Science Spin 40

ISSUE 40 May 2010 €3 including VAT £2 NI and UK

SCIENCE

SPIN

Burren rocks and insects Sensational brain Dusty volcanics

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

3 IN 1 in

Sp Science in Sp School tive Spin Ac

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Calling all scientists!

Speaking Science One Day Workshop Communications training Just for you!

What is it? Speaking Science is an intensive one day communications training workshop for scientists and it aims to help you to tell your stories. If you need to explain what you are doing or if you need talk to the press, this is the course for you.

Who should attend? This course is aimed at staff scientists based in academia, public bodies or industry and 4th level students, MSc and PhD candidates who need to develop a wide range of career development skills. The ability to communicate clearly is one of the most important of these skills.

Who presents it? Seán Duke, Joint Editor, Science Spin magazine. Seán has fifteen years experience as a science writer and editor. He is also the creator and presenter of Ireland’s only weekly radio science slot on 103.2 Dublin City FM. Seán began the Speaking Science initiative in 2008 in response to the need for scientists to acquire better communication skills. Until now Speaking Science has only been available as an in-house course.

When is it on? Thursday 24th June and Tuesday 21st September 2010. Book early as there is limited availability on each date.

Time: 9.00 am to 5.30 pm.

Venue: Terenure Enterprise Centre, Terenure, Dublin 6.

Cost: €195 per course.

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More information: To book a place simply email Alan Doherty at alan@sciencespin.com choosing either the June or September date.

l Speaking Science can also be held on your own premises for groups up to ten

SCIENCE

Life in the Burren is special because of the rocks.

SPIN

UPFRONT

SCHOOL SPIN

Publisher DKS 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

l SciFest is nation wide. l Is maths the problem? l Debating science issues.

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Introducing the brain

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SPIN ACTIVE

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The second part in a series of articles in which Veronica Miller explains all about the brain, and how it works. Collect the book length series.

A supplement in Science Spin covering applied science and transfer of results into business and industry.

l Opportunities at sea.

l Competence centres

The Burren

Tom Kennedy writes about the rocks.

Insects of the Burren

Lisa Clancy take a close up view.

Volcanic dust

Seán Duke give the background.

Are scientists about to lose control of their data?

Seán Duke reports that freedom of information is a problem.

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Picture research Source Photographic Archive www.iol.ie/~source.foxford/ Printing Turner Group, Longford

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Geological Survey of Ireland

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UPFRONT Open geoscience

Maps and thousands of geological images are available free from the British Geological Survey’s site: www.bgs.ac.uk/opengeoscience The high resolution files include the 1:50.000 digital geomap of Britain.

XY females

IN most animals, including us, it takes an X and a Y chromosome to produce a male. However, as scientists from the French research organisation, CNRS, have found, there are exceptions to this rule in some rodents.

Frédéric Veyrunes from the Institute des Sciences de l’Evolution in Montpellier, working with colleagues from the Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelles in Lyon, found that in the African pigmy mouse, sex is determined by the X chromosome.

Usually, six is determined by a single gene, named Sry, on the Y chromosome. This gene, known since 1990, initiates development of male characteristics. If absent, the gonads develop into ovaries.

Only seven exceptions to this rule are known, all of them rodents. One of these, the latest to be discovered, is the African pigmy mouse, Mus minutoides, a close relation to the common house mouse.

The researchers found that most of the breeding females had XY chromosomes. The sex determination does not seem to involve any mutation disabling the Sry gene, but some other arrangement is thought to come into play.

Molecular biology

SINCE 2004 Ireland has been a member of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL. In February a seminar was held at the TCD Science Gallery introducing the network organisation to the Irish scientific community. EMBL is widely recognised as a world-leading organisation in molecular life science, and through it, Ireland has contact with twenty member states. www.embl.de/

Muostakh Island in an area subject to Arctic gales where the sea is frozen over for most of the year. As permafrost thaws, methane is released.

Methane

FROM time to time the Earth releases gas, and not always from volcanoes. Enormous quanties of methane are trapped by permafrost, and scientists have found that 8 million tonnes of this gas are escaping every year from a large area of the East Siberian Sea. As the permafrost cap thaws, the gas is released. According to a group, involving collaboration between Russia, Alaska, the US, and Sweden, the volume of gas released from this area is equal to the total formerly estimated to come from all oceans of the world.

The findings are among the results of a joint Russo-Swedish Siberian Shelf Study which was completed last year. Although poorly known and inaccessible, the area constitutes the world’s largest coastal sea.

It is not known what the impact of this release will have, but as the scientists point out, sudden releases of methane in the past can be associated with periods of warming.

During surveys, some seawater was found to have 100 times more methane than the background average, and gas from below, bubbled to the surface.

City of Science

THE international City of Science event to be centred on Dublin in 2012 is expected to attract 8,000 participants, and Fáilte Eireann estimate that visitors from abroad will spend in excess of €14 million during their stay.

Tourism will not be alone in getting a welcome boost, and Ireland’s Chief Sciuentific Adviser, Prof Patrick Cunningham, said the five day event will be a great opportunity to showcase what has been achieved in Ireland following a decade of unprecedented investment in S&T. City of Science is to be a major European event, not just for Irish science, and not just for the chosen city, Dublin. A comprehensive programme of conferences and other activities is being planned for venues throughout Ireland. Many of these activities will involve a fusion of arts, history and science, and while the core event extends over five days, the plan is to have a year long programme.

Similar events have been run in Stockholm, Munich and Barcelona, and this year Turin is the host city. The events are organised under the auspices of Euroscience, an association of scientists founded in 1997 and based in Strasburg.

In a similar way to the Olympics, countries must bid for the rights to host the event.

Winning that bid, commented Prof Cunningham, has great significance for Ireland, and the benefits will be felt for many years to come. The collaboration involved in drawing up the programme will remain as a positive legacy long after the main event. www.c-s.ie/cityofscience2012/

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Badger culling Mass extinction

OPINIONS on what caused the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs are divided, but one group of scientists argue that an asteroid was responssible. Researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge, University of London, and the Open University, looked at all the available information, and they concluded that a 15 km wide asteroid ploughed into the Earth with such force that the material thrown up into the atmosphere caused a global winter. The scientists concluded that most of the life on Earth would have been wiped out within days.

Other scientists point to the super volcanic eruptions that occurred in the Deccan Traps of India. These eruptions continued over a period of one and a half million years, spewing basalt across an enormous area.

Scientists who argue in favour of the asteroid view pointed out that although the Deccan eruptions were prolonged and massive, life at sea and on land did not change enough to trigger mass extinction.

Dr Joanna Morgan, from Imperial College London, said that confidence in the asteroid view is high. “This triggered large scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than ten on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which caused tsunamis.

However, the final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs happened when blasted material was ejected at high velocity into the atmosphere. This shrounded the planet in darkness and caused a global winter, killing off many species that couldn’t adapt to this hellish environment.”

One of the telling pieces of evidence to back up the asteroid view is the elevated presence of iridium in rocks from the time of mass extinction. This element is quite rare on Earth, but relatively common in asteroids.

Some geologists argue that the asteroid impact occurred 300,000 years before mass extinction, but according to a paper published in Science by Dr Morgan and the UK group, this dating is an error caused by misinterpretation of geological data collected close to the Chicxulub impact site in Mexico.

BOVINE tuberculosis remains a big problem, and because badgers can be infected, it is often assumed that they are responsible for the spread of this disease. On this basis badgers were systematically culled, but the problem has not gone away.

In Britain, where badger culling has been tried as a way to control the spread of bovine TB, scientists from Imperial College London, claim that this approach does not work. In a report, published in PLos ONE, the scientists studied the results of a large scale field trial undertaken in 1988 to assess the effectiveness of badger culling. During trials, ten areas of 100 sq km were subjected to culling, and compared to similar areas where no culling took place. After one year there had been a 37.6 per cent decline in bovine TB, but this did not last. After four years no benefits in the reduction of disease could be measured.

Professor Christi Donnelly, the main author of the study said that

Nouns and verbs

NOUNS and verbs are processed in different parts of the brain. Two Spanish psychologists and a German neurologist came to this conclusion by observing brain activity in a group of people as they learned new nouns and verbs. The researchers, Antoni Rodrigeuz-Fornells from the University of Barcelona, Anna Mestres-Missé from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, and Thomas F Munte from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Maddeburg in Germany, observed brain activity using magnetic resonance as the group of 21 were learning new words.

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UPFRONT “we know that bovine TB can be transmitted between cattle and badgers, so the randomised badger culling trial was set up to find out if culling badgers would help control the spread of the disease.” Not alone is culling unpopular with the public, but he doubted if it makes economic sense.

“Although badger culling reduced cattle bovine TB during the trial and immediately thereafter, our new study shows that the beneficial effects are not sustained, disappearing four years post-cull. Our new research also suggests that the savings that farmers and government would make by reducing bovine TB infections in cattle are two or three times less than the cost of repeated badger culls as undertaken in the trial, so this is not a cost-effective contribution to preventing bovine TB infections in cattle.”

Publishing thei results in the journal, Neuroimage, the researchers noted that these findings are consistent with the fact that children learn nouns before they start using verbs. Adults also find it easier to react to nouns.

The 21 participants had to learn 80 new nouns and 80 new verbs, and in doing so it was seen that nouns primarily activate the underside of the temporal lobs associated with visual processing, known as the left fusifolm gyrus. New verbs were seen to activate part of the left posterior medial temporal gyrus, which is associated with concepts, and the left inferior frontal gyrus, which is involved in processing grammar.

Science on air

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UPFRONT Bipolar

We live by the biological clock, and this is why travelling across time zones or working odd hours can be quite a strain. Upsetting this circadian clock can have serious consequences, and according to a report in the journal, BMC Psychiatry, malfunctions may even be responsible for causing bipolar disorders in children. The bipolar disorder, which varies greatly, is characterised by alternating bouts of depression and mania.

Alexander Niculescu from the indiana University School of Medicine working with researchers from a number of US institutions found that alterations in a particular gene, RORB, were associated with bipolar conditions in children. This particular gene is known to influence our biological clock. Upsetting the biological clock would result in sleep disorders, and it is significant that sleep disorders are one of the earliest symptoms indicating that children have a bipolar disorder.

website: www.gsi.ie e-mail: gsisales@gsi.ie

Carriers

ViRUSeS can be used to ferry drugs into the body, but the need to remove all traces of genetic material has long been a barrier against developing applications. Scientists from the John innes Centre have discovered that genetically empty nano containers can be produced from a plant virus. In publshing their results in the journal Small, the scientists state that the Cowpea mosaic virus is ideally suitable for this application, and they have developed a way to empty the containers. Previous methods, they said, were successful in rendering the containers non-infectious, but they did not leave them completely empty of genetic traces.

Accordng to one of the researchers, Prof lomonossoff, such carriers were not available before, and the development opens up a whole new area of research.

Molecules that act as binding agents can be attached to the surface of these containers, which help target specific types of cell for targeted delivery of drugs. This approach could be of particular benefit in cancer treatments, because many of the treatments in current use also kill healthy cells.

Good neighbours

While it is widely known that plant scents can have a protective function, discouraging predators, researchers in Finland have found that unrelated neighbours can absorb the benefits. in a study published in New Phytologist, Prof Jarmo holopainen from the University of eastern Finland, and Dr Sari himanen from the Agrifood Research Finland, describes how semi-volitale compounds, ledol and palustrol, emitted by a species of rhododendron, Rhododendron tomentosum, were picked up by mountain birch.

Mountain birch leaves growing near the rhododendron were were also found to emit these compounds.

The authors suggest that interaction between plants is something that requires more study. Passive absorption of compounds from neighbours may be a significant factor in how plants establish communities.

R tomentosum is strongly scented, and traditionally it is used in northern households to protect clothing from moths.

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UPFRONT Depression

Dust

SPACE is far from empty, and gigantic filaments of dust extend through our galaxy. The full extent of these gigantic clouds of dust has been detected by the ESA Planck satellite.

The satellite, launched in 2009, takes an all embracing microwave view of the sky, and as it rotates, it sweeps across the Milky Way. In this view, the Milky Way appears edge on as the pink band, and clouds of cold dust can be seen extending out to 500 light years from our own position in the Universe. The dust is cold, and in the image, temperature is shown by colour, with the darker pinks indicating just a few degrees above absolute zero. Where the density of matter becomes high enough, stars may form.

Cosmic rays

HIGH energy particles fly through space close to the speed of light, and for a long time scientists wondered what could make them go so fast.

Last December a group of scientists including those from NUI Galway. Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, Cork Insitute of Technology, and University College Dublin, came up with the explanation. According to the scientists, who published their findings in Nature, the high energy cosmic rays are accelerated up to these speeds by exploding stars and stellar winds.

Although scientists had predicted that such forces must be responsible, the evidence to support their theory did not exist because the instruments available were simply not sensitive enough to record the evidence. To overcome that problem more than 100 scientists from 22 different institutions collaborated on the VERITAS project. The project is based on an array of four telescopes, the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array Ststem, VERITAS, located in Azizona. By observing gamma radiation from a distant galaxy, M82, the scientists were able to conclude that this radiation had been produced as a result of acceleration of cosmic rays to extremely high energies.

Two years of data collection and analysis led to this result, and as Dr Pat Moriarty, from GMIT, one of the scientists involved in VERITAS remarked, the project was a good example of how Irish researchers collaborate in world-class experiments.

Lithium

LITHIUM, composed of three protons and four neutrons, was one of the elements appearing after the Big Bang, and for more than fifty years astronomers have been puzzled at how little there is in our Sun. The expectation was that lithium would be more or less evenly distributed amongst all the stars.

In a paper published in Nature, Garik Israelian and a group of astronomers point out that there is a pattern to this peculiar distribution. By using the ESO 3.6 metre telescope, to examine 500 stars, seventy of which hosted planets, the group discovered that those with planets were low in lithium.

It appears that lithium is used up during planet formation, and as yet no one knows why or how that happens. While that remains to be explained, the group have discovered an efficient way to speed up the detection of planet hosting stars.

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BAD experiences in childhood can render adults more prone to depression. Research led by scientists from Trinity College has confirmed that abuse and emotional neglect can cause structural changes in the brain, and these changes can have long term consequences.

Commenting on the findings, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, Prof Thomas Frodl from TCD said this emphasised the need to intervene early in cases of depression. “Prevention strategies for childhood neglect and misuse are highly important to increase public health and to avoid in later life for these individuals, the burden of major depression.�

The study was based on observations on 24 patients who were being treated for major depression, and the structural changes were detected using Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Cilia

AN unusual, but severe disorder, known as the Joubert Syndrome, results in blindness, bone abnormalities, cystic fibrosis, and loss of muscle control. As researchers at the UCD Conway Institute, collaborating with colleagues in Tokyo found, an underlying cause for these prolems is that the hair-like cilia that help cells move and communicate, fail to function properly. The researchers, led by Dr Oliver Blacque report in the Journal of Cell Biology that they were able to trace that failure to a defect in a gene, known as Arl13b.

