was still standing, but unfinished. It may be high, but inside there are hardly any floors.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 29 Page 36

Science Foundation Ireland Scholarship 2008 School leavers Deadline for applications is June 27th 2008

Young women in engineering The Dell notebook computer is a powerful workstation class portable PC and is certified to run with a wide range of engineering class software applications.

Additionally, with the latest mobile technology and OpenGL graphics, this lightweight notebook lets you experience genuine workstation power on the move. Office applications like email and Word are available as standard. The notebook comes complete with a backpack and the security of three years next business day onsite warranty from Ireland's largest computer manufacturer.

PART OF A PROGRAMME TO INCREASE THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH IN IRELAND

Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) with support from Dell is awarding research driven scholarships to encourage more young high-achieving women into engineering.

Up to 10 scholarships will be awarded in 2008 to women entering designated engineering degree programmes in Ireland.

Scholars will receive an annual award of â‚Ź2,000; a Dell notebook computer; the support of an active researcher as a mentor throughout their undergraduate career; and at least one summer researchinternship in an academic research laboratory or an industry R&D laboratory during their degree.

Full details of the objectives and eligibility requirements, including how to apply for the scholarship can be obtained on the SFI website: www.sfi.ie/scholarship or by e-mailing: scholarship@sfi.ie Completed applications should be sent to the address below for delivery on or before 5pm on Friday June 27th, 2008.

SFI Scholarship - Young Women in Engineering Science Foundation Ireland Wilton Park House

www.sfi.ie

Wilton Place

Dublin 2, Ireland

tel +353 1 607 3200 fax +353 1 607 3201 email info@sfi.ie

The National Foundation for Excellence in Scientific Research

IRELAND 2008 'Science - Shaping Our World' 9th - 16th November 2008

Science Week Ireland offers people of all ages the chance to explore, discover, experiment or invent their way to a better understanding of science

Log on to www.scienceweek.ie for regular information and updates on events and activities near you

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