ISSUE 33 March 09 €3 including VAT £2 NI and UK
SCIENCE
IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE
SPIN SPIN
Geo images —The science of everything
In search of African giants
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Discover Sensors AT SCIFEST 2009 Discover Sensors, a junior certificate science support project for Discover Science & Engineering, Forfás, is delighted to be in partnership with Intel for SciFest 2009 and will be presenting a dedicated Discover Sensors Award at each Institute of Technology throughout the festival. Student projects demonstrating substantial use of one or more sensors for the recording of experimental data in any area of Science will be considered for the Discover Sensors Award. Entrance criteria for this award are available on www.discoversensors.ie and www.scifest.ie
The winning student/s in each Institute of Technology will be awarded: • a Discover Sensors SciFest trophy, and • a E100 voucher (E150 for student group) The mentoring teacher will receive a laptop computer.
Blog your way to a Discover Sensors Award One of the criteria for receiving the Discover Sensors Award is for students to keep a blog of their SciFest project. The blog makes it easy for students to store their SciFest project images, ideas, graphs, video files etc. as part of their online science diary. They can then use the blog as part of their demonstration at the SciFest event. Once the projects are published, students will see project blogs from other students all over Ireland and share ideas and get help and inspiration! Teachers can set-up blog accounts for themselves and their students on Project Blogger
www.projectblogger.ie & check out the SciFest area to see examples of last year’s SciFest student blogs! SciFest is jointly funded by Intel and Discover Science and Engineering and is supported by a number of other partners.
SCIENCE
One of the dinosaur giants that lived in North Africa long before deltas, teeming with life, became the Sahara Desert. Spinosaurus, with its sail back, was bigger than the American T rex.
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
SPIN UPFRONT SciFest
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Fairy tale end to Young Science exhibition Tony McGennis gives a round up of the show
Seán Duke talks to Shiela Porter
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Clash of the ash
Tom Kennedy reports on an old invasion
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Making sense of everything
Sticking to chemistry
Prof Gilheany brings in the models
The science of complexity
Measuring forestry run off
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African giants
UCD research student discovers old bones
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Geo science images A selection from the Du Noyer competition
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Measuring the impact of forestry on local streams
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Space rocks
Meteorites on show at the National Museum.
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Dinosaur island Amazing diversity
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Science — how far should we go?
An award winning essay by Bobby Tang
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Reviews
Ireland’s Marine life, visiting Mars, colonising space, and natural religion
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Contributors in this issue: Tony McGenniss.
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.
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Geological Survey of Ireland Suirbhéireacht Gheolaíochia Éireann
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 32 Page 1
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UPFRONT
Detecting diseases
TO TEST for diseases such as Hepatitis B and cysticercosis involves centrifuging to separate out the blood serum. In many countries half the deaths can be due to infectious diseases, yet the cost of equipment, such as centrifuges, can put tests out of reach of those who most need them. Recently, George Whitesides and his colleagues at Harvard found that there is a cheap and simple alternative to lab centrifuges. an ordinary handheld egg-beater and lengths of tubing can do the job of separation for a fraction of the cost. according to the group, the quality of plasma obtained is good enough for many tests, and the equipment, which requires no power supply, can be sterilized for re-use.
Debating science
SENIOR cycle students have been invited to join in on debating the issues surrounding biomedical science. at present students from over 45 schools are preparing themselves for a national Debating Science Issues competition in april. The competition, supported by the Wellcome Trust and co-ordinated by REMEDI at NUIG aims to foster an active interest in biomedical science. The finals, which will be open to the public, will be held at the Science Gallery TCD on 2nd april 09.
India on the move
THE current issue of Car Magazine has a bit of welcome news for mororists who want to cut down on costs. The Indian car manufacturer, Tata Motors is about to launch the four-door Nano at a price of about €1,500. Yes, that is correct, there is no additional zero in that price, and according to motoring journalist, Ben Oliver, who was allowed a preview of the prototype, the 600 kg car performs quite well. With a small, 624 cc engine, the fifteen litre tank is good for about 300 km. Needless to say, Ravi Kant, the by now celebrated owner of Taki Motors, expects the cars to sell like hot cakes, and he has little time for for the armchair eco-warriors who hold up their hands in horror at the thoughts of giving poor people access to congested roads. Every year, he said, thousands of cyclists are killed on Indian roads. Packing the kids and granny into a neat little compact car, he said, would mean saving a lot of lives. Interestingly enough, Ben Oliver reports that the Indian entrepreneur is no stranger to green issues. When land-hungry farmers protested that Ravi Kant’s factory would take up too much space he accepted the objections and moved the entire operation, although it had just been set up, from West Bengal to Gujarat. Of course, the auto industry is likely to throw up a lot of barriers to keep cheap cars out of the west, so don’t expect the Tata to appear soon on Irish roads. Ravi Kant claims that the Indian market alone could keep his company busy, but at the same time, guess who recently took over Land Rover? That’s not all. In another clever move, Ravi Kant bought over a company called Miljo in Norway. Miljo makes electric cars.
Science writers
LEavING Cert student, Daniel O’Reilly from Castleblayney, Co Monaghan was at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition to receive the top award in the REMEDI science essay competition organised by NUI Galway for his essay on the theme of “Boundaries of Science — is there anything we should not do?, Daniel was presented with a laptop, a trophy, and a science bursery for his school, Castlebleyney College. The annual competition, sponsored by medical device technology company Medtronic, is open to all students in the senior cycle, and this year entries were attracted from all parts of Ireland. The runner up prize of a video iPod, trophy and science bursery went to a-
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Pictured at the announcement of the winners of the National Science Essay Competition were (left-right): Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’ Keeffe; winner Daniel O’Reilly, Castleblayney College, Co. Monaghan; Bobby Tang, The Royal Belfast Adademical Institution; and Professor Frank Gannon, Director General, Science Foundation Ireland. level student, Bobby Tang of The Royal Belfast academical Institution Belfast. Honourable mention was made of Natalie Duda of Loreto Secondary School, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin; amy Diviney of Colaiste Chraobh abhann, Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow; and Rebecca anderson of Eureka Secondary School, Kells, Co. Meath. SPIN
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UPFRONT Hot rocks
Grey squirrel at Wollaton Park in Britain. Photo: Nature desktop
Red and greys
ScientiStS working with the Zoological Society of London believe that grey squirrels take over from the reds because they are immune to a squirrelpox virus. in the UK, red squirrels are facing a grim future because of the virus. the UK population of reds has been estimated at 140,000, compared to over 2.5 million greys, which only arrived from north America in the late 19th century. However, the scientists have detected a glimmer of hope for the reds. Dr Anthony Sainsbury has reported that some free-living red sequirrels have managed to survive infection. eight individuals are now known to have overcome the virus by mounting the appropriate immune reponse. As Dr Sainsbury observed, this gives the reds a fighting chance to recover lost ground.
Cow pats
WitHoUt dung beetles pastures could become clogged up with cow pats. According to norma o’Hea and Dr John Finn, writing in the teagasc journal, TResearch, this is what happened in Australia when the first European settlers arrived. the native fauna did not include dung-eating beetles, and pats could take years to decompose. the introduction of dung beetles in the 1960s solved that problem, but while Australia welcomed the scavengers, farming practices here could push populations down. According to the researchers, chemicals used to control parasites in cattle may have a knock-on affect on the Aphodius dung beetles. Anti-parasitic drugs, such as ivermectin, can continue to be excreted for up to 35 days after treatment and this creates a hostile environment for soil enhancing wildlife. With every cow producing 10 to 12 pats a day, dung accumulates rapidly, and unless recycled back into the earth, pasture can be spoiled. Both adults and larvae actively feed within the dung pat, creating tunnels, stimulating release of ammonia, and introducing micro-organisms that help in the break down to a stage when earthworms get to work.
Aphodius sphacelatus image from Environmental Archaeology Lab, Umea University.
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BY using powerful X-rays generated by a synchrotron to examine rock fragments, a researcher from imperial college London has concluded that the earth’s mantle cooled by 300ºc over a period of 2.7 billion years. Dr Andrew Berry from the college’s Dept of earth Science and engineering, looked at the chemistry of komatiite, a magmatic rock, preserved for billions of years in crystals. X-ray analysis has shown that komatiites were formed 2.7 billion years ago in a region between the crust and the earth’s core. At the time, the temperature was about 1,700ºc, higher than had been previously thought, and, thus, the conclusion of heat loss. Dr Berry commented that the clues yielded up by minute fragments of ancient magma enable us to create much more accurate models of how the earth evolved.
Distracted drivers
GoinG hands-free may be safer, but not as safe as drivers assume. in a series of tests, Dr Melina Kunar from the University Warwick, and Dr todd Horowitz from Harvard Medical School, found that engaging in a phone conversation can add five metres to the braking distance of a car travelling at 100 kph. Furthermore, with attention divided, people make more errors in carrying out a simple task. the conclusions were reached following a series of tests in which participants were asked to carry out simple tasks on a computer while engaging in a speaker phone conversation. not surprisingly, the slowest responses were from people engaged in conversations that required a little bit of thought. the ‘hold on, i better pull over,’ response seems to be our instinctive way of dealing with that sort of situation where the conversation begins to demand more of our attention.
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UPFRONT
Computer power
Discarding limbs
AFTER studying skinks, small lizards that are common in Australia, Adam Skinner from the University of Adelaide has discovered that some have discarded unwanted arms and legs to become more snake like. Reporting his findings in BMC Evolutionary Biology, Adam Skinner said that genetic analysis indicated that limb loss had occurred repeatedly, and in geological terms, extremely rapidly. “At the highest rate, complete loss of limbs is estimated to have occurred within 3.6 million years,” he reported.
An almost legless Lersista ameles
Lersista punctovittata with reduced legs.
Lersista microtis with four large legs. Photographs: Mark Hutchinson
Life in ice
MORE than 150 lakes are now known to exist under the Antarctic ice. At a European Science Foundation conference last year, Brent Christner from Louisians State University explained that the lakes formed as geothermal heat melted the ice. The enormous pressure of ice above also helped, by lowering the melting temperature. The largest subglacial lake, Lake Vostok is the sixth largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. “If you were on a boat in the middle of the lake, you would not see the shores,” said Brent Christner. Conditions in the area are extreme. Surface temperature often falls below minus 60ºC. Even so, there is life in the lakes. While it is not yet possible to extract samples of lake water, scientists have been able to recover ice from the lower levels of the frozen cover. This, said Brent Christner, represents water that has progressively frozen into the base of the ice sheet as it slowly passes over the lake. “Microbial cell and organic carbon concentrations in this accreted ice,” he said, “are significantly higher than those in the overlying ice.” Based on measurements of microbes in the subglacial environment, Brent
Christner believes that the concentration of cellular life and organic carbon in ice may be higher than is found in all the planet’s freshwater. “Glacial ice is not currently considered as a reservoir for organic carbon and biology,” says Christner, “but that view has to change.”
DATA centres scattered across Europe consume as much power as the Czech Republic. The centres, serving industry, business and administration, use 56TWh of electricity a year. According to the European Commission, that consumption is on the rise, and guidelines are being drafted aiming to make the centres more efficient. The aim is to reduce consumption by 20 per cent. Among the recommendations is to make more use of virtual servers. Instead of running several servers below capacity, virtual servers could be created within a lesser number. Another big saving could come from running servers at a higher temperature. At present rooms are usually cooled to 22ºC, but the servers could operate at 30ºC, and facilities are often not designed to make efficient use of air and environmental conditions. The code of practice is available from theEuropean Joint Research Centre website.
