43
ISSUE Nov/Dec 2010
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SCIENCE
SPIN
IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE
THE BRaIN personality Dún Laoghaire Moving mountains
Lady Luck
FacTS or
opINIoNS?
INVISIBILITY
Is it really possible? LIVE LINK
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One of the outstanding photographs from the NI Ornithologists’ Club by Danny Boyd.
Publisher DKS Ltd 5 Serpentine Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. www.sciencespin.com Email: tom@sciencespin.com LIVE LINK Editor Tom Kennedy tom@sciencespin.com
Contributing editor Seán Duke sean@sciencespin.com
Upfront
SPIN 2
Moving mountains Tom Kennedy reports that the harbour at Dún Laoghaire is a monument to the Dalkey quarrymen 8 THE BRAIN Veronica Miller explains about personality and mental illness
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Celebrating a decade of SFI Tom Kennedy reports that support for science will continue. 20 Point of view Tom Kennedy reports that explaining facts is not the same as expressing opinions. 24
Production support Marie-Claire Cleary
Problem solvers in demand Researchers are in demand as problem solvers. 25
Business Development Manager Alan Doherty alan@sciencespin.com
Links Opportunities for SMEs
Design and Production Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo
28
Red mud Margaret Franklin gives the background to the toxic spill 29
Invisibility Chris Coughlan explains how light may go around objects. 32 Dublin’s rocky roads Mary Mulvihill has an audio guide Bird watch A selection of winning photographs Lady Luck A prize winning essay from Sinéad Keane.
Field trips Humphrey Jones points the way to some destinations near Dublin. 46 Space education Ruth McAvinia was at the Space University in Strasbourg.
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Geological Survey of Ireland
39
GM Foods Humphrey Jones raises a hot topic for discussion in schools. 44
Printing Turner Group, Longford
Go to
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The fire-starter Seán Duke talked to scientist, Claire Belcher. 42
Picture research Source Photographic Archive www.iol.ie/~source.foxford/
ON AIR
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47
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Gorely Crater. Photo: Agnes Samper
UPFRONT
Explosive landscape
ONE of the most volcanically active areas on Earth is the northeast of Russia and in the extremely cold and remote Kamchatka peninsula, all the signs of upheaval remain undisturbed. According to geologists involved in the Europlanet Research Infrastructure, over the past six million years the Kamchatka peninsula has experienced more volcanic eruptions than any other place on Earth. Kamchatka is part of what is known as the Ring of Fire, a chain of volcanoes that encircle the Pacific Ocean. An international team of scientists is currently at work on the peninsula, among them Dr Agnes Sampder from the University of Quebec, and Dr Pierre Lahitte from the University of ParisSud. These scientists are working with colleagues from Russia on studying two of the volcanos, Mutnovsky, and Gorely. These two volcanos are just 15 km apart, and have been active for more than 700,000 years. A massive explosion completely destroyed the Gorely volcano, leaving a huge depression, the Gorely caldera. Activity continues at Gorely, and upwelling magma has built up a new volcano, and the scientists believe that this is a repeating cycle. Dr Samper said that Gorely has been through three cycles of being built up and then destroyed in massive explosions, and Mutnovsky has been through four. His aim is to pinpoint the dates of these events and relate them to the volcanos we see elsewhere today. Samples from the site will be brought back to labs in Orsay and Montreal for radioactive decay dating. Radioactive potassium in the lava decays over 1.25 million years into argon, and this gas has been trapped into the rocks. Dr Samper explained that collecting the 2 to 3 kg samples involved long and strenuous hikes over an awe-inspiring landscape.
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Gorely Crater. Photo: Agnes Samper Mutnovsky volcano. Photo: Agnes Samper
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UPFRONT
Opening up the Arctic
sea, the Barents sea, and other known fields. Gas is not the only source of wealth. There are abundant deposits of nickel, copper, tin, uranium, phosphate Dry areas, such as the sahara, were and other minerals. according to the once teeming with wetland life. Before russian geologists, millions of tonnes the blanket peat, the west of Ireland of lead-zinc carbonates with associated had a near Mediterrean climate, and manganese have been found in the in the near future we may yet see the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. opening up of the arctic Ocean. as For many years it was known Geoff Glasby and yuri Voytekhovsky that the far north is rich in minerals, from the russian academy of sciences and large scale mining and smelting report, retreating ice is improving operations go back to the 1930s. access to a vast mineral rich region. These operations have left a legacy Writing in Geoscientist, the scientists of pollution, and according to the explain that the Lomonosov ridge, two scientists, smelters are typically running all the way from siberia surrounded by a barren area. “The through the North Pole to Greenland, russian arctic,” they wrote, “is now far is thought to contain a quarter of the from being a pristine wilderness.” world’s oil and gas reserves. Interest In scale these operations are in laying claim to these resources lies big. One mining group, Norilsk behind the recent hazardous mission Nickel, produces about 19 per cent undertaken by the russian navy to of the world’s nickel, 46 per cent of An enormous area is being opened up along the plant a titanium alloy flag on the seabed its palladium, and 12 per cent of its Russian coast. The arrows on this chart, from the 4261 metres below the North Pole. platinum. Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Whatever about the immediate area as the ice retreats we are going to indicate recent movement of ice. around the Pole, russia can certainly see a lot more activity in this region, and lay claim to an enormous area off the ships will be operating in open waters siberian coast. although isolated and extremely cold, this highly within the arctic Circle. If the melt back continues at its present productive area is of great importance to the russian economy. rate, ports in the far north will be able to remain open all year. export of natural gas is already a source of great wealth to russia, yet billions of tonnes remain to be tapped from the Kara
Discussing geology
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institute.mail@marine.ie
IN auGusT the american Geological Institute hosted a webinar in the form of a live discussion between Dr Peadar Mcardle, Garth earls, Prof Pat shannon, and Dr Deirdre Lewis. The webinar was supported by the Geological survey of Ireland, Geological survey of Northern Ireland, royal Irish academy, the Institute of Geologists of Ireland, and university College Dublin. The speakers, all leading figures in Irish geology, discussed how geosciences are contributing to the Irish economy. as Peadar Mcardle, Director of GsI, pointed out, geology is currently contributing about three per cent to Ireland’s Gross National Product, and through projects such as the INFOMar seabed mapping geosciences have great potential to stimulate economic growth. In Northern Ireland, as Garth earls, Director of GsNI, explained, the Tellus project, charting resources from the air, is also opening up new opportunities. In many respects these projects are complimentary, and and during the webinar the benefits of adopting a co-ordinated all island approach was discussed. One of the significant points made by these contributors was that the payback from these projects is high and the economy will continue to benefit from INFOMAR and Tellus. The webinar can be accessed using this link: http://www.agiweb.org/workforce/webinar-videos/ GeoWebinar_Towardsasmartereconomy.html
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Ancient life
The discovery of deep sea fossils in Morocco has given scientists a better idea of what sort of life was on earth in ancient times. Ian Randall, writing in Geoscience, reports that more than 1500 marine fossils have been recovered from mudstones and siltstones in the Drea Valley of Morocco. The fossils, more than 470 million years old, were first noticed by a local fossil hunter who then led a team from Tale University to the site. The fossils include those of soft bodied animals, and their quality has led scientists to compare them to those found in the earlier Burgess shales of Canada. Both sites have yielded remarkably well preserved features, and the 19 million difference in ages, is helping scientists to understand what sort of changes occurred during that early chapter in the earth’s history.
World on fire
alThoUgh the fires that blazed around Moscow were unusually intense, they are not all that unusual. Large scale fires occur with surprising frequency around the world, and in many parts of Australia fires are part of a natural cycle upon which plants and animals depend. Satellite views show just how much fire is a feature of the Earth’s landscape. Thermal infrared sensors on board the ESA satellites, ERS2
UPFRONT
Dust
In naTURe, all things flow, and the dust that gathers over everything may well have come from another part of the planet. It has been calculated that between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust from the Sahara are carried off by winds which continue to blow along for thousands of kilometres. In September, the ESA satellite, Envisat, captured this image of sand and dust blowing west from the Sahara before veering off to the north over the Cape Verde islands. and envisat, detected elevated temperatures, enabling the ESA to create a fire atlas. The downloadable fire atlas provides viewers with the location of hot spots within six hours of an outbreak.