Cilia are present on many types of cell, and while the researchers at Conway looked at cilia in nematode worms, the scientists in Tokyo conducted parallel investigations on cultured human cells.

The resesearchers found that disrupting the Arl13b gene caused cilia to become mis-shapen. Because the cilia membrane did not develop properly, many of the normal functions involved in signalling and distribution of proteins was disrupted.

One of the results of this research is to show just how important cilia are to our health. It is now thought that malfunctioning cilia are involved in several serious disorders.

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UPFRONT Repetitive

THe natural world is full of repeating patterns, and often the most complex looking forms, whether molecular in size or as big as a sunflowers are built on an endless step and repeat process.

From march to July some of this natural geometry is being celebrated at TCD’s Science gallery. applying the repetitive stitch step of crochet the australian twins, margaret and Christine Wertheim, have recreated coral reefs in wool. The exhibition, strong on feminism and ecology, highlights the impact of climate change on coral reefs such as those off the coast of australia. more than 3000 women have contributed to the making of the woollen reef which has gone on exhibition around the world. Termed, the hyperbolic coral reef, from the mathematical function, the reefs are an expression of hyperbolics in three dimensions. more at www.sciencegallery.com

Well read

SCIeNTISTS around the world are reading about Irish research, especially in the field of immunology. In a review of scientific papers being referred to in the world’s leading journals, Ireland came up third with 590 papers and 14,821 citations. Switzerland topped the list with 3,837 papers, followed by the US with 55,074. most of the Irish success was due to papers from Prof Luke O’Neill from TCD’s School of Biochemistry. eight of the nine most cited Irish papers in the field of immunology were written

by Prof O’Neill.

Extreme ultraviolet image of the Sun recorded by Proba-2. ESA.

Sun

Image processing software developed by space scientists at TCD working in collaboration with the Royal Observatory in Belgium will improve our ability to understand and predict solar storms. The software was one of several new technologies being tested on board the european Space agency satellite, Proba-2, launched last November from northern Russia.

The object-orientated analysis software developed by the team led by Dr Peter gallagher, is now likely to be used on future missions, including the Solar Orbiter satellite, due for launch in 2018. The team have also integrated images from Proba-2 into a space weather monitoring system, www.SolarMonitor.org

deltas Sinking aROUND the world half a billion people live in deltas, and

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according to scientists from the University of Southampton, intense use of resources is causing these low lying areas to sink.

Reporting their findings in Geoscience, the group under Prof Robert Nicholls, found that 24 out of 33 major delta areas are sinking. Over the past ten years 85 per cent of the deltas experienced severe flooding.

Building of dams is believed to be a major contributing factor as sediments that would have gone into delta building are held back. Removal of oil, gas, and water are also contributory factors. Such areas are already under threat from any changing sea levels, but water management on land could add to those problems.

Allergy

aSTHma and other alergic reactions such as eczema can be triggered by an inappropriate response to stimulants, such as dust. In an attempt to understand how this reaction occurs, Prof Padraic Fallon from TCD in collaboration with Dr andrew mcKenzie from Cambridge, looked at how cells respond to parasitic worms. The parasites provoke an allergiclike response, and the researchers discovered that this involves production of interleukin 13 by cells known as neuocytes. according to the researchers, identifying the cells involved in the response opens opportunities for developing more effective treatments for asthma and other alergic conditions.

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School Spin

SciFest showcasing science around Ireland Figuring out a future for maths

School Spin W

elcome to the first edition of the new School Spin supplement, which is aimed at teachers, parents, students, and anyone with an interest in science teaching in our schools.

Here we will highlight the people making an impact on science in our schools. That might be a talented, innovative teacher, an awardwinning ‘young scientist’, or a school that has developed a reputation over time for producing top science graduates.

There is much that should be celebrated when it comes to science in our schools both at primary and secondary level, but serious issues must be addressed properly too.

Above all there is the issue of declining interest in science subjects at secondary level, and the perhaps related question of how to improve teaching standards above the mediocre. Ireland sadly IS mediocre in science, compared to other developed nations.

Why should that be? We are not mediocre when it comes to literacy, where we rank second only to Finland, so why are we falling down in science? It is a key question for all of us, and is linked – the government tells us – to our economic prosperity.

We will provide a platform for some of our best thinkers on this subject to get their ideas and views across on this and on many other topics.

Science Spin wants to play its part in stimulating debate about the future of science in schools, and we would encourage people to submit their views to us here.

Meanwhile, the use of technology in science teaching is moving at a rapid pace. The Internet is now a routine tool, while other newer tools are coming along at breakneck speed. We will keep our readers up-todate with the best of these, and profile how the best teachers are using new technology to good effect in the classroom.

But, above all, the goal of this supplement is to become a forum for everyone interested in the teaching of science to our 4 to 18 year olds. We want you, our readers, to feel that this supplement reflects what is really happening on the ground, that it provides genuinely useful content, and provides a roadmap for where science education is headed.

As editor I’m really looking forward to the challenge in making this new supplement a success. I would encourage anyone that wishes to do so, to get in touch with me with news, or feature ideas, or indeed to offer constructive criticism.

School Spin

April, 2010 Seán Duke Editor, School Spin Email: sean@sciencespin.com

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SciFest 2010 is here It’s SciFest time again, and 2010 has been the biggest year yet, with more students than ever having with opportunities to present their science projects, writes Shiela Porter.

Now in its fifth year, the strength of the SciFest concept – which seeks to encourage more students to take an interest in science – is seen by huge jump in participation levels.

The event at Athlone IT in 2009 involved 206 students and 83 projects. This year, 332 students, and 155 projects were involved at the AIT fair, held on the 23rd April. That’s an increase in the number of students in one year of about 66 per cent.

BACKGROUND

SciFest is a national festival of science organised regionally in collaboration with the 14 Institutes of Technology located around the country. It is open to all second level students and the aim is to encourage a love of science, through project-based learning and to provide more opportunities for students to present and display the results of their scientific investigations.

The SciFest initiative is jointly funded by Intel and Discover Science and Engineering as project partners. It is also supported by a number of other partners, including BT, Diarymaster, Abbot Ireland and the Institutes of Technology. The project, thus, creates a valuable link between the second and third level education sectors and between education and industry.

The inaugural SciFest was held in the Institute of Technology, Tallaght, in 2006, and it was launched on a nationwide basis in September 2007.

It has grown rapidly, with nine ITs hosting SciFest fairs in 2008, while all 14 ITs acted as hosts in 2009. Also in 2009, the first Northern Ireland SciFest exhibition was held in the Millennium Forum in Derry.

In 2009, a total of 1,980 students from 162 schools exhibited 836 projects nationwide in Scifest 2009.

PRIZES

There are lots of trophies and prizes to be won at each of the fairs hosted by the ITs. In each venue, students compete for a number of awards including: Intel Best Project Award; Abbot Runner-Up Best Project Award; BT Best Communicator Award; and the Discover Sensors Award.

The Intel Best Project Award winners from each venue in 2010 will be invited in October – as in previous years – to a special awards ceremony in Intel where they will be presented with an Intel ‘Excellence in Science’ medal.

As part of the partnership with Discover Science and Engineering, a Discover Sensors Award will be presented at each regional event. The Discover Sensors Award is presented to a student whose science project demonstrates a high level of application of investigative science methodologies that include the innovative use of one or more sensors for the collection, recording, and analysis of data. This year also sees the introduction of an additional category for ‘Highly Commended’ students, which will give more students the opportunity to be rewarded for their interest in science.

BLOGGERS

An integral part of SciFest again this year is ‘Project Blogger’, which was run as a successful pilot project in 2008. Through the website http://www.projectblogger.ie students can create individual blogs to record their SciFest entries and to share their experiments with other participating students from around the country. The blogs can also form part of the students’ exhibitions at the SciFest events – tracking the project’s path from conception to completion by uploading images, ideas, graphs and video files.

MATHS

The Project Maths initiative, meanwhile, is a new element this year.

The aim here is to introduce a new approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics that emphasizes the understanding of mathematical concepts and the applications of mathematics.

To support the initiative there is a new award at SciFest 2010, called the ‘Mathematics in Science Award’. At each IT the judges will be asked to identify the project which best illustrates the importance of mathematics in science. An overall winner will be selected by the judging panel, and the award will be presented at the ‘Celebration of Excellence in Science’ and launch of SciFest 2011, both to be held at Intel in October 2010.

DATES

SciFest was held in April at Dublin IT; Galway-Mayo IT; Waterford IT; Athlone IT; Cork IT; and Limerick IT. The dates to come in May are Carlow IT (5th May); Dundalk IT (5th May); IT Tallaght (7th May), IT Blanchardstown (12th May); IT Tralee (12th May); Letterkenny IT (14th May); and the Derry Millennium Forum (21st May).

LIVE

For further information please visit LINK http://www.scifest.ie or contact: Sheila Porter (SciFest National Coordinator) SciFest IR2 – 1 – T22, Intel Ireland, Leixlip, Co Kildare, Ireland Tel: +353 1 6068949 Mobile: +353 86 3796143 Email: sheilax.m.porter@intel.com SchoolSpin Spin School

SciFest at AIT Ireland’s Biggest

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a few short years, the SciFest event at Athlone IT has become hugely successful, and this year it will be the biggest of 14 events held around Ireland, writes Brian Murphy.

The SciFest competition that was recently hosted at AIT on 23rd April was the largest such event in the country this year, involving a staggering 167 science projects.

The question is why has SciFest at AIT gone from strength to strength?

Dr. Don Faller, Head of the Department of Life and Physical Sciences at AIT suggests that one of the key elements of a successful SciFest is having excellent organization of the event itself and in particular giving major emphasis to the judging process.

At AIT, said Dr Faller, everybody is involved from academic faculty to administrative staff to technicians, postgraduate students etc. The panel of judges is carefully chosen for each category, and judges are found in each of the cognate areas, ranging from the hard-core science subjects to the more applied scientific disciplines.

Judges at AIT also include faculty from other Schools and Departments, such as Engineering and Design Technology, which illustrates the importance of giving secondary students every opportunity to show-case their work.

This year, SciFest was officially opened by a former chemistry student at AIT, Jane Collins who is now working as a senior chemist with the hair care cosmetics company, Oriflame. In addition, one of the main sponsors of SciFest, Intel, visited AIT on the day to make a promotional video on Scifest.

Another unique feature of AIT’s SciFest this year was the visit of Randal Henly to AIT, who gave a lunch-time presentation on “Fun in Science” for students and their teachers.

Randal Henly is a former Head of Science at Mount Temple School in Dublin, where he taught Leaving Certificate Physics and Chemistry for 36 years. He was editor of the ‘Science’ for 26 years the Journal of the Irish Science Teachers Association, and the author of a number of leading science textbooks including ‘Chemistry for Today’, ‘Rapid Revision Chemistry’, ‘Physics Today’ and ‘Science Quest’.

Dr. Noreen Morris, the SciFest coordinator at AIT, said the large number of students taking part in SciFest in Athlone this year shows the huge interest in the Midlands catchment area for the competition, and the positive feedback received from previous students who have engaged in SciFest at AIT and their respective teachers.

Dr. Paul Tomkins, Head of the School of Science at AIT said: “The SciFest competition that AIT first participated in, in 2008 has proved to be an excellent, challenging but enjoyable model and forum for second level students to explore research across many disciplines”.

Second and tertiary level education in Ireland should be inherently more connected and SciFest represents a unique opportunity for AIT science staff to liaise with school colleagues and for students to consider whether a future in science is something for them.

It has always been a day to witness enthusiasm, energy and evidence of great work. In previous years, students who participated directly in the competition at AIT went on to present their projects at the BT Young Scientist and Technology competition, which underlines the quality of projects being presented at SciFest at AIT. Brian Murphy is a Chemistry Lecturer at Athlone Institute of Technology

School Spin

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IN SUM

mediocre in maths is not good enough

Irish students are ‘mediocre’ in maths compared to their peers in comparable nations. Tony McGennis, outlines the problem, and explores solutions.

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he problem has been there for a while now. The performance of Irish students compared to their peers in other ‘advanced’ nations is middling when it comes to maths, while our students excel in literacy. The question is why? There is not shortage of opinions, with poor teachers, a boring curriculum and the growing use of mind-weakening calculators to solve maths problems, all coming into the firing line. Here I seek out some answers to this issue, and seek out opinions from maths teacher colleagues.

From the mathematician’s point of view the best way to tackle this problem is to examine the available data, and to use the most reliable possible data. One of the most reputable data sources, to compare student performance in different countries is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA is organised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), made up of the world’s richest nations. It began in 2000, and has been administered every three years since, with 2006, the most recent year for which figures are currently available. Its focus is on assessing the reading, maths and science literacy of 15-year-olds.

In 2006, PISA ranked Irish students slightly above average in their maths performance. This mediocre result did not compare favourably with their reading literacy, where Irish students ranked highly. So, while Irish students were middling in maths, they were not ‘poor’ as some media would have it.

Furthermore, PISA has not been without criticism, and some have questioned its testing methodology. For example, many of the tasks that students must do for maths in PISA, are very similar to IQ test items. That means, the critics argue, that ‘real life’ maths challenges are not tackled. In addition, there is little attention paid to material on participating countries maths curricula, which means that students might feel questions are ‘alien’.

PROBLEMS

Maths teachers offer insights into what might be going wrong.

For example, Don Byrne, from Donegal said: “The focus in this debate seems to be exclusively on second-level, and while work is needed in this area, the whole process (maths teaching at all levels) should be analysed.”

Michael Hunt, a maths teacher with 40 years of experience, now teaching a small number of repeat students in Dublin said: “The basics have been neglected somewhere along the line, and it is often sad to see students despair of the subject.”

This idea of student’s despairing of the subject is supported by those that have been working as examiners in the state examination system for many years. The big difference between now, and say 30 years ago, examiners state, is not with the overall standard, but rather with the amount of times students will attempt to answer maths questions they find difficult.

It appears to be the case that, while three decades ago, students would be prepared to have a go at difficult maths questions, and keep trying – now they give up quicker. In the past, students might have made three attempts at a difficult question before giving up, while now that’s down to just onc.

Teacher Jenna Behan, from Cork believes that students have lost their ‘feel’ for numbers, as learning the tables is not emphasised in primary schools, as it once was, while calculators are routinely used in secondary school.

“Students don’t know their tables, and I have been handed up answers of over 1,000 metres per second for a realistic question about the speed of a walking man,” said Jenna.

Such answers would suggest that indeed students have lost a feel for numbers otherwise an answer of 1,000 metres per second would surely raise questions in students’ minds. After all, it takes almost 10 seconds for the world’s fastest man, the amazing Usain Bolt, to run just 100 metres.

Another issue in maths teaching that crops up from time to time is the issue of fun, or finding a way to get students to enjoy learning maths. This is important, as students will retain information when they enjoy their classes.

Martin Doughan, teacher, said: “There does not seem to be any fun in maths. There is more opportunity in other subjects for humour, discourse, discussion, which retains the students’ interest.”

