Science Spin 34

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ISSUE 34 May 09

€3 including VAT £2 NI and UK

SCIENCE

SPIN

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

Galápagos Meeting the meerkats Rise of the dinosaurs GREEN ENERGY

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Meerkats living in the Kalahari of southern Africa. Research student, Mico Tatalovic has been keeping watch on how they live.

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

SPIN 2

UPFRONT

Triassic extintion

Galápagos romance

John Paul Tiernan describes how he lives in a dream world.

A morning with the Meerkats

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Mico Tavalovic has been getting to know the meerkats.

Shocked bugs

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Seán Duke reports that shocked bugs develop an appetite for phosphorous.

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Anthony King writes about unravelling the mystery of why so many creatures died.

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Down the road

Marie-Catherine Mousseau reports that Irish researchers are staying ahead on transport.

Reviews

Tom Kennedy has been reading about women, geology and religion.

Birds on view

A winning selection of bird photographs.

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Solar power

Tom Kennedy reports that research at MIT could open up a new era for liquid fuels.

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Picture research Source Photographic Archive www.iol.ie/~source.foxford/ Printing Turner Group, Longford Contributors in this issue: Anthony King, Marie-Catherine Mousseau, Miko Tavolovic, John Paul Tiernan.

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

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UPFRONT

Soil map

DURING the 1970s and 1980s the agricultural research organisation, Foras Talúntais, began mapping Ireland’s soil. Soils vary in constitution and character, and knowing what lies below can be a great help to farmers and foresters. Teagasc is now going to update and extend the charting of Irish soils using the latest mapping technology to compete in five years work that previously took fifteen.

Under the Irish Soil Information System project, digital data will be combined with information gathered from thousands of soil samples taken from ‘auger’ points across the country.

DuNoyer winners

In our previous issue, Science Spin 33, our credit for the winning photograph of Glassilaun Mudstone should have read Dr Sarah Gatley.

Dr Gatley’s photograph shows folding and fracturing in Silurian red and green mudstone exposed at Glassilaun, Renvyle, Connemara, Co Galway.

Strept throat

A SIMPLE throat infection can lead on to rheumatic heart disease, and researchers in Germany have explained that this happens because our body continues to attack the surface attaching proteins produced by some streptococcal bacteria. Singh Chatwal and his colleague Patric Nitsche-Schmitz of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig found that if a throat infection is left untreated, surface binding proteins from the surviving bacteria attach themselves to collagen.

Our body detecting the proteins, goes on the defensive, and as collagen is a major component of body tissues, the attack is self-defeating. In heart valves, for example, collagen plays an important role, so inflamation can lead to loss of function.

According to the researchers, only about five per cent of all streptococcal throat infections result in this self-destructive behaviour, but early detection could prevent up to half a million deaths in children every year. In reporting the results in the PLoS ONE journal, Cingh Chatwal said that the aim now is to develop a simple test strip for early detection of the more harmful bacteria.

Body swap

IT IS possible to confuse people about which of two bodies is their own.

Neuroscientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have succeeded in making people perceive another person as themselves. In the experiments, the subjects were fitted out with cameras and screens in such a way that instead of seeing things directly, they saw themselves from the position of another person. According to the researchers, the subjects developed a powerful sensation of perceiving the other body

as their own. One of the researchers, Valeria Petkova, said the impression was so strong that two people could even shake hands without the illustion being broken. In another test, subjects experienced stress when a knife was held over the camera wearer’s arm, but gave no reaction when the knife was held over their own.

Apart from telling us more about how we perceive ourselves, the findings are likely to be applied in robotics and in virtual reality games.

Horse Mussels

THE Horse Mussels in Strangford Lough have gone into decline, and scientists from Queen’s are studying how to restore their numbers. Marine biologists from the university’s Portferry research centre state that the mussels act as biological engineers, keeping water clear by filtering it as they feed. Dr David Roberts from Queen’s said that cleaning action of the mussels is important for other marine life, and their hard shells also provide a home for up to 100 other species to grow on.

Dr Roberts said the decline had been sharp, and in places mussel density was down to under a quarter of the ideal. “In terms of intervention,” he said, “we have started to culture the animals in the lab at Portferry.”

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Geoparks

PLACES such as the Burren, the Giant’s Causeway and the Marble Arch caves in Fermanagh are special because they are geological wonders. They are also special because they provide flora and fauna with diversity of environment, so these areas are a big attraction for visitors who want to walk on the wild side.

Geoparks, where rocks form the core attraction, have grown in popularity, and this in turn raises issues of management. Apart from the Giant’s Causeway, Ireland has a number of areas that can be developed further as geoparks. The Copper Coast in Waterford celebrates Ireland’s mining heritage, and further north, the Mourne Mountains are being promoted as the place to see weathered granite.

In a joint initiative, the Geological Surveys on both sides of the border recently launched an annual geoparks forum drawing together people representing a range of number of different interests including tourism, archaeology, and education. Meetings have been held in Dublin, Belfast, Fermanagh, and later this year, 20th and 21th October, the Geopark Forum will be held in the Burren.

Furhter details from Sophie Préteseille, GSI. www.gsi.ie or www. coppercoastgeopark.com

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UPFRONT At the announcement of a €23.9million investment in five new Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Strategic Research Clusters (SRCs) were Prof Miles Turner (DCU), Prof Padraig Cunningham (UCD), Prof Brett Paull (DCU), former Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation Dr Jimmy Devins, Dr William Donnelly (WIT) and Prof Lokesh Joshi (NUIG).

Photo: Jason Clarke.

Prof Brett Paul, also from DCU - Irish Separation Science Cluster.

Research clusters

FIVE research clusters, involving seven colleges and 22 companies, have been established under Science Foundation Ireland. The development represents a total collaborative investment of €23.9 million, and it marks another phase in the existing SFI Strategic Research Cluster programme.The research clusters were started in 2007 to link scientists and engineers with industry.

In the latest SRCs, the lead investigators are:

Sniffer ants

ANIMALS have a variety of ways to find their way around, and desert ants, like tracker dogs, use scent to find their way back home.

Prof. Lokesh Joshi of NUIG - Alimentary Glycoscience Research Cluster (AGRC) Prof Pádraig Cunningham of UCD - Clique SRC Dr William Donnelly of Waterford Institute of Technology - Federated, Autonomic Management of End-toend Communication Services (FAME SRC) Prof Miles Turner of DCU Precision SRC, and

Kathrin Steck, Bill Hansson and Markus Knaden from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, had wondered how the desert ant, Cataglyphis fortis was always able to find its way through a landscape that

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Prof Frank Gannon, Director General of SFI said that the lead investigators had been chosen because they represent top-level research.

More than 40 proposals had been considered before the final choice had been made. It is important, he said, to give industry access to the best in academic research. “Subsidising mediocre research activity,” he said, “will not produce the outputs required to enhance Ireland’s scientific and innovation landscape.”

offered so few visual markers. As they found, ants relied on smell, rather than vision, and their sense is so acute that they can recognise their own nest.

In the open access journal, Frontiers in Zoology, the researchers describe how they were able to use gas chromatography to distinguish between these odours. In experiments, they found that ants could find their way back to hidden nests.

Instead of leaving a trail, the ants rely on the distinctive odour of the nest itself. The reason for this, explain the researchers, is that these ants live in a very hostile environment, where heat could destroy any trail left by the ants as they wander over 100 metres in search of food. In this environment, the the more stable nest odour is a more reliable guide.

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UPFRONT Stem cells

Progress has been reported on reducing the need to harvest embryonic stem cells. A team of researchers at Bonn University claim that they have succeeded in “almost indefinitely” maintaining a culture, and that this can be an inexhaustible source of neural cells.

Commenting on this development, Prof Oliver Brüstle, who heads the Institute of reconstructive Neurobiology at Bonn University, said that they can now supply human neural cells over periods of months and years without demanding any recourse to supplementary embryonic stem cells.

In animal tests, the researchers were able to demonstrate that transplanted neural cells were accepted in recipient brains. The transplanted neural cells were able to function and make connections in the normal way.

To conduct these experiments, the team had to receive special permission to import their starter embryonic cells.

Dr Philipp Koch, who initiated the study, said that “this is the first direct evidence that neural cells derived from human stem cells are capable of synaptic integration in the brain.”

Analytical winners

sTUDeNTs of analytical sciences from different parts of Ireland competed to win this year’s Eurachem award.

The competition, first held in 1999 is an annual event rotating between the Institutes of Technology. Teams are given an analytical task which they must complete within a strict time frame.

This year the top prize went to Rong Shi and Eddie O’Byrne from the Institute of Technology Carlow.

Niamh Carroll and Byran Doonan from Dublin City University and Alan Byrne and Daniel White from the Athlone Institute of Technology shared the runner up prizes.

Ireland’s Ocean

In our review of Michael and Ethna Viney’s book on Ireland’s Ocean Raymond Keary’s name was rendered as Kearney in error.

Jet aircraft condensation trails over the North Sea recorded by satellite in March this year.

As ice crystals form from the cooling exhausts, surrounding air condenses into elongated clouds which can persist from just minutes to several hours. The artificial condensation trails can cause cirrus clouds to form and these may last for weeks.

Envisat image from ESA.

Space ice

THERE is a lot of water out there in space, mostly in the form of ice bound up onto dust particles, comets, and planets. At a European Science Foundation meeting in Spain, Julyan Cartwright, from the Andalusian Institute for Earth Sciences, explains that this ice was formed at much lower temperatures than we find even in the coldest spots on Earth. The ice was usually formed, he said, just a few degrees above absolute zero, and because of this its form is different from the ice we see on Earth. “In some cases,” he said, “ice can be amorphus in form, like glass, with the molecules, in effect, frozen in space, rather than as crystals.” For the ice to be amorphous the water has to be cooled to its transition temperature of about 130ºK without crystals forming first.

This can happen with extremely rapid cooling.

Ice, explained Julyan Cartwright, can exist in a number of forms, the variations depending on how freezing occurs, and on the substrate. In the laboratory, his team found that ice formed on titanium at 6ºK had a characteristic cauliflower structure.

Some forms, he added, can look quite lifelike, and for this reason people should not be too quick in thinking that life has been discovered in outer space. A more realistic interpretation, he said, would be that nature has been copying physics.

“It is clear that biology does use physics,” he said. “Indeed, how could it not do so? So, we would not be surprised to see that sometimes biological structures clearly make use of simple physical principles. Then, going back in time, it seems reasonable to posit that when life first emerged, it would have been using as a container, something much simpler than today’s cell membrane, probably some sort of simple vesicle of the sort found in soap bubbles.”

Currently, the focus is on ocean floor black smokers, but as Julyan suggests, the original patterns for life could well have arrived as ice.

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UPFRONT

Show time

THE year 2012 is going to be a big one for science in Ireland.

Dublin will be the European City of Science, and the Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof Cunningham, is encouraging colleges and instutions to broaden the event. While the core event will be from the 12th to 16th July, Prof Cunningham explained that the aim is to maximise the benefits to Ireland. The City of Science branding will be used extensively throughout the year, and associated events are not tied to any specific venue.

Prof Cunningham said that winning the bid to become a City of Science provides everyone with a great opportunity to attract international conferences. In a letter to various organisations, Prof Cunningham urged scientists to consider what specialist conferences they could target for 2012. “Given the lead time,” he said, “it is important to commence this now.”

Apart from the benefits of high-profile international promotion, organisers are being offered some practical help.

Science Foundation Ireland is prepared to support highquality international conferences, and proposals for 2012 are to get special attention. “SFI’s conference and workshop programme will shortly be extended to support conference bids,” said Prof Cunningham, and he added that “Fáilte Ireland, through its Business Tourism Unit, can also be of assistance.”

Last year, Barcelona was the European City of Science. In July 2010 it will be the turn of Turin, and as Prof Cunningham remarked, it would be good to see a strong Irish presence there. Scientists and organisations have until 15th June this year to get in their proposals. The web site is www.esof2010

Tellus

THE ambitious Tellus project to survey the geological resources of Northern Ireland is already beginning to pay off. According to the Northern Ireland Geological Survey, data released from the survey has boosted mineral exploration to unprecedented levels. Since 2007, when datasets were released, the number of licences has trebled, and 68 per cent of Northern Ireland is now either covered by prospecting licenses, or applications. GSNI note that exploration companies have already invested three times the cost of the £6m Tellus survey.

Poster winner

ONE of the approaches being tried for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease is to block the action of enzymes associated with its development. At Athlone Institute of Technology, postgraduate researcher, Catrina O’Donohoe has been investigating these inhibitors, and in January she was presented with an award for poster describing this research.

During the course of this SFI funded research, over 200 different inhibitors have been synthesised and tested. The inhibitors act on an enzyme known as butyrylcholinesterase, which is present in high concentrations in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

Catrina, who studied chemistry at TCD, worked with Wyeth before enrolling with AIT for a postgrad diploma in toxicology.