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apart from helping with the management of large scale fires, the information will enable scientists to study the role and impact of fires on the earth.
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UPFRONT Molecular clouds in space, an image captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.
An old water flea A 450 million year old Crustacean, complete with fossilized soft parts, has been found in Herefordshire. One of the scientists Universal involved in the discovery, Prof David Siveter from the University water of Leicester, said that what made the 5mm long fossil so special
is not that it did is a all previously un-named species, but that the soft Where our water parts have been preserved so come from? Astronomerswell that eyes and the antennae can be made from out. heriot-Watt University The named takefossil, the view thatNasunaris the waterflata, belongs to the same group as water-fleas and shrimps. on earth was delivered to Their descendants are common today andflyng oceans, and geologists often use the fossils as us in bylakes comets in from indicators past climates. distantof space. however, what they are not so certain Internal image of the showing the soft parts and eyes. Image: about, is how thatfossil water David Siveter, in Derek G. Briggs, Derek J. Siveter and Mark D. wasJ. formed the E. first Sutton. place. At a meeting of the royal Astronomical Society, Victoria Frankland said that fine interstellar dust is likely to have been involved JERUSALEM’s fate was determined by the underlying geology. in reactions that led to the At the annual Geological Society of America meeting last formation of water. October, Michael Bramnik from Illinois University explained experiments, she said, that underground passageways in the karst limestone enabled have shown that it is possible for hydrogen atoms King David to take the city. Water was drawn from the Spring to combine with molecules of oxygen or ozone in of Gihon, which lay just outside the city walls. David’s soldiers an interstellar medium. however, while very little climbed down into the spring and by tunnelling under the molecular oxygen or ozone has been detected in space, walls got access to the city.
Bedrock of history
Website: www.gsi.ie E-mail: gsisales@gsi.ie
Later, one of David’s successors, King Hezekiah, fearing that the Assyrians would take Jerusalem using the same approach, rerouted the water into the city via a 550 metre long tunnel. It proved to be a good decision, for in 701 BC, Jerusalem was the only city that the Assyrians failed to take. there is an abundance of oxygen Atomic oxygen Water still remains a major factoratoms. in shaping modern history is the reluctant combine with hydrogen, but as Victoria in region,toand Michael Bramnik said that when he went in explained, dust must have surface forsettlements reactions search of hydrological mapsprovided for otheratowns and to occur, and as molecules of water remained stuck, ballnot he was often rebuffed with a claim that such mapsado of ice would have grown. exist.
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UPFRONT
Freezing out the dinosaurs
Ammonite fossil, and rocks exposed at Janusfjellet.
Sea levels
If anybody thinks they can predict sea level changes, they should think again. All those careful calculations based on melting glaciers could be way off the mark. In his presidential address to the Geological Society, Dr Bryan Lovell, from the University of Cambridge, compared the rise and fall of the earth’s surface to the moving mounds made by rats running under a carpet. In the Geoscientist, Sarah Day quotes Dr Lovell stating that “Paleogene Scotland went up and down like a geological yo-yo, some 500 metres up and down within a million years.” Dr Lovell suggests that convection currents within the earth’s molten mantle are likely to have caused these dramatic changes in elevation. Studies of the hotspot beneath Iceland, he said, suggest that a pulse sent ripples below the North Atlantic 55 million years ago. These type of movements, he said, are likely to be normal, and are happening all the time.
Medical research
fUNDING for medical research in Ireland has received a boost from the Wellcome Trust, the international charitable foundation. The Trust has become a co-funder of of research supported by SfI and the health research Board, hrB.
The Cretaceous Period is often thought of as long and warm, and on average it was. however, there were major drops in temperature, and one such episode has been investigated by scientists from the University of Plymouth and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. About 137 million years ago average temperatures in the Arctic Ocean fell from about 13ºC to between 4ºC and 7ºC and it is thought that the poles froze over. To find out what the climate was like at the time, scientists, Gregory Price and elizabeth Nunn, have been examining fossil belemnites and glendonites recovered from marine deposits at Svalbard. During the Cretaceous, these deposits were laid down when the area was submerged, and isotopes, trapped in the fossils, enable the scientists to draw conclusions about the water temperature. As elizabeth Nunn explained, the ratio of O-16 and O-18 changes with temperature. As the temperature drops, O-16 increases, and this change in ratio has been preserved in the fossil belemnites and glendonites. During the Cretaceous, the polar regions were inhabited by dinosaurs, but as yet, no one knows how, or even if, they were able to survive the colder episodes.
Getting high
CLIMBerS and healthcare professionals who want to know what happens to the body at high altitude can get a lot of information and advice on a new website developed by Dr Gerard flaherty at NUI Galway. Dr flaherty lectures in clinical medicine and medical education at NUI Galway, and the site was developed to support a special study module in high altitude medicine. Dr Flaherty, who has a keen interest in this area, said that travel to the Alps, himalayas and other high altitude destinations has become more popular, but specialised healthcare information is not always easy to find. He said the website can provide climbers with information as well as being a resource for medical students. The site is at — www.highaltitudemedicine.ie
Flying vaccinator
INSTeAD of transmitting disease, insects such as mosquitoes, could be genetically engineered to deliver a vaccine against malaria. In research being led by Prof Shigeto Yoshide from Jichi Medical University in Japan, a transgenic mosquito has been produced that expresses a Leishmania vaccine from its siliva gland. The aim of the researchers is to make the carrier treat the disease, and the more bites a person gets, the higher the level of protective immunity. While the approach appears to be scientifically sound, questions remain on how acceptable the release of genetically modified mosquitoes would be to the public. Mosquito transmitted malaria is one of the biggest threats to health in the world, causing millions of deaths a year.
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Cpl Science & Engineering Cpl Science & Engineering recognises that the future stakeholders of this industry are currently sitting in classrooms around the country. Interestingly, the current Science & Engineering sector is still a skill shortage area, which is contrary to the wider economic climate. The Cpl Science & Engineering team is committed to encouraging students to take up science, engineering and mathematical subjects for the Leaving Certificate and at Third Level through our industry partnerships. Despite the recession, the Science & Engineering sector is still a skills-shortage area to recruit in. To overcome this, we have partnered with industry bodies to communicate the benefits to school children of undertaking a career in Science & Engineering. We believe this will contribute to the continuous pipeline of qualified candidates to the industry. To pursue its commitment to staffing this industry for the future, the Cpl Science & Engineering team has partnered with government bodies and independent entities such as Discover Science & Engineering, Atlantic Corridor and the Science Gallery. Cpl has also entered into a three-year agreement as a Corporate Sponsor to the Science Gallery.
Cpl and Science Week 2010
At the Science Gallery Cpl provided a presentation on the career options in Science to school children from Tullamore.
Cpl staff at this year’s Grad Ireland fair at the RDS.
Cpl Science & Engineering view Science Week as a fantastic and very important initiative. As a Corporate Sponsor of Science Week, Cpl are involved in the Science Week Lectures Series and are also judging and sponsoring Science Snaps, the Science Week photography competition. As an example of our work in this area, our team will introduce the Science Week Lectures Series in the Science Gallery in November 2010, to inform school children about the career opportunities in the Science and Engineering industry. Cpl hosted a similar event in March this year in conjunction with Atlantic Corridor and the Science Gallery. School children from Tullamore schools were invited to the Science Gallery after the very successful Atlantic Corridor Conference 2010, where school children were involved in the discussion about how science and maths is taught in schools. The Cpl Science & Engineering team presented information on career options in the science and engineering industry, which was followed by a Q&A session. A career today in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, cosmetics, clinical services or food industry ranges from laboratory based roles such as Quality Control, Microbiology, Process and Analytical Development to office based positions such as Quality Assurance, Compliance, Validation & Regulatory Affairs. A degree in Science can also lead to a number of roles outside of the manufacturing and R&D industry. Science graduates with strong communication and people skills can move into Sales and Marketing functions in the pharmaceutical and related industries. It is a distinct advantage for a sales person to have a good scientific grounding when promoting healthcare products to customers. Science graduates who would prefer a non-laboratory based option can also consider roles in Recruitment, Science Communication or Education Outreach. However, with the ever advancing technology in this sector, it is likely that the career opportunities of the future will include jobs such as vertical gardeners, space pilots, human/robot interaction specialists, genetic counselors and animal-migration engineers. Therefore, for any school or third level student who has an interest in science, the job options are extremely exciting! There is currently a wide variety of options to choose from. However, many of the career opportunities that will be available for these future graduates don’t even exist yet! It has never been a better time to take up a career in technology.