The amount of material to be covered in the maths curriculum is another issue that must be dealt with, said Martin. “While somebody can grasp or use a concept early in 5th Year, in, say, Trigonometry, they have to wait 18 months to be examined on it.”

SOLUTIONS

A creative solution to the ‘calculator issue’ is offered by teacher, Ronan Coffey, from Wicklow. “Higher level students generally know their arithmetic anyway, so they could use calculators, but not allowing them (calculators) at Ordinary Level could (bring a greater) focus on teaching and learning arithmetic, and other basics,” said Ronan.

Certainly there is a need for students to get a feel for what kind of numbers make sense as solutions to maths problems and what figures don’t add up.

Enter the area of estimation in maths. This is an approach advocated by some, where students are encouraged to develop their own innate ability to estimate possible answers, and rule out answers that are way off.

An advocate of this approach is John Allen Paulos, the author of ‘Innumeracy’, which challenges students to solve real world problems. An example of this approach might be to ask students – perhaps at the Transition Year stage when they are still developing their maths skills – to estimate how many swimming pools would be needed to hold the blood of every person living in the world today.

This challenges the students to make estimates, rough calculations, find formulae and decide on steps themselves.

Another interesting idea, which sprung from conversations with my maths teaching colleagues about how different students learn in different ways, was that an oral maths exam could be set up, offering a percentage of marks.

For example, in 5th year, students, could sit their ‘oral maths’ test. They might be questioned on a couple of topics by an examiner in a room. The student would be asked to explain how they would tackle each problem.

This would provide more insight on a student’s problem-solving ability. The greater use of information technology would also undoubtedly help with the teaching of maths, as different learning strategies could be employed.

School Spin

The BBC has an excellent website at www.bbc.co.uk/schools, which is especially useful for teaching mathematics to 1st and 2nd year students.

Meanwhile, the people that set up the stimulating www. mathsisfun.com website must have been listening to Martin Doughan – quoted above.

Meanwhile, popular mathematician Rob Eastaway provides entertainment, as well as mathematical knowledge in his books, websites and talks.

‘How to take a Penalty’, a book written by Rob Eastaway and John Haigh is concerned with applying maths to sport, and has awakened interest in maths for some students, and would be a great addition to the school library. The Project Maths initiative, where a team of experience teachers of mathematics in Ireland provide support to post-primary maths teachers across the country, is another resource that is well worth visiting at http://www.projectmaths.ie

One major idea of Project Maths is to use props to improve understanding.

Outside of teaching, Engineers Ireland, the professional body in Ireland for engineers, has argued that bonus points in maths can improve standards.

The body also argue that many teachers of maths in Ireland do not hold a qualification in the subject, and that certainly is a valid point.

Finland, who topped the international PISA tables in maths, have put resources into maths teacher training, and reaped the rewards.

In sum, while the problem of mediocre maths standards in our schools is a difficult and complex one, it’s a difficult problem that CAN be solved.

Tony McGennis holds a BSc from UCD, and is a maths teacher at St Laurence’s College, Loughlinstown, in south County Dublin.

School Spin

Belfast school claims top science debating prize

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team from Our Lady process, as there were emerging and St Patrick’s College, alternatives, such as computer Belfast, has won the ‘Debating modelling for disease. Further, Science Issues’ 2010 secondary they argued that animal testing schools competition. did not prevent deaths in This very worthwhile humans, as was often stated. competition, which involves The thrust was animal research students debating some of the can be phased out in the near great scientific issues of the future. day, has grown in popularity However, Belfast, while and standards since it began in having the advantage of a more 2006. logical position to argue, proved This year the standard of to be the winners – but only speaking was high, and Science just. They argued that animal Spin is in a good position to research is absolutely vital to the say this, given that Sean Duke, research process, as it’s too risky Joint Editor, was one of the to test new drugs on humans, judging panel in the final held without first testing on animals. in TCD in April.

Winning team from Our Lady and St. Patrick’s College, South Belfast: Fiona Knight, This is likely to remain the case It is encouraging to see that teacher and team speakers Ciara Mc Convey, Oonagh Mitchell, David Mc Shane and for the foreseeable future, they the topics for debate include argued, as alternatives are a Luke Bowen. such difficult ethical issues as, long way off. how should stem cell research The three judges, Sean Duke of Science Spin, Maria Phelan of be regulated, and how much animal research should be done. the Science Gallery, and Marion Boland of Science Foundation It is a credit to everyone that reached the finals day at the Science Ireland had a difficult job of choosing a winner. It certainly it took Gallery that such issues – which professional scientists often shy away a long discussion before the judges made a decision. But, when the from tackling – were debated with skill and passion. decision did arrive, it was the right one.

Indeed Professor Frank Barry, Scientific Director at the REMEDI “This is a great competition, and the arguments put forward by Institute at NUI Galway, organiser of the event, said on the day that the students today were, for the most part, sophisticated, mature, controversial issues, right at the cutting edge of what is happening in and based on sound science,” said Sean Duke. science were deliberately chosen as debate topics.

“In my work as a science journalist I often find that scientists are In 2010, a total of 56 schools took part, and it is encouraging unwilling to deal with difficult issues, and run a mile from anything that this is now a genuinely all Ireland competition, with teams controversial. That is perhaps understandable, but in the long term from Northern Ireland again showing the strength of science in it does science no service, as the public do not get to hear the views the north. The competition is organised on a provincial basis, and of reputable scientists on important topics.” the fourth provincial winners that got through to the finals day “The vacuum of information is then often filled by nonwere: St Attracta’s Community School, Tubbercurry Co Sligo; Our scientific, ill-informed voices. In this situation, the public can be Lady and St Patrick’s College, south Belfast; St Mary’s College, swayed by anti-science rhetoric, as the pro-science side is silent.”

Rathmines, Dublin; and Clonakilty Community School, Co Cork.

“I would hope that this competition, which involves Leaving From these, the finalists that emerged were Our Lady and St Certificate students, would help to start a process, whereby a new Patrick’s, Belfast and Clonakilty Community School. generation of scientists in Ireland becomes more willing and able to In the final, the motion up for debate was: “This house proposes discuss the ethical and societal impacts of their research.” that animal testing is necessary for the advancement of disease The Debating Science issues treatment.” Belfast argued for, and competition is sponsored by Clonakilty against. the Wellcome Trust. Other The format was for each team collaborators include the to make an opening statement, Regenerative Medicine Centre followed by questions from the (REMEDI) at NUI Galway, the judges, questions from the audience, Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, and lastly the closing remarks. All CLARITY (UCD), the Royal finalists were superb.

College of Surgeons, the Tyndall In fairness to Clonakilty it should National Institute, the Alimentary be said that arguing against was the Pharmabiotic Centre, W5 (Belfast), more difficult position to take and and Queen’s University, Belfast. they did a good job. They argued that animal research was no longer absolutely essential to the scientific Ciara O’ Shea, science teacher at St. Attracta’s Community School; student debaters John Kelly and Erin Fahey, St. Attracta’s Community School; and Danielle Nicholson, Outreach Officer at REMEDI, NUI Galway.

School Spin

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PART TWO Continuing our series of special features in which Dr Veronica Miller explains what we know about the brain and how it works.

SENSATIONAL BRAIN

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orld crises, wars and the private lives Sensing cells of soap stars enter our lives easily Before we chose to ignore information first through TV reports, newspapers it has to find its way to us. Neurons are the radio interviews and of course the Internet. cells which trawl our environment receiving Stories, sound bites and idle gossip can keep storing and transmitting information. Unlike us busy talking to each other for weeks on normal round cells, neurons are star shaped. end. Our nerve cells are no different. They In order to get information from the world around thrive on novelty, drama, excitement and them they have outgrowths like lots of tiny sensationalism. They are adapted for the sole purpose tentacles which are known as dendrites. To transmit this of harnessing as much information about our world information, from your fingertips to your brain they have and dispersing it as quickly as possible through the a long narrow tube known as an axon. To makes sure the rest of our bodies. These cells are specialised to talk signals send properly, the axons are insulated with myelin, about the sounds, sights, shapes, movement, tastes and Signals that travel along an axon are electric, but signals smells of the world. Some are excitable and ready to between neurons are a mixture between electrics and divulge information at the flick of a switch. While others parcel delivery. are specialised to gag them when they babble too long, Our brains process sensory information from the body, working like ushers in a great sensory cinema. In fact postmarked by different neurotransmitters destined for the ability of cells to gag others is vital for us to make different specialised brain areas. In 1936 Nobel laureates sense of information.

Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi first showed that One of our most important senses is touch, the feel chemicals transmit signals between nerve cells. of the paper in your fingertips as you read this. And Communication between neurons yet though you notice the touch of the paper, you are occurs when one dendrite on a neuron branches unlikely to notice the feeling of the clothes you are onto a dendrite of another neuron without wearing, or watch on your wrist. This is because them touching. Like leaves on in our relentless search for neighbouring trees that can novelty, the brain knows when touch briefly in windy weather. to block out the mundane In the space between, they share senses, and only to pay information. Bundles of chemicals attention to new, dangerous, are released from one cell, to act exciting or stimulating events. on the other cell, usually telling Ever been told that you’re it to become excited or to calm not listening, or not paying down. attention to what another These specialised chemicals person is talking about? which transmit messages from You’re probably not alone, once neuron to another are and most likely not to blame known as neuro-transmitters, for this inattentiveness either. for example substance P is According to Ernst Weber the chemical responsible for unless a stimulus changes communicating pain messages by a certain amount, be it a from your tongue to your brain light shining more brightly, when you eat a spicey chilli or your mother having a new pepper. hairdo, you won’t actually pay A synapse is the name given attention. to the special space between two Just Noticeable Difference is dendrites coming together. The defined as the smallest change word synapse came from two in sensation that a person is greek words “syn” which means able to detect 50 per cent of Neuron observed at the Wadsworth Centre trying to together, and “haptein” which the time. This ability of the brain connect with other cells. means to clasp which scientists not to notice things is again an merged together. Because you can have hundreds of adaptation of our minds to conserving energy, and not to different synapses on individual neurons, an individual be easily distracted by non-important events.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 15

neuron can process a multitude of different signals. Sensory nerve fibers are a little different than motor nerve fibers. The axons, or wires inside of them are smaller, and because they don’t conduct as many electrical impulses as motor nerves, they need less myelin or fatty tissue to insulate them.

Smell cells

Our nose is the gateway for smells to the brain and olfaction is our ability to smell molecules in the air.

Inside the nose we find groups of cells with hairs on their ends which catch the odoury molecules we breath in, and and pass this information to the brain.

The olfactory epithelium is the special smell Touching news sensing area of the nose; found just between your eyes If you were asked to identify the most sensational under the bridge of the nose. It is a thin piece of lining, 1 parts of your body, your tongue, ears, eyes and nose square inch in size, containing about 10 million olfactory might jump to mind first. But the largest neurons.

Areas of the brain showing where the sensational organ in our body is skin.

The olfactory sensory neurons contain a Fingertips, lips, and palms of your hands sensory neurons for the different body single type of odorant receptor, and send a parts are located. all contain thousands of nerve endings variety of exciting and inhibiting signals to the that send sensory information to your olfactory bulb. The bulb is just inside the brain, brain. Information from the skin can be and contains, groups of different neurons about the pressure against our skin, temperature, or air specialised for different types of scents, some may distinguish movement or pain. fragrant blossoms and some fragrant beers. The bulb can Sensation is the process through which senses pick up then translate these messages into information to distinguish visual auditory and other information from the world, between a scent for incoming prey predation, mate or meal. and transmit it to the brain. Perception is the way in Smell sensing neurons only contain a single odorant which this information is interpreted in the brain and receptor, yet we can smell thousands of odours, this is made sensible. Axons are the wires which connect our because, there are actually a huge amount of genes which senses with our perceptions. The part of the brain which code for thousands of different types of receptors. Rats have then processes this information is known as the sensory a huge smell gene family, one of the largest ever discovered cortex. If you were to wear a hair band on your head, the -- programming 500 to 1,000 different types of receptors. sensory cortex would lie directly beneath. Because we If we wanted the heightened sense of smell that rats, or have more feeling from our lips, palms and fingertips, indeed blood hounds possess, we’d need noses a great deal they use the largest area of the sensory cortex, while the larger to hoover in smell molecules, and also many more skin on your legs and arms has much less brain power. smell receptors to catch them.

Women are tactile shoppers. This doesn’t mean that Our noses may be simpler than rats, but we are able to they’re sneaky or make large battle plans for their credit smell a huge variety of different odours. This is because we cards to attack department stores with. It means that have the ability to use our few receptors in many different while shopping women will invariably feel the clothes ways to identify smells. Individual odour molecules before trying them on to sense how comfortable or what can stimulate several types of receptors, each of which the quality of the material is. The decision to buy the responds to a part of the molecule’s structure. The pattern clothes is not only based on their touch however, if it of receptors activated by each odour forms a map or code was we’d all be compulsive and impulsive buyers. Our that the brain uses to identify each unique scent. This is eyes will tell us the price and colour and our brains after just like the way that our alphabet contains only 25 letters processing the information will tell us to buy or not to but we can rearrange them in a multitude of ways to make buy. Integration of sensational information is, therefore thousands of different words and then make sense of their essential. meaning.

A tissue section from a rat, stained to show olfactory epithelium and bowmans glands which secrete mucus. SP is the septum, the part dividing the nose into two sections.

The panel on the right corresponds to the magnified boxed area in the panel on the left.

Image: Fang Xie Doctoral Candidate Wadsworth Center New York.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 16

This picture shows neurons in the hippocampus of a mouse. The hippocampus processes short term memories which are made when you eat some memorable food; or listen to enjoyable music. The hippocampus got its name from the greek word for sea-horse because early anatomists thought it looks like one.

Secret smells sexual attraction and anger

Your nose contains secret receptors which harness silent airborne chemicals coding for the world around us. These special cells receive social and sexual clues sent from other people and animals, stirring our basic urges. In mice these signals spur males to mate with females and can make him violently attack another member of his group. These secret signals are picked up in cigar-shaped sacs known as the vomeronasal organs in the nose, found just inside your nostrils, behind the vomer bone.

The vomeronasal organs are made of some of the most primitive nerve cells in our bodies. They work in a very different way than the neurons in the big olfactory bulb.

In fact they actually bypass the olfactory bulb on route to the brain. Instead they send secret smells to an accessory olfactory bulb, and from there into the parts of our brains which control reproduction, maternal instincts and aggression.

The information highway from us sensing these secret signals to them exciting reproduction areas of the brain bypasses the cortex. This means that we are unconscious of their existence and they can influence our behaviour without us even knowing.

Your sweat could actually make you more attractive! A group of male students were asked to sleep in a t-shirt and then these t-shirts were given to a group of female students who were asked to rate the smells in from most to least attractive. The girls were then given photos of the boys and asked to rate them again. And it was found that girls tended to pick the same guys from both t-shirts and photos.