Vitamin B12

BABIES born to mothers low in vitamin B12 are are more likely to have spina bifida. Dr Anne Molloy from the School of Medicine, TCD, reported this finding following an eight year long study of Irish women. “The study shows that women with the lowest B12 levels during early pregnancy were almost five times more likely to have a child with a neural tube defect compared to women with the highest B12 levels.”

Spina bifida occurs when the neural tube of an embryo fails to close over properly. As a result the brain and skull often remain undeveloped.

Ireland, with one in 1,000 pregnancies affected, has a relatively high incidence of spina bifida, and as Dr Molloy explained, it has been known for some time that taking folic acid, the synthetic form of B vitamin folate, reduces the chance of spina bifida occurring.

Dr Peadar Kirk, who was also involved in the study, said the richest sources of B12 are meat and animal based foods.

“Women who are strict vegetarians or who eat little meat or dairy foods are the most likely group to have low B12 levels, along with women who have intestinal disorders that prevent them from absorbing sufficient amounts of B12.”

The researchers recommended that B12 concentrations should be above 300 ng/l and results of the study show that women with levels below 250 ng/l had up to three times the risk of having a child with a neural tube defect.

Another of the researchers, Dr James Mills, said that women should not risk waiting until they are pregnant before taking steps to correct a deficiency. “The formation of the neural tube occurs very early in pregnancy,” he said, “before many women even realise they are pregnant.”

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UPFRONT

Mole rats

A naked mole-rat, photographed by Stefan G端nther.

AMONG the oddest of species is the mole-rat, a bare naked mammal that lives in subterranean colonies. The mole-rats live in semi-desert regions of East Africa, and in a curious parallel with insects, they form worker colonies around a single breeding queen.

Researchers have been studying mole rats in an artificial burrow, which

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they have constructed at the Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research. The plexiglas chambers allow the researchers to see what the molerats are up to as they maintain their colony home. The home is divided into a series of chambers, each with a separate function. Some are for storage, others are for sleeping in, and they have toilets. The animals with a slow rate of metabolism can live for about 28 years, and to make up for the lack of fresh air underground, their blood has a high affinity for oxygen.

The queen, explained Dr Thomas Hildebrandt, one of the researchers, is larger and ligher in colour than the workers, and she keeps rival females in check by secreting a hormone that suppresses fertility.

When the queen dies, there is a palace revolution, during which females are prepared to fight to the death in order to gain the upper hand.

The winner then starts to assume all the characteristics of the queen, and after about a year and a half, she produces her first litter of pups.

At the Berlin Institute, the first queen who remains in command, has produced her first litter of five pups.

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UPFRONT Molten carbonates

Phena Graham from Siemens Ireland with one of the experts involved in the lecture series, Dr David Kennedy, Head of Engineering, DIT Bolton Street.

Climate change lecture tour

SiemenS is supporting a three month lecture tour on climate change covering the science, the business, the engineering and how people perceive the potential risks.

The lectures, organised with the ecology Foundation, continue until late may 2009, and are being given at Cork institute of Technology, University College Cork, University of Limerick, nUi Galway, GmiT, DCU, TCD, Queen’s and DiT Bolton Street.

Commenting on the lecture series, Dr Werner Kruckow, CeO of Siemens ireland, said that irish expertise in wind, wave, and other forms of renewable energy could lead to a rise in ‘green-collar’ jobs. One of the objectives in launching the lecture series, he said, is to capture the interest of young science and engineering graduates, and to show that they have a significant role to play in meeting a number of challenges.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

For full details log onto www.theecologyfoundation.ie or www.siemens.ie/ climatechange

Species on the rise

THe RiSe of the Andes coincided with a rise in the number of South American species.

After studying hundreds of species, Alexandre Antonelli, a Brazilian researcher at Gothenburg University found that some of the current theories to explain diversity are wrong. DnA analysis, he found, revealed that many of the plant and animal species did not exist 100 million years ago when South America broke away from Africa. Also, the species were “too old” in that they were well established at a time when advancing ice made the Amazonian rainforests shrink. Both of these factors have often been assumed to have been responsible for diversity, but Alexandre disagrees with these notions. The elevation of the northern Andes, he said, is connected to a massive rise in the number of species.

“The spread southwards along the Andes was not possible until the northern part of the mountain range came into contact with its central tracts, an event which took place 10-12 million years ago. Prior to this, a long lowland corridor that was periodically submerged in seawater acted as an effective barrier to the spread. At the same time, the elevation of the Andes brought about the end of Lago Pebas, a gigantic sea covering the whole of western Amazonas. Thus, many species were able to spread from the northern Andes to areas such as Amazonas, Caribbean and Central America, where new species developed.”

Alexandre maintains that the Andes acted as a ‘species pump’, causing an enormous increase in biodiversity.

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FOR some time geologists have suspected that significant amounts of carbon are present in the earth’s mantle, but this was impossible to prove because samples from close to the surface were low in carbon. The geologists were perplexed because natural electrical currents could flow easily at depths of 70 to 350 km, even though the mineral olivine, abundant in the upper mantle, is an insulator.

To gain a better understanding of what is going on deep within the earth, researchers from the institut des Sciences de la Terre dOrléans looked at liquid carbonates at the masai volcano in Tanzania. These carbonates are not known from other locations, and they are believed to represent the type of conductive materials present at depth.

The surprising thing about these carbonates is that they were found to be highly conductive, 1,000 times more so than basalt, which had been thought of as the only potential conductor in the earth’s mantle.

Farbrice Gaillard and the other researchers have concluded that the high conductivity of the earth’s mantle is due to small amounts of molten carbonates present between masses of solid rock.

Carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes originates at this level, and the researchers believe that, although the percentage of carbon in liquid carbonates is as low as 0.003 to 0.025 per cent, the overall reservoir of carbon at depth is higher than that present on the earth’s surface.

The presence of carbonates in the mantle has another significant implication. The sliding of tectonic plates may be lubricated by liquid carbonates, but as yet, little is known of how this works. it is also possible that carbonates give rise to diamonds at the base of the lithosphere.

How natural is milk? Not as natural as you might like to think. If you have doubts about other scientific claims the Irish Sceptics web site is worth a visit. www.IrishSkeptic.com

WILDLIFE The Galápagos Island as viewed from Evvisat. The largest island is Isabela, and the five volcanoes, from north to south, are Wolf, Darwin, Aledo, Sierra Negra, and Cerro Azul. To the right is Santiago Island.

Galápagos Romance How many scientists working in a sterile, white laboratory have dreamed of conducting ‘old fashioned’, ‘rousing’ science off the deck of an old wooden sailboat? Probably quite a lot, but unlike almost all the others, Irishman John Paul Tiernan, is living the dream. Here, in an article special to Science Spin, he describes his work, and daily life on the famous Galápagos Islands.

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t is rousing, and romantic to believe that old fashioned marine science, conducted in old wooden sailboats still exists. It is exciting that there are still places in the world, untouched by Gore Tex boots, where the elemental scientific processes of sampling, surveying and investigative ecology still hold much relevance.

The dream lives, I can tell you, and romantic science is being practiced with much bustle and ado in the Galápagos Islands off Ecuador. The sterile safety of the white laboratories of my scientific background in the west of Ireland seemed a long way away when I participated recently in a research cruise in this archipelago I now live in.

A cruise involving a pirate ship, volcanoes, marine iguanas, Martian landscapes, whales, sharks and a lot of seaweed.

Motivation

Our motivation for the voyage may have been one or a collection of many things. Perhaps the notion of a young Charles Darwin provided the motivation for one of our young scientists aboard. Restless in Europe and with a passing interest in barnacles and geology, and little did he know at the time, evolution, Darwin set sail on a similarly appointed ship to the same archipelago which is now synonymous with his name.

Perhaps it was the image of both my grandfathers, unwittingly investigating the biochemical composition of seaweed, used to fertilize our land that drove me to the ends of the earth to equally inhospitable shores to find the truth about seaweed. More than once it occurred to me that perhaps I was subconsciously emulating John Steinbeck’s 1940s novel The Log from the Sea of Cortez. If you haven’t read this book you should. If you haven’t read this book and you are an aspiring marine biologist, then you must.

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SPIN

“If we can’t protect nor conserve Galápagos, where can we?”

The scientific motivation was the realization of several field experiments.

We were studying ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ effects on intertidal algal ecosystems. That is to say, a seaweed´s growth may be controlled from the bottom up by changes in oceanographic properties such as nutrients due to an El Niño event (a temperature change that happens every few years in the waters of the Pacific Ocean) or from the top down by grazing pressures.

There is no better place to address such grand ecological questions as these as Galápagos. Situated on the equator, but with water as cool as Clew Bay in the cold season and penguins sharing living space with marine iguanas, they are a hotspot of diversity driven by a confluence of currents bringing productivity and importantly, left undisturbed by humans and other large mammals for a relatively long time.

This confluence of ocean currents directed our research interests and the bow of our boat ´´LV Pirata´´ as we steamed to Genovesa Island in the far north east of the archipelago. Here, the Panama current, warm and nutrient poor from the north, is stroking the islands, stealing further south in the warm season.

Due to these nutrient poor waters, intertidal algae are not as lush in Genovesa. This has a considerable physical consequence for the endemic marine iguana, the iconic symbol of

Giant tortoise, left, and a pair of Blue Footed Booby birds. Photos, George Karbus

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Galápagos. Here the iguanas are one twelfth the size of the iguanas on Fernandina Island in the far west of the archipelago, our next mooring, where the Counter Equatorial and Cold Humboldt Current direct from Antarctica converge causing upwelling, productivity, and lush intertidals.

Vessel

Our vessel was a reconditioned mail ship which plied the coast of Ecuador in the 1920s and ominously flies the pirate flag alluding to a hidden past.

Under thrust and sail, she made a passage of 80 miles or so to Genovesa in 10 hours.

Every item of clothing we wore and tool we carried had been in quarantine for three days prior to the voyage. The islands we would visit are as pristine as landscapes come, a troublesome seed or insect from the port town of Puerto Ayora would be most unwelcome to the local ecosystem.

Efforts like these seem futile at times; most of the islands have seen introductions at some point of pests ranging from fire ants to feral goats.

Coming from a world of litigation and safe scientific practices it was delightful to realize our landings would not be much safer than those

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of Darwin 170 years ago. The panga (wooden dinghy) was masterfully manoeuvred to the safest looking point of lava rock in between sets of waves where we hurriedly disembarked.

Our experiments lay at the lowest of the intertidal. Cages were designed to exclude various grazers from algal plots including marine iguanas, the bright red sally lightfoot crabs which light up the intertidal as they descend to forage at low tide, sea turtles and a host of reef fish who graze the intertidal at high tide. The addition of nutrients and cultivation of algae on plates of differing colours and thus temperature, was also investigated.

Fish censuses were performed at high tide, speedily so when sharks were sighted. What emerged from our experiments, some of which lay in situ for three years, is a massive data set, with the power to tell us many things about biological and climatic forces and the effects they have in relation to each other.

Dream

The Galápagos Islands are an ecologists dream to study processes such as this. The islands contain some of the least impacted ecosystems in the world. Humans only arrived here in the 18th century; interestingly the first settler was an Irishman named Patrick Watkins who enterprised for a few months in the 1700s selling vegetables to passing whaling ships.

The population stands today in the region of 30,000. 97 per cent of the archipelago is national park and while the conservation dream lives strong, the islands face a world of trouble. The burgeoning population is creating new visible threats to its ecosystems; unbelievably, extinction of some species is occurring here. This is driven by a desire to take advantage of the tourist dollar and facilitated by corruption, a South American theme that is well represented in the authorities governing Galápagos.

The currents that drive our research slowed our pirate ship on our 18 hour passage to Fernandina Island. Galápagos is noted for the unpredictability of its currents, making the diving which is some of the best in the world cold and dangerous at times.

The rewards can be overwhelming; this is one of the few locations where upwards of 100 hammerhead sharks may be not only enjoyed but expected in one dive. Where the distance the sharks keep when conducting scientific diving is appreciated, the curiosity and desire of the Galápagos sea lions to play with transect lines and generally interact with a diver is most welcome.

Fernandina lies in the far west of the archipelago and contains the newest and most active volcano in Galápagos.

As the islands are still growing and moving slowly eastward with the underlying plate movement, the newest, tallest and more volcanically active islands are found to the west, with the older, more rounded islands to the east.

Fernandina is a giant cone, with a terrain entirely impenetrable to all but the hardiest of organisms. Shards of lava rock, several times higher than a human, lay jagged and haphazard awaiting erosion and a smoother future. Our experimental plots differ here; hordes of gastropods attracted to the structural complexity of an algal ecosystem growing under conditions of high productivity is one interesting highlight.

Fin whales accompanied our departure from Fernandina and the start of our return passage home.