About Cpl
Cpl, founded in 1989, is a leading Irish provider of specialist recruitment and HR outsourcing services. Comprising of a group of 15 individual specialist recruitment companies encompassing 225 recruiters, the organisation operates on a national basis through offices in Dublin, Kildare, Limerick, Cork, Galway, Westmeath, Newry and Belfast. We also have offices in the UK, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Spain.
For more information related to the Science, Engineering or Supply chain industry, please contact: Judith Moffett, Science & Engineering Manager at Cpl. Ph: 01 6146132 LIVE Email: Judith.moffett@cpl.ie LINK Website: www.cpl.ie
Reports in the London Illustrated News, such as this view of Dunleary, highlighted the great need to build a safe haven for shipping entering Dublin Bay.
Moving Mountains The two long arms of stone that embrace the harbour at Dún Laoghaire are a monument to a forgotten army of quarrymen, and as Tom Kennedy reports, dog walkers can now follow their steps down through the Metals.
I
n 1807, during a severe easterly storm, two ships were wrecked in Dublin Bay and hundreds of people perished within sight of the shore. Commuters driving or Darting by Blackrock Park might find it hard to imagine that this apparently peaceful shore was once strewn with bodies and wreckage. When the MHS Prince of Wales was wrecked at Blackrock, and the Rochdale went down at Seapoint, 380 people were lost. Some were buried in the small graveyard at Merrion, just beside the Tara Towers hotel. This was not the first tragedy in a long saga of wreckage, but it certainly justified the need to provide a safe haven for ships, which often had to remain offshore in bad weather because sailing into Dublin was difficult and indeed dangerous. Up to the late 16th century Dalkey was the main port for Dublin, and in spite of all the quayside improvements entry to the capital was difficult at the best of times, and impossible during bad weather. There was a bar of packed sand just east of the Poolbeg light, and shipwrecks were so common that a petition was presented to the Irish Parliament in 1755 requesting support to build a safe haven where vessels
could run to instead of lying in wait offshore. Parliament agreed to provide £21,000 for a new harbour at the old fishing port of Dunleary, but the resulting pier, built from locally sourced granite, was relatively modest in scale, and besides, within a short time it became known as the Dry Port because it had become filled up with silt. For the next fifty years the debate continued on where and how to build a better and bigger alternative. One 19th century map showing the path of the Metals down from the quarry at Dalkey to Kingstown Harbour.
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 8
plan was to go back to the original port, and build a wall between Dalkey Island and the shore to create a big and deep harbour and there were also suggestions to build a canal link from Dunleary to Dublin. Captain W M Bligh, surveyor of Dublin Bay, and better known for his role in the “Bounty” mutiny, was totally dismissive of Dunleary as a possible location. “It has nothing to recommend it, being ill-adapted for its purpose and ill-taken care of.” Perhaps, if he had his way, we might now be able to walk out to Dalkey Island, but in 1802, the Scottish engineer, John Rennie, gave his “declared preference” to Dunleary, and in doing so, helped to set in train an immense project that moved a mountain of granite into the sea. Rennie was not alone with his declared preference, and one of the most prominent advocates was Richard Toutcher, a Norwegian who went on to play a crucial role in opening up the quarries at Dalkey. Toutcher was passionate in his support for the new harbour, and he was scathing in his criticism of those who had opted for the earlier development at Howth, accusing them of giving in to the vested interests of landowners who sought only to increase the value of their holdings. Howth harbour had already been built by 1816, but the plans for Dunleary went ahead, and in 1817 the foundation stone was placed in position together with a coin of the realm, some recent newspapers, and an inscription: “in the hope that it may be the cause of life to the seamen, wealth to the citizen, revenue to the Crown and benefit to the nation.” At first, the plan was to have one pier, but three years later, Parliament gave the go ahead for a second pier to enclose the harbour. These decisions had an enormous impact on the whole area, changing the entire landscape. At the head
of the harbour there is a monument, commemorating the fleeting three-week visit of King George IV, yet the harbour itself is a more fitting monument to the years of hard work put into the project by the quarrymen. At one stage, in 1823, there were over 1,000 men involved in quarrying, dressing, and transportation of enough granite to build the two piers that together extend for almost five kilometres. At a rough estimate, that would have been about two and a half million tones of rock, most of which had to be cut out of the quarries at Dalkey. Granite was also extracted from land more adjacent to the harbour, and where the People’s Park is now was a quarry. The Pavilion stands now on what was part of an outcrop of granite known as “The Churls”. For some time one of the holes served as a reservoir, but this was then backfilled with dredgings from the harbour. Revising the plans and adding a second pier increased the volume of stone required by about three times, but by then the Glasthule and Churl Field quarries had almost been worked out. An alternative supply had to be found to meet this enormous and increasing demand. Richard Toutcher, having been refused permission to take stone from quarries owned by the Ballast Office, then asked the owner of Dalkey Hill, Lord Carysfort, if he would agree to the opening of a quarry. Again, Toutcher’s request was turned down, but this time the resourceful Norwegian managed to get around the problem by using a legal loophole. At the time, for every acre leased from the Carysfort estate, two acres were granted as commonage on Dalkey Hill. Toutcher lost no time in leasing ten acres at £10 a year, and Carysfort gave him permission to quarry. In his book, The Metals, Rob Goodbody records how engineers thought long and hard about how stone could be brought down from the hill to the harbour, about three kilometres below. In 1815 four different routes were being considered, and, long before the railways were built, one navy lieutenant, McHalohon, suggested employing steam engines. His calculations were considered overly optimistic, and a decision was made to use gravity and horse power.
What in a name?
The original port with about 15 houses was Dunleary, and the newly built harbour became Kingstown in 1821 following the visit of George IV. In 1920 the name Dún Laoghaire was adopted, and this is an Irish version of the original, meaning Fort of Laoghaire. Laoghaire was a fifth century High King of Ireland.
A year later work began on building the long track way, known as the Metals, much of which still exists as a popular dog walking track winding its way down through the Dalkey and Dún Laoghaire suburbs. In his book, Rob Goodbody traces the course of this passageway and he describes how in places deep grooves show where restraining chains cut into the paving slabs as stone laden wagons clattered down the slopes. The track has always been known as the Metals, a name that might not mean much now, but in the early 19th century the iron rails were the distinctive feature. Up near the quarry was a big friction wheel, just over two metres in diameter, and lines ran down from
Map of the quarry in 1843, and below, the Metals clearly seen before haystacks were replaced by houses.