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UPFRONT
Eucalyptus
AustrAliAn Eucalyptus trees are being grown in ireland, mainly in the south west, for their decorative foliage. this trade is reported to be worth €4m a year by teagasc. Among the species being grown is Eucalyptus cordata, and E parvifolia. During 2007 growers noticed that the trees were beginning to suffer from attacks by a beetle, identified as Paropsisterna gloriosa. the beetle is native to Australian Blue Mountains of new south Wales. it is possible that the beetles arrived as larvae on imported agricultural materials. it is believed that the beetles spread from planation to plantation by hitchhiking on the pickers. Dr Finbarr Horgan from teagasc has been working on a project to identify the problems and come up with a control plan. the beetle, in Kerry, overwinters as an adult, and in late March, emerges to lay eggs on new foliage, which is softer. the beetle appears to favour E glaucescens, but E parvifolia, E perrriniana, and E mooreii were also attractive. Feeding continues throughout the summer, and most larvae pupate in August and september. selection of tree species might turn out to be part of the control plan for some are resistant to attack the beetle does not appear to be interested in feeding on E pulverulenta, which is aromatic, or E cordata.
Moving methane
HYDrAtEs occurring off our west coast and elsewhere throughout the world represent an enormous potential source of methane gas. in these naturally occurring deposits, formed at low temperature and high pressure, the methane gas is held captive in molecular cages of ice. While many scientists are working both on methods of extraction and the implications of releasing enormous quantities of gas, chemists at the university of liverpool have been taking a different view of hydrates. the same process that worked in nature, could, they maintain, be used to store and transport the gas. One of the problems in using methane as a vehicle fuel is that the gas has to be compressed, and tanks are heavy. inspired by nature, the chemists at liverpool have developed a hydrate mix of silica and water, which they found, can soak up the gas and store it as a powder. Prof Andy Cooper, at the university’s Centre for Materials Discovery, explained that in nature, methane hydrates form very slowly, so one of their objectives was to speed up the process. Breaking the water up into tiny droplets, and keeping them separate wth silica, was found to work well because it greatly increased the surface area exposed to the methane. “this ‘dry water’ said Prof Cooper, “soaks up large quantities of methane quite rapidly at around water’s normal freezing point.” the raw materials are cheap, and the chemists are now looking at possible commercial applications. Hydrates, they claim, might turn out to be cheaper than pipelines for delivering gas from remote locations.
Photo: Wilderness Classroom
Early farmers
50 million years before humans began to farm, ants were busy cultivating their gardens. According to Microbiology today, leaf-cutting ants are one of the most successful social insects, and like humans, their success was built on farming. the ants do not feed on the leaves, but on the fungi that grow on them, and they constantly attend to their crop, removing waste and weeding out the miocrobial pests. Prof Cameron Currie from the university of WisconsinMadison, has been observing the ants at work, and he noted that failure to weed out the pests can be fatal. if the wrong type of fungi get the upper hand, the ants starve. the ants are helped by a waxy looking coat, which turns out to be made up of antibiotic producing bacteria. so, as Prof Cameron commented, the ants also got there first with antibiotics to control fungal pests. Most of the antibiotics used by humans, he said, come from the same actinobacteria group. Both sides gain, the ants feed, and the fungi crop thrives in a protected environment, but as Prof Cameron reported, no one yet knows how the relationship started.
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UPFRONT
Perennials
Woolly rhinos
A Woolly rhinoceros skull, disovered over a century ago and pieced together from over fifty fragments has turned out to be oldest yet discovered in Europe. The significance of this is that it helps date the spread of cold climate animals during the ice ages. The woolly rhino, Coelodonta tologoijensis, which was found in a gravel pit, roamed 460,000 years ago across central Germany and grazed at the foot of the Kyffhäuser range. At the time, the climate was far drier than now and icy cold. The edge of massive glaciers were just a few kilometres away, and the woolly rhino was among other cold-tolerant animals, such as mammoths, reindeer and musk ox. Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke, a palaeontologist at Weimar’s Senckenberg Research Institute, said the pieced together skull shows that the woolly rhinos had moved into Europe in advance of the the ice. The animal was about 12 years old and it died in a melt-water delta, fed from ice covering central Germany. originally the animals had lived under harsh conditions in central China, and scientists at the institute believe that the woolly rhinos continued to adapt themselves to more difficult conditions. Two million years earlier, the woolly rhinos fed on a mixed diet of leaves from trees and shrubs. By the time they were in Europe, they were grazing lower down. According to Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke, they had become more efficient in utilising the available food. Artwork, Dionisio Alvazoz. Skull, Senckenberg Research Institute.
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IT only takes two genes to change an annual plant into a long-lived perennial. Researchers at Ghent University found that when two genes in an annual, thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana, were knocked out, the plant continued to grow and produce woody tissues rather than die back in autumn. Whether a plant is an annual or a perennial seems to be a matter of survival. Annuals germinate quickly, and by growing rapidly they take full advantage of summery conditions before withering back to leave lots of seeds to lie dormant throughout the winter. Perennials, on the other hand, save what they have gained, and thus are better adapted to survive poorer conditions. Researchers working in Tom Beeckman’s group found that instead of dying back in the genetically modified cress, a store of non-specialised cells were kept alive, and as in a normal perennial these would be responsible for renewal of spring growth. The researchers are inclined to think that this switch from annual to perennial probably happened independently on different occasions.
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UPFRONT
Living in salt
THE vast volume of water in the Mediterrean evaporated when cut off from the Atlantic 250 million years ago. When that happened layers of salt rock were formed, and then these deposits were covered up by wind blown sediments. In some places those deposits have been exposed, perhaps by earthquakes or other distrubances, and the adjacent water has become up to five times more saline than ordinary seawater. Michail Yakimov from the Institute of Coastal Marine Environment at Messina in Italy, is leading a team investigating these hypersaline basins, and recently, he reported that microbial communities thrive in the boundaries around these areas. “Because of the very high density of brine,” he said, “it does not mix with seawater, and there is a sharp interface, about 1m thick.” In this interface layer, his team found a great diversity of microbial life. The microbes get their energy to survive from sulphide oxidation, so they have no need for oxygen and sunlight.
Preventing Alzheimer’s
SODIUM valproate, marketed as Epilim, is commonly used as an anti-seizure drug in the treatment of epilepsy. researchers at the University of Leeds have found that the drug might also be a useful defence against Alzheimer’s. The scientists have reported that sodium valproate stimulates the body’s defence against a build up of amyloid beta peptide, the protein causing plaques to form in the brain. Prof Tony Turner, the lead researcher, said the prospect of using a well-established, safe, and relatively inexpensive drug against Alzheimer’s is an exciting development. It is thought that the placques begin to grow as production of an enzyme, known as neprilysin (nEP) declines. Expression of the enzyme, which prevents placques from forming, appears to be blocked by changes in the outer chromatin coat of the relevant gene. The sodium valproate prevents these changes from occurring, so the gene can freely express the nEP enzyme.
Sneak attack
The cabbage relation, Arabidopsis, is subject to sneak attack.
Pathogens have developed a number of strategies to overcome defence systems. one of these tricks, which is similar to snipping the wires to a burgalar alarm, is used by a bacteria to attack tomato plants. the bacteria, causing black marks on leaves and fruit, gains entry by knocking out the receptors that normally alert the plant’s defence system. thus, the bateria, once in, proliferates rapidly because it meets no opposition. Prof John Mansfield, from Imperial College London, found that the disease is also common in other plants, such as Arabidopsis, a common member of the cabbage family. this plant has been extensively studied, so with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Prof Mansfield was able to examine what happened at a molecular level. the researchers found that the bacterium injects a special protein into a host cell, which then seeks out and destroys the alerting receptors. By doing this, the bacterium by-passes the first line of defence. “Microbes that cause plant diseases, ” said Prof Mansfield, “probably all employ similar attacking strategies.”
Cold diversity
AnTArCTIC islands have been found to have more diversity than the Galapogos. A team of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Hamburg combed the land, shore and sea around the South Orkey Islands, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula to find thousands of species. The team listed over 1,200 marine and land species, including sea urchins, swimming worms, crustaceans, molluscs, mites, and birds. Dr David Barnes from the British Antarctic Survey said that the project, part of the international Census of Marine Life, revealed an unexpected abundance of species. Biologists have often thought of the polar regions as poor in diversity, but this is not actually the case.
Delivering a cure
ExPECTAnT mothers can develop a condition known as pre-eclampsia, in which poor transport of nutriends in blood vessels leads to oxidative stress. About 100,000 expectant mothers a year throughout the world die because of this condition, and Cork medical student, Aoife McSweeney would like to find out if the condition can be treated more effectively. With the support of the Health research Board Aoife is examining how an enzyme, known as PArP, is involved in developing the condition. The enzyme, she reports, is known to be overactive in pre-eclampsia, so, working at the Cork University Maternity Hospital, she decided to see what would happen if PArP inhibitors were introduced. In a laboratory model, she found that this has indeed a significant effect. When enzyme inhibitors were introduced, she said, there was a reversal from the pre-eclampsia condition, and a return to the normal response of a pregtant woman’s arteries. Aoife commented that this gives some hope for developing a treatment for the critical condition.
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Celebrating science
Ireland’s biggest science festival is, of course, the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, but now there is another festival, called SciFest that has been set up to provide more opportunities for second level students that want to take part in a science exhibition. Seán Duke talked to the driving force behind the festival, Shiela Porter.
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second level students. There is no entry fee and the students don’t have to travel long distances to the exhibition. A SciFest fair includes a competition and exhibition of projects, a selection of science talks, science demonstrations in the institutes’ laboratories and a prize-giving ceremony. SciFest encourages the students to visit their local IT and view the facilities and courses available. Exhibiting in a small studentfriendly environment helps build the students’ confidence in their science knowledge and skills and hopefully encourages them to choose science as a career.
he success of the BT supported Exhibition in the RDS each year, which has been running since 1965, means that not every student, or students that wish to take part can take part. The standards are increasing all the time and it is an achievement even to get into the RDS hall. This meant there was an opening for another festival, one that would take place at venues around the country, where students would have more opportunities to take part and exhibit. Shiela Porter, a science teacher at Dublin’s Loreto College, St Stephen’s Green, has a proud track record of students exhibiting, and winning prizes at the RDS. Now, she has taken time out from teaching to take up a post as the SciFest National Coordinator - based at Intel. Here she provides some answers to our questions about SciFest, which receives support from Intel as well as the Discover Science and Engineering Porgramme, and the background to it.
Why, as a teacher, are you interested in it? I believe you are with Intel on leave of absence for SciFest just now? I have always believed in the value of student P J O’Donoghue, St Colman’s College, Fermoy, Co Cork with his project entitled ‘Is practical work in science. It helps to develop an interest in, and enthusiasm for, the subject Bounty really bountiful?” and supports the students’ learning. Project work has the further advantage that it allows the students to learn science while pursuing an aspect of the subject in which they have a particular interest. For these Why was SciFest set up? reasons I have always encouraged my students to participate SciFest was originally set up to give as many second-level in the BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition. I saw the students as possible the opportunity to participate in a science establishment of SciFest as a means of providing an opportunity exhibition and celebrate their achievements in science and for more students to benefit from the experience of working on technology. The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition their own projects. I initiated the first SciFest in the Institute of has been doing this very successfully for over 40 years. It has Technology Tallaght in 2006. In August 2007 I was seconded to become so successful that the number of entrants now far Intel Ireland, jointly funded by Discover Science and Engineering, exceeds the capacity of the RDS to accommodate them; this year to set up SciFest nationwide and act as the national coordinator. 1,615 projects were submitted for preliminary judging while the RDS can accommodate only 500 projects. SciFest provides an What has the response been like? additional forum for students who wish to exhibit their work to Since its launch nationwide in 2007 SciFest has been more experience the excitement of sharing their findings with other successful than anyone thought like-minded students. SciFest has the possible, with 1,612 students additional advantage that it is locally exhibiting over 680 projects in based and so is more accessible to 2008. Nine Institutes of Technology students. – Athlone, Carlow, Cork, Dublin, SciFest is jointly funded by Intel Limerick, Sligo, Tallaght, Tipperary and Discover Science and Engineering. and Waterford – participated It is supported by a number of in SciFest 2008. Dundalk, other partners and the Institutes of Blanchardstown and Tralee have Technology. The project, thus, creates already been added to the list of a valuable link between the second participating institutes for 2009. and third level education sectors and A further development in 2009 between education and industry. is the extension of the project to Northern Ireland. Negotiations are How is it different to the Young SciFest 2008 Waterford Institute of Technology - Niamh currently underway to hold at least Scientist & Technology Exhibition? Coughlon and Aoife Buckley, Blackwater Community two SciFest fairs in the North, thus SciFest is a local one-day festival School, Lismore, Co Waterford with their project entitled giving students there an additional of science hosted in an Institute ‘An analysis of Pibolus: the shotgun fungus’ opportunity to participate in a of Technology. It is open to all
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SPIN
What would you hope to achieve with SciFest in 2009? I hope that SciFest 2009 will be as successful and as exciting as SciFest 2008. I am optimistic that even more students and teachers will be involved, not only because there are more venues but because of the interest and enthusiasm generated by SciFest 2008. I am also looking forward to seeing a number of venues in Northern Ireland hosting SciFest fairs.
science fair while also fostering cooperation in science education between North and South.