The Bolivar Channel which separates Fernandina from the largest island, Isabella is a safe bet if you desire sightings of these magnificent animals who take advantage of the incredibly nutrient rich waters here. The same southwest swells which supported our choice of direction leaving Santa Cruz

Ambylyrynchus cristatus, one of the peculiar species from the Galápagos which Darwin referred to in his Naturalist’s voyage around the World in less than glowing terms. “It is a hideous-looking creature, of dirty black colour, stupid, and sluggish in its movements.

Source Photographic Archives.

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a week earlier came directly on our starboard and lended to the dramatic character of the Martian environment as we rounded Cerro Azul, a volcano on the island of Isabella.

Dusty red earth is surreally punctuated by craters and mini volcanic cones in this remarkable corner of the island. This volcano awoke in June 2008 prompting Galápagos National Park personnel to airlift giant tortoises out of the path of the lava flow. These tortoises, which achieved gigantism in the absence of other large herbivores, have a now almost zero success rate breeding in

the wild due to predation of their eggs by introduced rats among other things.

Careful captive breeding programs are proving successful in maintaining some populations.

Station

On arrival home, many laboratory hours were spent in The Charles Darwin Research Station sifting through and processing algal samples. While sea lions and marine iguanas disregarded one another on the dock outside the doors of the laboratory, meso-grazers such as

Marine iguana feeding. Photograph George Karbus.

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Frigate bird. Photo George Karbus amphipods, crabs and gastropods were taxonomically sorted and seaweed dried and weighed for biomass estimation as the science was brought to fruition inside. The research station is located in Santa Cruz Island where a team of Ecuadorian and international scientists work to provide information to the Galapagos National Park Service to guide their management strategies.

The station represents hope for the islands, an institution of objective research supported by international interests. Tourists (some 145,000 in 2006) are encouraged to visit the station to gain an informed perspective of the natural spectacles

that delight them in their time in the islands.

Two innocuous, yet loaded photos sum up and bluntly reinforce a theme of change which drives our current research here. While the voyage I have documented is part of a project headed by Luis Vinueza of Oregon State University and a Galápagos resident, investigating the direction of control of the varying processes which affect intertidal ecosystems, I am investigating temporal changes in these ecosystems, brought about by the anthropogenic and climatic changes realized in Galápagos in the past 30 years.

One of the photos is from 1975 and displays a rocky intertidal thickly carpeted in a brown seaweed, limp and heavy on the rocks waiting for a tide to float its fronds and regain its grace.

The other photo, from 1985 displays the same piece of rocky shore, this time displaying the baldness and hostility of the rock; the seaweed, Bifurcaria galapagensis, disappeared in the early 1980s and the truth is, it hasn’t been seen since.

This is not an intertidal suffering under the strain of an industrialized hinterland. This is Galápagos and this is modern day extinction in the last place you would expect to find it.

Galápagos is becoming more and more represented in the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) ‘Red List’ of threatened species; our work will hopefully better enable us to understand the processes which are nominating species as candidates for this list.

While the demise of the seaweed B. galapagensis is attributed to a failure to recover from the 1982/83 El Niño event, local fishing practices to feed an increasing population are indirectly believed to be affecting others. An oversimplified picture tells that the removal of lobsters that eat among other things, sea urchins, leads to an increase in their populations, which leads to ´´urchin barrens´´, vast sub tidal areas cleared of large seaweeds by the over represented urchins.

The picture needs more resolution, however, and more science. At present, Margarita Brandt of Brown University, Maryland is investigating such interactions.

This is one of the remotest, most biodiverse and forgotten about archipelagos in the world. As The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society proclaims from its offices in Puerto Ayora, the largest town in the islands and my home, Galápagos is the ´´line in the sand´´. If we can’t protect nor conserve Galápagos, where can we?

John Paul Tiernan is an Irish scientist working at the Fundación Charles Darwin, Puerto Ayora, Galápagos, Ecuador.

Whitetip shark.

Photo George Karbus.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 11

A morning with the

meerkats

In zoos around the world meerkats have become one of the most popular attractions. Cambridge student Mico Tatalovic who went to study these social animals in the wild captured some great images, and here, he describes how one of his days was spent in the Kalahari Desert.

5:00 am

The alarm clock is ringing. It’s still dark outside. I get up, take my backpack; quick check: GPS, aerial antenna, scales, data logger...it’s all in there. Walking to the field station from my cabin, I scare a resident porcupine who rushes into the dark. He’s been at it again, digging around a large acacia tree next to the ‘farmhouse’ where the field station is based. I hop over the hole it dug and enter the farmhouse.

The eggs are already boiling in the kitchen. Three, four, five... I put an extra one in: the resident volunteers don’t always put the eggs in for us visiting researchers. I take my cereal bowl and

squeeze between two Earthwatchers on the worn-out sofa in the living/ dining room, the main social space at the field station. “So, which group are you going to today?” I mumble, still half-asleep. Earthwatchers pay a lot of money to visit and take part in research on the wild meerkats of the Kalahari Meerkat Project.

The Project was set up by the University of Cambridge and has been running ever since with the help of volunteers who come mainly from UK and Australia. Volunteers stay for a year collecting daily detailed data about all aspects of the lives of several groups of meerkats. They

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 12

collect background data using the ad libitum method, which means they observe the whole group and record any interesting events that occur. These may include the cooperative behaviours that meerkats are most famous for: pup-feeding, babysitting, sentinel behaviour, burrow maintenance (social digging) or allogrooming (grooming each other). On a more exciting day they will record group battles they refer to as intergroup interactions or ‘iggys’, predation attempts by raptor birds, or a roving meerkat from another group trying to mate with the resident females.

Meerkats (Suricata suricatta) are small, carnivorous mammals weighing on average less than 1 kilogram. They inhabit the arid areas of southern Africa and live in social groups of 2-50 individuals, consisting of one dominant pair and a variable number of related and unrelated subordinate helpers. They are an excellent model species for studying behavioural biology and ecology because they can be habituated to close observation by humans; they are also diurnal and forage in a relatively open habitat and are hence easy to follow and observe on foot. The aspect of their lives that interests evolutionary biologists the most is their sociality. Why do they live in groups? Why do the young adults stay in the group and why do they help each other? What are the evolutionary conflicts among individuals living in groups and how are these resolved?

For meerkats, group living makes sense because there is little available land for establishing their own territories, and the harsh desert environment makes it difficult to survive alone. All adult meerkats contribute to cooperative behaviours, the main ones being pup-feeding, sentinel duty, burrow maintenance and for females allo-lactation (lactating for another meerkat’s pups).

Co-operation increases the pups’ survival, development and subsequent reproductive success, which benefits the group as a whole, because larger groups are more likely to survive.

A meerkat usually has to worry about two main things in life: “Find food. Avoid being eaten yourself”.

Birds of prey, wild cats, jackals, snakes...if it’s bigger than a meerkat and if it eats meat, it’s probably a threat. Living in a group is an advantage; many eyes see better.

But meerkats have evolved an even SPIN

more sophisticated strategy to avoid predation: posting sentinels, usually one but sometimes several at the time. Like soldiers on guard, meerkat sentinels scan the horizon from an elevated post and announce their duty with a special sentinel call, the ‘watchman’s song’. They have excellent depth perception that allows them to detect predators at a great distance. Having a sentinel on guard reduces the possibility of a surprise attack and this allows the rest of the group to be less vigilant.

Having followed these meerkats for over a decade means that researchers know exactly where their territories are, which sleeping burrows they use and the relationships that individual meerkats have within their group.

5:30 a.m.

I start my car, but forget to check where my group went down to sleep last night: quick run to the

Meerkats live in social groups of 2-50 individuals, consisting of one dominant pair and a variable number of related and unrelated subordinate helpers. farmhouse to check the co-ordinates of the sleeping burrow on the wall sheet containing latest positions of all groups. “RB101, where the heck is that?!” As the dry season has lasted for longer than usual, the meerkats are struggling to find food at their regular foraging spots and some groups are moving to rarely used parts of their territories in search of insects and other arthropods, their main diet. Quick look at the map and my GPS to make sure I have the co-ordinates of this burrow and I’m off.

The sun is already rising behind the sand dunes on the horizon. Driving along the narrow sand road I startle a herd of 20 or so wildebeests that were grazing around a water hole. They are lovely animals, much friendlier than

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some of the other large antelopes at the Project. My colleague Matt is lucky to be alive after surprise attack by a semi-tame eland. It’s funny to think that while this Project was still being set up, the Gemsbok National Park researchers had to look out for lions while observing meerkats; it seems dangerous enough with the violent antelopes and horny, testosteronecrazed male ostriches that sometimes charge us here at the ranch.

5:55 a.m.

I park my car under a tree and check my GPS. Another 800 metres to walk before I reach the burrow. I’d better hurry: meerkats usually get up at sunrise during the summer months and they only spend short periods sun-bathing and grooming each other before heading off to forage.

That doesn’t leave me much time to weigh all 25 of them. Weight is used to estimate the meerkats’ foraging

efficiency and physical condition, which are then used in most statistical analyses in studies on their behaviour.

Some meerkats contribute a lot to co-operative behaviours, others don’t: what is causing this variation? Does it depend on their physical condition, hormonal levels, or status within the group? Or could we say meerkats have different personalities, like people? I wonder about this as I stumble upon the sleeping burrow. “Good, they’re not up yet.” This gives me a bit of time to enjoy the scenery, dusty sand dunes with patches of dry grass, scattered with green acacia trees and occasional group of springbok – small colourful antelopes grazing under the trees.

Kalahari Meerkat Project was set up some 15 years ago by Prof. CluttonBrock from University of Cambridge.

In the meantime various collaborations have been fostered, especially with University of Zurich in Switzerland and Pretoria University in South Africa. All meerkats at the project are wild but habituated to people and are easily identifiable by small dye marks painted on them by the researchers and volunteers. These dye marks make for an easy ID check as “head and shoulders” is different from “right rib, right thigh”. Volunteers who spend a year at the project collect various background data on meerkats (collect their weights, mark who the first to get up and last to go to sleeping burrow is, track their use of different burrow etc.) and make sure all the meerkats are habituated. Since most meerkats are followed from birth their parents are known as well as their whole lifehistory. Used to people since birth they ignore us so we can observe them from up to 0.5 m away and walk among the group without disturbing their normal behaviour.

The project manager makes a weekly schedule of group visits to

Collective defence as meerkats gang up on an intrusive snake. allow researchers (masters and PhD students and postdocs) to visit the groups they need for their experiments and to make sure all group are visited at least a couple of times a week by volunteers to keep track of where they go and what they do. In every group one animal has a radio collar that allows us to track them down; also most of their sleeping burrows are labelled with GPS points so it is easy to locate them. All pups are caught and inserted under their skin with an ID microchip in case the dye marks on their fur wear out. Their blood samples are also taken at regular intervals in their lives, both to get their DNA profile and hormonal profile.

This helps researchers to determine relationships within and between the groups and to correlate behaviours to hormones. These captures take only a few minutes to avoid stressing the animals too much.

Researching meerkats involves waking up before sunrise to arrive at the sleeping burrow before meerkats get up. Various records have to be kept such as where they slept, when they got up, how heavy they were (we use small crumbs of hard-boiled egg to lure them onto scales saying “yum, yum yum!”), count and identify

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 14

them all to check group’s composition and then follow them for three hours while they forage for food and avoid predators. When following them we also take regular GPS readings to get the routes meerkats take on their foraging trips. At midday when meerkats have a siesta to avoid the heat of the desert sun we leave to have lunch and return in the afternoon for more data collection. Experiments we do might include playback of their own vocalizations or presentations of predator cues or faeces to observe their response to those.

7:10 a.m.

“Yum, yum, yum, yum...” I tempt another scurry with a bit of hardboiled egg, their favourite fast-food.

“There you go. Wow, you’ve lost a lot of weight since last night!” I keep talking to the meerkat as I jot its weight down in the notebook. As I do this an ‘egg-monster’ jumps in and pushes its brother out of the scales’ box. Weighing is the most intimate and enjoyable time a researcher gets with meerkats; yet it can get irritating.

Some meerkats simply refuse to enter the scales and jump straight out when picked up by their tail and placed there; others are egg-monsters, so hooked on hard-boiled egg crumbs that they keep jumping into the scales and disrupt the weighing of the

They do this especially in the morning when they emerge from the burrow famished, having used lots of energy and lost up to 10 per cent of their body mass as they huddled together to keep warm during the long, cold desert nights. As much as I feel sorry for them, especially the small meerkat that was born without claws and so it finds digging for food in the tough, sun-baked sand difficult, I cannot give them more egg than is necessary to weigh them. As researchers we observe the meerkats but try not to interfere with their lives too much: we even leave pups to die if their group mistakenly leaves them at the wrong burrow. Some find this disgraceful; others accept it as part of the work bioethics. Who is right? I don’t know, but I can see both sides and accept that work with wild animals inevitably invokes such dilemmas. I comfort myself with the thought that my work might at least help provide captive meerkats with better sentinel posts; knowledge of their wild behaviour and natural preferences for choice of sentinel posts may inform how best to keep them happy in captivity.