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this to a smaller wheel below. Trucks, filled with stone, were attached to each other by a restraining chain. Where the gradient was steep enough, the descending trucks pulled up the empty returns, and for the rest of the journey going down and along the harbour, horses did all the pulling. The trucks, 1.8 metre long flatbeds for blocks, and covered wagons for stones, were on rails, some or all of which were cast by Richard Robinson’s Phoenix Iron Works in Dublin. By 1822 there were 250 wagons in operation, and undoubtedly they made a lot of noise as they rattled and shrieked along. Over a thousand tones a day were being sent down to the harbour. Five lots of rubble to two loads of blocks weighing anything between four to ten tones each. Between 1820 and 1823, 226,112 wagons were sent down, one every two minutes. An almost unbroken line of horse-drawn wagons would have stretched along the road alongside the harbour. In that year, greasing alone cost £772, of which £176 went in wages. Grease, apparently, was a lot more valuable than labour, and over time discontent with conditions of work was becoming more of an issue. Pay was extremely low, the hours long, and the work was dangerous, but no one wanted to risk being identified as a troublemaker. Even so, there was a two-week strike in 1825. Nothing was gained, and fourteen men were dismissed. Up at the quarry, which had been divided into four lots, hundreds of men were employed in extracting rock, a task that required strength and strong nerves. Granite is not the easiest rock to work, and to make a cut, three men had to work in perfect harmony. One held a drill chisel against the rock, and as the other two delivered hits with a sledge the chisel was rotated. When the hole was deep enough, gunpowder was packed in. Between the rattling of wagons, the boom of explosions, and the constant hammering, there was a lot going on to disturb local residents. However, noise seems to have been the least of their concerns, and in a highly offensive and insensitive letter, a local
resident, John Peters, complained that respectable persons had been driven from the neighbourhood “by the introduction of so many hundreds of the lowest, and worse, of the human species.” With barely enough pay to survive, hundreds of quarrymen and their families had no alternative but to set up shacks, tents and small cottages, and when asked to work longer hours, there were rumbles of discontent because it would mean that the men would have no time left in the evening to tend their vegetable plots. While such conditions were not unusual for that time, the men were not much better off than slaves. Accounts of how much stone was quarried were carefully kept, but there is no record of how many died or were injured
A noble asylum
The Penny Clopaedia, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1838, describing the progress of the new harbour, reported that navigation in the Liffey was still very imperfect, requiring constant dredging, and a bar of sand ran across the channel just beyond the Poolbeg lighthouse. “The insecurity of the bay, joined to the failure of the works at Howth, led to the commencement of the present noble asylum harbour of Kingstown, on the site of the old harbour of Dunleary, on the south side of the bay, in 1817. The small pier and tide harbour at Dunleary have been enclosed within the new works, and are now crossed by the Dublin and Kingstown railroad. The new harbour is entirely artificial, consisting of an area of about 200 acres contained between two piers, of great dimension. There is a depth of 24 feet at the pierhead, at the lowest springs, which is sufficient for a frigate of 36 guns, or an Indiaman of 800 tons”
in accidents. We get some idea of the situation from a complaint by the quarrymen in the 1820s that from 14 shillings a week, four had to be set aside to support the families of those who had died or had been injured. Legally, these families were squatters, and in 1823, a year after Peters lodged his snobbish complaint,
landowners took an action to clear the area. Perhaps the authorities were being pragmatic about the possible loss of production, or, as often happened later with evictions, troops were reluctant to take action against those that they could all to readily identify with, but, in any case, the military refused to become involved.
Rail arrives
For mAny years quarrying continued, until the old watchtower was left perched above the sheer man-made cliffs that we see today. no shortage of granite, but as the piers neared completion in the 1840s, demand fell, and Dún Laoghaire entered a new era of respectability with the arrival of the railway. In spite of the gloomy looking prison hulk anchored between the piers, the harbour had become an important, and fashionable port, villas and fresh sea air just a short train journey away from the city. By 1834 the Dublin Kingstown railway had reached Salthill, and two years later the line was being extended to the harbour. At that stage, the track began to merge with the metals along which all the granite blocks were drawn. As the railway approaches Dún Laoghaire station, one end of the metals can be seen on the sea side as a narrow roadway running in parallel. The railway company was keen to press on to the south, and because of the metals a major obstacle to their progress had been removed. The deep cut, which was no longer required for transport of stone, had opened access to Dalkey. The land was valued, and in 1841 that section of the metals was handed over. While solving one problem, the deep cutting also presented an engineering challenge. It was thought that the steam engines of that time would have been unable to navigate the sharp curves, and, once again, opinions were divided on what sort of traction power to use. This was a time of great innovation in engineering, and one of the most celebrated of all engineers, Isambard Brunel, was among those promoting a remarkable system based on suction. Known as the Atmospheric System, carriages were drawn along by a vacuum. A tube with a slot opening on top ran between the rails, and a stationary pumping house created a vacuum, which drew a piston along. An arm, projecting through leather flaps, which acted as a seal, was attached to the carriage, and amazingly, this system worked quite well. Although denounced by another great engineer, George Stephenson, the railway company decided to invest in this system, and construction of the Atmospheric line went ahead in 1832. naturally, the novel system, extending for the best part of two miles, attracted a great deal of international attention, but it soon became apparent that the future lay in keeping engines on track. For some years the Atmospheric railway continued to run, but every train had to be followed by an attendant, employed to grease and press back the flaps. Not that the flaps were always left undisturbed. Rats, attracted by the grease, took to gnawing holes in the leather. Suction brought the train uphill to Dalkey, and on approaching the station, a look-out at the pumping station stopped the engine, and let the carriages drift in on their own momentum. For the return journey, the carriages relied on gravity, and on occasions, third class passengers had to step out and give the train a final push. Eventually the Atmospheric System was abandoned, and in the 1850s there was a change over to steam, but Dalkey still has its Atmospheric road, and the Dart still travels along much the same old metals line.
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Bullock
Small, but by no means insignificant, the harbour tucked away behind the main road to Dalkey, was an important landing place for Dublin, and it was also a port for the export of local granite. Some of the Thames Embankment in London was built from stone shipped from Bullock, and in 1773 there is a record of 34 tons of granite went from there to Dublin’s South Wall. While various options were being considered for a much-needed safe haven, Bullock Harbour was also being considered and improvements were made. In 1818 the Lighthouse Authority, responsible for Dublin port, drew up a detailed specifications for a new quay and pier at Bullock.
Selection
Coarse-grained granite with its quartz and feldspar crystals, usually well flecked with shiny flakes of mica, is familiar to everyone, but as builders and quarrymen knew, the stone is far from uniform. Among the most common basement rocks, granite is plutonic, which means it was formed at depth, and in the case of Ireland, this welling up from below occurred about 400 million years ago. Weathering away of the surface rocks eventually exposed these granites, which vary in colour and composition. There are greens and reds, and the granite of Dalkey, for example, is tinged with yellow compared to the whiter granites of Wicklow.
“The foundation of the pier to be laid under the level of low water marks of spring tides by at least one foot. To be faced with wrought granite stone in courses of twelve inches thick (except the Copeing Course which is to be eighteen inches thick) Header and Stretcher alternately the Headers not to be less than four feet deep in the bed and two feet long in the face and the Stretchers two feet deep in the bed and four feet long in the face on an average no Stretcher to be less than three feet long in the face and the said Headers and Stretchers to overlap each other at the joint at least eight inches and that the beds and horizontal joints be drove or chiselled round their edges and fair dressed between so as that they may form fair and solid joints throughout.” A quarry already existed by Bullock, and the bidding contractors were informed that although they had just eight months to finish the project, they could extract whatever stone they needed from the area within the tower walls. There was a long established While some granites are hard wearing, those high in mica can weather quite rapidly. Stone was not always taken from quarries such as the one at Dalkey, and much of the granite that found its way into the streets and buildings of Dublin came from erratics and loose blocks harvested by farmers when crops were out of season. George Kinahan, in his Economic Geology of Ireland, published in 1889, remarked that builders were often not careful enough when selecting granite. Cost, of course, was a factor, and while the granite from Dalkey was regarded as more durable, Wicklow stone, being worked by locals, was less expensive.
““Of late a most undesirable trade has sprung up in granite for common walling purposes and other cheap work; the stones being supplied by the farm occupiers who raise the stones in slack time, and during winter cart them down from Dublin hill slopes. This practice is very injurious to the repute of the Dublin granite, as the stone thus procured soon becomes weathered and discoloured. Some of the window-sills, etc, quite disfigure, on account of their dirty colour, many of the newly erected houses in the suburbs of Dublin. These cheap stones have done away with the former trade in limestone; so that most, if not all of the quarries of the latter, which were formerly worked to supply Dublin are now closed, such as those in the Kimmage district, to the southward, and those between Lucan and Leixlip to the westward.”
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tradition of quarrying at Bullock, and when the wealthy Mitchell Henry decided to spend some of his fortune on Kylemore Castle in Connemara, his contractor chose to use rock from Bullock rather than draw from the abundance of granite in Galway. Granite from the Dalkey quarry was also used in the construction of the South Bull Wall, and some even went to Newfoundland where it was used in the construction of the giant Basilica of St John the Baptist. Many of the paving stones in Dublin were of Dalkey granite, but while there is no shortage of high quality material in Ireland, the trade in stone has changed. Many of the new granite facings, replacements, and kerb edges we see around Dublin came from China.