How important are these kind of events to students? Our fast changing world requires today’s students to be life-long learners. Effective learning requires that students take control of their own learning. When a student works SciFest 2008 Cork Institute of Technology - Alex Carey and on a project they get very involved, Jane Aston, Christ King Girls Secondary School, Cork with take ownership, and get a taste of their project entitled ‘The Pivoting Ramp Generator’ what it is like to be a professional research scientist. The student has the choice of what to study and how to go about it. No matter how simple or complicated the investigation this type of learning experience coupled with the opportunity of WHERE — Institutes of Technology throughout Ireland sharing the results with the class, or the judges at SciFest takes WHEN — One-day science fairs taking place between April 22 students to another level beyond just memorising facts. The and 6 May student is then more likely to leave school equipped with the Details: www.scifest.ie necessary skills for solving real world problems. They will also have learned to work collaboratively and to communicate and present their ideas. For further information contact: Sheila Porter (SciFest National Coordinator) Can they help to encourage students to do science subjects, SciFest IR2 - 1 - T22, Intel Ireland, even supposed ‘hard’ subjects like Physics and Chemistry? Leixlip, Co Kildare, Ireland In SciFest 2008 44% of the projects fell into the physical sciences Tel: 353 1 606 8949 and technology categories. Approximately 80% of the exhibitors Mobile: 353 86 379 6143 were in the junior cycle. Exhibiting at SciFest helps promote Email: sheilax.m.porter@intel.com active and collaborative learning and being inquiry-based, it Website: www.scifest helps students develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. This helps promote a positive attitude to science and equip the students from an early age with the skills and confidence to :00 take science at senior level. 2008 18 29/02/
SciFest 2009 Schedule
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Clash of the
ash Some invaders have been with us for so long that we should look on them as established settlers. Tom Kennedy talked to botanist, Mary J P Scannell about how ash has self sown the seeds of confusion.
R
ecently, foresters were dismayed to find that the ash, highly regarded since Gaelic times as one of the seven nobles of the forest, had become, like most things Irish, a bit of a hybrid. The native Fraxinus excelsior, grows rapidly and produces strong, pliable timber, as perfect for hurleys now as it was in the past for spears. For forestry, the native Fraxinus excelsior is one of our most productive trees, and on the assumption that we could never have too much of a good thing, farmers and foresters were encouraged to plant more ash. However, when many of the trees failed to thrive it became apparent that there is ash, and there is ash. Unfortunately, the non-native, Fraxinus augustifolia, had slipped into the supply, and no one had noticed the difference until the seedling trees began to grow. In fact, explained Mary Scannell, one of Ireland’s leading botanists and co-author of the Census Catalogue of Irish Flora, there are about 25 species Two leaves from the Botanic Gardens herbarium compared. Left, Fraxinus augustifolia, and right F excelsior. Both leaves were collected in Clyde Road, Dublin.
Fraxinus excelsior from a German flora of 1885, Flora von Deutschland, Osterreich und der Schwiiz. of Fraxinus growing in Irish heritage gardens. Of course most of these are ornamental, or cultivars, such as Raywood, grown for its display of autumnal colours, but Fraxinus augustifolia, which grows widely in southern Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, would be regarded as a fairly normal forest tree in countries such as France. Most people, said Mary Scannell, would not see much of a difference between F excelsior and F augustifolia, and because of this the distinction between the two has become blurred. That distinction,
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although not obvious at first is actually quite important. F excelsior thrives in damp Irish conditions, but F augustifolia, while it does grow quite well here, would really prefer to be in a more southerly climate. Wholesale planting brought the issue to a head, but as she pointed out, the spread of F augustifolia is nothing new. For many years Mary Scannell had noticed that two forms of ash occur in Ireland, one sparingly branched with lighter green foliage, and in the other, darker-leaved tree, margin teeth were less pronounced. As SPIN
she reported in the Irish Botanic News of March 2007, Mary Scannell identified the sparingly branched tree as the nonnative Fraxinus augustifolia, and she noted how the tops makes a different “fretted pattern” against the sky. We might think of F augustifolia as non-native, yet, as Mary argues, it has probably been with us at least as long as rabbits. Unlike rabbits, the difference in ash was not obvious enough to be noted in what became the standard reference works on British or Irish trees, yet the invasion may well have begun at Hastings. The famous Bayeux tapestry, she points out, is a great record of a major event, during which the heavily armed Norman invaders crossed the Channel before engaging in a bloody hand-tohand battle. In preparation for that crossing, thousands of trees would have been felled, particularly ash, because this is weapon grade timber. Would carpenters have made any distinction between one kind of ash and other? Absolutly not, said Mary, and when Norman soldiers fell, their splintered ash handles must surely have taken root on fertile ground. Arrows of relatively fresh wood could well have planted themselves. The arrival in Ireland could have taken a similar course, and even if we discount discarded arms, Fraxanus augustifolia is an excellent traveller by air. The winged seeds, produced in abundance every Autumn, are designed for flight. The Normans
The invasion and battle of Hastings were recorded for posterity in a 70 metre long tapestry, which is now on display in the Bishop’s Palace at Bayeux, northern France.Thousands of trees would have been felled in preparation for the invasion. were planters, and what could be more natural than to bring some ash seedlings along with the southerly herbs. “Do you think those ashes stayed behind stone walls?” asked Mary. They went where the wind blew, but the escaping ashes do not seem to have completely succeeded in becoming, like the Normans, more Irish than the Irish themselves. It could be that some have “married in” to the natives, while others have kept to their own. Both species occur in northern
France, and as Mary mentions in her Irish Botanical News paper, a study by Myriam Heuertz from the Free University of Brussels revealed that hybridisation between the two there is common.
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Making sense of
everything
Prof Geoffrey West looks for order in complexity. Often, as we see in this image generated from a build up of repeating patterns, fractals, the rules underlying complexity can be relatively simple.
I
Researchers usually like to delve into highly specialised details and the funding agencies always want to get predictable results, but as Tom Kennedy reports, giving scientists the freedom to step across academic boundaries could be of more benefit to society. SCIENCE SPIN Issue 33 Page 12
n an attempt to find out more a lot of effort has gone into looking at less. As a result, the sciences have been sliced up into a whole series of narrow segments, all of which now stand well apart from what we might call general knowledge. Without any shadow of doubt, all this closer attention to detail has transformed the sciences, but as Professor Geoffrey West, distinguished President of the Santa Fe Institute, might argue, if this trend towards specialisation continues we may end up not being able see the wood for the trees. Recently, Prof West, visiting Ireland at the invitation of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) explained that our obsession with detail often leads us all astray, and not just in the sciences. The collapse of the financial markets, he said, is just one example SPIN
of how regulators failed to predict the global consequences of reckless trading. Financial collapse, he said, occurred because no one was paying attention to the bigger picture, and such a knock-on effect is quite typical of large complex systems. Like the butterfly and the hurricane, one small change in one place really can have unexpected, and unintended changes somewhere else. We live in a world of compex systems, among them IT networks, ecosystems, markets, cities, and life is the most complex of them all. Big systems fascinate Prof West, and he is one of the leading lights in a growing band of scientists who strive to find sense in compexity. At the Santa Fe Institute complexity is high on the agenda, and in Europe IRCSET is one of the eleven Complexity Network Nets, and as Prof West argues, we need to encourage big thinking not just because it’s good for science, but because it is also the only way we are going to solve some of the world’s greatest problems. Just because systems are complex, he said, is no reason to assume that they are beyond our understanding. In many, if not all systems, there is an underlying set of rules. Although the underlying rules can be surprisingly simple, identifying them can be a challenge. It took a long time to find out the laws governing movement and gravity, but once we had them, everything we observe in the Solar system made perfect sense. Mathematicians predict orbits with relative ease, but back on green Earth, complexity can be very complex indeed. The planetary movements and global finances are but child’s play compared to what goes on day after day in living systems. Even so, as Prof West explained, our body is a system, and as a system it can only remain in existence if it obeys some fundamental rules. Dissecting the innards is not going to tell us what those rules are, and if we start with the cells, or the genes, or the individual organs, we will never understand how all of these components can possibly work together as a coherent system. Yet, here we are, the living proof that complexity cannot be explained by interaction of the constituent elements. Prof West doubted that we can ever reduce life to a set of rules as simple as those that apply in space, but even so, if we look hard enough for order it is there, just waiting for it to be discovered.
Above, a simplified chart of metabolism, the interlinking processes that keep life going. In reality all these processes are a lot more complex, and the image below, of the Golgi region in an insulin secreting mammalian cell, gives some idea of how a huge number of elements come into play. In this amazing image created by Dr Brad Marsh, Institute of Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, each colour represents a distinct organelle. All these organnelles work as a team because they all obey certain underlying rules.
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Visiting researchers at the Santa Fe Institute where depth of expertise is shared through open discussion and interaction. Hiding away in the lab is not encouraged. Life, spread over 23 orders of magnitude, is amazingly diverse. Mammals alone range across eight orders of magnitude, and a shrew is a lot different from an elephant. However, looks can be deceptive, and one way to search for rules, is to look at how different animals can have something in common. All animals must eat to stay alive, and as we all know, a meal for a mouse is not going to feed an elephant. In fact, as Prof West explained, we can look at the size of an animal and calculate, fairly accurately, how much energy they need. The interesting thing about this calculation is that it is non-linear. If we look at metabolic rate, the speed at which animals burn up energy, we find that there is a non-linear consistency that extends right across all orders of magnitude. As body mass increases, metabolic rate goes down, so an elephant ticks-over a lot slower than a mouse. We would never have discovered this rule simply by peering at cultured cells in a petri dish, and indeed, a researcher could easily come to the conclusion that increasing body size will lead to a corresponding increase in metabolic rate. That sliding scale, said Prof West, is just a simple formula, yet it is one of the fundamental rules that underlies the complexity of life, and similar rules can be found to apply elsewhere. “Wherever there is a physiological variable”, he said, “there is a formula.” One of these relates to branching,
whether it be in blood vessels or in trees. A natural forest, he said, is not just a random bunch of trees, it is a system. Not only is branching being regulated, but while some trees die, and other grow, the overall density and distribution remains the same. Can these sort of rules apply to society? Prof West believes they can, and if we take cities as an example it is possible to find some underlying patterns that are universal to all. We might wonder how Cork could possibly be a scaled up version of Limerick, and Dublin a scaled up version of Cork. Quite obviously they are not the same, they each have a character and ambience of their own, yet, as Prof West pointed out, animals are also diverse, so we should not give up hope of making sense of urban sprawl. With cities, one of the apparent universals is that wages go up with size, as does the efficiency of infrastructure. In some ways this is easy to understand. Less hospitals, schools, roads and filling stations are needed per person. If that has you heading for the big smoke, think again, because the rise in income is matched by a rise in sickness and crime, and as Prof West pointed out there is a much darker side to city life. With the drift into the cities, which are getting bigger and bigger, there has been an alarming increase in energy consumption. That, in turn, brings us back to the universal rule underlying metabolism.