Clearly there are chemicals in the air that influence us more than we know. But air-conditioning, smoking and air-fresheners probably don’t let them hang about in the air long enough for them to take effect these days. And although these chemicals tell you who is attractive and who isn’t if you have a cold or a flu your secret sensory perception may be lowered. People you may not be attracted to normally may seem more attractive, when you’ve a blocked nose.

Neurons need to make lots of connections in order to integrate information and lay down memories. This picture shows a band of hippocampal neurons; white and underneath a thicker band of synaptic rich nerve fibers.

The fact that opposites attract may not be just a quirk of nature, but a deliberate ploy by our bodies to increase the strength of our children. Pheromones, the chemicals thought to convey attraction, could be based on our immune systems. People who have different immune systems may be more attractive to us, because our children would have a combination of two different systems and therefore be more resilient to infection.

Conversely, people with similar immune systems would be less attractive because our children would not be as resistant to infection. Which could explain why opposites attract.

A matter of taste

If you open a box of biscuits, you know some people plunge for chocolate covered ones, others jammy dodgers and the dark chocolate ones left for late-comers. You wouldn’t dream of putting chillis in your tea, unless you were looking for kicks, and the idea of putting tomato sauce on your breakfast cereal just doesn’t make sense. So why is it that some flavours work and some don’t? Some appeal to us, some remind us of happy occasions and some put us off our food entirely. How is it that we can taste millions of flavours, when our taste receptors can only sense only a few different sensations; sweet, sour, salty and bitter?

Though we only have four different taste types within our mouths, we have around 10,000 taste-buds to sense these flavours. Inside these buds, scattered about your mouth, throat, palate and epiglottis, are taste receptors.

The taste buds that you can see on the surface of your tongue are a really just a cluster of taste and receptor cells, which are enclosed by their own pod. At the tip of this pod is a small opening which allows the chemicals from food you chew, dissolved in saliva to enter and activate the taste receptors.

As you chew food, chemicals dissolved in the saliva enter the taste-buds and activate hairs at the tips of the taste neurons. These convert the taste, be it sweet salty

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 17

sour or bitter to electrical information Semicircular Stapes which then feeds into two main large canals nerves, the glossopharyngeal and facial nerves, which then enter the Malleus brain.

Vestibular nerve Not only does the brain receive electrical impulses from the taste receptors when you eat, but also from our eyes and noses. These means that our perception of flavour is made up of information from a variety of senses Cochlea nerve — which you’ll already know; food that looks bad generally tastes bad too.

Cochlea The brain areas which you can see External lighting up if you do a brain scan of Tympanic auditory canal somebody eating a meal include the cavity cingulate gyrus, the hippocampus the Tympanic Eustachian tube hypothalamus and the midbrain and cerebellum. What this tells us is that our ability membrane Round window to taste and savour a meal is a highly ordered and complicated event, even if the food we are eating is Structure of the ear. Chittka L, Brockmann, Wikimedia. only a simple slice of bread.

If the way that our brain processes flavours was a For others even invisible food tastes good, they meal itself, the appetiser would be when we first lay experience ghost smells and tastes! This happens because eyes on the food, and the starter would be chewing and when they experience unusual seizures, like an electrical swallowing. The main course, or part that our brain gets storm in their brains, which activate the parts of the brain its processing teeth into is when we start to analyse the which store taste or smell memories, such as the temporal smells and tastes of the food. Activation of the different lobes, without any food being near. During a seizure receptors starts us thinking. Dessert time comes and our these people can be convinced that they taste or smell memories become activated, and we fondly remember particular types of foods. similar flavours or make a note that the food is tasty, and we should have it again.

Sound waves

The Umami Effect

Take away food always tastes good. So good you’ll find yourself sneaking a second taste in the middle of the night and snacking on cold leftovers the next day.

Some of these cravings may be because it contains monosodium glutatmate which activate what we now think of as the fifth type taste: Umami. Umami is that flavour you might find in soy sauce, almost meaty, and desirable. It is a taste that is heavily linked with activating and working with a specific type of chemical in the brain, dopamine: the pleasure seeker.

Thus takeaway food may actually be acting as a drug pleasuring us late night thrill seekers.

Bad taste and ghost flavours

Apart from burnt, over salted or undercooked food, we normally wouldn’t turn down a free lunch. But for some people all food tastes bad. They have a distorted sense of smell or taste, which makes even the most innocuous smell unbearable (dysosmia). This bad taste is usually caused because the nerves within their nose and or tongues are damaged meaning that the flavours cannot be sent to the brain properly. This damage can be due to infections, or more commonly due to heavy smoking.

Smoking usually leads to a loss of sensation, which is why you’ll notice that heavy smokers tend to over salt their food.

Ever wondered why it is that light can’t bend around corners, but we can easily listen in on conversations being held behind closed doors? This is because sound, unlike straight light, travels in waves, through molecules. As Irishman Robert Boyle demonstrated many years ago, sound cannot travel through a vacuum, it needs a medium to move through, air water, or the bones in our ears. That is why, as the film tag line goes, in space nobody can hear you scream, though they may see you. Sound needs a medium to travel through, and for this reason we have developed several different media in our heads to filter the sound, from the air, to the electrical impulses which light up our brains and allow us to hear, and appreciate music, from folk to funk.

Our ears funnel sound into a wax lined tube, which carries it down to our ear-drums, consisting of a stretched sheet of tissue. The sound waves cause the tissue to vibrate, and these vibrations then beat sound onto three little bones the Malleus- hammer, Incus-anvil and Stapesstirrup. One by one they then tap on the oval window which is the porthole for changing the physical movement of the bones into vibrations in fluid contained two little bony tubes, our Inner Ear. Movement of the liquid causes movement of tiny hair like sensory cells in the tube, and cause them to transmit electrical impulses into the brain.

In exactly the same way that sights and smells are converted to electrical impulses, the ear sends signals via the Vestibulocochlear, hearing and balance nerve to the auditory or hearing cortex to let us hear. People who are

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 18

music lovers have a larger auditory cortex than non-music lovers. Bats need super-perceptive auditory processes and have a massively enlarged mid-brain auditory cortex as compared to other animals. But unfortunately even if you have a large auditory cortex, simple genetic mutations can leave you without the ability to appreciate music and become irreversibly tone deaf. And other folks can be born with deformed little bones in the middle ear, which don’t quite reach inner ear to tap sounds into. Luckily nowadays, surgeons can attach tiny wires between the bones and the tube filled with liquid across which the sound vibrations can pass, letting people hear again.

There are three different types of colourful cone cells, one for red, one green and one blue. These cells are always active and send information to the brain telling it about all the colours in the world. Again its important for the brain to be able to put a gag on this information, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to make any sense of it. So when the eye sees red, it causes all the other signals from that cone cell to stop. Only the signal for red is received.

This gagging is known as the opponent process theory.

If you look at the pictures below you’ll see how strong the signals are that the brain has to gag.

Digital or film photography

Our rod cells can sense even a single photon of light in our environment, which is a bit like being able to find a needle in a million haystacks in a millisecond. The chemical which senses the light is known as rhodopsin, a light sensitive protein.

If a person’s gene for producing rhodopsin isn’t working properly, or if becomes mutated during your life, you may lose your sight. That is why it is so important to keep your eyes as protected as you can, especially from harsh bright sunlight which can damage the retina.

The genes which code for receptors of the green and red colour sensing proteins are located on the X chromosome. Women have two XX chromosomes and men are missing a bit and have XY. This means that if any X chromosome mutation occurs then women have a back up X to make up for the mistake. Men unfortunately do not. Hence, colour blindness is more prevalent in men than in women, which may account for more male drivers causing accidents by skipping red lights at junctions!

Our eyes are like old film cameras. Herman von Helmhotlz discovered in the 19th century that visual information is passed through the eyeball to cells on the back of the ball, the retina, and displayed just like old cameras. That is to say that the pictures were twisted in the lens, so that they were upside-down and much reduced in size. So our eyes may not quite be up to the standard of the new digital cameras, but pictures in our minds will never become pixilated the way modern photos do!

Colour vision

The retina is made of two different types of sensory cells, rods and cones. Rods sense the amount of brightness of an object, while Cones sense the objects colour. Rods will tell you the light is flashing cones will tell you its red. As you read this text a particular part of the retina, known as the macula (yellow spot) is focusing on it. This is where our fine focusing part of the retina is, and it is almost entirely composed of cones. From these two cells, light is converted to electrics, and shot via the optic nerve into the brain. Images from your eyes are criss-crossed in the brain so that the left part of the brain sees through your right eye and vice versa. This crossover occurs in the middle of the brain in an area known as the optic-chiasm, before sights are sent to the cortex.

The opponent process theory was developed by Ewald Herring, who thought that our colour vision is controlled by three colour sensing systems which oppose each-other; for example red vs green, blue vs yellow and black vs white . Within the systems, one colour is dominant; so if the red is excited then green is inhibited, vice versa. Red and green light also have different fluorescent peaks at different wavelengths, we see red ~560nm, and green

Blindness and bad drivers

Third eye: pineal gland

Disregarding pirates, most people would say that they have two eyes. But if you ask a neuroscientist, you’ll be surprised to learn that we actually have three.

In the very centre of the brain there is a third eye, which controls some of the most vital functions in our ~535nm. If you stare at a red-coloured object for long enough, the red sensors; which are essentially proteins known as photopsins will become super-excited. Once you shift your gaze to a neutral or white colour; on the rebound, the green signals are longer inhibited by the red, so for a flash the green signal will appear dominant, while the red sensors are fatigued and you will see green before your eyes.

Stare at the orange dot on the left, then after while stare at the dot on the right.

bodies. This third eye is known as the pineal gland, and is able to sense light passing through the skull deep into the centre of our brains. This light is then used to tell the body what time of day it is, and to set our biological clocks to make us sleep and wake up on time.

Look of love

The light coming into your eye is constricted by the coloured circular muscle of the pupil. Too much light will make it enlarge, and two little cause it to shrink. If you close your eyes and then quickly open them again then look in the mirror you’ll see your pupils close in. We also open our pupils wider when we see somebody or something we like, to let more light and information in about them.

In the 1800s the Victorians were well aware that dilated pupils meant that a man or woman was interested in you, and the ladies of the time used to favour taking a drug called Belladonna which made their pupils become permanently dilated, thus giving their male friends the illusion that they found them very attractive. Belladonna is from a plant known as Deadly Nightshade. The plant which grows in Europe, produces very attractive berries almost like cherries which are absolutely lethal when consumed, and cause chocking, not to mention permanently dilated pupils. Legend has it that MacBeth used it to poison a whole army of Danes in the 1500s after offering them alcohol laced with Belladonna during a truce.

Supervision

The part of your eye which gets the most amount of information is at the centre, and known as the macula.

Despite its small size, it sees a lot of information, and therefore has 35 times more corticical space devoted to it than the rest of the retina. The parts of the brain which process this info were discovered in the 1950s.

Two scientists, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovered that the Primary Visual Cortex, or back bit of the brain as it was probably known then, processed sight information and won a Nobel Prize for it.

They planted tiny thin microelectrodes into cells in the cortex of cats and monkeys to spy on the brain cells activity. After exposing a cat to a bright line image, they found a neuron in one part of the brain became excited.

Then they showed the cat another picture, and found a different neuron became excited. And gradually this led them to believe that lots of different neurons are needed to process an image before we can see it in our heads.

Although what happens when you show a cat a Whiska’s ad may be a very different story!

Correction Our illustration on page 17 of the previous issue the cerebellum was incorrectly labelled ‘cerebrum’

Brain naming

Another not so nice name for the Primary Visual Cortex is area 17. Most cortical are named by numbers rather than actual names, partly because from the outside, most lumps and bumps look the same and party because this was the scheme first used by the first man to generate a sensory map of the brain.

A Canadian neurosurgeon in the 1930s named Wilder Penfield, was the first person to understand the functions associated with different sensory areas of the brain.

In what sounds like a gruesome series of experiments Penfield used electrodes attached to brains of patients who had epilepsy to see what happened when these parts were activated. By this simple suck it and see type of experiments he was able to find out which areas of the brain controlled different senses, and generate a map of the brain.

Multisensational

One weird feature of the way that our brain processes information is that sometimes our senses can become cross-wired. Some people can taste music and see sounds because both senses have become activated in their brains.

They are known as synesthetics. Because of the fact that sounds smells tastes and sights are hard wired into our memories, one smell may trigger a variety of sensational memories. Just think how the smell of fir trees can remind you of Christmas time. Our memories can allow us to experience senses even if our bodies no longer allow us to.

Cross wiring of our senses may actually be the key to our successes in becoming super sensational. Mozart is well renowned as being a wonderful composer of music.

When quizzed as to how he became so good, he replied that “love love love is the soul of genius”. Imagine if his ability to sense music was crossed with our pleasure seeking Umami receptors. We would have an insatiable desire to create and generate more music in search of pleasure.

The mechanics of our sensational brain is quite simple.

Nerve cells sense, light, or sound movement and convert it to electrics, which shoot to the brain where info is cross-wired and lights up different patterns in our cortex, that we make memories out of. We can explain how we sense the world, but what we don’t yet know is why such simple electrical impulses, sights sounds and smells, can send our hearts racing and bring a tear to the eye. Perhaps this is where the emotional brain comes into play.

Veronica Miller has a doctorate in neurobiology from Newcastle University, a Masters in Science Communication from DCU and a degree in Biochemistry from TCD. Previously she worked on “Scope” a popular science TV series for teenagers. Currently Veronica is working in the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health laboratories, researching how environmental toxins contribute to risk of disease from womb to tomb, with a focus on autism, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

Collect the series as Veronica Miller continues to go deeper into our amazing brain.

In our next issue — how do you feel about the emotional brain?

SPIN ACTIVE Applied Science Technology & Innovation Diving into business at sea

Competence centres

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INNOVATION AT SEA Tom Kennedy reports that the outlook is good as high technology firms move into niche markets offshore

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Technologies, is into innovation big time, with more than 90 bout 1300 companies are involved in information patents filed to date. As he explained, the company is now a technology in Ireland, and of these roughly half are in world leader in underwater communications, but this is more services and rest are in manufacturing. Over 85 per cent of by accident than design. “We started in a completely different their products are exported, so the sector, although based in field, but could not figure out how to make money from Ireland, has a global focus. an optical and wireless interface.” So, Brendan thought the In spite of any slow down in the economy, this is a sector company should have a look at something different. with enormous potential for expansion, and as a recently “I encouraged one of the researchers to set up an formed industry group points out, significant growth is experiment to demonstrate two way radio communications likely to come from the sea. Most activities at sea, including through water,” he said. The researcher, from his knowledge of trtansport, are heavily dependent on information technology, physics, was quite reluctant to waste time on conducting the and almost all marine research involves remote collection experiments, because, as everyone knows, radio waves do and processing of data. Having one of the largest marine not travel well through water. Even so, the experiment was territories in Europe gives Ireland a natural advantage in that set up. “Much to everyone’s surprise,” said Brendan, “it worked, IT products developed at home can be marketed abroad. and it worked much better than we thought.”