Local historian, Rob Goodbody, follows the track of the Metals as they pass through the the modern suburbs. Much of the track survives and has become a popular walkway for locals. The Metals, published by the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is available in bookshops.
Part five
Personality and mental illness Continuing our series of special features in which dr Veronica miller explains what we know about the brain and how it works.
s
unny, warm, calm, thunderous, stormy, or fiery. These phrases from a weather forecast could also be used to describe any one of us. Why is it that no matter how dark and gloomy it is, some see a sliver of blue skies and others only impending doom and gloom? Were the seven dwarves born happy dopey grumpy and bashful or were they predestined to their fairy tale fates by some biological fluke?
Three became five, when the PEN traits were expanded to the Big Five last century. In the picture the five pronged star represents the big five. They cover our smarts, outgoingness, emotional reactivity, friendliness and how considerate we are of others. These are the traits that psychologists use in personality tests to define us. And most of us would agree which of the big five we’d like to see in ourselves. But even though we know how we should behave, we’re capable of being moody aggressive selfish or cold from time to time. So what motivates our behaviour, and what happens when we cross the line from Medical education was influenceced being quirky to being crackers? strongly by Claudius Galen.
Four temperaments
If they had been born almost 1800 years ago, there may have been only four dwarves. Four with the not so catchy names of Phlegm, Choler, Sanguine and Melanchol, so named by the Walt Disney of his day — Claudius Galen. Galen was a Greek physician, born in Turkey who lived from ~130-201 AD. He was fascinated with the human body and tried to understand how it worked by dissecting the insides of pigs, apes and dogs. Naturally without any human subjects he made quite a few wrong assumptions about our bodies. Nonetheless, Galen’s work became the basis of medical education in the European universities from the 12th century onwards. According to Galen, choleric people were touchy and restless, caused by an excess of yellow bile. Sanguine people were talkative lively and carefree, caused by excessive blood. Melancholic people were the opposite; miserable and depressive because of excessive black bile. Phlegmatic people were thought to be characterized by their slowness, laziness, and dullness due to having more phlegm than other folks. Although you might have assumed they’d be quite unpleasant to talk to also.
Behaviour and cultural values
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In the last 1800 years these four temperaments evolved into three PEN traits en route to the definitive Big Five. The PEN traits were conjured up by Hans Eysenck, one of the founding fathers of personality testing. Eysenck’s theory is known as the PEN model after the three traits it encompasses, psychoticism, extroversion and neuroticness. Introverts are bookish, and reserved if not boring. Psychotics tend to be cruel, have unusual interests and are lacking in feeling, while people who are neurotic tend to be overly moody and emotional. At either end of the scale, you would be either introverted or extroverted, be psychotic or not, and neurotic or calm. Your best friend would have the perfect combination of these PEN traits.
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One man’s pleasure can be another man’s pain. Cultural stereotypes say that, Nordic people are cold, Latinos emotive and touchy feely, Japanese secretive and overly polite, the Irish are talkative drinkers, Africans wear loud colours, and Americans are simply loud. These gross stereotypes may be outdated, but cultural differences are still riding strong. For example Latin Americans make more eye contact and touch each other more when speaking than North Americans. Yet, Northern Americans are not the most standoffish; Germans keep an even larger personal space around them em when speaking, approximately 6 inches more space. The O. K. hands signal might be okay with you, but in Brazil it’s considered a rude gesture. And while you’d consider it rude if a group started doing it to you, Mexican’s use a “psstpsst” sound to catch another’s attention in public.
Cultural differences in Behaviour. 2 4 6 8… what comes next?
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Bananas? You probably would be if you didn’t think 10 or ‘who do we appreciate’ was the appropriate response. This response is what’s known as the “norm”. And most of our behaviour in society is coloured and controlled by the culture that we grow up in. The extent to which we simply act on “autopilot” in society was first recognised by Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ludwig was interested in why people behave in certain ways. He felt that if we locked up people who didn’t respond
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to “cultural norms” in the normal way, then we would reinforce these cultural norms. It’s a bit like the story of the Emperor’s new clothes when everybody was afraid to tell the man that he was naked for fear of drawing attention to themselves and being thought of as mad. You may wonder how we draw the line between behaviour that is mad or simply bad?
You’d need a hole in your head Other ancient civilisations used a process known as Trephination — a technique not for the faint hearted in order to liberate mad folks from daemon possession, . This technique basically meant drilling a hole into the skull of the mad person to allow the daemon that had possessed them to escape! Trephination was actually used right up to the 19th century.
Mad are from Mars
Possession Hans Eysenck, one of the founding Although they weren’t sure what caused Up to the 19th century, mad people were fathers of personality testing. it, our ancestors recognised madness deemed unfit to look after their own lands. in their friends and families. In most of Laws such as De Praerogativa Regis, the the oldest civilisations madness was seen as daemon or king’s prerogative, were passed to give the Kings of England spirit possession. Evil spirits and daemons entered the mad possession of mad lands preventing sons or heirs getting person’s mind and drove them insane. them. Nowadays “developed” societies have folks who claim to Men known as “Escheators” used to have been driven mad, not by daemons, trawl the countryside looking for “fools but by aliens who abducted them and and the insane” to take their lands for inserted madness in their minds. You the King. Only after the civil war did could say the daemons have been English tenants have more say in who replaced by daleks in popular culture. could inherit their land. The madness of King George III
Ancient Ireland and madness
When King George III started to In ancient Ireland the Druids were display eccentric behaviour and powerful people with magic skills. One ended up in a straightjacket, richer of their most terrifying powers was to people started to wonder if there was produce madness. To do this the druid a medical basis for madness. Naturally prepared a “madman’s wisp,” a little George’s lands were not passed back wisp of straw or grass, into which he Extracting the ‘stone of folly’ from a painting by to the English people when he was pronounced some horrible spells, then the fifteenth century artist, Hieronymus Bosch. diagnosed with madness. flung it into the face of his victim, who The madness of King George III at once became insane or idiotic. was caused by a medical condition In Kerry there is a valley called known as “acute intermittent porphoria”. This is a metabolic Glannagalt, ‘the glen of the galts or lunatics’. It was believed disorder when too many porphoria molecules involved in that all lunatics would find their way to the valley from making haemoglobin in the blood are produced. People end any part in Ireland. The water of valley at Tobernagalt (‘the up with too many of these molecules in their tissues, causing lunatics’ well’), and the wild cress that grew along a stream pains in their stomach, mental confusion, and it can also turn in the valley was believed to have magical healing powers their urine red. which would cure them.
This skull of a Neolithic young woman uncovered in France and dating to about 3500 BC shows that trepanning has a long history.
Trepanning kits, such as this from about 1850, were being used to treat injured soldiers during the American Civil War.
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SPIN
He equated women looking good with them feeling good. Part of this dress cure naturally involved doing the laundry for the entire asylum also. Men didn’t fare much better under the Victorian regime. While women were urged not to do any intellectual pursuits as this could drive blood from their wombs and render them infertile, men were advised almost the opposite. Henry Maudsley was one of the fathers of modern psychiatry who advocated a strict exercise regime. Order, exercise and brute reinforcement of normal behaviour was what was on offer.
Mad business
During the 19th century the words used to describe mad people changed. Mad doctors became alienists, asylum superintendents became psychiatric physicians, keepers of madhouses became attendants. Madness itself became lunacy, mental derangement, insanity or mental illness. The treatment of madness then became mental science or psychiatry — and gradually treatment of mad people was legislated for and became profitable. The first people to be admitted to madhouses tended to be unable to look after themselves; poor, destitute, old or female. By 1845 The Lunatics Act required all The face of madness Some of Lombroso’s criminals. counties of England and Wales to make Maudsley also thought you could recognise provision for the care of lunatics. Within a mad person, by their irregularly shaped two years, thirty six of the fifty two heads, malformed ears, stammers, peculiar eyes and their counties had built public asylums. By the 1850s women were “predilection for puns”! His work was heavily influenced the majority of inmate population. In 1851 after a visit to St by Cesare Lombroso who had studied the faces of many Luke’s Hospital Charles Dickens wrote different types of men. “… insanity is more prevalent among women than men”. Lombroso believed that there was a peculiar facial Of the 18759 patients admitted during the history of the type, heavy set jaw and sloping forehead that predisposed hospital 11162 were women. people to criminal and antisocial behaviour. He spent most
Marriage or madhouse
In Victorian Britain rising numbers of women began to campaign to enter professions such as law, medicine and politics. And at the exact same time came an epidemic of “female nervous” disorders such as hysteria. Hysteria is actually the Greek word for womb. The options for women at the time appeared to be either marriage or the madhouse. Florence Nightingale compared confinement of women in their family to the lunatic locked up in the madhouse. In her journal she wrote that “Christ if he had been a woman might have been nothing but a great complainer”. Naturally she kept quiet in case she was locked away too — following Wittgenstein’s norms.