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That sliding rule, explained Prof West, makes life every efficient. Life is remarkably good at conserving energy, and in our unadorned native state, humans fit very neatly into the scale between mice and elephants. At rest, all we consume is the equivalent of a single 100 watt bulb, and with exercise that might only rise to 250 or 300 watts. This is the amount of energy we need to sustain growth and stay alive, and throughout human history this is all we needed until we cleverly started to change, or perhaps even break, the rules. To cut a long story short, by externalising our consumption, we now burn along on the equivalent of 11,000 watts and in metabolic terms that should make us bigger than a blue whale. Prof West, commenting that “we have really managed to screw things up” wondered where that accelerating trend might end. The indications, he said, are not so good, and he referred back to some of the universals he has found underlying city growth. The impression we get of living in the fast lane, he said, has a basis in fact. People in big cities do walk faster. Given that society can be looked upon as complex systems, Prof West wondered if we can discover the underlying rules that would enable us to predict, and if necessary, control growth. The way it seems to work now, he said, is that innovation keeps us growing. First we had the axe and fire, then iron, agriculture, steam, the industrial revolution, and with each major discovery there was a giant leap in population. With each leap forward, we changed the ground rules, and in effect humanity started up all over again, and continued to increase until the resources started to run short. The message here, said Prof West, seems to be that the only way we can keep growing, is to keep on innovating, and what makes him worry, is that the gap between major innovations is narrowing. It took thousands of years to go from stone axe to iron, it took less than a 100 years to go from steam to oil, and now each one of us is likely to live through two major innovations within a lifetime. Not that Prof West wanted to come across as a banner waving messenger of doom, but he did make the point that it might be a good idea to know where we going.
Encouraging minds to soar
“This is what I thought a university should be” Academic freedom
Prof West pointed out that academic life can leave a lot to be desired. For many researchers, he said, universities can become a prison, and like most prisons, the rewards, pay and advancement, are usually given out for good behaviour rather than disruptive originality. Prof West, who did his primary degree in Cambridge, and has a PhD from Stanford, established the high energy physics group at Los Almos National Laboratory before heading up the Santa Fe Institute. The Institute, often seen as a safe haven for researchers who want to throw off their academic shackles, is no holiday camp. As Prof West explained, the scientists who come there are highly motivated, and the last thing they want is a vacation. They go because they want to work. The Institute was established about 25 years ago, when a small group of prominent scientists, three of them Nobel Laureates, becoming dissilusioned with what they saw as the progressive ossification of the academic system, decided that they would have to do something about the situation. All had experienced intense frustration
in their attempts to cross academic lines. For example, explained Prof West, when one of them wanted to extend his knowledge of physics into economics, he was given to understand that if he did so, he would no longer be accepted as a full member of the physics department. Of course, life has moved on in the quarter of a century since these scientists decided to strike out for academic freedom, but the Santa Fe Institute, said Prof West, can take a lot of credit for changing attitudes that have led to the growth of interdisciplinary studies. The Institute, said Prof West, has always been careful to maintain its independence, and that means accepting no more than 35 per cent of its funding from the government and holding off the advances of bigger universities. Becoming a department within an established university, he said, would defeat the whole reason for their existence. Far better, he maintains, to be poor, by American standards, and free. Most of the annual $11 million budget comes from a mix of foundations, wealthy people, and companies, and as Prof West
commented, “we are lean and mean.” There is a small staff, lots of visitors, and no tenure. Researchers who hide in the lab are not welcome, they are expected to mix and interact, and when their work is done, they leave. “When I was 18,” said Prof West, “this is what I thought a university should be,” a place where the unfettered mind could be allowed soar to dizzy heights. As he admits, the reality was not quite like that. “Now that I am a good few years older,” he said, “I regard myself as very lucky to have finally arrived at a place like the Santa Fe Institute.” Curiously enough, considering that the researchers are more interested in abstract ideas than concrete products, commercially driven companies are among the biggest contributors to the budget. The secret, said Prof West, is that they are smart enough to know that inspiration eventually gets reflected in the bottom line. The rich are also quite willing to part with money, and while Prof West commented that “I spend a lot of my time on bended knee,” he likes the idea that he’s helping these people to buy academic independence.
The climate is good for dining out, and coffee breaks spent exchanging ideas can be one of the most productive parts of the day.
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Model of Spinosaurus with its sail back against the Sahara sunset.
In search of
African giants Nizar excavating Pterosaur beak fragments.
Tom Kennedy talked to dinosaur hunter Nizar Ibrahim about the monster animals that lived when the Sahara was teeming with life.
L
ong before the harsh dry deserts, the entire north end of Africa was a warm, humid delta like environment. Crocodiles swam in shallow waters, flying reptiles spread ten metre wide wings, and dinosaurs grew into giants. One hundred million years ago during the Cretaceous period, the Sahara teemed with life,
and as palaeontologist, Nizar Ibrahim, explained, we humans, who had yet to evolve, would have been dwarfs in that land of monsters. The dinosaurs of Africa were big, and for some as yet unknown reason, most of the other animals in that carbon dioxide enriched environment were scaled to match. We often think of American Tyrannosaurus rex as big, but some of the plant eating Africans were actually a lot bigger. The American dinosaurs are better known to most of us because their fossilized remains are more accessible and easier to find, but as Nizar observed, to get a more balance view of what the Cretaceous period was like, we need to explore and broaden our horizons. Nizar admits to being a dinosaur enthusiast, and has been as long as he can remember. Even as a small boy, clutching his dino toy, he just knew that he would have to become a palaeontologist. His bemused, but approving parents, made sure to satisfy his growing appetite for suitable books, and when the time came to study, he headed for Bristol where the university, with a long and distingished history in the Earth Sciences, has a strong focus on palaeobiology. As an undergraduate, Nizar was already impatient to get out into the field, and as he explained, do real hands-on research. A lot of scientists, he said, just visit museums and while there is nothing wrong with that, Nizar did not think this was
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SPIN
Dinosaurs left their footprints
Making tracks
As animals move around they leave tracks, and on rare occasions these become covered in fine sediment to be preserved as fossil impressions. The expedition came across a number of dinosaur footprints, and as Nizar explained, they often show a distinctive pattern, created by three claws pressing into the ground as
Ernst Stromer’s drawing of Spinosaurus which he discovered in Egypt.
the animal crouched down. Dozens of dinosaur footprints were found, but Nizar said he would like to have found even more. If tracks can be shown to belong to individual animals, a lot can be deduced about
their gait. Most of the time, he said, the traces would be from dinosaurs leisurly wandering about because this is what animals spend most of their time doing.
and not just some illustration in a book. For his research, Nizar wanted to go out and uncover more evidence to show that this giant was no isolated find, and that if palaeontologists were prepared to go out into the wilderness, they would disover the fossilized remains of an ancient world that stretched right across the northern end of Africa. Nizar likes to get out and about, but he also makes a good argument to explain why scientists
should be prepared to get their hands dirty. Many of the fossils in museum collections, he said, were bought from collectors or acquired from secondary sources, and from a scientific point of view, this can limit their value. A palaeontologist, like an archaeologist, can read much more into a find when they know exactly where it came from. Nizar’s ambitious thesis proposal brought him to University College Dublin where he is now a PhD student, busy writing up the results of an
good enough, and besides he was the sort of student who had, quite literally, played with live snakes as a child. He was well aware that we still know very little about the explosive growth of life during the Cretaceous, and that we know even less about conditions at the time in Africa. Pictures of an enormous sail backed Spinosarus dinosaur fossil discovered in 1910 by Ernst Stromer in Egypt, and subsequently lost in the World War II bombing of Munich, had made a great impression on Nizar. It is amazing, he said, to realise that this animal, one of the largest ever discovered, once existed, it was real,
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The remote rocky Kem Kem region of the Sahara
Matching
One of the field-working skills is an ability to distinguish fossils from the surrounding stones. The skill, explained Nizar, gets better with practice, and he now has no problem picking up two similar looking fragments and identifying one as from a crocodile, and the other as a dinosaur. The crocodile, he noted, is rougher and heavier, while the dinosaur typically has many fine channels. From the collection brought back from Morocco, he picks up another fossil, and the first impression is that it is some form of tooth. So it is, but not a tooth as we might imagine. The tooth, he can say with complete confidence, came from the cutting edge of a giant sawfish. The long snouts of these monster creatures were lined externally with two rows of sharp cutting teeth, tipped with nasty looking barbs, clearly capable of inflicting terrible flesh tearing wounds. Determining what species a fossil belongs to is more difficult, and given the immense periods of time involved, our ideas of what constitutes a species in living animals could be too rigid, so matching up fragments, unless they all occur together, is not at all easy. Identifying a fossil bone can involved a lengthy literature search before it can be matched with known species, and when differences occur, chances are that the species is actually new. The crocodile and sawfish infested delta was no Garden of Eden, and among the fossils in Nizar’s collection is a big back
bone, a vertebra with flat dorsal extensions, which stuck up like a great sail along the back of a dinosaur. One of the extensions had been broken off before the bone became a fossil, and as Nizar speculated, this may well have been from the dinosaur’s final fight. That particular fossil, he said, would have come from one of the largest of the dinosaurs, similar, or perhaps even the same as the Spinosaurus monster that survived as a fossil for millions of years only to come to grief in the bombing of Munich. This dinosaur with its enormous sail-like appendage was a spectacular find, amazingly intact, so the loss of the fossilised skeleton was unfortunate. However, as Nizar observed, the exploration of Africa has hardly begun, and who knows what will turn up over the coming years. More than likely, Nizar will be making some of those finds. This was his second trip out to Morocco, and as far as he is concerned, this is just the beginning. His first trip was a short visit to get the lie of the land and to meet colleagues from Morocco, including the mammal palaeontologist, Prof Samir Zouhri, and a structural geologist, Iahssen Baidder, who participated in the second, but first “real” expedition. For Darren Martill, Nizar Ibrahim’s expedition was also a dream come true. For twenty-five years, Darren, who is reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Portsmouth, had been waiting for an opportunity to explore the area.
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Nizar with the giant Sauropod bone, and below, carrying the fossil down to the Land Rover. expedition to Morocco that last year led him up over the Atlas Mountains and far out into the desert. Nizar’s determination paid off in a big way. The expedition team, led by Nizar and made up of scientists from the University of Portsmouth and the Université Hassan II in Morocco, made a number of remarkable discoveries, including dinosaur tracks, fragments of a flying reptile, and a massive one
metre long fossil bone. Two of the finds are likely to be from previously unknown species. That bone, once part of an enormous plant eating Sauropod dinosaur, was quite a prize, but it was hard won. As Nizar recalled, the expedition group had ventured out into an isolated desert area, well off the beaten track, and close to the border with Algeria.