When it comes to the sea, there are no barriers, and covering Surprise followed surprise. Like the researcher, Brendan 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface, the oceans could be seen could not believe that no one had tried this out before. “We as the biggest signle market in the world. had a look at the Internet to see if there were any competitive The synergy between information technology and the products, and we could not find any. We had a look through marine sector was formerlly recognised last year when Intellectual Property, and could not find anything either. So, a group of industry experts and researchers met at NUI either we had stumbled onto something and were lucky, Maynooth. As a result of that meeting a marine innovation or it had all been done before, and it had proved not to be cluster was established, with Yvonne Shields from the Marine commercially viable.”

Institute as the chair. This is very much a working group, with As it turned out, they had hit lucky. Patents were filed, members drawn from the likes of IBM, Intel, DCU, UCD, IDA and as Brendan commented, the company became the and EI, and as Yvonne explained, the Smartocean cluster unopposed leader in a brand new marketplace, underwater is targeting emerging markets in areas such as energy, wireless. environmental monitoring, and coastal erosion. The cluster, The phycisists were correct, he explained, radio waves do she said, is concerned with a broad range of activities not travel well underwater, but that does not mean that they including sensors, communications, data management, cannot travel at all. What the company discovered is that software, control systems, mechanical engineering, and novel good communications are possible over short, but useful, materials, and in many cases the advances that can give Irish distances. “The aim,” he said, “is to work within the envelope firms a competitive advantage can only be made through of possibilities.” Systems developed by the company can now a combination of expertise. One of the cluster members, deliver 100 bits a second through five metres of seawater, Dr Barbara Fogarty, the national co-ordinator of Advanced and by going down to one bit per second, it is possible Marine Technologies, said that her aim is to map out the to extend this range out to between 100 and 200 metres. experitse and companies involved so that everyone can That lower rate, he said, could be fine for data collection, benefit from a rising tide. Apart from the multinationals, such and if access to sealed for life sensors is a problem, the as Intel and IMB, there are, she said, “a significant number of company has developed a smart pick-up product, tellingly Irish SMEs,” and in many cases core expertise, which they may called ‘Seatooth,’ that can hitch-hike on a passing remotely have developed for other purposes, such as aerospace or controlled device. environmental monitoring, can be transferred into the marine Big customers include oil and gas exploration companies, sector. and as more and more enquipment goes into the sea, the Earlier this year at a conference organised by the need to communicate underwater is bound to increase.

Smartocean Cluster in Galway, some of the stakeholders Its an unusual field, said Brendan, and all the more exciting revealed just how big the potential for development is, how because there are no text books. fast progress is being made on a number of fronts and how Another company with a big interest in the marine sector fluid is the market geography. is Fairview Analytics, established just three years ago as an Brendan Hyland set up a technology company in Scotland Dublin City University Innovation partner. Pat Flynn, CEO seven years ago, and now there is an R&D centre in Belfaast, of the Fairview, explained that company has developed and an office outside Washington. The company, WFS SPIN ACTIVE

SPIN ACTIVE considerable expertise in video analysis of port traffic. There are a lot of security issues, he said, and everyone wants to know what’s going through busy ports. Cameras, mounted over entries and exits, can monitor container traffic, and the software can quickly zoom in on identification numbers.

Trucks have numbers, front and rear, and 90 per cent of the world’s containers also have a unique number which is also capured by the Fairview system. The system can immediately identify the container, thus helping to track goods and prevent fraud.

Various elements in the system, such as number plate capture, said Pat, already existed, but what makes the company’s system special is that they have added functionality. These functions, he explained, were developed in close collaboration with Dublin and other port authorities.

It is important to know that customers want, he said.

“We focus on containers,” he added, and using wire-frame modelling, shape and length of containers can be matched up to the numbers.

Pilot trials have been very successful, and Pat said the system is due to go into operation soon in Rosslare port. “We are working with three Irish and three UK customers, and one large Asian port group,” so for a start up company, expansion is likely to be rapid. “There are more than 10,000 large ports around the world,” he said, and all of these would have a throughoput of 50,000 or more containers a year. A real nightmare for custom and port officials, but no problem at all for Fairview Analytics.

Like WFS Technologies, Fairview Analytics did not hit a winning streak first time out. At first, Pat was looking for a way to apply college expertise and make use of research funding, but the initial attempts to develop a system that could be used in airports never took off. However, lack of success was a lesson, said Pat, and next time round, the company has a much clearer commercial goal. “The initial failure was not lack of expertise, but lack of experience,” he said.

Dr Adrian Boyle, whose company, Cathx Ocean, is based in Rathgan, Co Kildare, also changed course as the hightechnology company needed a cash-cow to get them going.

The time and investment needed to develop undersea robotics was more than the company could afford, but as Dr Boyle explained, making an impact in a niche market for divers lights was something they could achieve with a lot less strain. It was a good decision, and the company now has three different microprocessor controlled light products on the market. Being able to program the light and integrate microprocessors, he said, gives the company a lot of scope in developing lights that double up as data collectors. Having the expertise in robotics was a great help in developing

these products, and by next year the company expects to incorporate 3D modelling into products which could slash the cost of undersea pipeline inspection.

Not surprisingly, one of the first people to see where opportunities were opening up at sea was Dr Mark White, former head of R&D at the Marine Institute. The Institute had not long been established before Mark took the plunge into the private sector to set up NowCasting. Realising that a lot of the data being gathered on conditions at sea could be presented in a more user friendly way, Mark developed weather prediction products. The company, NowCasting, is based in Ennis, Co Clare, and with sixteen on the staff, services, such as AskMoby, are on offer across five continents.

In developing new products, said Mark, a lot depends on goodwill and a willingness to share expertise and information. There is still an element of begrugery in public life, he observed, and a real fear of taking risky decisions. “We should be ready to go for success, and accept failures,” he said. “We need to learn how to collaborate, and not worry all the time about giving away little gems of information.” Mark is highly critical of the tendering process, which while being designed to be fair, is in fact a major problem for many SMEs. Small, yet successful companies, like his own, he remarked, can’t afford to waste time and resources filling in endless forms, and he said the same is true for research grants. The public services, he said, could do a lot more to foster homegrown innovation they could be a bit more creative and above all, eliminate the fear factor.

For all the endless and by now very tiresome talk about the ‘knowledge economy’ some of this unwillingness to make a connection is embedded in the research system. As Dr William Donnelly, director of the Telecommunications Software Systems Group at Waterford Institute of Technology observed, it is much easier to get funding for a researcher than for a person who will go out and market the results.

There is, he said, a fundamental flaw in how research is being funded, and on that point, he added that SMEs do need to invest more than they do at present. Academics, he said, follow a career path that can make it difficult to work with industry, and there is little or no roll-over in funding.

“Can you imagine running a company where you have to spend all of your profits in a single year?” This is the reality for many researchers, and Dr Donnelly, who runs one of the most active research groups in the country, said it can be very frustrating when researchers, just as they getting into their stride, are suddenly dropped from projects because the money is cut. What we need, he said, is a more holistic approach to innovation.

Hydro power

which was manufactured in Ireland, is that it does not require a tidal barrage dam. In addition, the turbine is underwater, so is out of sight.

The turbine generates 1MW, and because it is driven by the tides, the output is highly predictable. www.openhydro.com LIVE

OPEN Hydro, an Irish company, has installed a commercial scale tidal turbine in Canada’s Bay of Fundy. The Bay, known for its exceptionally high tides, is an ideal location for a tidal power turbine. One of the attractions of the in-stream turbine,

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SPIN ACTIVE Ten in 2009

TEN new campus spin-offs were set up to commercialise research at TCD in 2009. The companies are based on bioscience, physical science, and information technology. The Associate Director of Research and Innovation at TCD, Dr James Callaghan, said that during the year researchers had come up with 47 invention disclosures, and 22 new patents were filed.

The ten companies are Solvotrin, BioCroi, Miravex, Kinometrics, Treocht, EmpowerTheUser, ReciTell, Share Navigator, Anamate, and Gofer ICT. Solvotrin, involving Dr John Gilmer from the School of Pharmacy, has developed a better method of delivering aspirin that eliminates undesirable side effects. Many people with cardiovascular disease who are unable to take aspirin at present could benefit from this development.

BioCroi, involving Dr Davies from the School of Medicine, has launched a technology called PlateMinder, which speeds up the screening of and identification of potentially useful drugs.

Miravex, involving Prof Igor Shvets, Dr Guido Mariotto, and Dr Roman Kantor from the School of Physics, has come up with a hand-held imaging device that can be used in cosmetic surgery by providing a 3D image of skin condition.

Kinometrics, promoted by Dr Gerard Lacey from the School of Computer Science, has come up with camera-linked system to help nursing and other healthcare staff to wash their hands more effectively.

Treocht, involving Prof Khurshid Ahmad from Computer Sciences and Prof Colm Kearney from the School of Business, had a web-based product enabling users to monitor global events. The Treocht product incorporates a self-learning system to support rapid decision making in financial markets.

EmpowerTheUser, involving Prof Vincent Wade from Computer Science, Prof Michael Gill from the Department of Psychiatry, and Prof Brian Fitzmaurice from Medicine, is developing technologies for on-line immersive learning. Such systems are expected to cut the cost of training.

Innovation

Games

IRELAND has a large computer games industry, and according to John Breslin, lecturer in the School of Engineering and Informatics at NUI Galway, there is plenty of scope for expansion.

John Breslin made the comment when two second year students from the college emerged as winners in the annual XNA Ireland Challenge.

XNA is a Microsoft games development platform and the students, Finn Krewer from Tubber, and Padraig Meaney from Cloghan, used it to update a thirty-year old game, Pac-Man. As many readers might remember, Pac-Man had to gobble up dots while avoiding capture by the roaming ghosts.

ReciTell, involving Prof Frank Boland and Darren Kavanagh from the School of Engineering, provides advanced elearning solutions, and its first product supports teaching of reading skills.

Share Navigator, involving TCD MBA graduate, Aidan Bodkin, and UCD MBA graduate, Stephen Cox, has developed stock market software enabling users to analyse equity and client portfolio risks.

Anamates, involving Dr Brendan Tangney from Computer Science, Dr Mark Tangney from UCC, James Bligh from NDRC, and Dr Chris Collins from St Thomass’ Hospital in London, has launched an easy-to-use web-based tool allowing users to create their own animations.

Gofer ICT, involving Elizabeth Oldham from Education, and mathematicians Dr Samik Sen and Prof Siddartha Sen, has produced educational software to help students become creative and confident users of mathematics. Testing of the software is to be carried out in Irish and Indian schools this year, and a commercial release is planned for 2011.

NUI Galway students Finn Krewer and Padraig Meaney overall winners of the XNA Colleges Cup with Michael Meagher (back left) Academic Engagement Manager Microsoft and John Breslin, Lecturer NUI Galway.

The new version, Pac-Man Unleashed, was praised by the college and industry judges as having everything in terms of coding, design, play and music..

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IN AN alliance between TCD and UCD, bursaries valued at â‚Ź2 million are being offered to support innovation.

Funding is to cover fees, start up and research costs over a four year period.

The bursaries are being offered to post-graduates and PhD researchers across a range of disciplines including earth sciences, energy. health and communications.

The initiative is based on an Innovation Academy, housed in two locations, Nova UCD and Foster Place in College Green.

The initial uptake of students is to begin in September, and there is to be a significant involvement of speakers and mentors from industry. www.innovationalliance.ie

LIVE LINK

SPIN ACTIVE Water research

Ed Story, MD of Chemifloc pours out clean water for Maurice Bukley, CEO of National Standards Authority of Ireland.

Water treatment

THE Limerick based producer of water treatment chemicals, Chemifloc, has received the Irish Standard Mark for three of its leading products. The aluminium sulphate, iron sulphate, and aluminium iron sulphate produced by the company comply with the highest internationally recognised standards.

The company, founded almost 30 years ago produces about 40 different water treatment products. The plant at Shannon produces over 1,000 tons of treatment chemicals a day which are delivered by tanker to local authorities and other customers throughout the country. Since 1991 Chemifloc has been the supplier of fluoride to drinking water plants throughout Ireland.

LIVE www.chemifloc.com

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Telehealth

TRIALS for a remote patient care monitoring system are being conducted by the Netwell Centre in Dundalk. The centre, based at the Dundalk Institute of Technology is involved with research, development and application of lifeenhancing technologies for older people. Such technologies can enable older people to stay living in their home environment.

The trials are being conducted for Robert Bosch Healthcare, a company with more than 300 subsidiaries in over 60 countries. R&D has always been important for the company, established in 1886 as a precision mechanical and electrical engineering firm. The company now spends more than €3.5 billion a year on R&D. The trial, involving the 24/7 monitoring service, as a project partner, aims to help people understand and manage chronic illness. Forty elderly people with heart conditions or diabetes are participating in the trial, and a further ten are being monitored as a control group. The main group will have a Bosch patient interface in their homes for 90 days. This is a compact device with a display and four-button keyboard. Users can submit queries, and they will receive tips and reminders to take medication. The interface will also allow participants to submit blood pressure, weight, and glucose levels. When necessary, specialist health personnel will be alerted to take action.

Rodd Bond, director of the Newell Centre, said the telehealth project will be a catalyst for transforming the health services for the benefit of older people.

In the US, where the Veterans Health Administration has used the system, there was a 20 per cent reduction in hospitalisation and a 25 per cent reduction in bed care days.

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A RESEARCH facility operated by NUI Galway and funded by the EPA has been opened at the Tuam waste water treatment plant. Laura Burke, director of the EPA said that the research facility is expected to play a strong role in developing solutions for many villages and towns. By having the facilities on site, novel technologies can be tested under real working conditions. As Prof Terry Smith, Vice-President of Research at NUI Galway commented, industry will also benefit by having a test site for new products. The potential market for waste treatment products internationally, he said, is enormous. In Europe alone, he added, environmental technology is worth €227 billion a year.

Medical devices

AT a meeting held in Galway last October for the Irish medical device industry sales for the sector were said to exceed €6 billion a year. 25,000 people are believed to work in the medical technology industry, and export prospects are excellent. Global growth has been estimated to be in the region of seven per cent a year. SFI funded researchers, who were invited to showcase their work at the meeting were told that exports from this sector remain strong, defying the recession, and continuing to grow. For the first six months of 2009, the Irish Exporters Association recorded an eleven per cent growth for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and medical devices.

More than 140 medical device companies operate from Ireland and of these, nine are among the world’s top ten. Research participation in the meeting was high. Twelve research groups, from NUI Galway, University of Limerick, Tyndall, UCD, and TCD took part in the meeting.

The Irish Medical Device Association points out that the industry has undergone a change for the better.

Originally, the industry here was confined to manufacturing, but now there is a much higher level of innovation driven by Irish based research.

SPIN ACTIVE Digesting wood

Pathogen survival

RESEARCHERS at Teagasc have found that E coli can survive in soil for much longer than previously thought. The bacterium is widely taken as an indicator of contamination, and the presence of E coli in water shows that it is unfit for human consumption.