Dressing and exercising daemons
John Connolly was a renowned physician and head of Hanwell asylum in England in the 19th Century. His advice for mentally ill women was to give them better clothes.
of his time wandering prisons and measuring the heads of criminals, and photographing the most “criminal- like” faces. Innocent men unlucky enough to have criminal’s facial features were incarcerated by judges who believed Lombroso’s theory. Lombroso was a forerunner of the phrenologists who thought that our characters were shaped by the lumps and bumps of our heads.
A picture of madness
Naturally once people in the 19th century thought you could identify madness by people’s faces, it didn’t take long for psychiatric photography to take off. Psychiatric photography involved taking photographs of the Victorian mad women, and having them pose with books or flowers to show them how respectable they could look. Ideally the photos were meant to “treat” the women, and also be used for diagnostic purposes. Naturally this didn’t quite work, as the doctors tended to only take pictures of the prettier women.
Shell shock
With the advent of the First World War people started to take madness quite seriously. No longer was madness the prerogative of the poor, frail, or other social misfits. Brave boys who had set off to defend their countries returned home as stammering nervous wrecks. Families found this unacceptable and confusing. The name shell shock came about to describe the syndrome. It was named after one soldier became traumatised, lost his vision and sense of taste of sense and smell after a shell exploded nearby. This first case of shell shock soon became very common in the army. The army itself was uncomfortable with the notion of its soldiers having a nervous disorder. It banned the diagnosis of shell shock near the end of the First World War. William Hogart’s engraving of the Bedlam asylum in 1763.
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The shocking experience of the past has been replaced by more refined techniques.
Shock treatment
One treatment used by doctors such as Lewis Yealland for shell shock was electric shock therapy. One of his patients, a young soldier serving in Salonica had collapsed, most likely due to heat, and then was found to be mute. He had been hypnotised, had had electric shocks to his throat and mouth, and cigarette burns to the tip of his tongue, but still would not utter a word. Yealland then applied electric shocks at random intervals to the young man’s throat until he spoke. Another soldier Yealland treated had faced battle at the Somme and used to have nightmares about rivers of blood flowing through the trenches. But after having received treatment from Yealland these nightmares subsided and were replaced with dreams of electric shock treatment in the trenches- this change was recognised as a success by Yealland.
Electroconvulsive therapy
Nowadays Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is still used- albeit in a much more modified form. In 1999 across England and Wales, around 11,340 people received ECT treatment. ECT was first developed in 1937 by Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini as way to induce seizures reliably. It had been previously observed that inducing seizures using chemicals given intravenously helped reduce hallucinations and paranoid ideas. So they thought ECT could induce seizures and then maybe reduce hallucinations also. As you might have guessed ECT is actually most useful to shock people out of their depression. A less barbaric cure for madness evolved around the same time as ECT therapy, the talking cure. Naturally being a talking cure it was invented by a woman.
Anna O’s talking cure
Anna O’s real name was Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936). She was a 21 year old woman from Vienna when she invented this cure. She was intelligent and could speak German, English, French, and Italian fluently. Being a woman in the 19th century meant no career opportunities were available to her; gradually her frustration drove her mad. She ended up having to see a therapist Josef Breuer, who later with Freud
set in motion the wheels of modern psychiatry. Her treatment involved meeting Breuer regularly, talking to him and telling him stories. She may have said too much, because after telling him about a dream she had about having his child, he ended her treatment abruptly. However, talking to him helped rid her of her mad symptoms. In her later years Anna O as she became known in Breuer’s case notes became an innovative social worker and a leader of the women’s movement in Germany. Breuer and Freud later wrote that Anna O’s troubles came about from a lack of social outlet for her skills and intellect. Their manuscript “Architecture of Hysteria” was one of the first papers to explore the fact that hysteria could be caused by social conditions.
Motivating our minds
Freud became the father of psychodynamic theory to understand what motivates us. His idea was that all of our behaviour, good and bad, is controlled by our unconscious wishes, thoughts and desires. By analysing a person’s dreams or getting them to freely associate different words you can tap into this unconscious part of our minds. In daily life you encounter people’s unconscious desires and wishes when they make what we call “Freudian Slips”. You’ll be familiar with Freudian slips of the tongue when you’re very tired, and accidentally the wrong words come out. Another method people use to open up each other’s minds is to ask somebody what they see in an inkblot picture. If you ask somebody what they see in the ink blot, you can reveal their subconscious desires through their imaginative descriptions of the blot. Although some people are more cynical and only see the $$$ signs for the psychiatrist in the pictures. See what you can see in the test ink blot picture.
id wasn’t me
Freud felt that all of people’s actions were controlled by the influence of their id, the word he used for their innate basic animal desires, such as aggression and sex drive. His daughter Anna expanded his theory to include less animalistic drives.
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The three tiers on the psychological The DSM criteria sounds like cake could be described as: the a driving license application, is unconscious id which drives our actually a set of questions designed preconscious mind; our ego, which to understand how your brain is controls our conscious actions. working. The DSM, fully titled; the Con Although it is difficult to find diagnostic and statistical manual ciousness — Cortex proof for this idea, you may see a link of mental disorders, is a paint-bybetween this theory and the three numbers guide used by psychologists different systems in our brains. to correlate how a person is feeling Our basic animalistic drives are with their brain function. It can be in our brainstem autonomic system. used to differentiate between people Our secondary drives; emotions and who have anxiety, depression, short term memory are in our limbic dementia and those who are simply system. And our tertiary higher having a bad day. functions are stored in our cortex. On a physical level you could think Problems with psychiatry of Freudian psychology as saying that In 1973 a sociologist named David our animalistic unconscious system Rosenhan did a famous study criticising psychiatristy. 8 from the brainstem drives us and is the first layer of the normal people went to 12 different psychiatric hospitals psychological cake — but it is difficult to prove this. in the USA and complained of hearing empty sounds and hollow thuds in their minds. Each of the 8 people were admitted to the psychiatric hospitals and in 11 cases were Raging reflexes diagnosed as having schizophrenia, while others were Having naturally aggressive or protective tendencies can diagnosed as having manic depression. actually be traced back to unconscious inbuilt reflexes. The only people to become suspicious of the so called After having children, people change, but the inbuilt desire patients were the other patients. to protect offspring is actually innate. When threatened Then staff at a teaching hospital were warned about a mother lioness will attack without question, and fake patients coming to their hospital and told to rate all domestic cats will show the same behavior. In the new patients in terms of their “fakeness”. The psychiatrists laboratory, a simple electrical impulse to the brain rated 41 out of the 193 new patients, as impostors, and were sensors which regulate our protective side can suspicious of many more. But not one of the trigger maternal aggression in female cats even patients were fakes. if the cats have no kittens! A diagnosis based only on a conversation In fact aggressive and rage like behavior between two people can be difficult. But with is hard-wired into the hypothalamus; which brain imaging tools it’s easier to see what is part of the brains ancestral limbic system. happens when good brains turn bad. By stimulating parts of the hypothalamus, rage like anger can be stimulated in normally unaggressive strains of laboratory rats. In fact Where the blood goes the rage reflexes are so sensitively programmed into the hypothalamus; that by moving the thoughts flow electrodes to stimulate the reflex by mere An Italian named Angelo Mosso (1881) was the first millimeters, very different attack patterns manifest person to show that that during mental activity in the rats. For example sometimes they will attack head the blood flow to the brain increased and thus on and sometimes they may rear their heads up. You may made the important bridge between brain blood wonder if better boxers simply have hypothalamic centers flow and activity. This link might seem obvious that can learn better to focus aggression! now, but at the time Mosso’s ideas were very controversial. Not everybody believed him. Proof positive of the link between blood flow and brain Psychology: proving mind without matter activity was found by physiologist, John Falton. In 1928 The word Psychology itself comes from the Greek word in a scientific journal named Brain he described a patient psyche meaning soul or spirit and logos meaning knowledge. who had malformed blood vessels in the visual cortex. This Psyche was a beautiful mortal from Greek mythology, who malformation meant that the blood wasn’t flowing properly managed to enter the realm of the gods, heaven, via the love there. The patient also had decreasing sight. Falton made the of the god of love, Eros. It was said in Greek mythology that link between the problematic blood flow to the visual cortex, love was the only way to heaven. and the patient’s visual loss. Psychology as a field of study dates back to 1879 to Wilhelm Wundt, in Germany who founded a school of thought “introspection” or scientific philosophy. In 1913 John Seeing the brain in action Watson then founded behaviourism, which observed specific People next realised you could use two electrodes on either human and animal behaviours and used them to understand side of a person’s head to pick up changes in the electrical how and why we behave in different ways. signals when somebody was thinking. Then Scandinavians, Now doctors use a series of questions and answers with David Ingvar and Neils Lassen in the 1960s used a helmet set boxes to fill in for diagnosing mental illness known as the with lots of electrodes to generate maps of the brain showing DSM criteria. which areas of the brain did different tasks.