Today is a presentation experiment day: I am presenting a foreign meerkat’s faeces to this group to see how they react to it. My working hypothesis is that a smell from a foreign group will increase this group’s sentinel efforts: if there is a foreign group around, it’s best to spot them before they spot you. Meerkats are not good neighbours. When they encounter other groups, they do a ‘war dance’ and attempt to intimidate the rivals before engaging in bloody battles that may leave injured and dead meerkats on both sides. It’s not just in their co-operative behaviours that they are similar to people.

I lose the group. Not the best start to the day!

Luckily each group has one individual equipped with a radio collar so they can easily be tracked from up to a kilometre away. Today, though, the group saw something, perhaps a caracal, a medium-sized wild cat, that scared them and they ran a fair distance, leaving me to waste most of the morning tracking them down again. When I finally find them they are already ‘crashed-out’ around one of their sleeping burrows.

Meerkats are especially renowned for taking siestas at unseemly times of the day, disrupting even the experienced researchers’ experiment plans. A few of them are below the ground, two pups are play-fighting and the dominant

female is grooming the dominant male.

It’s a bit late to do the experiment now, since the plan was to observe their behaviour while they foraged.

It’s one lesson any zoologist learns soon enough: even the best planned experiment will only come to pass if the animals allow it.

Web references

For more information about the work of Tim Clutton-Brock’s research group, see: www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/ larg/Pages/ For more information about the Kalahari Meerkat Project see: http://www.kalahari-meerkats.com/ http://www.fellowearthlings.org/ http://www.meerkatsrule.org/index. html

i LIVE LINKS www.kalahari-meerkats.com www.fellowearthlings.org www.meerkatsrule.org/index

8:45 a.m.

“I’ll have to put my name down on rota for next week so that I can do a playback experiment with this group,” I think to myself as I unpack the frozen faeces to present to the group.

Suddenly, I hear a sentinel barking from the top of a nearby bush and the whole group runs off in opposite direction. Struggling to keep up without scaring them as I run after them through the tall, dry sour-grass,

Photographs by Mico Tatalovic

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 15

SPIN

Shocked bugs

devour phosphorous

Seán Duke reports that ’shocked’ bugs at the research lab of Dr John McGrath, QUB, have been tricked into devouring phosphorous pollutants and converting them back into a more useful form.

P

hosphorous is a natural mineral is, costly, and it causes another mined from rock and used problem as it increase sludge in fertilizers, detergents, and by 30 per cent. This sludge even Coca Cola. We humans need it bye-product must then, in turn as part of our diet, as our DNA, for Stored be removed, and the options to do that example, is made up of a phosphorous phosphorous showing up are limited and expensive. backbone, and our bones contain a lot black in this electron microscopic image This all means that industry is of phosphorous. of shocked micro-organisms. crying out for a ‘biological solution’ It is very useful, but it’s running out, for dealing with phosphorous, one that and also it causes pollution when it’s organisms do is that when you shock is chemical-free. There is a biological used up. them, instead of taking a breath, they system on the market for dealing with Once phosphorous leaches into take an intake of phosphorous. They phosphorous in wastewater, said Dr a lake or river systems it can cause store that inside themselves to protect McGrath, but it was developed in the ‘eutrophication’ – which is essentially against these (future) shock events.”

1960s in South Africa, and has been the slow death of the lake. The lake is Dr McGrath began by testing the shown not to work very well in wetter starved of oxygen and light due to the shock technology at a small sewage climates. growth of algae micro-organisms that treatment works, and then moved on Dr McGrath’s approach is to expose ‘bloom’ on top of the water surface. to a full-scale trial at Mullaghglass, micro-organisms to ‘shocks’, such as The algae thrive on the presence of which is close to Lisburn, near Belfast. acidic PH levels. What this achieves, phosphorous, causing a green film on “That has given us some encouraging he said, is that it tricks the microthe water. results. We have managed to increase organisms to ingest phosphorous in Ireland has a significant problem P (phosphorous) removal to about 64 the environment around them, and with phosphorous said Dr McGrath: per cent. Normally a treatment works lock it up in a harmless form.

“There are 496 lakes in Ireland that will remove about 40 per cent of the “It is like you jumping into the have more phosphorous in them phosphorous that comes in.”

Atlantic on Christmas Day. As soon as than there should be under European The European Commission are you hit the water you take an intake of legislation. There are 37 to 40 per cent pushing for 80 per cent of phosphorous breath. But what some of these microof rivers with the same problem.” to be removed from wastewater The major source of by treatment plants – by phosphorous pollution is tightening its legislation under wastewater from domestic the Urban Wastewater sewage. There other Treatment Directive. Dr important place that it arises McGrath said that he has is in agricultural ‘run-off’ looked at applying another from lands where fertilizers ‘shock’, on top of the acid have been used. The shock, to micro-organisms that phosphorous, in both cases, can achieve compliance with can cause major problems. the legislation. He can’t, at the Water companies use moment, say more about this. chemicals to remove The use of micro-organisms phosphorous from which convert phosphorous wastewater. This involves pollutant into a safe, and dosing the water with iron useful form, can also provide chloride, or aluminium a method for recycling of a compounds to precipitate out scarce, useful commodity. phosphorous. The process works well enough, but it Small scale testing at a facility near Belfast has shown that bugs can be ‘tricked’ into devouring phosphorous. Photo: Dr J McGrath.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 16

SPIN

i LIVE LINK

www.hea.ie

GLACIOLOGY

GLACIAL PAST

casting light on modern climate questions

Ice sheets covered Ireland and Britain, but until recently there was little evidence to show how far they extended under the sea. Seán Duke reports that while marine cores are revealing what happened in the past, they are also showing what could occur again.

T

he reconstruction of the extent of the British-Irish ice sheet that covered much of the two islands during the last Ice Age about 20,000 years ago might initially seem like an obscure academic topic holding little relevance to the lives of most of us.

However, such work, which is being undertaken by researchers based at the University of Ulster, could ultimately serve to provide specific answers to some of the most important questions facing us all today. For example, if the Earth warms by 3 degrees C what will that mean for the world’s ice sheets?

How much melting will occur, how fast will it be, and where?

Background

Dr Sara Benetti, UU Coleraine, is one of the scientists working on charting the British-Irish ice sheet.

The better understanding of the extent, the thickness, and the speed of melting that took place for this ice

sheet, she said, can provide clues to the behaviour of important modern ice sheets, like in Greenland and Antarctica. The advantage of studying an ancient ice sheet, she said, is that there is a sediment record laid down over thousands of years, whereas for a modern ice sheet there is no such sedimentary record available.

Glaciologists interested in the British-Irish ice sheet, such Dr Benetti and her colleague at UU Coleraine Dr Paul Dunlop, UU Coleraine, have long suspected that glacial features on the Irish landmass that could be traced to the water’s edge, did not simply end there, but continued into the offshore area. However, there was no way of proving this theory.

This pictured changed in 2002, with the arrival of the well funded Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS).

The INSS surveyed a huge part of the massive Irish offshore, which is roughly 10 times as large as the

Left, vertical section through one of the cores, core material, and recording on board the Celtic Explorer. Top, core locations.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 18

Republic’s landmass (70,000 square km as against 652,000 square km) between 2002 and 2005. This was followed up by another major survey, the Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s Marine Resource (INFOMAR) project.

INFOMAR, in contrast to the INSS surveyed bays near to shore. It began in 2007, and is funded under the National Development Plan up to 2013.

The data sets that emerged from the INSS and INFOMAR were of huge interest to Dr Benetti and Dr Dunlop, as they provided the first strong evidence that glacial features on land, did, as they suspected continue into the offshore. However, good as the marine survey data was, the only way to confirm this was to go to sea, and take some samples.

Celtic Explorer

In the summer of 2008, Dr Benetti, Dr Dunlop, along with scientists from the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI), and a group of eager students, went to sea for six days on the Celtic Explorer research vessel. The primary goal was to take marine core samples in multiple locations to confirm the presence of glacial sediments on the continental shelf.

The group was lucky in that the weather was good, and they worked round the clock until weather forced them to return to Galway after six days. At the end of that time, they had managed to take 52 marine cores in suspected glacial sediment, while another 2 cores were recovered in areas that were of interest to the GSI. There were two methods for taking sediment cores on the cruise. On the continental shelf a machine called a Vibracore, which was supplied by the GSI, was used. This machine takes sediments by vibrating a core barrel into the ocean floor. Then in deeper waters, between 2,000 and 2,500 depth, a piston core machine was used. This latter machine is capable of taking quite long cores in deep waters, without disturbing the sediments.

The core sites were chosen based on the interpretation of ‘multi-beam’ data that had emerged from the INSS and INFOMAR. Multi-beam technology is essentially an echosounding technology where acoustic signals are fired from the bottom of a boat, or from beneath a plane, into the water, where they travel to the bottom, and then bounce back to a

detector. The time that it takes to bounce back provides an accurate indication of depth.

Samples

The samples that were recovered varied in size from half a metre up to six metres in length, and the size was dependent on the nature of the sediments being cored. The scientists decided to open some of these ‘cores’ onboard, splitting them into two halves. This confirmed to everyone’s delight that the features that were suspected as being glacial, were glacial. The interpretation of the survey data was being shown to be correct.

The majority of the cores were not, however, opened onboard. These were kept in storage at 4 degrees Celsius to

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preserve all the chemical properties of the sediment, and brought ashore in Galway, and then transferred to Coleraine. In Coleraine there are cold storage facilities that can preserve the sediments indefinitely. Dr Benetti said they have applied for more funding to take the project on to the next stage of analyzing the cores in detail.

The primary goal will be to date the glacial sediments recovered and the ‘post’ glacial sediments. From that, it will be possible to determine how long it took the ice to melt from the continental shelf (which was on land at the time). From that, the next aim will be to work out how much water was released from the melting of the British-Irish ice sheet into the North Atlantic, and how fast that water was released into the ocean. This data

could be used to determine what is happening to the Antarctic ice at the moment.

Another research goal from the cores is to work out the volume of the British-Irish ice sheet – how thick it was. At the moment it is impossible to say whether it was 100 metres thick or 1,000 metres thick. This precision can only be determined from looking at all the deposits, on land and in the offshore area, and seeing what size the glacial deposits were.

“Also, we are going to look at physical properties to try and work out what type of ice was on top of the sediment when it was deposited?,” said Dr Benetti. “How fast it was moving? If it was there for a long time, or a short time?”

The UU researchers want to be able to have the kind of data on the BritishIrish ice sheet, that will enable them to say with confidence what is likely to happen to modern ice sheets if the world’s temperature increases by say,

2 degrees C. “That is the way we want to go,” said Dr Benetti. “You need to know what is happening to the past ice sheet to tell what is happening to the modern ice sheet.”

The information from the cores collected on the continental shelf and slope could also be useful for geotechnical reasons. For instance, if an exploration company wanted to put an oil and gas rig somewhere in the Irish offshore, they will need to know how stable the sediment is in any particular area.

Future

The research team of Dr Benetti, Dr Dunlop and Professor Colm O’Cofaigh, at Durham University don’t expect to do all the future core work on their own. They would like to bring in other scientific experts. For example, the work determining the volume of the British-Irish ice sheet will require input from scientists with

www.sciencespin.com

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 20

very specific expertise. “The area that we are studying received ice from the northwest of Ireland, but was also possibly receiving ice from Scotland, so we also looking to bring in people who are more experienced in the Scottish ice sheet, and see if we can work together,” said Dr Benetti.

The longer term goal, said Dr Benetti, would be to take more cores, in deeper waters. On the cruise last summer the cores were collected in waters of up to 2,500 metres depth, as the length of the cable onboard the Celtic Explorer was 2,600 metres.

The sediments in deeper waters are finer than nearer to shore, she said, and that means there is potential to collect longer cores. This would help to provide the remaining data that could enable a full glacial map of Ireland – comprising both the onshore and offshore - to be drawn up.

SPIN

Discover Sensors Discover Sensors is a second level Junior Certificate Science project representing a partnership between Discover Science and Engineering, the Second Level Support Service (SLSS), the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) and the Education Centre network. It is supported by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). Since the successfully pilot of the programme in 2006/7, Discover Sensors has registered 195 post-primary schools to date. This project promotes an

investigative hands-on approach

to teaching the junior science curriculum.

It involves training science teachers in the incorporation of data-logging equipment and sensor technology to greater enhance student-centered learning of the junior science curriculum.

On-going support for teachers is provided through the website

www.discoversensors.ie which includes a dedicate Forum for registered teachers and tutors. This will in turn develop into a course management system which helps educators create effective online learning communities.

Further teacher support is provided via face-to-face training days and meetings.

In years 2 and 3 of this project, approximately 40 teachers on the programme engaged in two summer schools (August 2007 and August 2008) in order to become lead and assistant trainers for the project and to work in conjunction with existing Second Level Support Service trainers to provide in-service training days in education centres nationwide to the remaining Discover Sensors teacher cohort.