One of the reasons why E coli is used as an indicator is that it was, until now, thought to be relatively short lived. However, recent investigations suggest that it might not be a reliable indicator of recent contamination.

The research, conducted by scientists from Teagasc Johnstown and NUI Galway, show that E coli may be able to survive for nine or more years in soil.

Some soil types are likely to retain a population of E coli, and these in turn can leach out into surrounding areas. Recent research shows that the bacterium does not just sit tight, but produces protective proteins to enable it to survive stress, such as cold.

Irish wood for France

SHIPMENTS of timber from Glennon Brothers, based in Longford, are going to customers in France. According to Coford, the kiln-dried timber is for use in construction, and until these orders came in, the market for Irish timber was confined to home and the UK. For Glennon Brothers, this is a welcome boost for an industry hard hit both by the decline in construction and a fall in the value of Sterling. The company, established in 1913, has expanded over the years and now has plants in Fermoy and in Scotland. www.glennonbrothers.ie

Timber

LIVE LINK

OVER the past twenty or so years private planting has overtaken state forestry. Grants encouraged land owners to plant, but one of the consequences is that Ireland now has a patchwork of small and medium sized forests. This makes harvesting expensive, and as growers were told at a recent meeting of farm-foresters in Kiltimagh in Co Mayo, it might not pay to extract larger logs from some of the more remote locations.

One of the reasons for this is that roads have to be built to give machinery access,.

As a rule of thumb, it can take three tons of gravel per linear metre to build a road, so for many forests, the expense would not justify the returns.

At the meeting, organised by Coilte and Teagasc, growers were encourage to collaborate in harvesting. In one area, extending from Tulsk in Co Roscommon to Swinford in Co Mayo there are hundreds of isolated plantations, many of them semimature and ready for thinning. While harvesting of timber for fuel is becoming a more attractive option, large scale harvesting will only be possible through collaboration of neighbouring growers. By acting together, five or six growers, for example, could cut the cost of bringing in heavy harvesting machinery, and one access road may serve them all.

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RESEARCHERS at Delft in The Netherlands have found that the bacterium, Cupriavidus basilensis, is effective in breaking down wood without producing undesirable side products. Using microbes to produce biochemicals and fuel from waste wood often results in the production of harmful by-products. According to the researchers, removing those by-products can be costly and not very friendly to the environment.

Among the unwanted by-products are furans, and the researchers have found that Cupriadidus basilensis breaks these furans down so they become harmless.

Furans, composed of four carbons and an oxygen in a five sided molecular ring, are toxic, and they exist in a variety of forms.

Researchers, Frank Koopman and Nick Wierckx, working under their supervisor, Han de Winde, recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which they trace the details of chemical break down, and they identify the genes and enzymes involved.

Han de Winde, who is professor of Industrial Microbiology at Delft, said that the same break down processes could now be incorporated into other organisms, to give a higher quality yield of biochemicals from waste wood. The researchers have already succeeded in introducing the entire degradation process into the common bacterium, Pseudomonas putida. This micro-organism is widely used in industrial biotechnology, but until now, it has not been capable of breaking down furans. www.tudelft.nl

Irish furniture

Examples of 20th century Irish furniture design are on display at the National Museum at Collins Barracks in Dublin. The work of several designers is represented showing changing tastes and manufacturing innovations introduced from 1900 onwards.

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here is today an acknowledged lack of research in the management of innovation, especially in understanding the complex processes that lead to the development of value laden innovations.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, the pressure to deliver more value from IT investments and practices in particular is proving to be a key challenge for Chief Information Officers and management across all sectors. But an empirically proven and industry validated IT best practice model has been lacking.

Managing IT like a business

Managing the IT budget

Managing IT for business value

IT-CMF views the effective management of the IT function within a firm as focusing on these four major strategies, with the IT Budget essentially the input to the production process, the IT capability as the production engine and IT value as the output.

Managing IT like a business closes the loop by providing the feedback mechanism for adjusting inputs to optimise the output value. These four strategies should be aligned to the organisation’s overall business strategies and the business context it is operating within.

Managing the IT capability

Launched in 2006 at NUI Maynooth, the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) amalgamates pioneering academic theory and training with leading industry and public sector experience to codify these processes in the IT field and to ultimately foster innovation in the management and usage of IT to optimise business value.

The IVI is a unique worldwide consortium of 40 members brought together in a bid to benefit from the research and development of suitable advanced methodologies, tools and practices which will enable businesses to manage IT as a value centre and to exploit IT as an innovation technology. Members include such worldclass global companies as Intel (co-founder with NUI Maynooth), , Microsoft, SAP, Chevron and BP and consultancies such as the Boston Consulting Group and Ernst and Young, just some of the professional association, academia, analyst, enterprise, public sector and IT ecosystem mix. IVI members are now firmly putting into practice the tools and methods devised during research with quantifiable results.

The open innovation concept means that in a world of widely distributed information, organisations can benefit significantly from sharing ideas and knowledge and take advantage of faster and better quality advances than they could independently achieve.

Recently successful in securing an investment of €5m by Enterprise Ireland and IDA to host the IT Innovation Competence Centre consortium, IVI plans to research further into IT Value Management and Capability Maturity ,Sustainable Computing, IT Innovation and Services Innovation.

Among the results reported by members employing IT-CMF practices are: l 8% saving in total operating budget for Technology Innovation and 20% saving of total budget for experiment execution (Merck) l 25% improvement in IT capability, for 10% reduced spend (Intel) l Significant success with initial applications has led to decision to use IT-CMF’s 36 process framework to organize and unify the IT function across corporate group (Chevron) l 96% reduction in set-up working time for new servers; and -81% (-63%) reduction in total cycle time for set-up of virtual (physical) servers (Axa-Tech) While the IT-CMF™ provides a methodology and roadmap to help IT and business executives deliver and demonstrate more value from IT, it will also proffer a more detailed and integrated approach for IT and business practitioners. The benefits of IVI membership include the opportunity to improve practices within an organisation and deliver more business value; to contribute to industry thought-leadership and share experience with other leading companies; and to develop staff and expertise.

The advantages to academics participating in the research are access to executives and organisations allied to a research stream focused on topical applied IT. Future priorities for the IVI include the areas of sustainable computing and services innovation.

For more details: http://research.nuim.ie or http://ivi.nuim.ie/ LIVE

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At the core of the initial research agenda is the development and dissemination of an industry standard for managing IT for business value – the IT-Capability Maturity Framework (IT–CMF™). This integrating framework enables senior executives and IT specialists to adopt four inter-related strategies – managing the IT budget; managing the IT capability; managing IT like a business and managing IT for business value. The framework allows organistations to better understand the value and opportunity of increasing maturity levels and bridging structural gaps in other assessment frameworks. IVI expects this framework to be used by two-thirds of all Fortune 500 companies within five years.

Using the IT-CMF, top executives and practitioners can adopt the four inter-related strategies and associated maturity curves to help manage and deliver more value from IT. The IT-CMF is the result of the synthesis of leading academic research, industry best practice and the experience in driving the transformation of the Intel IT organisation.

IVI—IT-CMF European Launch. NUI Maynooth, June 3rd 2009 (L-r) Ralf Dreischmeier (Managing Director, BCG), Martin Curney (Director, Intel Labs Europe, Prof. John Hughes (President, NUI Maynooth), An Taoiseach, Brian Cowan, TD, Stacy Smith (Chief Financial Officer, Intel), Maruja Gutiérrez Diaz (Advisor to the Director, DG Education and Culture, European Commission), Jim O’Hara (General Manager, Intel Ireland).

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R&D CompeteNCe CeNtRes

IN

a joint action to boost the standing of Irish research the Industrial Development Authority and Enterprise Ireland are to invest a total of â‚Ź56 million over the next five years in a number of Competence Centres. Five of the nine Competence Centres have already been established, and as Pat Howlan from the IDA explained, the development did not just happen overnight. The joint action, he said, brings to fruitition many years of work by the agencies. Apart from scaling up the level of research in strategic areas, Mr Howlan said that the centres have a vital role in making sure that Ireland remains relevant to the multinationals. Almost half the money put into Ireland by the multinationals currently goes into R&D, and from an inward investment point of view, research competence has the potential to become a magnet to attact more innovating companies from abroad.

Both IDA and EI will be promoting the centres abroad, and in a smart marketing move, a series of fastmoving videos in which enthuiastic researchers talk about their research, has been posted on U Tube.

Although dominated by the multinationals, one of the objectives is to provide a platform through which Irish SMEs can engage with bigger companies on applied research projects. Already, about 180 companies are involved with the centres, many of them Irish high-tech SMEs and spinoffs from the colleges.

At the launch of the Competence Centres, Martin Shannaher from the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, made it clear that this is an industry led initiative. Although a great deal of collaboration between players such as the Higher Education Authority and Science Foundation Ireland was involved, Mr Shannaher said that it is the end-users rather than the researchers who set the agenda. “We started with the clients

Spinning a wafer to check chip quality at Intel in Leixlip. Intel is one of the leading multinationals helping to set the research agenda in the Competence Centres.

Industry is to lead the way in five university based centres, and as tom Kennedy reports, smes are likely to benefit as R&D becomes a magnet to attract another round of high-tech multinationals. and worked backwards,� he said, and the directors come from industry. This does not mean that the colleges and researchers are being excluded, and as Mr Shannaher pointed out, this is a completely symbiotic relationship and without the support of the colleges, the Competence Centres could not work.

The focus is on research likely to produce a high return within the time frame of the investments. The first five centres are involved in bioenergy, IT innovation, nanotechnology, composites, and microelectronics.

These are to be followed up shortly by centres for manufacturing technology, energy, financial services, and elearning.

SPIN ACTIVE

All of the centres are based in the universities, six of which are currently involved, NUI Galway, UCD, University of Limerick, TCD, UCC, and NUI Maynooth. With longer term funding, researchers at these centres are less likely to be frustrated by stop-go style support, which has become all too common in Irish instututions. One of the big problems at present is that continuity on longer term projects can be compromised by departure of researchers on short-term contracts.

Larger companies are likely to maintain support for longer periods, and for smaller firms, there could be more opportunities to delve deeper into topics that are of particular interest to them.

SPIN ACTIVE The CenTres Bioenergy and biorefining

Twelve Irish companies are involved with this centre based at NUI Galway and co-hosted by University of Limerick and University College Dublin. Several research projects on energy capture and bioprocessing are underway, and John Travers, director of AER, one of the SMEs involved in the centre said said that Ireland has a natural advantage in this area. “Our growth rate for grass is among the highest in the world,” he said, and the same applies to algae.

Biomass is a sustainable resource for bioenergy production, and in a related area, the centre is involved in boosting the ability of microorganisms to convert waste into fuel or other useful products.

Multinationals and small start-up companies are involved in the research, and as John Travers explained, they all want to turn results into real-world applications, not just in Ireland, but abroad. The world market for this type of technology has been estimated to be worth €40 billion a year, and annual growth is in the region of 12 per cent.

Starting off with a natural advantage, said John Travers, will help companies based in Ireland to carve out a sizable slice of that market.

Applied nanotechnology

This centre, based in the Tyndall National Institute and co-hosted

by CRANN in TCD is involved with applications on the molecular or nano scale. Manipulation of materials at this

level is of huge importance for a whole range of sectors, such as electronics and pharmaceuticals. Leonard Hobbs from Intel said that nanotechnology is transforming the way these industries work, so it is important for them to be involved in world-leading research.

One of the benefits from the centre, he said, is that a number of researchers will go into industry, bringing their knowledge with them. Ideally, he said, people will work in the centres for a number of years, and then transfer into industry.

Composite materials

A dozen companies are working with this centre, based at the University of Limerick and co-hosted by University College Dublin. Conchúr O’Bradaigh, MD of EireComposites, one of the Irish SMEs involved with the centre, said that getting access to knowledge at an early stage is a big plus. Composites are rapidly replacing traditional materials, such as metals, and apart from better performance, they are often lighter, and more suited to applications in the auto, aero and energy sectors.

However, the technology is evolving rapidly, and the aim of the centre is to stay ahead in such areas as joining, resin-infusion, and incorporation of nanoparticles.

IT innovation

Information technology is one of the most powerful resources available to business and government, yet the track record in exploiting opportunities leaves a lot to be desired. Martin Curley, director of IT Innovation at Intel, explained that this centre, based at NUI Maynooth, aims to help users to get more benefits from their investments and to use the technology more efficiently. The centre is expected to provide intensive users with tools to improve performance and predictability, and efficiency also means cutting down on energy required to run complex systems.

Microelectronics

Based in the Tyndall National Institute at UCC and co-hosted by the University of Limerick, the focus here is on microchip circuit design. Just about every device we use now incorporates a microchip, and as James O’Riordan, chief technology officer with the Irish SME, Silicon & Software Systems, explained, new circuit designs are now bringing about half a billion euro a year into Ireland each year.

TO COMe Competence centres on manufacturing productivivity, energy efficiency, elearning, and financial services are in the pipeline. Companies such as Pfizer, Intel, Bombardier and Seagate will be involved in the centre on manufacturing productivity. Xerox, Analog Devices, Sustainable Energy Ireland, and Intel are lined up for energy efficiency.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbooCmyGvnQ

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SPIN ACTIVE

LIVE LINK

MBER 2010 E V O N 4 1 7

Get your company involved in Science Week 2010!

Science Week continues to be one of Ireland’s largest and most recognisable events on the yearly calendar. The week-long regional programme of events each November aims to make science more interesting and accessible to children and adults alike.

The Science Week Corporate Partners Programme is a DSE initiative whereby companies from various industries are invited to participate in Science Week.

Companies are united by their interest in promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to young people and to the general public.

Get Involved! Becoming a corporate partner is very straightforward and there are lots of ways to participate. Here are some ideas:

l l l l

Invite local schools to an open day in your company Sponsor a Science Week quiz in a local school Hold a Science Week competition (essay, art, photography etc.)

Give a science-themed, or career-related talk at a local school or library

Benefits include visibility on the Corporate Partner’s page of www.scienceweek. ie; including your company logo, a description of your event, a link to your company website, free Science Week merchandise for your event, an opportunity to highlight your event nationwide and coordination /outreach advice from the DSE team.

If you are already involved in science outreach throughout the year, why not schedule these activities to happen during Science Week and climb on board for national coverage, co-branding and visibility on www.ScienceWeek.ie? If you are interested in joining the programme, simply get in touch with us at: E-mail: info@science.ie or tel: 01 607 3042.

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The Burren

T

he siltstone, shale and sandstone cliffs of Moher rising sheer out of the Atlantic are spectacular, yet they are top of a range that goes down for 800 metres, and they may well have once been capped by another 2,500 metres of younger sediments. These covering rocks have long since been worn away and what we see now are the remains of a giant delta, formed over 300 million years ago as the land began to emerge from a shallow tropical sea. Compared to the greyer rocks inland, the cliffs are relatively young, and the limestone pavements we see exposed in the Burren were formed earlier when the whole region was a sea bed off a giant continent on the other side of the equator.