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A brain scan highlights active areas, providing valuable information on how the brain works. Right: As the brain MRI scan is being made, detailed slice by slice images come up on screen. Photo: At the Keck Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison. To understand which areas were active during a task they simply measured electric waves in the brain when it wasn’t active, and took these away from the picture when it was active. A bit like doing before and after pictures, then playing spot the difference to see which part of the brain does what.
Making memories
Analysis of a person’s brain waves, allowed us see which parts of the brain do what and also provided some more insight as to how our memories work. One quirk of looking at brain waves is that you see not just the primary change when that part of the person’s brain is stimulated. But you also get secondary little waves milliseconds later. These little later waves are thought to indicate that brain coding the stimulation as a memory— the echo on the brain wave graph is thought to show you that the brain is making a memory out of the experience.
Atomic energy in the brain
We also use atomic energy in Positron Emission tomography for PET scans to image the brain. Positrons are the part of the atom which makes the energy you visualise in the brain. Emission means they emit energy, and tomography is another way of saying mapping which part of the brain is active. Atomic nuclei in general decay over time, like us they lose energy as they get older. As they age they emit a positron. A positron released can bash into and annihilate a electron in a molecule beside it. The clash of the positron and electron results in energy being released. This process is known as annihilation. In general when matter meets antimatter, annihilation occurs. This annihilation results energy released as x-rays or PET emissions. A typical PET apparatus can scan 31 slices of 3 mm thickness. Then the computer integrates these images to give you a 3D picture of a person’s whole brain.
Seeing brain disease spreading
Technically to do a PET scan all you need to do is stick a radioactive tracer (which will rapidly decay) onto the
molecule you want to see in the brain. Then you do a scan on the person’s brain once the tracer enters the blood stream. When the blood flows to their brains you’ll see the areas that consume the most blood (glucose or oxygen) lighting up brightest on their scan. Any chemical that you can stick on a radioactive tracer molecule and eat without making you ill, will enter the brain, get into brain tissue and light up showing you what it does. So in theory if we could stick these tracer molecules onto the pathological markers you find in Alzheimer’s or other diseases, you could scan people’s brains and catch the disease at a very early stage — before they even show any symptoms.
MRI: reading your mind
Another method for seeing what’s happening in a person’s brain is MRI, magnetic resonance imaging. In this technique, you lie on a table, with your head in a circular tube which holds a large magnet. When the magnet is active, it makes some of the atoms in your brain tissue to align themselves with the field of the magnet. The magnet’s like a general calling troops into order. If you send out a radio wave you can then knock certain atoms out of the field. When they get knocked out they release radio waves that a detector in the MRI machine picks up. Different tissues contain different atoms which have specific signature radio waves which the computer uses to identify them. So from these waves, the computer makes a picture of the brain tissues.
“Laughing Death”
Even when you can see what’s wrong with somebody’s brain, it’s not always obvious why their brain is broken. New Guinea is land of over 700 tribes, with their own Stone Age culture and rituals. It is also a land with a history of madness, where tribes people were inflicted with a disease they called kuru, “laughing death”. This laughing death robbed victims of the ability to walk, talk or eat, driving them mad. A doctor working with one New Guinea tribe, the Fore people noticed that the brain’s of some of the victims of the laughing death looked like Swiss cheese; full of holes. This reminded a veterinary pathologist William Hadlow of scrapie, a viral infection, which normally infects the brains of animals.
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The Fore people had many ancient mysterious rituals. One ritual was that they ate the brains of their ancestors, in a ritual to preserve the spirits of their loved ones. They blamed the laughing death on sorcery. The doctors however became convinced it was due to eating the brains. But because there was a long incubation period between the disease developing and people eating the brains, it was difficult to convince the tribes people this was the problem. Proof the brain tissue did contain a virus was found by Carleton Gajdusek at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He showed that infecting a chimpanzee with brain tissue from a tribe member from New Guinea resulted in the chimpanzee becoming infected with the laughing death. He won a Nobel prize for Physiology in 1976 for this work. And since the link between eating brains and brain disease was made, the tribes of New Guinea stopped eating the brains, and no child has developed it since then.
Diet and dementia
Eating brains may sound like an extremely unusual way of getting a mental disorder. But most of us will be familiar with the scare over Mad Cow Disease spreading to humans via infected meat products. The jury is still out as to whether or not the virus could find its way to our kitchen table and cause CJD the human form of Mad Cow disease. Vegetarians have been found with CJD, and people who worked in abattoirs with infected cows don’t develop it. Food really plays a huge part in mental illness. In the US it was discovered that up to 10 per cent of asylum patients had a deficiency of niacin, also known as Vitamin B3, which was the direct cause of a mental illness known as pellagra. Pellagra causes delirium, disruption in normal mental processes and manic behaviour. The people affected in general were quite poor, from the Deep South and ate the cheapest available grain which is corn. Corn is one of the most difficult grains for you to absorb niacin from. Once these people were fed a proper diet, their symptoms of pellagra vanished. You may remember that deficiency of another of the B vitamins, thiamine causes another form of dementia, Korsakoff’s syndrome, resulting in memory loss. Korsakoff’s syndrome is usually found in alcoholics who eat very little, but also in very poor countries were people live on grains of one type such as rice.
Is madness organic or genetic?
We know that environmental factors, such as stress, and poor diet can cause mental illnesses such as neurosis and pellagra. Some mental illnesses are heritiable and are thought to have genes responsible for them. If somebody in your family has schizophrenia you have between 0-90 per cent of becoming schizophrenic yourself. But the actual gene for schizophrenia has yet to be found. Schizophrenia accounts for 50 per cent of mentally ill patients who are institutionalised. Schizophrenics have many varied traits, paranoia, delusions, auditory hallucinations, manic periods, and odd behaviour. Paranoid schizophrenics appear to be more prevalent in Northern Ireland. Many people come to clinics with “delusions” of being watched. However, given the political situation it’s difficult for psychiatrists to distinguish between people who are delusional and those who really are being watched.
Genes for behaviour?
In the past thousand years we’ve gone from believing in devil and daemon possession of our minds, to believing genes have possession of our minds. Although some scientists would say that it’s their parents who control them. Some are convinced it’s their genes that determine their behaviour. But the genes for any behavioural traits, greed, love hate and friendship have yet to be found.
Misbehaving genes
However, scientists have attempted to correlate genes with characteristics such as suicidal behaviour, happiness, intelligence, hyperactivity and aggression. By comparing the sequences of genes in a huge population of “normal” people and comparing the strips of amino acids the genes are made of, with those found in people with behavioural problems they can identify mutants. Playing a simple form of spot the difference allows geneticists try to find mutations in genes associated with behaviour in diseases that may be heritable. Researchers then study the candidate genes in laboratory, by engineering mice to have similar mutations in their genome, or simply knocking out the gene for the protein, to try to understand what behavioural changes the gene itself is responsible for. By using this approach, the function of genes which regulate growth of synapses, metabolism of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, and mood-enhancers such as oxytocin have been discovered. In the future, scientists hope to use gene therapy; designer drugs which can normal gene function, or prevent the abnormal gene expressing itself, and thereby train misbehaving genes to better express themselves.