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“We had to get permission from the military to go in there,” he said, and it is not the sort of place to go into without being prepared for the worst. About a year before two people had driven into the area by car. The car broke down, and the two, isolated and overcome by the intense heat, died. The expedition had nearly come to an end, when they decided to have a look at one scree covered hill. Impossible to reach by their Land Rover, the party walked for about an hour and a half before clambering up loose, sharp edged stones. People who think the Sahara is just a sea of sand, said Nizar, have the wrong idea. There is a lot of raw rock, and, of course, where there is rock there could be fossils. Just ten minutes after arriving at the site, which Nizar said was actually more of a mountain than a hill, the scientists noticed an interesting looking fragment. They began digging around it, and much to their surprise, what they had seen at the surface was just the shattered tip of something quite large. As they dug, the complete form of a one metre long bone emerged. After the initial excitement of discovery died down, the scientists realised that they now had a really big problem. Impossible for one person, yet alone two, to lift, and extremely fragile, so how could they possibly get it out of there? At first, to keep the surface cracks from spreading, they applied a glue to the bone, but as they realised, this would not be enough to stop it breaking up from its own weight if they attempted to lift it out of the ground. The bone needed to be encased in plaster, and where was plaster, and the water to mix it in, to come from in the middle of the Sahara? Nizar, and Darren Martill, a palaeontologist from the University Portsmouth, who had offered his Land Rover provided some of his students could come on the expedition, decided to back-track to the nearest town in search of plaster. After driving through most of the night they came across a man, making his way towards the town. Worries about what this man was doing wandering about soon evaporated as Nizar explained in Arabic what they were looking for. The scientists had been thinking of finding a clinic or hospital where plaster of Paris might be used, appropriately enough, for mending broken bones,
but their grateful passenger gave them a more realistic, down to earth lead. He told them where the local builders went to get their plaster. Not quite the same, but at a push, it would certainly do. A day later, Nizar and Darren arrived back to camp with the supplies, much to the relief of the others. Expedition finances were so tight that any idea of mobile communications had been ruled out of the question, so the safe return of their transport was something to celebrate. At this late stage, the Moroccans in the team had returned to Casablanka, taking one of the two Land Rovers. Now the work of plastering could begin, and tee-shirts were sacrificed as strips were torn off to bind the cast. The plaster, said Nizar, was not the best, and as precious time began to run out, they waited with growing anxiety for the cast to set. Anxiety began to grow into desperation the following morning when probing fingers revealed that the plaster was still soft. They concluded that heat would help, so they gathered up their papers, and scoured the surroundings for enough sparse and thorny vegetation to build a fire around the cast. At least, that was the intention. In true boy scout style, they attempted to light the fire using sparks from the car battery. So much for theory. It didn’t work, and so one unlucky volunteer had to trudge one and a half hours to the Land Rover and one and a half hours back again bearing a box of matches. This time everything went according to plan. The fires blazed and the plaster set, but even as the cast
cooled, the five remaining scientists were wondering what to do next. The bone, now in its cast, was heavier than ever, the Land Rover was some distance away, and it was difficult to clamber down the rocky hillside. There was some debate, but Nizar made it clear that he was certainly not prepared to abandon their fossil. “If the bone stays,” he declared, “I stay!” Two planks, which they were lucky to have, were fetched from the Land Rover and bound together to make a stretcher. Then, a safe path had to be made down the hillside. “We moved thousands of rocks,” said Nizar, and it took all their strength to navigate their way down to the Land Rover, which was then so heavily loaded that its wheels kept sinking into the sand. Every so often, said Nizar, we all had to get out and help the Land Rover along. Eventually they made their way out
Among the numerous finds were beak fragments from a flying Pterosaur reptile. Some of these, said Nizar, had a wingspan of over ten metres. At
of the area and on reaching a surfaced road had their hopes of a smooth passage back to Casablanca dashed by, of all things, a snowstorm. Compared to the trials and tribulations they had gone through out in the desert, this was no more than an unexpected inconvenience, and a reminder of how much the world, like climate, never ceases to change.
Going home
Impression of a Sauropod dinosaur by Mark Witton and Mike Taylor.
Drawing by Todd Marshall of a Pterosaur discovered in west Africa. Chicago Museum.
Flying reptiles
Nizar examining an Allosaurus skull.
present only two or three specimens of this flying giant are known from Africa, but Nizar observed they appear to have been quite common. A number of beak fragments were gathered, and Nizar believes that these survived because they were the toughest part of the body. Of necessity, bones in flying animals are light, but for pecking for food, the tip of the beak would have been hard and resilient.
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The giant Sauropod bone arrived back in Dublin during January, and it now rests on its bed of plaster encrusted newspapers surrounded by boxes crammed with fragmentary fossils. The bone came from a plant eating Sauropod, believed to have been about 20 metres long. Nizar is keen to create a display based on these finds so that everyone can share his enthuiasm for dinosaurs, but ultimately, he said, those fossils must go back to Morocco. Ironically, he said, the palaeontologists who work at the Université Hassan II in Casablanca, and are closest to this fossil rich area, often have less funding than scientists from abroad. A museum for these Cretaceous fossils is planned, and when this opens, it is likely to create a shift in focus towards the lost dinosaurs of north Africa. The exact dating of the Moroccan fossils, explained Nizar, is hard to pin down because many of the usual indicator species, particularly the ammonites, are missing. However, there is a lot of evidence to show that what we see in Morocco is just one part of a vast sweep of delta deposits, with many of the same species appearing right across the range.
Wake up to
Science on screen
TV3
A popular science TV slot has started – broadcast on Tuesday mornings every two weeks - on TV3’s Ireland AM, featuring Sean Duke, joint editor of Science Spin. This is the only regular science broadcasting on Irish television, and the goal is to feature lots of exciting research projects happening in Ireland, as well as explanation of the science of everyday things, and debates on issues of scientific importance. The slots alternates between
How Stuff Works and Inventors, and Head-to-Head, talking to the people who make science happen So far there has been an explanation of the technology inside a microchip, a feature on the TRIL centre, a research partnership developing technology to help older people, and a debate on what kind of stem cell research should take place in Ireland. “The idea is to reach out to a broad audience, to show how science is important to all our lives, to explain scientific concepts, and highlight exciting new research,” said Sean Duke. “There has been a huge upsurge in the quality and quantity of research in Ireland since 2000, but until now the media has been slow to catch up with these developments.”
Over the coming months, the plan is to look at technologies that we take for granted in our lives, such as GPS (global positioning system) enabled products, medical scanners and plasma televisions, and explain, in common language how they work. In addition a series of in studio discussions will take place on important science-related subjects such as the introduction of a DNA database in Ireland, and how it should be administered, and whether incineration is the answer to our waste problems. Furthermore, Seán will be talking to the emerging breed of science innovators, asking them how they are going to help create new opportunities and revitalise the economy.
So, if you want to know what’s happening in Irish science tune in to Ireland AM every second Tuesday morning and get right up to speed.
Have a look How stuff works: The microchip http://www.tv3.ie/videos.php?video=4209&locID=1.65.74&page=4
Head-to-head: Stem cell research in Ireland http://www.tv3.ie/videos.php?video=4969&locID=1.65.74&page=3
4
Inventors: Paddy Nixon, UCD, technology for the elderly http://www.tv3.ie/ireland_am.php?video=5483
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SPIN
Vivid glow of sunrise, captured by Michael Sheehy, as pale granite of Las Torres in the Torres del Paine national park, Chile take on a red hue. Below the towers are remants of the Torres Glacier. SCIENCE SPIN Issue 33 Page 22
SPIN
10th Earth Science Du Noyer
Photographic competition
Left, waves crashing through a sea arch at Loop Head, Co Clare by Ross Harding. Right, Sarah Gaffney’s winning photograph of red and green Silurian mudstone at Glassilaun, Renvyle, Connemara. A selection from the entries for the Du Noyer photographic competition. The annual competition, run by the GSI commemorates the geologist and artist, George V Du Noyer. The winners for 2008 were Sarah Gaffney, Ross Harding, and Dick Keeley. Hauke Steinberg won the Foreign award for this photo of the Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina, one of 48 glaciers fed by the Patagonian ice field. SCIENCE SPIN Issue 33 Page 23
Outcrop of Thor Granite near Burtonport with intrusive band of aplite photographed by Daragh McDonough. Meltwater from the central ice cap cascading over the high cliffs along southern coast of Iceland. Photographed by Aedan Coffey.
Cascades of calcareous tufa photographed by Anthony Cooper at the Pammukkale hot springs in Turkey.
Cuernos del Paine, mountain range in Chilean Patagonia. Much of the Paine Massif consists of Cretaceous sedimentary rocks that have been intruded by Miocene granite. Erosion and glacial processes have created a spectacular landscape. In this photograph by Hauke Steinberg the light coloured granite contrasts with the darker tips of the sedimentary tops, giving rise to the name, Cuernos (horns).
Left: Bedded sandstone, Cliffs of Moher, by Dick Keeley.
Right: Glenbarrow waterfalls, by Clair Donogher
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Climbers dwarfed by the French Alps at Aiguille du Midi, photographed by Frank Fagan.
Right; a granite face, photographed by David Kirk. Below: Alan Connaughton’s photograph of El Arbol de Piedra, the stone tree, a 7 metre high formation shaped by wind blown sand. The ‘tree’ is in the Bolovian Altoplano.
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Du Noyer
Geological Photography Competition 2009 Entries are invited for the 11th Du Noyer Geological Photography Competition, which this year promises to be bigger and better than previous years.
George Victor Du Noyer, who served as a geologist with the Geological Survey of Ireland from 1847 to 1869, was a skilled field artist whose numerous sketches and pictures, with their combination of artistic skill and technical accuracy, were the “field photographs” of their day. This competition seeks to encourage the same blend of artistic and scientific skills through the medium of photography.
Prizes will be awarded in two categories, Irish and Foreign, and a prize fund of €800 applies. All photographs entered must be accompanied by a note giving the name and address of the photographer and a short description of the geological content. Up to four photographs may be submitted as prints or good quality scans. Submitted material will not be returned and GSI reserves the right to reproduce entries in its publications and promotional activity with due acknowledgement. The competition will be judged by a panel including representatives of the Irish Geological Association, the Geological Survey of Ireland and external nominees and their decision will be final. Entries will be exhibited and
prizes awarded at a GSI Cunningham Awards ceremony in early December. The photographs will be evaluated on the basis of creativity, technical skill, and geological content. Entries should be posted in an envelope marked “Du Noyer Competition” to: Cartography Unit, Geological Survey of Ireland, Beggars Bush, Haddington Rd, Dublin 4 or emailed to info@planetearth.ie
Closing date for entries: Friday 9th October 2009.