Discover Sensors is currently piloting the use of a Sensors equipment loan facility, called a Sensors box, which will be available to a number of registered schools to borrow sensor and datalogging equipment for use in their class. Booking

and coordination of equipment is facilitated through the Discover Sensors website. A quarterly e-newsletter is also featured on the Discover Sensors website, in addition to a Members Area for registered teachers.

Non registered teachers can avail of all the information areas of the website, including the quarterly eNewsletter.

Should you be interested in learning more about the programme itself, register your expression of interest on www.discoversensors.ie Existing teachers wishing to expand the Discover Sensors programme in their science departments can also register an expression of interest or contact us directly

discoversensors@forfas.ie

In addition, a new Ask Tom section is available for teachers to key in any query sensor-related on the website www.discoversensors.ie Tom Bolger, Discover Sensor mentor, will respond in the online shared environment – your question might assist others, so don’t hesitate to ask!

Discover Sensors is currently forming a network of Discover Centres. Centres will typically be Science outreach centres/ visitor attractions/parks. Centres are required to place sensor-based, curriculum relevant, exemplar material on their website, accessible to all Irish schools.

They must also facilitate visits from local Discover Sensors teachers and their student in a scientific field trip type scenario.

Killarney National Park is our first such Centre – Keep an eye on the website for the programme to take off!

www.killarneynationalpark.ie

Discover Sensors are very happy indeed to announce the new Discover

Sensors School Award for Science Excellence. The Award is designed to reward schools that make a commitment

www.discoversensors.ie www.discoversensors.ie i LIVE LINK

to embed ICT and the investigative approach within their Junior Science programme, and particularly where all teachers are involved. We are aware that many principals are already supporting such a vision and we are keen to recognise their leadership and the work of their teachers through this award. Keep an eye on the DS Award Section for important information and expressions of interest dates.

An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta & Gaelscolaíochta Teachers can take part in the Discover Sensors project through Irish. The Irish version of the project is provided with the support of An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta & Gaelscolaíochta. Some feedback from teachers:

“There is a tangible excitement and interest with the science investigations.

Often in conventional methods, students stand back. Now, everyone wants to do it! The student response to subsequent evaluation and recap confirms greater understanding.”

“This method of collecting and analysing data is particularly useful for students who find science difficult.

Those with limited skills of graphing can still produce an accurate graph and it does increase their confidence.”

“I now think first of using sensors for all practicals. My seniors think nothing of using the equipment and we often go on to explore lots of “what might happen if” because of the time saving factor of doing practicals using sensors.”

“At the end of the course I feel confident in devising my own investigations and most importantly have greater confidence in problem solving ability when using sensors with the students.”

BIRDS on view

F

or the past 35 years the Northern Ireland Ornothologists’ Club has held an annual photographic competition. The competition has always attracted a great crop of close ups and action pictures, and the internationally celebrated wildlife photographer, Jari Peltomäki said that he had been amazed at this year’s high standard. Jari, who is based in Finland, was invited to act as judge the 53 entries submitted by photographers, and here we show a selection of the winners.

During March the photographs went on show at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra, in Hollywood.

A shag from Farne Island in Northumberland, photographed by Allen Gillespie from Belfast.

David Dugal’s action shot of moorehens at Comber, Co Down.

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SPIN

Cattle Egret photographed by Allen Gillespie in Majorca.

Puffin from the Farne Islands, Northumberland photographed

by Brian McKenna, and below, his shot of Arctic Terns.

Green winged teal at Belfast Harbour Reserve photographed by Danny Boyd.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 23

Waxwing, photographed in Belfast by Danny Boyd.

Ian Dickey’s photograph of Common and Arctic Terns at Belfast Lough.

A Jay photographed in Belfast by Allen Gillespie.

Goldfinch photographed on teasel by Allen Gillespie in Belfast.

Black Backed Gulls at Killybegs, Co Donegal, photographed by Ian Dickey.

The results

Beginners Graham Hall, from Antrim, winning image.

Danny Boyd from Belfast, portfolio winner.

Donna Rowley, from Newtownards, second.

Garry Wilkinson, from Hillsborough, third.

Diane McCormick, from Dungannon, highly commended.

Graham Chapman, from Portadown, commended.

Intermediate Ian Dickey, from Ballyclare, winning image.

Allen Gillespie, from Belfast, Belfast Portfolio winner.

Jon Lees, from Downpatrick, second.

Elizabeth Close, from Newry, third.

Nigel Moore, from Crumlin, highly commended.

Ian Dickey, from Ballyclare, commended.

Richard Smith, from Londonderry, commended.

Great Shearwater on Belfast Lough photographed by Danny Boyd.

Advanced David Dugal, from Dungannon, first.

Brian McKenna, from Newtownabbey, portfolio winner.

Tom McDonnell, from Rathlin Island, second and third.

Geoff Campbell, from Ballycastle, highloy commended.

John Taggart, from Antrim, commended.

Adrian McGrath, from Newry, commended.

Digiscope Allen Gillespie, from Belfast, winner.

Swans on Lough Neagh photographed

by Graham Hall.

Chaffinch at Comber, Co Down, photogrtaphed by Graham Chapman.

Northern Ireland Ornothologists’ Club

www.nioc.co.uk www.nioc.co.uk

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 25

i LIVE LINK

PALAEONTOLOGY

Looking at the evidence in Morocco. The white layer is the Triassic-Jurassic extinction level.

Above this , the brownish layer is from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province lava flows.

Solving he mystery of the

Triassic mass extinction Ticinosuchus: a raiusuchian chases two protosaurs. It was the top predator in its environment.

Helveticosaurus: an iguana sized aquatic reptile of the Triassic that possibly fed on mollusks and crustaceans.

Ticinosuchus: a raiusuchian chases two protosaurs. It was the top predator in its environment. Artworks, Prof Silvio Renesto, Università degli Studi dell’ Insubria.

A huge project is underway at UCD to try and figure out the mystery of why so many creatures died off at the end of what’s called the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, about 200 million years ago. The aim is to compare fossils collected from this time period with the evidence produced from state-of-the-art atmospheric chambers at UCD that re-create ancient climate conditions.

Among the questions that scientists want to answer is, why did the dinosaurs emerge during this time of ‘mass extinction’, reports Anthony King.

D

inosaurs, scientists believe, departed the Earth following the impact of a huge asteroid which devastated the Earth and cooled its climate. Less is known about how the curtain rose on their long reign. What gave these massive creatures the opportunity to rise and dominate the Earth? Researchers believe that dinosaurs got their big break 200 million years during a period of ‘mass extinction’.

It seems possible now that good luck was the main reason the dinosaurs, rather than a rival group, rise to dominance in the Jurassic.

However, by the time dinosaurs got the chance they had been waiting for, they had already been around and evolving for about 30 million years, diversifying from one type into a range of shapes and sizes. But, during the geological period known as the Triassic – between 248 and 213 million years ago – the dinosaurs were still only ‘bit players’.

A group of crocodile ancestors, called the crurotarsans, were in a more dominant role than dinosaurs at this time. The cause of the mass extinction which killed off these pre-historic crocodile relatives, and many other species, is still under debate, but whatever the factors were that caused it to happen, these extinctions opened the door to the dinosaurs.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 26

SPIN

Triassic

If we could travel back in time to a period around the closing stages of the Triassic, we would be able to see bizarre creatures – to our modern eyes at least – such as two-legged crurotarsans with beaks rather than teeth walking around, sharing the landscape with large herbivorous crocodiles covered in protective armour, as well as strange creatures in trees, called monkey lizards, with grasping hands and spines at the end of their tails.

As well as these rather odd creatures we could encounter gliding reptiles, giant pig-like reptiles with jaws equivalent to those of a grizzly bear, and swift predatory crurotarsans with greyhound proportions and pencil-thin legs. In this world, there are also fish-eating phytosaurs that look very like modern crocodiles, while the top line predator to be found are the rauisuchians – a quite fearsome group of carnivores with deep skulls, powerful jaws and long steak-knife teeth. This diverse, odd community of animals also included insects, primitive mammals, amphibians, early dinosaurs and flying pterosaur reptiles.

The mass extinctions when they came, as with most mass extinctions of life in the Earth’s history was quite rapid, not gradual. “Ecosystems are functioning well, life is diverse, then ‘wham’, along comes the extinctions,” said Professor Mike Benton, dinosaur expert at Bristol University. Professor Benton has sought to explain why the dinosaurs won out at the end of the Triassic. The notion that dinosaurs gained the upper hand over the crurotarsans by virtue of being warmblooded is unlikely, said Prof Benton, given that dinosaurs were closely related and, therefore, similar to them.

In fact, many crurotarsans were such ringers for dinosaurs that they were mistakenly identified as such in the past.

In any case, scientists are unsure of whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded or not, as in recent years the idea that they were warm blooded has gained ground. It has been suggested by some researchers that dinosaurs were warm blooded and the crurotarsans – being crocodile relatives – were cold blooded, and this is why the dinosaurs won out.

However, Prof Benton’s position is that the crurotarsans and dinosaurs were so closely related at the end of the Triassic that they could not have major

Fossil plants collected from Greenland revealed a past of luxurious growth. Photo: Paul Olsen.

Living relatives, a Ginkgo seedling, and, right, Lepidozamia.

differences in their physiology, such as one group being warm blooded and the other cold blooded.

At the end of the Triassic, the crurotarsans would have been favourites to emerge as dominant in the Jurassic, rather than the dinosaurs, said Prof Benton. This conclusion was based on comparisons of the anatomical characteristics and body forms of the two groups by Prof Benton and research student Steve Brusatte reported in the journal Science.

The evidence the researchers found indicated that in the run up to the mass extinction, dinosaurs were not evolving faster than crurotarsans, and the crurotarsans had a larger range of body types, diets, lifestyles and

were more abundant. So, what was happening?

Prof Benton believes that the dinosaurs simply got lucky. “The extinction cleared out the majority of the carnivore groups, and allowed the carnivorous dinosaurs to radiate and expand,” he said. Otherwise, the Jurassic, which followed the Triassic and has become synonymous with the reign of the dinosaurs, could have belonged to the crurotarsans.

Fossils

Dr Jenny McElwain, a Palaeobotanist at UCD travelled to Greenland in the summer of 2002 on a fossil quest. Dr McElwain and her colleagues searched for plant fossils in sedimentary rocks

“The fossilised leaves showed that carbon dioxide levels before the boundary were about three times higher than today, but five to seven times higher at the peak of extinction” SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 27

the extinction peak, causing stress to plants. As the Triassic came to an end, the number of species and diversity in the Greenland forests fell, the mix of plants changed, and the canopy became simpler and less layered.

Volcanism

Drs Matthew Haworth and Claire Belcher from UCD Palaeoecology and Palaeobiology Group, examining some living fossils at the Péac (Programme for Experimental Atmospheres and Climate) growth chamber. Photo by Karen Bacon lain down along the margin of a large lake during the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic geological period.

The team wielded that vital instrument of palaeontology – the hammer – to discover the best fossils in what are today river cuttings along a glacial valley. They then excavated metre-by-metre sections, collecting everything of value. “You collect it, label it, wrap it, and then ship it back to the lab,” said Dr McElwain. There was another fossil trip in 2004 to the same location that yielded a massive tonne of material.

The various fossil collections yielded nine snapshots of Greenland as it existed from 210 to 195 million years ago, showing it to be a land of luxurious forests of palm-like cycads and extinct bennettitale trees. Nothing like it exists today, but it is best described – in modern terms - as a cross between the Florida everglades, the cypress swamps of the southern

United States, and the broad leaf conifer forests of New Zealand.

The fossil plants recovered proved their worth when Dr McElwain previously reported a dramatic drop in the number of breathing pores called ‘stomata’ on leaf surfaces from the Triassic-Jurassic time ‘boundary’ – representing ‘ground zero’ for the extinction.

The drop off in breathing pores was important as it indicated that elevated carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere: plants take in this vital gas through their stomata, and have fewer stomata when carbon dioxide levels are high, in order to reduce water loss.

The fossilised leaves showed that carbon dioxide levels before the boundary were about three times higher than today, but five to seven times higher at the peak of extinction.

As a result, global temperatures increased by up to 7 degrees C around

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Dr McElwain’s work had, thus, put global warming at the scene of the crime in terms of what caused the mass extinctions. But, what stoke this worldwide rise in temperature in the first place? The Triassic world was geographically simple, with one huge continent connecting all the land on Earth, called ‘Pangea’.

The break-up of Pangea at the end of the Triassic led to an era of extreme volcanism, as pieces of the super continent – which are now the seven continents - broke free of one another, moving over, under, sliding past, and smashing into one another.

Large swaths of the planet was sundered with volcanoes, spewing out lava and enormous quantities of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other toxic gases. These gases would have retained heat in the atmosphere, thereby creating what’s been called the Triassic hothouse.