RonĂĄn Hennessy, a geologist from NUI Galway, has a special interest in these formations as he recently became the scientific consultant to an influential group that aims to have the Burren region classed as an

Tom Kennedy reports on how the history, culture, flora and fauna of the Burren have all been shaped by geology. internationally recognised geopark.

The Burren rocks, he said, have a remarkable story to tell, and what makes the area so special is that so much of the flora, fauna, history, farming and culture, has been shaped by geology.

The Burren is just one part of an ancient intercontinental shelf that would once have stretched across to Britain, and west to the Aran Islands, which geologically are an extension of Co Clare rather than Galway. At some stage the islands would even have been joined to the Burren, but over the space of 50 or 60 million years a lot has been literally washed away, and this is largely because the rocks, composed mainly of calcium carbonate, and

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 31

capped by shale, are soluble rather than soft. Moisture absorbs some carbon dioxide, so rain drops are naturally acidic, and acid, even though extremely dilute, dissolves calcium carbonate. Given enough time, rain would make the Burren as flat as the lowlands around Gort.

The limestone was formed as billions upon billions of tiny marine creatures deposited calcium carbonate, which became compressed and solidified into hard rock. In the earlier part of this era, the Lower Carboniferous, the sea deepened as the Earth’s crust in this part of the globe began to stretch, and for a long period of time, life underwater flourished in the undisturbed depths. While the invasion of land was still very much in its infancy, there was an abundance of life at sea. Apart from the all important zooplankton, there were sea urchins, sea-lillies, ammonites, filter-feeding brachiopods, gastropods and corals,

GALWAY BAY

oh er

Kinvara

ev eE lva

Ballyvaughan

S li

N

Cl iff so fM

Lisdoonvarna Doolin Kilfenora Ennistymon

Corofin

Layer upon layer of rocks formed when the Burren was part of a great river delta.

Photo: Marie-Claire Cleary

all of which we now see in a fossil record that remains surprisingly stable for a remarkable length of time. As Ronán Hennessy explained, fossils from the lower limestone are not all that different from those at the top, so life under the sea may have been a lot less stressful than life on land. “There are crinoids throughout, and likewise there are corals,” he said, and while some corals have been knocked over, showing disturbance, others remain standing, suggesting long periods of calm. Although the sea could remain warm, the Earth itself could be in the grip of an ice age, and as frozen caps advanced and retreated, sea levels fluctuated, sometimes going low enough to expose the recently formed limestone. Hard to imagine that rocks now buried deep below were once at the surface, but during these periods of exposure, the limestone was subject to much the same kind of wear and tear that gave the Earth its blanket of soil. In the Burren these ancient soils have been preserved, sandwiched in between the older and younger layers as bands of yellow-brown ‘palaeosoil’.

Several of these palaeosoil layers occur, some just a centrimetre or so and others up to one metre thick, and they yield clues to what was happening on land. Particles of volcanic ash occur and these are likely to have come from eruptions to the south, in what is now County Limerick, and roots of ancient plants have been found. Where these palaeosoil layers have been exposed, weathering in more recent times has produced a distinctive terracing, which can be seen on hillsides and along the coast from Doolin to Fenore.

As the sea levels rose, these ancient landscapes were submerged again, and soils were buried under yet more limestone. This rising up of land was not just confined to the Burren, and the palaeokarst bands are known to stretch all the way from the Aran Islands to the Peak District in England.

About 326 million years ago the sea level deepened to such an extent that the constant deposition of calcium carbonate dwindled away, and all that fell to the ocean floor were teeth, scales and bones of marine vertebrates.

Of these there was an abundance of species and their bones accumulated to become a phosphate rich deposit which can now be seen in places as a black band over the earlier limestone.

At Doolin these bands are up to two metres thick, and during World War

II, these phosphates were mined for fertilizer.

Later, fine clay particles began to appear, washed down into the sea as river sediment from mountains which have long since gone. At this stage the ocean floor was a dark, gloomy, oxygen starved place, high in dissolved sulphides. Not a suitable environment for larger marine animals, but among the animals living above, closer to the surface, were cephalopods, with their distinctive swirling shells. When their remains

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 32

fell into the mud below, their shells were often replaced by pyrite, iron sulphide.

Over millions of years, the influx of silt and sand increased as a great delta extending over to the midlands formed. Sometimes, so much sediment was being washed down, that it slumped down into folds, and these can be seen now as solidified rocks on the south side of Fisherstreet Bay. As the delta rose the speed of deposition increased. It was as if the Earth had woken up from a long

slumber. Hundred of metres were laid down in less than two million years, compared to the leisurely eight million years taken to deposit the previous 12 metres of black shale.

From our present perspective, this is the rock we see exposed at the Cliffs of Moher. The numerous stacked layers represent repeating episodes of invasion and retreat, a great sandwich of sandstone, siltstone and mudstone formed by changes in sea level. Each layer was once at the surface, and at the base of the cliffs a 300 million year old river bed has been identified.

Mud-dwellers were abundant, and while the idea of slimy arthropod or gastropod beasties slithering around the kitchen floor might not have much appeal, their fossilised trails are greatly admired in ‘Liscannor Stone’ Liscannor sandstone splits conveniently into flat surfaces and it helps that the Burren was not pushed too hard by the mountain building of 300 million years ago. The folds are gentle and the slope is just a two to five degree tilt down to the south. Of course, the pressure required to tilt an enormous slab of rock this much was enormous, but geologists are inclined to think that firm foundations prevented a bunching up of the Burren limestone. As Ronán explained, the Galway granite to the north is thought to extend down southwards forming an anchor for the Burren.

As a result of the overall tilt we can get a fairly good idea of how thick the limestone is. The shale at the Cliffs of

p

a Shale c

320 million years

by arated one sep d limest Terrace ay bands cl ancient

330 million years

estone Lower lim

Old Red Sandstone

Granite

360 million years 400 Million years

Slieve Elva

A 19th century ordnance section from Galway Bay to Slieve Elva at a horizontal scale of one inch to a mile, and a vertical of three inches to a mile.

Moher is at the top, the dip is down to the south and up to the north so, as Ronán said, “you can log your way up the Black Head, and beyond to Galway, and if you drew a line, east west through Galway Bay, this could mark the end of the Burren

limestone.” At that point, the lower limestone comes up against granite, so over the distance we get a top to bottom section. The 800 metres, he said, makes the Burren limestone among the thickest in the world.

BURREN

feature of the exposed limestone pavement, and they provide cover for a remarkable range of plants. Because of the deep crevices, Arctic plants, normally only found at high elevation, grow side by side with Mediterranean species.

Named from the Irish, boirne, a rocky place, the Burren is generally taken to embrace an area, 40 by 32 km, lying between Galway Bay on the north, and the Atlantic coast on the west, with a line running through Doolin, Kilfenora, Gort and Kinvara separating it from the south.

The area is of special interest because the gently sloping limestone with its numerous joints represents a landscape created by dissolution rather than by deposition or erosion.

Water has dissolved carbonate rocks to form what is known as a karst landscape, and numerous caves underlie the surface.

The cracks and crevices, known as grykes, are a

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 33

Mountain building

About 300 million years ago, long after the limestone had been capped by a cover of siltstone, enormous pressure, built up as the Earth’s plates continued to move, began forcing horizontal beds of rock to bend and fold. The entire Burren area was tilted, and rocks gently folded into synclines and anticlines. These folds are clearly visible on the hillsides of Slieve Roe and Mullaghmore, and the stretching of limestone beds up into anticlines caused numerous fractures to form. Hot mineral-rich fluids flowed into these fractures, depositing veins of calcite, fluorite, galena and pyrite, some of which were mined in the past.

The pressure is thought to have continued with intermittent upheavals over a period of 250 million years, so an abundance of fissures helped the rain to sculpt the surface, widening cracks and allowing the slightly acidic rain to penetrate deep into the underlying rocks.

A Geopark

The Burren with its unusual flora, archaeology, music tradition and geology is a huge attraction, and up to 900,000 people a year visit the Cliffs of Moher. All of these attractions in one area could result in the Burren achieving recognition as a world class geopark. In terms of status, this is a bit like becoming a world heritage site, and the pay-off could be enormous, not just financially, but in terms of managing and maintaining a fragile environment. Already the influx of tourists is having an impact, and one of the main objectives in aiming to become an internationally recognised geopark is to ensure that visitors do not actually destroy the attractions that they have come so far to see. The roads are winding and narrow, yet driving a four lane super highway into the heart of

the Burren to accommodate bus loads of flower-picking visitors is not an option. Some of the impact would be hard to predict, and as Ronán found, the area is now littered with ‘minidolmens’, modern memorials left by hill walkers.

Achieving geopark status is not easy. The requirements are quite Wave ripple marks of an ancient ocean on the side of the road near Lehinch

strict, a comprehensive resource management plan has to be in place, and an international panel of scientists has to be convinced that these plans, involving all stake holders, are sustainable and supported by the resident community. In planning terms, this approach, although strict, is ideal because all interests must agree to work together. A bid group involving locals, Clare County Council, Shannon Development and the Geological Survey of Ireland has been working on a submission, and recently, Ronán took over from the soft-fossil expert, Maria McNamara, as the group’s consultant geologist. As the geological expert, Ronán has the task of bringing all these interests together into a comprehensive management plan for the Burren. The plan is to have this submission in before the end of this year.

Caves

An extensive network of caves extends throughout the limestone and in scores of places the ground has dropped as caverns collapse, forming large hollows, known as dolines. One, the Carran Depression, at 9 sq km in area is the largest doline in Europe.

Water is plentiful, but there is just one river as all other streams quickly disappear underground. Sometimes streams are swallowed up into the ground, leaving a dry valley. Many of these underground streams only emerge at sea level, and one, known as Mermaid’s Hole, gushes out at Boodaun, north of Doolin Point. At Kinvara thousands of litres a second filter out into the bay.

Underground streams continue to etch their way down to the water table, and where this is close to the surface, rivers can re-emerge during heavy rains or in winter, causing dry lakes to fill up again. These turloughs are a prominent feature of the Burren, and some, close to the coast, can fill up with high tides, as underground streams are forced to back up.

The attack on rock begins at the surface, and the exposed limestone is pitted with small pools where rainwater has eaten into the rock.

Algae growing in these pools increase the acidity of the water, accelerating the action in dissolving the limestone.

In geological terms, this wearing away of rock is fast. Given another four or five million years, the Burren would be levelled down to become like the lowlands to the east by Gort.

Below ground, the action of water has been creating a labyrinth of caves since rain first fell on the siltstone cap, and in those millions of years passageways have been made at a succession of levels as the sea level rose or fell. Some of these caverns are immense, 10 metres or more across, and others have deep pools and subterrean waterfalls. One of the better known caves, Aillwee, was formed below the water table, but now it is 90 metres above. That cave was discovered by a local man, Jacko McGann, when he found a hillside hole in 1976, its entrance blocked by fallen rocks. Jacko was probably the first visitor to this cave after a brown bear, Ursus arctos, failed to wake up from winter hibernation shortly

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 35

after the retreat of ice. Since then thousands of visitors have passed through the enlarged entrance every year to wander in safety through a section of cave. There are countless other caves, and the most extensive system known is the Poulnagollum complex under the eastern side of Slieve Elva. This has over 11 km in galleries, and is still being explored by cavers who must first descent into a funnel shaped hole for about 30 metres before entering a sloping passageway leading to a spectacular subterrenean waterfall. At Poll-anIonain, near Lisdoonvarna, there is an eight metre long stalactite, the largest in Europe, and at Doolin there are caves that were formed when the water level was lower, so these ‘green holes’ have since been drowned. It takes some effort to delve into these dark spaces, and in some ways, cavers are a bit like mountain climbers in reverse. Like them, safety is a issue, and they need their equipment. Spectacular sights are hidden in perpetual darkness, and these are some of the rewards that cavers enjoy in return for exploring the depths. Cavers like the challenge, and new caves keep turning up. One if the most recent discoveries was in the Carren Depression, where passageways have been found extending down from 120 metres to sea level.

Phosphates

A band of ancient soil, trapped between layers of limestone showing where sea levels fell for long periods of time.

Ice and soil

After advancing over the Burren, the melting ice deposited boulders from the north, and many of these, including blocks of Galway granite and schist, remain perched on the landscape as erratics. Erractics are found up to 300 metres above sea level, but not higher, showing that the peaks of Slieve Elva and Knockauns remained above the ice.

The last two advances of ice are relatively recent, and as long as the Burren was above sea level, periods of intense cold have left their mark. Of the dozen ice ages known to have occurred since then, nine have been recorded in Burren rocks.

The most recent glaciation, moving in a north east, south west direction, left its scars, polishing north facing outcrops, and exposed large areas of limestone pavement, but it did not completely clear away the thin covering of soil. The last, Midlandian glaciation, even left boulder clay on elevated hillsides, and there are drumlins deposited by melt water streams. It has often been assumed that ice swept everything away, but this is not so. Pollen grains, left by plants, suggest that, compared to the present day, there may have been a lot more soil on the Burren before the Bronze Age when, as the numerous remains show, the area was heavily populated.

Selected references

The phosphate deposits were mined in north Clare, near Doolin and Kilfenora. From 1924 to 1939 the deposits were mined and quarried, and during the war years hundreds of tons every week were being distributed to farmers throughout Ireland for use as a fertilizer. Prior to this, phosphates were being imported, mainly from North Africa, but war time hostilities cut off that supply.

Although regarded as inferior to the imports, the government at the time wanted to ensure a supply of phosphates, so under an Emergency Power Act, the workings, owned by a retired circuit court judge, Michael Comyn, were taken over in 1942.

Extraction continued until 1947, but as Ronรกn Hennessy explained, the deposits were far from exhausted. In 1974, when the price of phosphates went up, the Geological Survey sank 55 boreholes to determine if it would be worth reopening the old workings. The boreholes revealed that the deposits were larger than had been thought, with estimated reserves increased from 1.75 million tons to 3 million. However, interest in Irish phosphates had already declined, so no further action was taken.

Other minerals were mined in the area, and both lead and silver occur on the west side of Slieve Carron. During the 1960s there was an open cast working in Kilweelran where fluorspar was extracted, and crystalline calcite is often seen filling grykes

Many books, articles and guide have been published about the Burren, and here are three references to works that focus on the geology. l A non-technical guide to the geology of the Burren region. Dr Marie E McNamara, January 2009.

Northern Environmental Education Development. l Geoparks, feature in Science Spin, issue 28, May 2008. l Exploring the limestone landscape of the Burren and Gort lowlands. Mike Simms.

INSECTS OF THE BURREN Biologist and photographer, Lisa Clancy, has been taking a close look at the amazing variety of insects in the Burren.

1

Horse Fly: Haematopota pluvialiscan be an unwelcome and attentive follower of visitors in the Burren. They feed on blood, which aids in egg development.

2

Marsh Damsel Bug: Nabis limbatus- this species occurs throughout the Burren in damp grasslands and wet meadows.

1.

E

very creature, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant has its own

independent world and life experience.

Photography can help to tell their story.