Top: The landscape of Joyce’s Country in the Maamturks photographed by Darren McLoughlin. The Maamturks or Maumturcs are formed from Pre-Cambrian quartzite which suffered heavy erosion during the Pleistocene when the many valleys seen in this image were created out of the softer schist and slate. Above: Alan Boland’s photograph of sedimentary layers in the cliff face on Dollar Bay on the Hook Peninsula, Wexford
BOUNDARIES OF SCIENCE
Is there anything we should not do? Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison. HEINRICH HEINE, “Lutetia; or, Paris,“ Augsberg Gazette, 1842
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Bobby Tang
I looked, and there before me was a black n the Bible, the Book of Revelations is a runner up in the 2008 horse! Its rider was holding a pair of story meant to inspire hope. However, REMEDI National Science scales in his hand. it also carries a stark message. A Essay compeition, reminds warning to men that if they cease to respect Genetic manipulation is not a new concept us how some things never God’s awesome power, there will be and has been used widely in medicine and seem to change. severe consequences. In one passage, the industry. Certain bacteria can be modified to apocalypse is foretold and the four terrible create insulin and there is no doubt that this horsemen that announce the beginning of has been a great achievement in medicine. the end are mentioned: Conquest. Famine. War. Death. In the future the problem of world hunger can be alleviated In the modern world, we can sometimes forget these by creating crops that are: resistant to disease, drought and, ancient passages, but are they still relevant to us? And what most importantly, able to grow in less arable land. However, of the four horsemen? It looks as though the road is clear for we do not fully understand the mechanics of genetics, and now. Or is it...? to proceed now might upset the balance of the ecosystem and shake the roots of evolution- a process which has taken “Look! A white horse. The one riding it has a bow. A crown millions of years. was given to him. He went forth conquering so he might In addition, we may wittingly create an organism which finish his conquest.” causes the extinction of all other crops by out competing them or by carrying a lethal disease. This downward spiral Stem cell research is potentially a goldmine in the medical might exacerbate the problems that it tried to resolve and lead profession. A stem cell is, according to the glossary of eventually to a worldwide famine. biotechnology terms, a “generic” cell that can make exact copies of itself indefinitely. In addition, a stem cell has the ability to produce specialised cells for various tissues in the body, such as heart muscle, brain tissue, and liver tissue. ...” This multi-purpose cell is a revelation in medicine as it can allow for the study of diseases which involve genetic changesdiseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In fact, stem cells can also solve the problems in transplantation. In the UK hundreds of people die each year whilst on the waiting-list for organ transplants. Stem cells from cloned embryos can be used to create organs, and this method has the added advantage that the patient’s body will not reject the new tissue. However, the creation of embryonic stem cells has several moral implications. These embryos have the potential to develop into human beings, and it is this loss of a future life, some say, which makes it morally wrong. If cloned embryos were used in this way, what other implications does it have? If a transplant patient can receive an organ, which was almost identical to the previous one except for being healthy and new, then surely we can renew our organs every now and again to keep them from dying out. We could even replace parts of our brain, although this has serious consequences on the state of conscience mind. In short, we could achieve a dream held by humans since time immemorial- Immortality! This might sound great, but like the false messiah on the white horse, it will only upset nature’s cycle.
Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. Physics seems to be a science that holds all the answers to our problems. Problems such as replacing our main energy source of fossil fuels with clean, safe energy from nuclear fusion and maybe even antimatter. Physics has given us wonderful things, such as quantum theory, electromagnetism and thermodynamics. (Things I cannot even begin to understand!) On the other hand, since the mastery of the neutron in 1932, physics had opened the doors to atomic bombs. Had the neutron been discovered earlier, it is said that the atomic bomb would have been developed first in Europe, undoubtedly by the Germans. Therefore, discoveries in this field might not always be a good thing as it may lead to a path of greater destruction and war. I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. The discovery of penicillin (an antibiotic) in 1952 seemed to be the end for pathogens. William Stewart, a U.S. surgeongeneral even declared, The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the
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United States. In fact, it only intensified the battle. Bacteria, like any organisms, have the capacity to evolve. They can form resistance to antibiotics and evolve to become more lethal strains. If we waged war against viruses, there will only be one winner — the virus. They can survive extreme conditions and have an unnerving ability to burst upon the world with new and devastating strains, and then vanishing altogether. Examples of this include the 1918 flu and the Great Spanish Flu epidemics, which had mortality rates in the hundred millions. No one can rule out the possibility of these viruses rising again from dormancy, especially if we try too hard to eradicate them using medicine.
There is no doubt that scientific advancements have improved health, convenience and a general quality of life for the human species. However, if we let ourselves get carried away, there could be disastrous consequences. Future scientists must take into account the moral implications of their actions and weigh the good aginst the bad. We are at the beginning of great scientific achievements, let us pray we do not find the end. REFERENCES Usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/1005/ijee/ glossary.htm The Cloning Debate- ISSUES Volume 44
Bobby Tang
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16/02/2009 11:08:21
Photo: Tom Kennedy, Source Library.
Fairy tale ending to Young Scientist Exhibition
Above, the CALMAST stand at the exhibition attracted lots of attention. Below, John O’Callaghan and Liam McCarthy, the winning students from Kinsale. airy Liquid was an essential ingredient of the overall winning project at this year’s BT Young Scientist ans Technology Exhibition at the RDS. Kinsale students John O’Callaghan and Liam McCarthy used the detergent in their diagnostic test for infection in cows. In common with last year’s winner, their application is simple yet ingenious and provides a low-cost solution to a practical problem. John and Liam’s project stood out from the others, as far as ease of application to industry is concerned. One judge commented: “John and Liam are both farmers’ sons from Cork and were concerned with the monetary losses incurred if milk sold from their farms had
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Tony McGennis looks at some of the highlights in this year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition. high somatic cell content. Systemic somatic cells reflect mammary gland infection which downgrades the processability of the milk during cheese making. Current tests for somatic cells are expensive and slow. After research, the boys discovered that if a small amount of
detergent is mixed with a fresh sample of milk, the milk becomes progressively more viscous as the somatic cell content rises. With this knowledge in mind they developed a simple apparatus that could be used by a farmer to quickly test the milk and determine its status. This will be of tremendous commercial help to farmers and is a marketable product. Thus, what they have achieved is utterly practical and brilliant in its simplicity.” It was significant that, in addition to the main prize, the pair also scooped the Patents Office prize for their innovative work. It is not just projects with immediate practical application which are successful at the SPIN
Photo: Tom Kennedy, Source Library.
exhibition. Individual winner Andrei Triffo, of Synge Street CBS studied the “Infinite Sums of Zeta Functions and Other Series”. An example of an infinite series is 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 +1/8 + 1/16 + … Here the series is infinite with each term being half the last, but the sum is not infinite (it’s very close to 2). Zeta functions are an infinite series of powers, while the most used Dirichlet Series are those of the form
∑ 1/nª, where a is a complex number.
There was a noticeable increase in entries from the North, with groups from Down, Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh among the prizes. Alex Atwood, Member of the Northern SDLP politician Alex Atwood shows an interest in the project of Marianist students, who found that adding a post code to letters going to the North did not speed up the delivery times.
Ireland Assembly, was conspicuous by his presence, as Southern politicians seemed not to be as thick on the ground as previous years. He was quite interested in a project which featured cooperation of schools on both sides of the border. Students from St Laurence College in Dublin examined the question of whether postcodes should be used in the Republic. Their experiments included sending around 200 letters to helpful teachers and pupils from schools in Lisnaskea, Derry, Coleraine, Downpatrick and Belfast, to see if those containing postcodes arrived quicker. They didn’t. The group later found out from a tour of the Dublin’s huge mail sorting centre (DMC), in Clondalkin, that the technology used in the postal system already can read printed or handwritten addresses right down to the level of one postman’s route.
the country in spring 2009. Recently, there were several projects on rugby (examining forward passes and how to randomise line-out calls, for example). This year Newtown School in Waterford developed a system and equipment for improving line-out throws. Part of the project involved producing a device similar to a basketball stand, but with the hoop attached vertically rather than horizontally. School teams performed measurably better after incorporating the system into their training regime.
inner w l
d i u v i a d
The North
Showcasing projects in hundreds of stands.
In
Andrei’s teacher at the famous Dublin school, Jim Cooke, has mentored several successful Young Scientist projects, including overall winners in 2004 (Ronan Larkin – ‘Generalised Continued Fractions’) and in 2007 (Abdul Abubakar, who was rewarded for his work on RSA encryption, which uses a public and private key to encrypt data sent, inter alia, over the Internet). Cooke was also the mentor of this year’s Intermediate group prize winners in the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Science category - Gary Carr, Darragh Moriarty and Graham McGrath for “Efficient Numerical Tests of Robin’s Reformulation of the Riemann Hypothesis”. This year marks the end of an era for the Young Scientist Exhibition and for Synge Street CBS as Cooke retires after coaching budding mathematicians and scientists since 1971.
Rugby
It was interesting to see projects which were a variation of ones from the same or different schools from last year’s exhibition, or from the various SciFest competitions around
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Jim Cooke, Maths teacher Synge Street CBS with category winners Gary Carr, Darragh Moriarty, and Graham McGrath.
Photo: Tom Kennedy, Source Library.
Cutbacks
Can you taste the difference? Science in action at the exhibition.
Colleges
Students could contact experts from industry and academia via the website www.btyoungscientist.ie for opinions and assistance with their research. Others got help directly from universities and third-level colleges in carrying out their experiments. Letterkenny IT, for example, made
their facilities available to students from the local Loreto Convent, who wanted to quantify the bacterial presence in various everyday objects. The time and effort spent learning how to use the sophisticated equipment in the IT was worth it as a prize was won by the team measuring bacteria in tea towels.
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There was a worry that the exhibition could be severely affected by the education cutbacks which came into effect as the displays were being prepared. Unlike other years, supervision cover was not provided by the Department of Education and Science for teachers. Although the number attending was slightly down on the Thursday, most schools managed without having to cancel visits or projects through the cooperation of principals, deputyprincipals, other school staff and parents. And the excitement and energy of the competition was as powerful as ever. While the economic situation may be getting worse, there is hope for the future when the innovation and creativity of the young scientists is witnessed. And the recession will be the furthest thing from the minds of at least two boys from Cork, who can look forward to reaping the profits of their ‘cash cow’.
Woff-woff? Actually, no, it’s methane, built from a stick-and-ball kit. This one came from a US supplier, thinkgeek.
Sticking with
chemistry At the recent Science Foundation Ireland summit Prof Declan Gilheany explained how sticks and balls can be a winner for chemistry in primary schools. Tom Kennedy reports that positive results could pave the way to the launch of a national science education programme. t all began, said Prof Gilheany, “when my daughter asked if I could go into her school to talk about what I do.” Prof Declan Gilheany is a chemist at UCD, so obviously he had to say something about chemistry, and while thinking about what to do, he remembered how atoms and molecules were often described in the past by stick and ball models. Computer modelling, among other factors, had led to a decline in popularity, but it struck Prof Gilheany that sticks and balls could be the ideal way to explain chemistry to primary pupils. Armed with his box of stick and balls, Prof Gilheany gave his talk, and as he explained, the reaction was amazing, “completely over the top.” The class had no problems grasping the concepts, and they enjoyed discovering how different kinds of “stuff” can be built up from atoms. “I was very surprised by how successful it was,” said Prof Gilheany, so he began thinking that this approach to teaching chemistry should be taken more seriously. He looked up teaching contacts through the Forfas Primary Science and SFI websites, so that he could visit more schools. Over the last three years Prof Gilneany has been to 12 primary classes, 2nd to 6th class, and each time the chemistry kit was a big hit with pupils. The kit is quite simple, and it consists of coloured balls with plastic connectors. The balls follow the long established convention of black for carbon, red
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for oxygen, white for hydrogen, blue for nitrogen, yellow for sulphur, and purple for phosphorous. Each ball has the appropriate number of holes for the connectors, so atoms cannot be joined up in the “wrong” way. No doubt, one of the reasons for the success of these lessons, is Prof Gilheany’s well-paced delivery. He obviously enjoys teaching. “You start by asking, what is everything made of?” Naturally, the term ‘stuff’ is quick to emerge. “So what’s ‘stuff’ made up of?” he asks, and that leads very easily onto the idea that its made up of molecules, and that molecules in turn are made up of atoms. By now the pupils are curious, so Prof Gilheany then surprises them with the news that there are about 100 different atoms, and not only that, but if you join them up in different ways you can get all sorts of molecules. “Then I ask them if they know the structure of water, and quite a few do, they know that water is H2O, so I take up three balls, my oxygens and a hydrogen, and join them up.” To the pupils seeing this happen before their eyes is like a miracle. Eager hands take hold of the kit as Prof Gilheany hands over the box telling the pupils to “go on, make a molecule, and I’ll tell you what it is.” The simple molecules come first, and as Prof Gilheany said, methane is one of the most popular because it comes out of a cow’s rear end. Then there is salt, which they all know, ethene from
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bananas, the SiO2 for sand, carbon dioxide, butane from the gas cooker, chlorine from the swimming pool, and lots of others. “Then, you move on to the more complex structures”, he said, and the pupils start to work together to make fats, proteins, sugars, diamonds and whatever else takes their fancy. Prof Gilheany knows his molecules, but even so, he said it is really important not to pretend to know everything. “It can be a case that the molecules they come up with do not yet exist,” he said, and factors other than simiple stick and ball chemistry come into play. A little bending of the facts, he said, can be required, but “always stay close to the truth, because kids know when you are faking.” Questions start to come up on why should some atoms have more connections than others, and that, said Prof Gilheany, leads on quite naturally to the concept of valence. “For valence,” he said, “I talk about methane being burned and producing carbon dioxide.” The explanations act like a catalyst, and Prof Gilheany said that after leaving one particular class in Trim, the pupils got busy in an attempt to build the world’s biggest molecule. “After each talk,” he said, “I am completely shattered because every child has lots of questions, and you have to respond.” The existing stick and ball kits, he observed, do the job, but he believes they could be improved, and the positive response suggests that we should now think of launching a national programme to bring chemistry into primary schools. SPIN
Quantification of erosion and phosphorus release from a peat soil forest catchment Michael Rodgers and Liwen Xiao any forest plantations on the western seaboard are now reaching the stage where they are ready for harvesting. These plantations were established during the 1970s and 80s on sites that today would be regarded as environmentally sensitive, being located in the headwaters of many important salmonid catchments. Characterised by high rainfall and peaty soils the harvesting of these areas is posing a challenge to foresters as they are particularly prone to nutrient and silt run off during the harvesting operations of road building, clearfelling and timber extraction. A study undertaken by NUI Galway, the Marine Institute Newport, and Coillte, and funded by COFORD, is now providing new insights into the nature of these releases and their duration and verifying the efficacy of the current best practice advocated by the Forest Service for harvesting in these areas. Wet soils and high exposure require that most of the western plantations are managed on a clearfelling and replanting silvicultural system. This requires that the plantations are harvested in blocks when trees reach a marketable size. Harvesting removes the merchantable part of the tree but leaves branches and foliage behind. It is in the latter that most of the nutrients in the tree are located and as the foliage and fine branches decay, nutrients are released which can be flushed into nearby watercourses, if not absorbed by vegetation. The effect of nutrient enrichment, if not controlled, can have serious impacts on salmonids (trout and salmon) and also on Ireland’s longest living creature, the freshwater pearl mussel. These effects are particularly serious in the upper reaches of nutrient poor catchments where biological activity is usually phosphorus limited. In these cases nutrient enrichment can cause excessive algal growths, resulting in dissolved oxygen fluctuations, and disruption of the ecosystem. Similarly ground disturbing operations associated with harvesting
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such as road building and timber extraction can lead to the release of silt in the form of peat or fine mineral soil particles. Silt can have an adverse effect on aquatic flora and fauna. Light penetration can be reduced affecting overall productivity, fish feeding and migration. Fine sediment can affect fish respiration and also damage spawning areas by physically covering and blocking spawning gravels.