About two and a half million cubic kilometres of hot magma – an absolutely enormous quantity in today’s terms – flowed onto the super continent forming what is now called the ‘Central Atlantic Magmatic Province’. Surviving fragments from this province were pieced together by geologists just in the last decade, when rocks in the eastern US, Morocco and South America were dated to around this time. Only then was the huge scale of the volcanism at the time of the break-up of Pangea recognised.

Despite these findings, the reason for extinctions is still debated. “The majority of experts are happy to pin the blame on volcanism, but how it did so is far from understood,” said Paul Wignall, Professor of Palaeoenvironments at the University of Leeds. “I’ve worked on all mass extinction events, but the TriassicJurassic extinction is the most enigmatic and hardest to understand because there is no obvious kill mechanism. One idea is global warming, but warming doesn’t kill much; it’s the environmental change itself.”

Atmosphere

It is something of a Triassic mystery, therefore, that Dr McElwain and her team at UCD are attempting to solve.

Their approach to the problem is to try and revive the ancient atmospheric environment in state-of-the-art growth chambers. Each chamber is a large room where plants are grown, and where levels of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide can be adjusted.

Temperature, humidity and night and day cycles can also be controlled in the ultra-modern chambers, built with the help of a €1.7 million EU Marie Curie grant.

“The idea is to change the atmosphere and the environment to those we believe existed at the TriassicJurassic boundary,” said Dr Matthew Haworth, a post-doctoral researcher on the project. “We then put relict plants, those with a long evolutionary history, into the growth rooms and look at how they respond.” Cycads, ancient conifers, ferns and the maidenhair tree will be grown and the results compared to the Greenland fossils.

Torrents of acid rain washed over the Triassic lava fields and the researchers will be able to simulate acid rain by misting the chambers with water and sulphur dioxide. They will check the effect of a spike in sulphur dioxide, a potent pollutant released by volcanoes, on plants.

Another project will test the ‘thermal damage hypothesis’. Research has shown that large leaves in high carbon dioxide environments heat rapidly and cooling is impeded due to the low density of leaf pores.

Decreased heat loss cause plant

“Their approach to the problem is to try and revive the ancient atmospheric environment in state-of-theart growth chambers”

temperatures to rise to levels where proteins become damaged and photosynthesis is impaired.

Injury from high temperatures in plants, would, thus, be size dependent and there is evidence for this in the fossils. “What we see across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary in early data is a pattern in which large leaf species get replaced by species with dissected leaves,” said Dr McElwain. Thermal image cameras will detect minute changes in leaf surface temperature and the simulated atmospheres will reveal how different gases influence plant physiology and leaf temperature.

If we see a change in leaf shape in the growth rooms, said Dr Haworth, and we observe a similar change in the fossils, we can extrapolate that maybe these were the conditions that occurred during the mass extinction.

The investigation of palaeo ‘wild fires’ and oxygen levels is another area being investigated by Dr Claire Belcher, UCD palaeobotanist. Dr Belcher has reported that oxygen levels at the end of the Triassic were not as low as some thought, and were most likely above 15 per cent. These results were published in the journal Science last year.

Debate

Some experts doubt whether volcanism is the cause of the TriassicJurassic extinctions and one of those is Paul Olsen, Professor of Earth Sciences at Columbia University. “I’ve taken the view that the extinction may have been caused by the impact of a large asteroid, similar to that at the KT boundary (the time period when the dinosaurs died out).” But, Prof Olsen does admit that the evidence for his proposal is – so far at least – weak.

The work at UCD in addressing the mystery of the Triassic Jurassic extinctions has been very valuable, indicated Prof Olsen, particularly the work showing the dramatic changes in temperatures associated with plant extinctions.

“It is wonderful stuff, and some of the best work done on the subject,” said Prof Olsen. The increased temperatures at that time, he said, likely exaggerated the hydrological cycle, with increased wet periods and dry periods. This might have meant that plants had access to plenty of water, but they also had to suffer intense heat. “It may have been lethally hot in the continental interiors at that time,” said Prof Olsen.

The question remains, what kind of disaster did the dinosaurs manage to survive? Was it overheated ecosystems, retreating oceans, poisonous gases, depleted oxygen, raging fires or an asteroid? Whatever the denouement, it took a very long time for life on Earth to rebound, a salutary lesson considering global warming today, and declining biodiversity.

Recreating environmental conditions as they existed millions of years ago in growing chambers at UCD.

Anthony King studied science at TCD and has a masters in science communication from DCU.

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TRANSPORT

Down the

ROAD

In spite of increasing road congestions, air pollution, high levels of CO2 emissions and road traffic accidents, the prospects of road transport in Ireland are not all gloom and doom. Marie-Catherine Mousseau reports that scientists from Ireland have received European standard medals for their innovative road transport research.

W

hether we like it or not, cars have become a central part of our lives. Transportation systems and the routes they use have greatly influenced both how and where people live. In the face of increasingly populated urban centres, efficient road transport means increased mobility, higher speed and more freedom.

Transportation is also vital to the economy – providing access to natural resources, promoting trade, in short allowing a nation to accumulate wealth and power.

But there is a dark side.

Transportation in general, and road transport in particular, increasingly has to face major challenges – environmental, energetic and safetyrelated. Road transport must respond to climate change and pollution concerns, rein in energy consumption and decrease dependance on fossil fuels, alleviate road congestion, and, last but not least, cut traffic fatalities (which cause 40,000 deaths a year in Europe).

“Climate change, increased transport volume in urban centres, transport safety, as well as a sharp increase in need for transport of passengers and goods, demand rapid and efficient solution,” said Mr Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research at the opening of the 2nd European research conference on road transport. This statement illustrates clearly the slogan of the conference: “Greener, Safer and Smarter Road Transport for Europe.”

That’s what we urgently need; but how do we get there? To address this question, the Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2008, which took place last April in Ljubljana, saw an impressive range of experts – from automobile industries, to development planners, legislators, and of course researchers.

New engines, alternative fuels, hydrogen technologies, smart cars, and emissions reduction were all part of the agenda.

Year 2008 awards

Another part of the TRA agenda was to stimulate interest in transport research by spotlighting its most exciting promises. This was the remit of the YEAR (Young European Arena of Research) 2008 Awards. Funded by the European Commission through FP7 and coordinated by UCD, YEAR 2008 was a student competition recognising

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outstanding and creative transport research being carried out by students from all over Europe.

The scope of the event was significant. A total of 28 different countries participated in six categories of transport research. The Gold medal winners, announced at the TRA opening ceremony in Ljubljana, came from France, Sweden, the UK, and Ireland.

Ireland in fact did particularly well, as it was awarded the Gold medal in two categories: “Infrastructure Design & Production” and “Future Visions” – the category for creative ideas where applicants were invited to let their imagination fly and present their vision of where road transport will be in 20, 50 or 100 year’s time…

And Dublin city turned out to be a productive source of inspiration for the young candidates from Ireland.

Tommy, Francesco, Dónal and James’ examples are showcasing road transport research in Ireland, but there is plenty more going on all across the EU. As Professor Eugene O’Brien of UCD Urban Institute Ireland, organiser of the competition, put it: “There is a wealth of Transport research being carried out in Europe’s universities – by students from all over the world.

Our PhD students spend many years developing new processes and techniques to make our roads safer, greener and smarter. It is a goal of

SPIN

the YEAR competition to ensure that they do not work in dark rooms by themselves.”

He added: “This work is important, not just for the work itself, but also for the human resource that it produces.

This new generation of transport experts will be the future leaders in the industry.”

The good news is that there is plenty of room for everybody.

Indeed, the transport industry is the largest industry in the world. From geotechnics (e.g. slope stability) to structures (e.g. bridges), pavements, transport planning and economics, automotive engineering, safety, energy and the environment, the scope is huge and the areas of research numerous to say the least.

But let’s not allow the enormity of the task discourage our pool of young

Future visualization

surrounding soundscape

WE ARE quite familiar with the idea of visualising a landscape. “Visualising” a soundscape however sounds a bit more unusual. This may be one of the reasons why Francesco Pilla got a Gold-Medal in the category “Future Visions”.

Francesco is an environmental engineer who got his degree in Bologna, Italy. In 2007, he started his PhD research in Trinity College Dublin with SFI and the Metropolis (Supercrowds for Multisensory Urban Simulations) group.

Like Tommy’s, his project deals with urban and road planning. But this time it has less to do with optimising the traffic itself, and more with minimising its adverse consequences to ourselves and the environment. Air pollution would be an obvious traffic annoyance to think about; but there is another one maybe not so much publicised albeit very prevalent and annoying – that is noise pollution.

Noise pollution in cities has always been a concern, long before air pollution and even before the automobile was invented. As Francesco put it, “Julius Caesar is believed to have been the first to enact a noise ordinance, banning creaky chariots from barrelling around Rome during night time.” Noisy chariots are no longer an issue, but as cars became prominent obviously things haven’t improved. Some two thousands years after Caesar’s noise ordinance, the EU has issued an Environmental Noise Directive (END) to help control and mitigate the noise problem. “The END forces competent authorities to prepare noise maps of certain areas,” Francesco explained. “As a result, noise maps are now available for all the main cities in Ireland.”

Another central premise of the END is public involvement. This requires that all information must be

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researchers. If they keep up the good work, then who knows better more efficient transport in Ireland and elsewhere may be just down the road.

presented in a “clear, comprehensible and accessible manner,” Francesco continued. Noise maps, however, hardly meet this requirement. “A noise map is a very technical paper with noise information on it,” Francesco explained. This is basically a 2D representation of a city or part of it where decibel levels of different areas are noted. “But for many people 50 db doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “My main concern is to explain to people what 50db means.”

So Francesco came up with an innovative and futuristic means of displaying noise – one which is more direct, engaging, realistic and intuitive, and also interactive. “What I’m doing is presenting realistic sound in a 3D virtual environment,” he said. “The three dimensional representation of results is an ideal presentation tool for those who are unaccustomed to two-dimensional drawings. It allows a sensory experience.”

Francesco’s idea is then to show the generated noise map to people, to let them ‘experience the noise.’ “People would be able to walk through an environment – similar to a video game – and hear the sound,” Francesco said (they work in coordination with the Computer Sciences department which provides the 3D environment, and even with the Psychological Department to predict crowd behaviour).

The approach is two fold: it is based on noise mapping and actual sound recordings. “The map is made by one of my colleagues and I’m recreating the sound.” To produce the noise maps, they have their own software, where they can enter all relevant parameters – car frequency, data on the ground surface, building height.

The programme processes the data and simulates the noise. At the moment Francesco has already simulated the ‘background noise’ in a virtual

representation of an urban scenario surrounding tCD. the next stage is to add what he calls singular sources, such as a car passing by, people walking etc; so Francesco goes out recording the sound. “the methodology has the advantage of being a truly interactive realistic environment and therefore offers a level of environmental realism that current noise mapping studies fail to deliver.” he added.

“the model we are creating is web-based, because it’s important to get through to the public and get them involved in the planning process – in line with the eu directive.” Indeed, such a model would help politicians and the general public figure out the impact of the changes planned for a particular area. “If they want to build a noise barrier, you can include it in the model and hear the benefit that you would get from it,” Francesco

Aerial LIDAR

geometric approaches PhD stuDent tommy Hinks was awarded the YeAR 2008 Gold medal of the category ‘Infrastructure Design and Production’ for his research on Aerial LIDAR conducted in uCD. LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. In many ways it is similar to RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging). Like RADAR it is a ‘remote sensing technology’, but instead of emitting radiowaves, it emits light (shorter wavelength) in the form of many short laser pulses aimed in many different directions that bounce off the surroundings. timings are converted into distance, thereby creating a 3D view of the surrounding. “Over the past few decades laser scanning has evolved into a formidable tool for rapidly and accurately recording 3D point data,” tommy commented. tommy applied this technology to “capture” Dublin – that is to create a virtual city model of the Irish capital.

For this he had to go airborne. “It

takes one day – 15 hours – to do one building from the ground, going all around the building with a scanner and a tripod,” he said. “But if you do it from a helicopter, in one day you can do an entire city – that is thousands of buildings.” tommy and his team didn’t invent the technique of aerial LIDAR, but they improved it greatly.

He explained: “Directly beneath the scanner it’s very difficult to pick up a wall, because the angle is very oblique – basically, data beneath the scanner is dead. What we have done is design an overlap scheme which allowed us to transfer the data from good areas to bad areas. As a result sampling becomes more homogeneous.” He added: “This means extra flight time but what we gain in quality is worth it.” In other words, they optimised the path of the helicopter and the processing of the data. thanks to tommy and his colleagues we now have not just the roofs of Dublin,

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explained. It may also be used to highlight to people the impact of different traffic management scenarios on the sound environment. It may even help them choose their house by experiencing directly its surrounding noise without having to leave their computer!