Butterflies have justifiably earned their reputation as the most exquisite of the insects.

Their patterns and striking colors are akin to “self-propelled flowers” floating in the meadows.

Unquestionably there is something thrilling about

2.

seeing them in the wild but a photograph has the capacity to highlight details that the naked eye could not possibly define. It immortalizes a subject; evokes an emotion; shows feeling and depth in the

2.

subjects subject’s eyes. Macro photography lets us see the world in new ways and can give us new information and greater insights into the commonplace.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 38

Common Blue: Polyommatus icarus

M

acro images can show that the

around me, frequently redirecting my

the right lens on at the right time and on

wonders of nature are not

attention. I quickly outgrew this and

the right settings. Then it’s just a mat-

confined to exotic places like the

began to realize that capturing great

ter of pressing a button. I wish I could

tropical forests of the world. Through

images is all about patience and

say the same for the rest of the images.

the naturalist’s eye a common horse

determination. If you spot an insect that

Time and again, after eons following the

fly can be as interesting as the praying

intrigues you, stick with it for as long

one subject, watching it bound from one

mantis’ of the tropics.

as it takes. Build a relationship with the

setting to the next- all with uninspired

subject, get to know it, anticipate its

results- it would finally pose in just the

taken in the Burren, a unique karst

actions and then stalk it until it lands in

right way. Alas a myriad of things can

limestone landscape in the northwest-

just the right position. Of course, a lot of

go wrong at this point- the sun retreats

ern region of Co. Clare. The great thing

it has to do with luck. The image above

behind a cloud, a sudden move startles

about ‘shooting’ insects is they are

of the Common Blue butterfly is a perfect

it, a delay in configuring settings and so

everywhere you look. Actually I found

example of a lucky catch. I saw it land,

on. Morale is crucial because that’s what

this to be a hindrance initially as

saw- with glee- the uncluttered

keeps you going and nothing encourages

creatures of all kinds flew and scurried

background and just happened to have

you more than getting that perfect shot.

The images seen in this article were

Four-spotted Chaser: Libellula quadrimaculata

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page39

1.

2.

3.

5.

4.

6.

1

Wood White: Leptidea sinapis- this butterfly thrives under certain conditions of light and shade. The Hawthorn, Hazel and Blackthorn scrub of the Burren provide precise conditions for its larvae and it flourishes here.

2

Garden Pebble: Evergestis forficalis- this species has a distinctive resting posture, and when completely at repose, has the wings held in a steep tent-like fashion.

4

Click Beetle: Athous haemorrhoidalisthis species is best known for its ability to hurl itself into the air when placed on its back. This process is accompanied by a loud click, hence the name.

3

Black-tailed Skimmer: Orthetrum cancellatum- mature males of this species are territorial and protect their area by perching on the ground or low on vegetation from where they can scan and patrol their territory.

5

Garden Pebble: Evergestis forficalis

7.

6

Drinker Moth Larva: Euthrix potatoria- the caterpillars of this moth can be seen from August to September and April to June when they feed mainly on grasses and reeds.

7

Yellow Ophion: Ophion luteus- the female of this species lacks an ovipositor so it lays her eggs on a caterpillar. The wasp larva then burrows in and develops inside this host, eating its internal tissues and eventually killing it after it pupates.

8

Shield Bug Nymph: Palomena prasina- this species has five nymphal stages, moulting between each colouration one. Each stage has a different coloration with the adult stage occurring in September.

8.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 41

Drone fly: Eristalis tenax

C

uriosity alone should justify the study of insects. They are fellow inhabitants of our

planet and display a wide array of intriguing identities and lifestyles. They are symbols of spirituality in many cultures, and are portrayed in art and music. In an economical context insects are of monumental importance. They pollinate our crops, break down organic material such as detritus, rotting materials, living and dead wood, and fungus, they eliminate animal waste and aerate the soil and today few human societies lack honey, provided by bees. They are fundamental to ecosystem functions including nutrient recycling, plant propagation, maintenance of plant and animal community structure, and providing food for insectivorous vertebrates. It is no wonder than that some insects are considered “keystones” as loss of their critical ecological functions could collapse the wider ecosystem.

Ireland has approximately 12,000 species of insects, which accounts for only a small fraction of the estimated worldwide number. The Mayfly: Cloeon dipterum

Burren is relatively rich in insect species, when compared with the Irish total, exhibiting unusually high densities of certain orders, such as the Lepidoptera (Butterflies & Moths), possessing a completely unique mixture of species types and boasting a number of rarities.

For example in 1949, Capt. W.S Wright stumbled upon the indigenous burren green (Calamia tridens occidentalis). This lime-green, inch-long moth was discovered in the Ballyvaughan area. It is fascinating to think that this species, which is unknown elsewhere in Ireland and Britain, could have remained here undetected until so recently.

M

acro images highlight the capacity of nature to enthrall us. They help

demonstrate that the insects of the Burren, and indeed everywhere, have a place, not just in scientific journals and periodicals, but in an artistic context. “Macro photography is a visual portal to a world most people walk by without a glance”.

By Lisa Clancy

Azure Damselfly: Coenagrion puella

LisaClancy Clancyhas hasa adegree degree in Zoology Lisa in Zoology fromfrom NUI NUI Galway in in Biological Photography and Galwayand anda amasters masters Biological Photography Imaging from the University of Nottingham. and Imaging from the University of Nottingham.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 43

In this image taken on 19 April 2010 by ESA’s Envisat satellite, a heavy plume of ash from the Eyjafjallajoekull Volcano in Iceland is seen travelling in a roughly southeasterly direction. The volcano has been emitting steam and ash since its recent eruptions began on 20 March, and as observable, the emissions continue. The plume, visible in brownish-grey, is approximately 400 km long. Image: ESA

The Icelandic eruption

Seán Duke reports on an inconvenient truth

he inconvenient truth emerging from the eruption of the Eyjafiallajoekull volcano, is that mankind, despite all of our advanced technology, remains at the mercy of nature. One relatively small volcanic eruption, and Europe’s airline industry is grounded. The volcano doesn’t care if people are getting docked pay abroad, or missing family. It doesn’t give a whit if the airlines are losing millions daily, or jobs are being put at risk.

The volcanic ash, or tephra, from this Icelandic eruption is very fine grained and as such is being carried by prevailing winds. We are, thus, at the mercy of the weather, and flight disruption could go on for some time.

The scientific advice for now is ‘flyer beware’.

“I think people would be well advised to take the scientific advice,” said Professor Gamble, who recalled a dangerous incident cause by volcanic

T

Billowing clouds of dust, Eyjafjallajoerkull photographed by Árni Frioriksson. ash several years ago. “Back in 1982, a British Airways 747 jet flew into a plume of ash over Indonesia, and lost all four engines, said Prof Gamble.

“The crew heroically managed to re-ignite the engines a few thousand metres above the ground, averting a major disaster, but the incident was an eye-opener for the international aviation industry, and these areas (prone to volcanism) are now monitored closely.”

Though there is talk of getting back to normal in terms of European air flight at time of writing, but this ignores the fact that Icelandic volcanoes have been known to erupt for up to a year, or more, in the past, according to Prof Gamble. As for trying to predict how long the volcano will continue to erupt for he said: “How long is a piece of string.”

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 45

GEOLOGY

Iceland sits atop a geological ‘hot zone’ where molten magma from deep in the Earth is prone to rise to the surface.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it is also located along the Mid Atlantic Ridge, where two enormous pieces of the Earth’s crust are being pulled apart. As these plates are being pulled apart, it creates the opportunity for magma to rise up from below. These enormous forces of nature underlie the eruption that began on 20th March.

There is arguably also the risk of the eruption spreading to the nearby Katla volcano, a more dangerous volcano that some geologists believe is linked to Eyjafiallajoekull. Prof Gamble is not convinced by the link saying the link between the two is ‘open to question’, but he has enough experience to know that he can’t rule out a link either.

The eruption is, of course, taking place in a very cold country, where

Cascading up to 500 metres, lava ejected by Eyjafjallajoerkull photographed by David Karna.

glaciers exist year around. Icelandic volcanoes are often capped by glacial icecaps. When magma wells up from below ground, and hits the ice, at temperatures of up to 12,000ºC it causes explosive effects. This is a big reason why Icelandic volcanoes are a threat to the local population.

The type of magma, or molten rock involved here is basalt. This is the same rock that typically makes up the rocks of the ocean floor. It is also the rock that once spewed out onto the surface of Ulster, and cooled to form the Antrim plateau – at a time when Ireland was in an active volcanic zone.

It is also the type of rock that people might be familiar with from seeing footage of fast-moving lava spewing out from Hawaiian volcanoes.

Basalt is fast flowing, because it has relatively little ‘silica’ content. Silica is the major component of sand. When there is a lot of silica, magma is slow moving – this can lead to a build up of pressure before eruption and a massive explosion, such as occurred with the Mt St Helen’s eruption in the US in 1984. Without the affect of the covering ice, basaltic magma would flow speedily out from Icelandic volcanoes and spread all over the surface of the land. But with the ice there, the basalt gets trapped and it must blow its way out.

LUCKY

Prof Gamble believes that we in Ireland, and Europe generally are lucky in that we do not experience

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 40 Page 46

the after effects of volcanic eruptions too often. In other parts of the world, such as Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand, where he has lived and work, disruption caused by volcanoes is quite common. “I remember in 1996 Auckland International Airport was closed by a relatively small eruption from Mount Ruapehu. When the ash settled and the wind direction changed then a decision was taken to fly again.”

At the moment, we have a change in wind direction at time of writing, but no settling out of ash, and settling is not likely as eruptions continue.

In these circumstances it seems that air flight in Europe will be crucially dependent on the direction of the prevailing winds. Until the eruptions stop, and fine ash settles, this will continue to be the case.

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Will scientists lose control of their data? he scientific system works by scientists working hard to generate data, which they then claim ‘ownership’ of and use to publish research papers and further their careers. Scientists, thus, are motivated to generate data, and to do good research. It will come as a shock to scientists to learn that data built up over years, or decades, might not be protected from anyone that might seek access to it under freedom of information laws.

Queen’s University Belfast has been told that data belonging to their ‘tree-ring’ laboratory built up over four decades must be handed over to Douglas Keenan – a mathematician that doesn’t accept that global warming is due to mankind’s actions.

Douglas Keenan had applied first to gain access to the data in 2007, and was turned down by QUB. Then he applied to the Pro-Chancellor of QUB, and was again turned down. He then applied to the UK Freedom of Information Commissioner and won.

The Commissioner determined that the tree ring data was ‘environmental’ and that there was a public interest to be served, therefore, in forcing QUB to release it.

Douglas Keenan believes that he can extract information on past climate from the QUB tree ring data, but this contention has been strongly challenged by Professor Mike Baillie, a world figure in tree ring research, who up until his recent retirement was running the tree ring lab at QUB. Prof Baillie contends that he tried to extract information on past climate from his own tree ring data, but was unable to do so.

If this ruling stands, scientists might rightfully ask: Why should I work hard to gather data, and to analyse

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Scientific ‘ownership’ of data is under threat, like never before following a ruling by the Freedom of Information Commissioner in the UK which requires that QUB release ‘tree ring’ data gathered by a leading lab over four decades, writes Seán Duke. it, and to try and make sense of it, if anyone at all can put an FOI request in, at any stage, and gain access to the data and use it for their own purposes?

The ruling will send shockwaves throughout the scientific community well beyond Northern Ireland and the UK. The FOI legislation in the UK is based on European law, as is Irish law.

What happened in Northern Ireland could certainly happen here.

Prof Baillie is a world-class scientist and a pioneer in the use of ‘tree rings’ to data, precisely, the age of ancient oak material. His work means that a piece of ancient oak recovered from an archaeological site, for example, can be dated to say, exactly 641 AD. This precise dating is a powerful tool for archaeologists. It cannot, said Prof Ballie, say anything about past climate other than indicate that a specific year was ‘probably warmer’ than another year, or one decade was ‘maybe colder’ than another.

Prof Baillie, and the team he leaves behind, is now, however, suffering perhaps because of his high profile in the world of ‘tree ring’ research. Prof Baillie’s profile was probably what attracted the attention of Keenan, a man who believes that top scientists could be mis-representing data to support the view that global warming is the result of mankind’s actions.

Keenan wants the chance to analyse the data himself.

When Science Spin contacted Prof Baillie was less than happy with the ruling, and admitted that given its serious implications, he was happy to be now retired.

The decision on what to do next following the ruling is not his to make, he said, but that as far as he was concerned the data now belongs to QUB, who paid him for 37 years.

“QUB may decide to give out the data - that is up to them, however, if it was up to me I wouldn’t give it out for several reasons. One of the reasons is that I feel, due to the expertise issue, that I retain some intellectual property rights over the data.”

“Another reason is that it is being demanded under false pretences – tree-ring widths are not climate data.

Unfortunately, as trees grow in the environment it would be hard to argue that they do not contain environmental information. Indeed that is probably why the Commissioner found that the data was environmental.”

“I think it is out intellectual property and no-one should have the right to simply demand it. Also, Mr Keenan is the only person in 40 years who has accused me of being dishonest – on a web forum last year – thus I wouldn’t give the data to Mr Keenan under any circumstances.”

“I am having a go at this whole FOI business and feel it is an outrage that we have to hand over our data on very dubious grounds. Given the shambles that is FOI legislation the Commissioner was acting well within his brief to order the data to be released - that still doesn’t make it fair.”

Why should I work hard to gather data, and to analyse it, and to try and make sense of it, if anyone at all can put an FOI request in, at any stage, and gain access to the data and use it for their own purposes?

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 39 Page 48

Du Noyer

Geological Photography Competition 2010 Entries are invited for the 12th Du Noyer Geological Photography Competition.

Outcrop of Thor Granite near Burtonport with intrusive band of aplite, a photograph by Daragh McDonough from the 2009 competition.

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.

Entrants may submit a maximum of 4 photographs, illustrating any aspect of field geology or scenic landscapes.

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.

Only previously unpublished photos will be accepted as entries. By entering this competition entrants are stating that they have taken the photo and that the photo is unpublished.

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 on 10th 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 e-mailed to info@planetearth.ie Closing date for entries: Friday 8th October 2010.

For full details visit the GSI web site www.gsi.ie

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Renewable energy, nanotechnology, space technology, computer animation and game development: A career for you?

MyScienceCareer.ie is a new website which aims to provide resources for students, career guidance counsellors, teachers, parents and people of all ages who are interested in finding out more about a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Check out career profiles written by young professionals from all areas of science, along with useful resources such as video interviews, for some valuable insights into a career in science.

Find out the difference between various sciencerelated jobs, what subjects you would need to study, what a typical day involves and what other areas could be open to you in the future by pursuing a career in STEM. Use the Resources section to direct you to some important websites that will help you to get more information on what colleges to consider, what points you may need and what options are open to you. Read about Ireland’s rich scientific history and famous Irish scientists of the past, as well as finding out more about our brightest Science Ambassadors of today.

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is an initiative of the national integrated awareness programme Discover Science & Engineering.