Figure 2. Instrumentation station.
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Figure 1. The study catchment US: Upstream station DS: Downstream station USC: Upstream of the confluence station DSC: Downstream of the confluence station The forest industry is currently working to operational guidelines, produced by the Forest Service, to ensure that harvesting impacts are avoided. These guidelines were drawn up in 2000 and were based on what was perceived at the time as best practice, and while supported by scientific research, the effect of their implementation had not been tested. To gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of harvesting operations and to test the efficacy of the Forest Service guidelines, a study was carried out by NUI Galway, the Marine Institute and Coillte in the Burrishoole catchment, Co Mayo. The study site ( 20 ha area) was located within a lodgepole pine plantation, established in 1971, on blanket peat that receives an annual rainfall in excess of 2000 mm (Figure 1). The site is drained by a first order stream that receives the flows from the ploughed furrows, mainly via collector drains and discharges directly to the salmonid Shrahrevagh River. The study site was divided in two parts: the downstream part of 10.5 SPIN
hectares was clearfelled in early autumn 2005 and the upstream part of 7.2 hectares was left intact. Two instrumented stations (Figure 2) were established – one just upstream (US) and the other just downstream (DS) of the area that was clearfelled. The instrumentation at each station included a flume, water-level recorder, rain gauge, automatic water sampler and a multi-probe (Figure 3) for measuring physico-chemical water variables. The rainfall flows and water quality variables at the two stations were recorded every five minutes for about 1 year pre-clearfelling, during clearfelling and harvesting, and for 19 months post-clearfelling. During flood events, water samples were taken hourly at the US and DS stations for suspended sediment (SS) and phosphorus (P) analysis. The study site was clearfelled by Coillte and their contractors in accordance with the Forest Service Guidelines, with no onsite work being carried out during wet weather. The SS and phosphorus concentrations during the study period indicate that the effects of clearfelling and harvesting are longer lasting with regard to phosphorous release than suspended sediment release. However, in this catchment, the dilution ratio
Figure 3. The Datasonde multiprobe used in the study. available in the Shrahrevagh River of about 24 – based on the ratio of the area of the upstream river catchment to the clearfelled area – maintained the average P concentrations in the water downstream of the confluence of the river and study stream at less than 10µg TRP/l – an acceptable concentration. This indicates that knowledge of areas, flows and nutrient concentrations at strategic locations in a catchment could provide a rational and quantitative basis for determining the optimum size of clearfelling areas to have minimal effects on receiving waters.
In summary, the Forest Service Guidelines provide good guidance for sustainable forestry. The results demonstrate that the current guidelines and measures implemented in the salmonid Burrishoole catchment research study were effective in protecting water quality. In addition to the guidelines other measures are being taken that will provide lasting protection for watercourses in the future. As old plantations are being felled they are being redesigned to incorporate unplanted buffer strips, native riparian woodland and open space that will develop into permanent riparian zones and will be managed for both water protection and biodiversity enhancement. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge COFORD, EPA, NPWS and Coillte for funding the project. (The full report of the work can be accessed at http://erc.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/ display?isoID=53)
For further information, contact: Dr Michael Rodgers Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering National University of Ireland, Galway email. michael.rodgers@nuigalway.ie
Science & Engineering Camp at the University of Limerick
22nd - 25th June 2009 Experience University Campus life while learning about science and engineering in a full interactive action based programme. Participants will be given the opportunity to explore possible career options in different science and engineering fields with sessions in areas such as forensics, genetics, chemistry, nutrition, biology, physics, energy, astronomy, electronics, design, aeronautical and mechanical engineering, etc.
For further information contact: Science & Engineering Summer Camp Administrator University of Limerick
Tel Fax Email Web
061 202642 / 061 213059 061 202602 Josephine.Hogan@ul.ie or Vicky.Kelly@ul.ie www.scieng.ul.ie
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Photo: National Museum of Ireland.
Rocks from space Tom Kennedy visited the display of meteorites at the National Museum in Turlough, Co Mayo. In March the display is due to go on show in Dublin. More than 20,000 meteorites of over 100 grams fall onto the Earth every year, and fortunately for us bigger hits, like those that created the 62 km long Sudbury Basin in Canada are rare. Eight meteorites have been observed falling on Ireland since 1779, the largest being a substantial 27 kg rock that came down into Brisha townland, Co Limerick, on 10th December 1813, and the latest landed at Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow in 1999. Always looked on with a certain amount of awe, these rocks from space are currently on view at the National Museum, Turlough, Co Mayo. Given the size, and speed of descent, it is amazing that no one, that we know of, has been killed by one of these rocks. Although some have crashed through roofs, the only known fatality was a dog, killed at Nakhla in Egypt by a meteorite from Mars. Observers note that the descent of a meteorite is far from silent, and there is a great first hand account from 1865 that describes what happened in the parish of Clononlty, Co Tipperary.
“I, John Johnson, of the parish of Clonoulty, near Cashel, County Tipperary, was walking across my potato garden, at the back of my house, in company with Michael Fahy and William Furlong, on the 12th August, 1865, at seven p.m., when I heard a clap like a shot of a cannon, very quick, and not like thunder; this was followed by a buzzing noise, which was continued for about a quarter of an hour, when it came over our heads; and on looking up, we saw an object falling down in a slanting direction. We were frightened at its speed, which was so great that we could scarcely notice it; but after it fell, we proceeded to look for it, and found it at a distance of forty yards, half buried in the ground, where it had struck the top of a potato drill. We were some time on looking for it (a longer time than that during which we had heard the noise). On taking up the stone, we found it warm, milk warm, but not hot enough to be inconvenient. The next day it was given to Lord Hawarden.”
Irish meteorites Pettiswood, Co Westmeath, 1779 Mooresford, Co Tipperary, 1810 Limerick, 1813 Killeter, Co Tyrone, 1844 Dundrum, Co Tipperary, 1865 Crumlin, Co Antrim, 1902 Bovedy, Co Antrim, 1969 Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow, 1999
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That particular meteorite was later given to the Geological Museum at TCD, but in another case, the meteorite of 1902 had hardly fallen when the British Museum rushed in to buy it. That action, among others like it, caused quite a stir, and was one of the turning points for Irish independence. Irish meteorites are not the only rocks from space on show and among the smaller objects are the vitrified splashes from a massive impact 14,500,000 years ago. These green glass tektites were tossed over to the present day Czech Republic from the 24 km wide Ries crater in Germany. In scale, this was relatively small compared to another impact that left a trail of strewn tektites stretching all the way from east Africa, Australia, to west China. In spite of its size, the impact site itself has never been identified, for unlike the pock-marked Moon, the Earth’s surface seldom remains the same for long. The second largest impact crater is the Sudbury Basin in Ontario, which is believed to have been caused by a 10 km wide monster hitting the Earth 1,850,000,000 years ago. That impact must have caused a lot of damage, but it left us with a miner’s paradise, rich in nickel, copper, platinum, palladium and gold.
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Dinosaur island
The efforT of carrying three and a half tonnes of mud up from the shore kept Dr Steve Sweetman fit, and the effort paid off with the discovery of 48 new species. Dr Sweetman, a research associate with the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Portsmouth, decided that digging actively for fossils could be more productive than surface picking. His results proved him right. By hauling mud up to his farm-based laboratory on the Isle of Wright, Steve discovered as many Cretaceous species in four years as had been found before in 180 years. The mud, exposed along the shore, laid down about 130 million years ago has yielded up remains of at least eight as yet undescribed species of dinosaur, many different types of lizard, salamanders, and, most remarkable of all, six tiny mammals, some as small as a shrew.
Steve Sweetman with his buckets of mud.
On bringing back his buckets Dr Sweetman dried and sieved the mud, and for fine details he looked at grains under a microscope. Living on the Isle of Wright, he said, made the research possible. “In the very first sample,” he said, “I found a tiny jaw of an extinct newt-like salamander-like amphibian, and from then on new species just kept coming.” Most of the attention, he added had been focused on the larger animals, but what he had discovered were the smaller creatures that scurried around the feet of the dinosaurs. Above, Palaeontologist Mark Witton’s beautifully executed impression of the discoveries, and, left, his charting of where they fitted into the Cretaceous landscape.
REVIEWS Tom Kennedy has been reading some recently published books
Ireland’s Ocean
MOST of Ireland lies under the sea, but how many of us would know for sure how many species of octupuses live in Irish waters, or could describe the difference between a cod and a John Dory? The latter, we are informed in a new book Ireland’s Ocean, is flat, like a vertical dinner plate. We still know precious little about our own marine environment, thanks in part to an amazing decline from the robust interest of the mid and late 19th century into a half century of almost
complete indifference and neglect. Fortunately we are emerging rapidly from those depths of ignorance, and over the past few years Ireland has been sailing ahead on a voyage of discovery. As Michael and Ethna Viney explain in this book, a lot of the credit for this revival of interest is due to people such as the geologist Raymond Kearney, whose “rooting around the seashore of Connemara” with quite basic technology, eventually led to the highly sophisticated surveying of the seabed in what amounts to one of the most ambitions scientific projects ever undertaken in Ireland. The authors, not surprisingly, given their lifetime passion for nature and the environment, have been keeping track of these developments and in this book they blend this knowledge into a fairly comprehensive, yet compact, natural history of the marine environment. As they describe, there are giants, and there are creatures so small that they can only be detected by fluorescence under the microscope.