The benefits of Francesco’s technique could even extend beyond noise. According to him, it could be adopted in the future to include other environmental information such as air pollution. “such a tool may fundamentally change the way in which planners communicate ideas and developments to the public – by modelling the built environment and being able to interact within it over the web,” he concluded. since then Francesco started up a company in Dublin on noise consulting. “Although Infrasonic is a consultancy we are involved in research based projects. these aim to not only provide solutions to acoustic and vibration problems but also to improve the knowledge base of the field.” http://www.infrasonic.ie

www.infrasonic.ie but also the windows, the doors, the pillars. tommy acknowledged that “the maths involved were quite nasty.” He has a Masters in Computer Graphics (from the university of Linköping, sweden – he’s swedish) which helped.

His research also involved two departments at uCD, computer science and civil engineering. But everything at the moment remains confidential.

“We had to hire a company to fly the helicopter and get the data, but they were not told what they were doing, they just knew that they were flying in a particular pattern,” tommy said. that’s because tommy and his colleagues intend to patent their technique as they have more ideas about how to process the data. “We are getting the patent; it’s very close.” he indicated.

But before that, they are expecting results on another aspect of their research. Beyond optimising flight paths, they are designing a new method of extracting the relevant information from all the data. “the amount of information recorded during a city flyover is staggering;

reaching billions of points for a single city.” Tommy pointed out. So what they are trying to do is to transform these vast amounts of point data into more visually pleasing and accurate models. “Because current techniques do not expect fully 3D point data, they fail to exploit this aspect.” he said.

“Points of different buildings tend to mix together – you don’t know how the points are connected and which point belongs to which building,” he continued. “In order to get an accurate visualisation we need the surfaces.”

Promising progress is expected with ‘geometric reasoning’ which has the potential of identifying surfaces.

“Using a completely new approach to identify vertical surfaces, we can identify building outlines in a more robust way than with previous methods,” Tommy explained.

“So the next step of our research is automatically generate models like the ones in Google Earth,” he continued.

The difference is that with Google Earth the images are made by hand by individual users. The data there

Body-in-white design Tommy and Francesco were actually not the only winners from Ireland.

Dónal Gildea won an iPod nano for coming second in another category: ‘Automotive Design and Production’.

Indeed, optimising transport solutions is not just about optimal transport routes and planning. At the heart of the matter, there is the vehicle, and at the very heart of the vehicle there is the ‘body-in-white’. “The term ‘body-in-white’ (BIW) is used within the automotive industry to describe the structural body of a vehicle,” Dónal explained. It is the core, the ‘bodyshell’, where all the various components (engine, suspension, interior trim etc.) are attached. And it is quite sophisticated in itself. “To form the bodyshell of a mediumsized vehicle, the construction typically involves the need to join approximately 300 stamped sheet metal components together,” Dónal said.

“This bodyshell represents the heaviest singular component of a vehicle and has the largest influence on many of its key attributes – including handling and crash performance,” he

continued. In other words the BIW is a critical component of a vehicle, a determining factor for its safety, but also for its energy consumption. This is simple physics. The lighter you can make it, the less energy it will require to move it. And the stronger, the safer.

So to combine safety and energy efficiently, you have to make it both light and strong which may appear as a challenge as to the materials used. “Environmental legislation and safety performance has provided the motivation for many recent developments within the field of BIW construction,” Dónal explains. “In order to meet these objectives, car manufacturers are incorporating an increasing amount of high strength steel (HSS) into BIW structures.” Use of HSS means that thinner, lighter components can be substituted for those thicker, heavier conventional mild steel ones.

The results is that more and more types of materials are used– mild steels, high strength steels, as well as extra high and ultra high strength steels – all included in a single BIW structure. This also means that a wide

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is not verifiable, and not necessarily homogeneous with regards to level-ofdetail. “Imagine, with our technique in a few hours you get thousands of buildings, top quality, centimetreaccurate representation. It’s automatic and much more efficient – an entire city in one day!”, Tommy concluded.

He hopes that in a few years time detailed digital city models will be available for everyone, from urban planners to game designers.

range of joining technologies is now required to assemble these numerous material types. “A typical car body will now contain any combination of spot welded, mIG welded, arc-welded and more recently, laser welded joints,” Dónal explained. “mechanical joining methods such as clenching, riveting, nuts and bolts are also utilised in numerous applications,” he continued.

In fact, there are no less than 20 different joining technologies which on average are now required for the production of one BIW structure. This evolution has greatly complicated the task of the automotive designer.

“Selecting the optimal joining technology for a particular component is at present a very time-intensive task which relies greatly on the personal experience of the designer,” Dónal explained.

So Dónal thought about a systematic way of picking up the appropriate joint technology – a design methodology, as he called it. “When you design a car, there are many parameters to consider, and we cannot consider them all,” he said. “So we tried to establish the minimum parameters that are needed to identify the suitable technology – such as joint length/type/accessibility, material combination/thickness, or degree of permanence. These are the key parameters.” He continued: “That is the process side of it. Then we had to factor in economic data. What I’ve done is to establish the cost of making a standard join for each joining process and each material combination.”

The result is a user friendly database on microsoft Access which guides the designer all the way through the selection of the best technology, “thereby reducing design effort and development time,” Dónal concluded.

Dublin bus routes

a collaborative effort Dublin city was also inspirational to James Decraene. Even though he did not win any prize, James is still very happy he has been preselected for a project which happens to be more closely related to transport as well as a very much longed for map of Dublin bus routes.

James Decraene was born in France to a Chinese mother. He lived in the uK, then in Canada, before starting his PhD on artificial life in DCu, Dublin. but the reason James entered the YEAR 2008 competition had nothing to do with artificial life. James set out to draw all of the routes of the Dublin bus system. “The idea came up after my girlfriend had a bad experience using Dublin bus. She was to go to an interview in a part of Dublin she did not know. She eventually managed to find the right bus but could not figure out where to get off; she ended up missing her stop and missing the interview.” unlike Tommy and Francesco with their Dublin 3D visualisation projects, James did not use any fancy technique or complicated maths. His idea was similar to the “Wikipedia approach”. He set up an interactive website where fellow-Dubliners were encouraged to participate and send him the routes they knew. in a few months half of Dublin bus routes were already online, integrated with Google

Map. The system even provides for the inclusion of additional data such as bus timetables or station locations.

“The Department of Transport told me they intended to draw up a similar plan of all Dublin bus routes,” James said. “but it’s been nearly two years now and they still have not developed anything similar. There is today no online/offline map of the public transport network.”

Surely, they didn’t take the collaborative approach. As in Tommy’s project, Dublin served as a pilot study to show that the concept works.

James demonstrated that using a collaborative approach to provide optimal transport planning is efficient and applicable to other cities. What’s

more, behind this concept there is the potential to quickly identify ‘hot spots’ where transport is deficient.

“Conventional systems have a significant lag time in identifying these problems,” James explained, “our system is highly reactive, so it can intervene faster before things go out of control.”

He added: “i think the important idea here was to show how through a collaborative approach, critical data could be obtained – and not only bus routes. This approach could be used to gather other information, e.g. traffic, to do efficient transport planning and conduct further studies.”

James may not have won the final prize, but his achievement is still worth noticing. He had no funding and did it in his spare time. With almost no marketing he’s getting around 10,000 unique visitors per month.

See http://mkmap.com/dublin

http://mkmap.com/dublin

Science community notice board Want to reach everyone involved in the sciences? Science Spin is providing free space where your notices will be seen by thousands of visitors to the www.sciencespin.com web site. Short notices of interest to the Irish science community are now being accepted for inclusion on the web site and as with our existing DIARY of science related events, there is no charge for inclusion, but notices, which must be non-commercial, are limited to 100 words max.

Notices can be about events, opportunities, special interest courses, appointments, or vacancies, in fact anything of interest to the science community and readers of Science Spin.

Submission of notices is quite simple. Just email not more than 100 words of text to sean@sciencespin.com and we do the rest. Your notice will remain up on the community notice board for one month.

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REVIEWS

Lab coats and lace IN Lab coats and lace, we are introduced to a remarkable group of individuals, including Aviatrix Lilian Bland, an active all-rounder, who built her own aeroplane, the fabulous Boole sisters, and Anne Jellicoe, foundress of Alexandra College who wanted women to have careers rather than “straining after vacous and useless accomplishments.”

There have always been those who made their mark, but the difference with the women in this book is that they refused to be trapped by the gender conventions of their day. Some of these conventions may well have been as new to men as they were to women, for until the late 19th century few would have considered science as a profession. As soon as the sciences started to become divided out among the emerging professions, the closed shop, which we still, unfortunately have with us, came into play. Men were expected to bring in the money, and it was relatively easy to exclude competition from capable women, yet that attitude was already at odds with the underlying drift towards independence and individual responsibility. Liberation, after all was never just a women’s thing, and that freedom to choose is, in reality, just one end of a long process that has brought us, at least in this part of the world, from Renaissance to Reformation, and from Reformation to the French Revolution.

Of course, liberation for women often means that they are now free, like men, to be bound by wages to the wheel of work, and while we have to accept that a higher mortgage is the price we pay for a double income, we can also acknowledge that people in this part of the world do have a lot more freedom to be themselves now than they ever had in previous generations. Women often value that freedom to such an extent that they often choose to work for less than the weekly cost of keeping the kids in play school, so obviously the social drift still has some way to go.

In presenting us with a dazzling array of talented women, who indeed deserve to be celebrated, there is an implied assumption that men conspired to create and perpetuate a highly

unsatisfactory state of affairs, but it has to be remembered that boys learn a lot from their mothers.

I think one of my grand-aunts was fairly typical of her generation in rejecting the offer of a teaching post in one of the recently established Queen’s colleges, with, I have to assume, a haughty sniff that ‘ladies don’t do that sort of thing.’ Again, I must presume that what she really meant was that this was a job for a man.

Then, of course, there were those dreadful harridans who went about pinning white feathers on men who refused to “do their duty” by going to war. In a way these women were simply trying to outdo the men in reinforcing whatever was seen as the political correctness of their day.

The great thing about the women in this book is that they could rise above all those daft but correct conventions, and significantly enough, quite a few came from free-thinking families. For example, Kathleen Lonsdale, 10th daughter of the Newbridge postmaster, recalled how her mother wept for the ‘poor German boys’ who had perished when their airship, which had passsed over their house in London on a bombing raid was shot down in flames. That ability to appreciate the broader picture is likely to have been a formative influence on the young Kathleen, who, when told by her head master not to take physics, had the good sense not take his advice. It was more important to do what she thought was right, rather than what she was told.

Family approval makes a big difference, and in the forward, historian Aileen Fyfe notes how previous generations might not have welcomed reforms that could set their sons and daughters free. “Most working-class parents saw little reason for their children to learn skills that would not help them to become better spinners, colliers or farm labourers.

Some aristocratic parents, confident of their place in the world, equally saw little need to educate their children.”

So, as in most revolutions, the banners of reform were held aloft by those caught in the middle, the shopkeepers, the Quaker traders, and

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 36

the upwardly mobile self-improvers.

Then, as now, knowledge was seen as the way to independence and prosperity.

Clara Cullen, in her contribution to the book, describes how the notions of equality and inclusion were core values in an institute established under the scientist, Robert John Kane in the mid 19th century. Originally set up in 1854 as a showcase museum for Irish geology, the institute in Stephen’s Green, Dublin, soon evolved into a centre where anybody interested in science, regardless of who or what they were, could come and quench their thirst for knowledge.

In time, this institution became the College of Science, which in turn became part of University College Dublin, and throughout these transformations, a tradition of equality survived. When the College of Science building in Merrion Street was being vacated as the university was moving out to the green fields of Belfield, three of the professors, Clinch, Humphries, and Philbin, were women. It is probably also more than coincidence that Professor Phyllis Clinch was a past pupil from Loretto on the Green, next door to what was the original Museum.

Not that having three distinguished, and very popular, professors at UCD meant that women, at last, were being treated fairly and as equals. As Éanna Ní Lamhna pointed out in her contribution, Professor Philbin, unlike other members of staff, had to pay full fees for her own student children.

Clinch and Humphries, although SPIN

REVIEWS they mothered their students, never married. I don’t know if they ever wanted to, but at the time, having any kind of career would have made that difficult. It seems to so stupid and backward when we look at it now, but until quite recently the marriage cert was almost as good as a letter of resignation.

With a few notable exceptions, I don’t think most of these women would have seen themselves as social reformers, but just by being true to themselves, they undoubtedly inspired others to follow.

Aleen Cust, daughter of a landowners’ agent in Co Tipperary, simply wanted to be a vet. Clair

O’Connell describes how with enormous perserverence and a great deal of personal hardship, Aleen completed her studies at Edinburgh only to be denied the right to take the final qualifying exam. So, although fully trained in the 1890s, she could not actually refer to herself a vet until formally recognised as such in 1922.

Strange that this is now one of the professions, like medicine, where there has since been a complete reversal in the gender balance. How much of this is due to the pioneering examples, or the enlightened attitude of the 19th century reformers who believed that science should be accessible to all is hard to tell, but it does seem that

Geology and religion THE last thing most geologists would have on their mind while out prospecting would be religion.

However, the issue was not always so irrelevant, and indeed the survival of the creationists is a reminder of how difficult it can be to untangle the facts from faith.

The stormy relationship between science and religion is part of our history, and not surprisingly, it is a subject of great interest to scientists, historians, theologians and philosophers. During July and August 2007 many of these specialists met for a history of geological sciences conference at Eichstätt in Germany. An appropriate setting, for the university at Eichstätt is a Catholic seminary and is home for a collection of fossils, including the iconic Archaeopteryx.

Presentations from this conference have been published by the Geological Society as a book, Geology and religion, a history of harmony and hostility. Although all the papers have been written in a dry academic style, the book gives a good idea of how close the relationship between religion and science was until well into the 19th century.

The study of geology, in fact could be said to have grown from the old beliefs of creation and the flood.

Stories about creation are universal, and in one form or another they have become enshrined in religion. As far as the faithful were concerned,

the Bible told it all, and while it was a sin to doubt, there were those who wondered how it could all have happened in seven days.

There were also some niggling difficulties such as the belief, prevalent in mining areas of Germany, that minerals had been provided for the use of mankind through the generosity of divine providence. Offering thanks to the Lord was not of much help to prospectors whose concerns were more down to earth than the pastor’s, yet he was the one most likely to collect and display the colourful crystals.

It could be risky to question those who assumed to speak with divine authority, especially among those who read the Bible line by line as the literal truth. The Bible had referred to giants on Earth before the coming of Man, so in 1630 when a massive tooth was unearthed in Tunisia, the French scholar, Peiresc, remained silent on his conclusion that it could only have

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 37

society as a whole had begun to accept that gender discrimination should be consigned, like slavery and child labour, to the dustbin of history.

As before, in the companion book Stars, shells and bluebells, published in 1997, Mary Mulvihill has brought together a great team of contributors, many of whom, as ex students or fellow-professionals were writing about these individuals from personal knowledge.

Lab coats and lace, edited by Mary Mulvihill, was published by WITS. Paperback, €20.

Tom Kennedy come from an elephant, and a very old one at that.

It is remarkable that many of those who took the keenest interest in geology were clerics, and among them the Jesuits played a leading role, arguing that there is no reason to be afraid of what science will reveal because, even if we have problems in interpretation, facts can never disagree with what we believe to be the revealed truth. No wonder the Vatican has always been a bit nervous of the clever Jesuits, but their views certainly helped liberate the facts from blind, unquestioning faith.

Faith is a strange thing, and in case anybody thinks that they remain immune, M Kölbl-Ebert, in his paper, points to how people now believe in science. Referring to his own theological students, he observed that they do not actually understand what science is. “In school their teachers knew everything and they simply had to believe them.” He then added that: “They studied physics, chemistry and biology but never conducted an experiment without knowing how it would turn out.”

That all has a familiar ring to it, so should it surprise us that so much propaganda these days, whether about health or the environment, is being dressed up as, yes, you guessed right, science.

Tom Kennedy Geology and religion, a history of harmony and hostility. Editor M KölblEbert. Geological Society, London.

Hardback, £57.

Photo: Tom Kennedy, Source P A

ENERGY

SOLAR POWER Although bathed in energy, the world is rapidly running out of power. Tom Kennedy describes how Professor Dan Nocera and his group at MIT argue that back-to-nature chemistry is going to solve that problem.

E

ven if we dam every river in the world, cover the hills with wind turbines, and build thousands of nuclear power stations, we do not have the capacity to keep up with the growing demand for energy. At the Science Foundation Summit last November, Dan Nocera, Professor of Energy and Chemistry at MIT, explained that it is simply not possible to get a high enough energy yield from existing technology, and the gap between supply and demand is rapidly growing. “By the year 2050,” he said, “we are going to need about 30 terawatts of energy, that’s double what we are using now, and by the end of the century we might triple the amount of energy required.” As Prof Nocera explained, this is a conservative projection, and “even if we can deliver 100 per cent energy savings, we will still need a lot of energy.”

At present the world demand is about 15 terawatts, and even if the population remained static, millions of people would still be left waiting for the sort of connection that we in the west take for granted.

The drive to replace existing energy sources, said Prof Nocera is not going to solve our problems, and he dismisses many of the claims being made for the alternatives as fanciful.

To take biomass as an example, he said we would be doing very well to get a one per cent energy yield. “The whole thing about corn ethanol, is ridiculous,” he said, “people push it because there is money to be made.”

On wind, Prof Nocera, waving his hand through the air, remarked, that if it’s so easy to do that, how can we expect to collect much energy? In his view, developers have made a big mistake in scaling up their calculations.

“The experts have got it right for small groups of mills,” he said, “but on a larger scale, these calculations will not hold up. Energy has already been extracted from the wind, so there is less for the next wind farm.”

The biggest problem is one of scale, and this even applies to nuclear power. “The problem with nuclear is that you can only put out a gigawatt,” he said. On that basis, it would take 8,000 nuclear stations to generate

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 38

eight terawatts, and that still leaves us short, which leads us on to some startling conclusions. To meet existing world demand, “you could end up building a new nuclear plant every 1.6 days for the next fifty years. Then, of course, you would have to start decommissioning. Nuclear plants last about 50 years, so its not just 1.6 new plants for the next fifty years, but forever.”

Not that Prof Nocera wanted to throw cold water on everyone’s expectations by showing up the errors in over-optimistic calculations.

“Everything should be on the table,” he said, for there is no one single fix available to us, and besides, western society is not just going to walk away from a massive dependence on grid-based technology. “Three billion people in the developed world are doomed to the grid,” quipped Prof Nocera.

If something works, use it, is Prof Nocera’s advice. However, he does not believe that the sums can ever add up unless we can come up with a more efficient way to harvest

energy. That energy, he said, is there for the taking. The world is bombarded with more than enough solar energy to meet almost any demand, but at present the most we can recover is ten per cent, and unless we have efficient storage, a high proportion of this is going to go to waste. “Storage is one of the big problems,” said Prof Nocera, and to give some idea of the current limitations, he mentioned that if America has to depend on pumped storage, the 639 sq km Lake Mead reservoir behind the Hoover Dam would have to be emptied and filled five thousand times a day.

We hear a lot about battery improvements, and again, Prof Nocera, while acknowledging their usefulness, said we should not pin too many hopes on them. The improvements we have seen, he said, are in the speed at which they can deliver power, rather than any increase in energy density.

So, where does that leave us?

Strangely enough, the solutions, both to capture and storage, has been staring us in the face, and as is often the case, Nature got there first. Photosynthesis converts solar energy into chemical bonds, and guess where that energy can be stored so efficiently that enough can be released from less than a litre to enable us break the speed limit. The highest energy density that we can get, said Prof Nocera, is in chemical bonds.

“It is orders of magnitude bigger than other energy storage forms,” he said, “Society already has this figured out,” he said, “because most of our stored energy is not from batteries, but from chemical fuels. That’s a bias I have, and that’s a bias Nature has.”

When it came important to store energy, it would have been just as easy for Nature to arrange transfer of electrons across membranes, and indeed, while that mechanism exists and is essential for life, it is not used for storage. Nature saves energy in chemical bonds.

As Prof Nocera notes, the process is as elegant as it is efficient. “When you burn a fuel, nothing exotic happens,” he said, “you just rearrange bonds,” and extract the spare energy.

Nature, said Prof Nocera, choose water for a very good reason, and not just because of its abundance. “In one litre you have thirteen megajoules,” and he commented on how this knowledge made him look at swimming pools with something akin to awe.

At the SFI Summit, Prof Frank Gannon, and, right, Prof Dan Nocera.

Water comes into the energy equation during the first stage of photosynthesis, and as Prof Nocera observed, most people only think of this process in terms of its final products. As far as he is concerned, the earlier part of the process, where hydrogen is split from oxygen is of bigger interest, because a lot of what follows goes into making sugars, starch and fuelling growth. Sugar is an energy store, but from our point of view, far from ideal, so Prof Nocera’s group at MIT has been concentrating on the catalytically assisted splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen. Working with Matthew Sanan, a post doc, the group developed catalysts from cobalt, phosphate and platinum with some very useful properties, not least being activity at normal room temperature.

As he remarked, the artificial photosynthetic system is quite easy to set up and is very efficient way to make hydrogen and oxygen. For a small input of energy, their relatively simple laboratory apparatus splits water into oxygen and hydrogen.

There, the parallel with photosynthesis ends, for Prof Nocera’s group does not want to lock the Small scale generation of power is likely to be the way to the future, but as Prof Nocera commented, we in the west are condemned to the grid. As we try to patch on extra generation capacity, people in less developed parts of the world may end up with an advantage as local schemes could give more security of supply. With synthetic photosynthesis, said Prof Nocera, “five litres of water could turn a house into a combined power and gas station.”

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 34 Page 39

hydrogen up in sugars or end up producing alcohols. At this stage some attractive options start to open up. For example, the hydrogen could be used directly as a gas fuel, or the gases could be used in fuel cells to produce energy, but Prof Nocera does not think this is the best way to go. “A lot of people argue in favour of using the hydrogen directly,” said Prof Nocera, but “I would prefer to take the hydrogen and combine it with carbon dioxide and make a liquid fuel.”

As he observes, we are well accustomed to liquid fuels, they are easy to transport and store, they are packed with energy, and in this case, with artificial photosynthesis, the process is totally non-polluting. “I take light and use it to rearrange the bonds in water, and when the hydrogen and oxygen recombined, you get water back again. You are not even using up the water.”

So, if this is so good, how come we are not using it? Up to now, said Prof Nocera, the problem has been cost, but the new lower cost catalysts, that can work well at normal room temperature, are likely to get over that problem.

At present synthetic photosynthesis has an overall 18 per cent efficiency, and Prof Nocera believes that this is all we need to meet our projected energy needs. Hot deserts, he remarked, could become highly productive sources of liquid fuels.

Science, he said, can deliver on solar power within twenty years. Admittedly, there is a lot of work for the chemists, but just how fast they can work depends on just how willing we are to support what they are doing.

SPIN

TRAINING

Speaking SCIENCE Scientists in Ireland have long been wary of the ‘media’ and its potential for harm. There has been little appreciation of the benefits that come from media coverage.

The fear some scientists have of being misunderstood or misquoted is very strong. There is an understandable dread of a reporter getting the facts wrong, or trying to overstate the importance of the research. This could be damaging or embarrassing.

The basic thinking is that if the research is not being explained to the public, and its importance outlined, then government might not be inclined to continue funding it.

The pressure is there, and researchers who don’t communicate will suffer accordingly. There are various ways to do it, but perhaps the most powerful way is via the media.

That said, scientists have every right to be afraid of the press.

There is no media training provided for scientists based in Ireland, to help them get over this fear.

This mindset is unfortunate, as there are major advantages to be gained from interaction with the press, and, if things are handled correctly there is no reason at all to worry.

The researcher is often left entirely to their own devices when they receive a phone call out of the blue from a journalist. In such cases, misunderstandings can happen.

However, the reality of the situation today is that scientists really are not in a position to decide whether to communicate with the public or not. They are compelled to do it.

The misunderstandings often arise from situations where the scientist and the journalist do not fully understand where the other person is ‘coming from’.

Certainly, funding bodies such as Science Foundation Ireland, and the Higher Education Authority, are very keen that scientists communicate with the public.

The journalist wants the scientist to say something definitive, certain - while the scientist is trained to be cautious, to understate, and say more research is needed.

They want very much for the public to know about the quality of research happening here, and how that can impact on all our lives. They believe this is absolutely vital.

The best relationship between journalist and scientist comes when each understands the other, and their needs. If this is achieved, then long-term connections are made.

Speaking Science: Communication Training Workshop for Scientists Scientists today must be adept at making the case for funding, for without funding, nothing can be achieved.

DKS, the publisher of Science Spin, is offering the Speaking Science Communication Training Workshop to help scientists improve their communication skills.

The primary focus of the workshop, which is designed and presented by Seán Duke, Joint Editor of Science Spin, is to help scientists reach a number of key audiences.

These audiences include:

l l

The representatives of the funding agencies.

People in industry that might want to collaborate on research projects.

l

Venture capitalists considering investment in a good research idea.

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The general public, who ultimately fund much of current research.

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The media, in all its forms, TV, radio, print, and the scientific press.

The groups that can gain from this service include:

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Full-time members of staff working at third-level institutions in Ireland.

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Researchers working in industry (the emphasis here is on communicating with third-level researchers and the public).

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Doctoral or post-doctoral students interested in gaining a useful skill for their future careers.

If you are interested in attending a workshop, or require information on group bookings please contact Alan Doherty, Business Manager, Science Spin, E: alan@sciencespin.com, T: 01 2842909.

SCIENCE ON SCREEN Seán Duke talks about science and research on TV3 Ireland AM. Broadcasting Tuesday mornings every two weeks.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 35 Page 32

SPIN

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

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