Not that they are insignificant, those self same picoplankton are thought to account for half the photosynthesis in the world’s oceans. We have a lot to learn, not just strange names for unfamiliar fishes, but even defining home territory can be difficult, and with many creatures, such as the curious and well named By-the-wind-sailor, Velella velella, no one is quite sure if it is not just a blowin. Naturalists, who like to put a name on what they find, will have plenty of examples here to whet the appetite, but I would like to think that describing what’s out there between sandy shores and Rockall will be followed up with other books delving deeper into the science behind some of the more extraordinary discoveries being made at sea. Ireland’s Ocean, a natural history, Michael and Ethna Viney The Collins Press, Cork. €29.95 hardback.
Visiting Mars
Irish Naturalists’ Journal
LONG established as Ireland’s record of field observations, the Irish Naturalists’ Journal has been given a welcome facelift. The full colour, higher contrast presentation is a big improvement, not just making the INJ easier to read, but allowing photographs to be used more effectively as illustrations. The INJ is available on subscription for €33. www.habitas.org.uk/onj/inj/
WhOEVER steps out onto the surface of Mars is likely to be greeeted and shown around by Kevin Nolan. Kevin, lecturer in physics at Tallaght Institute of Technology probably knows more about Mars than most of know about Earth, and it is remarkable just how much we now know about the red planet. For a number of years, Mars has been the target for mission after mission, all of which Kevin describes in some detail. Mars has been capturing the imagination since the “discovery” of what were thought to be canals, and in many ways that dream about life being out there persists. Mars has turned out to have a much harsher environment than the likes of h G Wells could have written into fiction, but even so, the odds are in favour of life being found there. In fact, given the conditions under which life first appeared on Earth, it would be downright peculiar not to find the same sort of pattern elsewhere. The possibility of extra-terrestrial life is a strong motivator, but as Kevin explains, the main reason behind all these missions is that Mars is seen as our stepping stone into space. Once
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completely out of reach, we can now begin to seriously contemplate the idea of establishing some sort of base on Mars. It is a long way to go, and it could be a one-way journey, but as we know from our earlier exploration of the Earth, curiousity made us set sail for golden wonders beyond the edge of the world. Not many sailors returned from those trips. We could continue to send robotic missions to Mars, and the data they have transmitted back is of amazingly high quality, but there comes a point SPIN
REVIEWS when we would like to step into the picture. Apart from any other issues, could the cost of going there be too high? Humans, with their gravity bound, oxygen burning bodies, were never designed for space, so, unlike a set of sensors and micro-circuits, space travellers would need a lot of very expensive support. As Kevin points out, a fleet of robots could be sent for the cost of just one manned mission. “There is no right and wrong answer to this debate,” he writes, but at the same time, he argues strongly, and convincingly, in favour of the hands-on approach. “We would not dream of sending robots to explore the remote Amazonian rainforests or the Antarctic.”
Humans in Space
SPACE travel is no longer a matter of how, but of how far are we prepared to go. Hundreds of people have already experienced what it is like to break free from the gravity of Earth, and in a book published in association with the European Science Foundation, Marcel Egli, who heads a space biology group in Switzerland, commented that “this is not an extraordinary task anymore.” The exploration of space has progressed rapidly since Yuri Gagarin went aloft in 1961, and where robots have gone, a growing band of astronauts and space settlers are likely, at some stage, to follow. The possibilities of taking off into space are becoming real enough for scientists and indeed policy makers to take the issue seriously, and this book, Humans in Outer Space, is a collection of papers delivered at a conference held just over a year ago in Vienna. At that conference, organised by the European Space Agency, the European Science Foundation, and the European Space Policy Institute, a number of issues relating to our extra-terrestrial endeavours were discussed. Not least of the issues was the one of ownership. Who actually owns space? As James Muldoon, a specialist in medieval legal and ecclesiastical history pointed out, the question is hardly new. Back in the 16th century, Hugo Grotius penned a work called the Mare Liberum, in which he refuted papal claims to the oceans. In his reformist view, God had willed that all mankind “be of one race and to be known by one name.” This questioning ultimately led to our laws of the sea, and by extension, international law makers are determined to avoid
The scenery, as we can see from the pictures, is spectacular, and in a way, what we see is a damaged world. Unlike Earth, which still has a hot core, Mars has no internal dynamo, and lacking a protective magnetic field, is open to intense bombardment of radiation from space. As a result, the atmosphere has been stripped down to a bare minimum, as rarified on the surface as Earth’s is at 30 km elevation. The landscape gives us some idea of what Earth must have been like billions of years ago, and as such we can learn a lot about our own history. Features that would have been long since been obliterated on Earth have survived intact on Mars. One of the most prominent of
these features is the giant Hellas crater, 2,000 km across and nine km deep. Such an impact, writes Kevin, would have “reset” the entire planetary surface. “Imagine, for example, a worldlet, several hundred km in diameter, colliding with the Earth at 30,000 km per hour.” Everything on the surface would have been wiped out, the oceans would have vaporised. “Incredidibly, Earth suffered such a fate at least several times in its earliest history.” Without Mars to look at, we might find it hard to imagine that Earth has such a violent past.
territorial disputes in space. We can think of setting up shop on the Moon, we are likely to see some brave souls dispatched on a long journey to Mars, but are the obstacles to be overcome in going further so immense as to be impossible? Maybe not, but Agnieszka Lukaszczyk writes, “an interplanetary society may emerge at the moment a first child is born on another planet.” This brings up one of the really fundamental questions about colonising space. Humans have evolved to live on Earth, and in space they are aliens, ill equipped to survive for any length of time. So, should we allow, or even encourage our bodies to adapt? How important is it to keep our film star looks, when survival on some distant planet is at stake? This is a serious question, and one that could mean a lot more to us if the World’s population continues to climb. Apart from any harm we might inflict on our home planet, we cannot rule out the possibility that some catastrophic event could wipe out life on Earth again, as happened in the past. Then, there is that issue of resources, and one of the authors, Gísli Pálsson, Professor of Antropology at the University of Iceland, has a telling quote in which Mahatma Gandhi was asked if the newly independent India should follow the British path to development. In response, Gandhi said; “it took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve this prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?”
Unless we want to become like a mound of bacteria in a petri dish, emigrating into space might yet become an option to consider, and if we are prepared to consider that, we would have to let humanity evolve. Biologically this is not at all an obstacle, we are, after all, a relatively young species, but it is just something we might rather not think about. Curiously enough, the Jesuit palaeontologist and philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin, entertained the idea that humanity was destined to move on. At the time of his death in 1955, he was being unfairly dismissed as a mystical dreamer rather than being celebrated as “a proper philosopher”, mainly because he was postulating the ultimate unity with the one-and-all, but half a century on, the idea has taken on a new meaning, not unity, but possibly survival. Commenting on the significance of the book, Archaeology Professor Ulrike Landfester from the University of St Gallen, remarked that we may have to reconsider some of our notions about the reality of space before humanity continues its progress from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, and on to Homo celesticus.
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Mars - A Cosmic Stepping Stone; published by Praxis/Copernicus Books of New York.
Humans in Outer Space — Interdisciplinary Odysseys, a collection of studies in space policy, published by Springer in association with the European Science Foundation and the European Space Policy Institute.
REVIEWS
Natural religion
LEFT to our own devices, set free to run wild, how would we all behave? Would we become like those nasty children in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, or would be rise above it all, never lie, never cheat, never steal, and never ever kill? Hard questions and not much except for guesswork by way of answers. Consider what’s going on around the world. Is genocide natural, or is it, like paedophilia, some kind of sick aberation from the norm, and before some smart alec pipes up “what’s the norm?” lets consider that the world is full of those who feel a deep abhorrence for those darker sides of human behaviour. It is hard to escape the conclusion that those feelings are rooted in natural laws that you could almost say are hard wired into our make up. Even so, we still bomb civilians back into the stone age, arms dealers get rich on other people’s misery, and look at all those public posters telling us that husbands beat their wives — again. So, things go wrong, and for a long time, biologist Brendan Connolly wondered why this should be so. Brendan, who studied zoology and psychology at TCD and works as a scientist with the Fisheries Board, spend ten years pondering these and other questions, which he attempts to answer in his book, The Natural Religion. His contention is that the traditional rules, enshrined in religions, have failed, and are out of step with how we actually live now. The reason they have failed, he maintains, is that they are faith-based, and blind faith, as we all know, has often led us astray. It is indeed sad to see how the faithful can inflict such savagery on neighbours without showing the slightest
qualms of conscience. Brendan might indeed point out that if God is telling people to be brutish and nasty, we should depose him, it, or her. In the place of faith, Brendan would have science, and if I am not mistaken, is that nat what the rationalists of old were at. Brendan, who seeks to rationalise a whole range of behaviour, goes as far as advocating The Natural Religion, and I must confess to having serious reservations about that idea. The repeated use of the uncompromising word “The” sets off alarm bells. In effect we are being told to substitute one type of faith for another. Black is out, and the white lab coats are in. Science, as we know, does not have all the answers, in fact, the great thing about science is that it asks a lot of questions. True, we can have a lot more confidence in the truth revealed in Gray’s Anatomy than in the rantings of a soothsayer untangling the entrails of an unfortunate chicken. Facts, however, can turn out to be quite elastic, and if you look for certainty in numbers just think of the calculating Aztecs who would rather rip out a bleeding heart than risk a return of numbers to zero. As a former American president realised, it is actually quite easy to manipulate the facts, and just look at how the leading lights of science are so often like fighting dogs, eager to fly at each others’ throats. Dare I question all those wild assumptions about climate change? Absolutly not!!! Jumping genes and tectonic plates were being scoffed at until quite recently, so I for one, would hesitate to kiss the ring of a Nobel Laureate.
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Perhaps Brendan should have dropped the loaded word, Religion, and as a biologist concentrated on uncovering the roots of our behaviour. He certainly has a point to make that something is amiss. We no longer live in small, isolated communities, and that the combination of science and technology has led us into very unfamiliar territory. We have only to consider stem cell research and genetic engineering to realise that we no longer have such a crystal clear idea of what is right and what is wrong. Humanity does have a serious problem, we are out of our depth, and by discarding the old belief-based rules, we are in danger of being cast further adrift into a moral vacuum. Even so, are we really smart enough to fill that void? A few brief visits to our miserable courts of law should be enough to convince anybody that synthesised rules can be anything but natural, or indeed just. Another visit, this time, to one of those dreary “non-denominational” folksy services, would suggest that far from looking for something bland and scientifically rational people are actually crying out for a return to the old style certainties. By all means, lets get a deeper understanding of what we are at, but heaven help us if scientists start to think that they have a natural right to shout down the other preachers. Mind you, that would give a novel twist to our religious wars. The Natural Religion, Brendan Connolly, Emmer Publications, Co Meath.
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Sponsorship available to promote mathematics, second level science, careers in science and engineering and Science Week festivals. The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) sectors are fundamental to Ireland’s economic success and offer progressive, challenging and rewarding career options. The Discover Science & Engineering (DSE) programme is building awareness amongst young people of the value of the physical sciences and mathematics in Ireland while also fostering a culture of scientific and technological innovation. As part of this programme, DSE is offering support to those working to promote the physical sciences and mathematics throughout Ireland. This support will provide sponsorship funding under the following strategic themes: Mathematics Second level science Science and engineering careers promotion Science Week festivals Proposals should be aligned to these themes.
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