Mad isn’t always bad
If you’ve seen the film Rain Man, you’ll remember Dustin Hoffman’s great gambling ability. Rain man wasn’t so much rain man as autistic man. Autism is a syndrome that people are born with. Autistic children are noticeably different than other kids from an early age. They don’t play with other children, require less attention and don’t enjoy affection from their parents. More boys are autistic than girls, about three times as many. Autistic folks have an inability to see things from another’s point of view. This may sound like stubbornness or selfishness. But it is different because autistic people don’t chose to ignore people, they genuinely lack the ability to understand another’s point of view. We now know that autism is a “medical condition,” not a mental disorder. People who have frontal lobe damage develop symptoms mirroring autism. They become obsessed with rituals, and unable to understand people. This led some researchers to think autism may be linked to a problem in the frontal lobes. Indeed several disorders including autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive and Compulsive Disorder are thought to involve significant frontal and temporal lobe dysfunction.
Idiot geniuses
Autism isn’t always a bad thing. About one in ten people with autism are exceptionally gifted. The so called Idiot Savant syndrome skills come from the right hemisphere
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includes music, art and maths, nonsymbolic musical and motor abilities. Unusually gifted people may not show up on IQ tests, because IQ tests measure a range of skills and average them. People with gifts in maths may not perform well on verbal or linguistic tasks, and thus end up with a lower than average IQ score, despite being quite gifted. Savants are also known as idiot savants because they generally have a very low IQ, 40-70.
developed genius abilities yet. Left brainers are more orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. They are good at understanding directions and anything that is explicit and logical. Right brainers are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what’s not said, Stephen Wiltshire has an amazing ability to visualizing things, and making recall and draw entire cityscapes in great detail. things up. Alonzo Clemons creates perfect replicas of A hyperactive left or right brain animals. can result in people having right or A knock on the head could left brained super skills. Naturally, if do you good you’re not in the right environment Brain damage can actually result in some of us it’ll be difficult for you to express these skills. becoming unusually gifted. Alonzo Clemans There’s no use having Mozart’s musical brain if developed the ability to create perfect wax you didn’t have his domineering father to push replicas of animals after only having seen them him into practising and playing the piano from for seconds after a childhood head injury. But a young age! it was puzzling: Alonzo couldn’t even feed Better ways of seeing into our brains with himself or tie his shoes. His ability to create these MRI, PET and ECGs have allowed us to find perfect replicas of animals right down to their out which parts of the brain are responsible for every muscle and fibre is thought to be due to an behaviour. In general the frontal lobes control amazing photographic memory. our behaviour, our ability to make plans, paint Like Dustin Hofmann in the film Rain Man, and drive cars. The Amygdala can make us most savants have great memories and are happy, anxious or afraid, and the brainstem can unusually gifted at maths, music or the arts. drive us back towards our animal instincts. Alonzo was diagnosed as a savant, with an unusual Probing more deeply so as to understand how these sculpting gift. He works as an artist, and lives and works in areas work on a molecular level has been vital to help Boulder, Colorado where he is a vital part of that community. treating people with brain disorders. By threading the right transmitter though people’s veins you can help improve their mood and behaviour. These molecular marvels can be seen Unlock your rainman day to day, as people light up, uncork and eat their way into Some people blame an overly dominant left hemisphere for feeling better. repressing our natural gifts and have suggested that if you Drugs, both bad and good play a huge part in who we are. change the electrical activity in the right hemisphere you The next chapter will explore where they came from, what could “unlock the little ‘rain man’ in each of us”. In general they do in the brain and why we always crave more. most of us have a dominant hemisphere, even if we’ve not 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.
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SPIn aCtIVe Moráin, director of Innovation and Commercialisation at enterprise Ireland, explained that part of this pragmatic approach is focusing on a limited number of research areas. “We are a small country,” he said, “so we can’t do it all.” In a thought provoking presentation, Prof daniel Zajfman, President of the world renowned Weizmann Institute in Israel, made the point that giving undue priority to applied research is not the best way to stimulate real innovation. as he noted, all the important discoveries, such as lasers, that industry now rely on for innovation, came from curiosity driven research. It is much easier, he said to talk about applied research, but if we are looking for economic development, the linear model from discovery to innovation, is not the way to go. If the process was really linear, he explained, we would still be trying to make better candles, there would be no such thing as GPS, and of course, no electricity. the level of innovation in Israel is exceptionally high, so high in fact that it has become an example that other smaller countries, such as Ireland would like to emulate. that level of success, said Prof Zajfman, has been based firmly on curiosity driven research. While the trail from high-technology innovation in Israel generally led back to the Weizmann Institute, Prof Zajfman, in a remark that took many of the Irish listeners by surprise, stated quite bluntly that there is no collaboration at all with industry. Industry, he said, is so strong, that industry collaborators end up setting the research agenda. at the Weizmann Institute, he said, researchers are under no obligation to think of how their results will be applied. If findings look promising from a commercial point of view, he said, the results are simply offered to industrial or business investors. at that stage, Weizmann scientists retain their rights, but otherwise the Institute exits the scene, and lets industry get on with the applied side of research. the approach has been highly successful, but as Prof Zajfman pointed out, this is not a short term strategy, and it is impossible to anticipate results.
looking into the future, SFI director, Frank Gannon, and Conor lenihan, Minister for StI, watching a three dimensional display of technology developed by Clarity.
Celebrating a decade of SFI
SCIenCe FoundatIon Ireland has been in existence for ten years, and in a celebration to mark the tenth anniversery, the Minister for Science technology and Innovation, Conor lenihan, remarked that the agency has had a huge impact on Irish research. Mentioning some of the big successes in areas such as immunology and information technology, Minister lenihan said that only ten years ago no one would have thought that Irish science could come to be so highly regarded internationally. In the minister’s view, funding research through SFI was one of the best investments ever made by the state. “It is,” he said, “one of the things we got right.” the taoiseach, Brian Cowan, Minister Batt o’Keeffe, and Conor lenihan were joined by leading figures from industry such as Peter o’neill, GM of IBM Ireland, and Ian Coulter, Ceo of Signoid Pharma, in discussing the impact of science on the economy, and there was general agreement that whatever about cuts in other areas, investment in science must remain high. While there is no dispute about the necessity to keep investing in science, opinions differ on how and where this support should be applied. Many scientists argue that curiousity driven research ultimately produces the best returns, while agencies such as enterprise Ireland, want to see results that can be applied in the short term. Fergal Ó
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SPIn ACTIVe
Netting €23 million
Ireland has secured over €30 million in funding for 30 marine research projects. This comes as good news to about 130 young researchers in areas such as ocean energy, fisheries, biotechnology, and environmental monitoring. According to the Marine Institute, winning this level of support is a good indicator of how activties within the sector are continuing to rise. Top performers in this sector include the hydraulics and Maritime research Centre at UCC, Wavebob, and AquaTT. Irish researchers have been particularly active in developing wave energy technology, and in a number of other areas there is a high level of collaboration with scientists abroad.
Industrial placement
Bill Daly
Biomaterials
One of the main reasons why tissues fail to regenerate after injury is that their cells do not have a base on which to grow. At the network of excellence for Functional Biomaterials at nUI Galway, postgraduate researcher, Bill Daly, has been working on a threedimensional structure that could provide nerve tissue to regenerate after injury. At the Annual Conference for the european Society for Biomaterials, held recently in Finland, Bill Daly was presented with an award for his presentation on this project. The project involves collaboration with laser scientist, Dr Claire O’Connell to etch guides on implant surfaces, along which the nerve fibres can grow.
Supporting IT
A FUrTher €750 million has been made available for information technology projects under the eU Framework 7 programme. Proposals have been invited under this latest call, and the deadline for submissions is 18th January 2011. Projects to be considered include those involving smart cars, energy efficient buildings, factory automation, and future use of the Internet. Under the entire duration of the Framework 7 programme, which runs from 2007 to 2013, over €9 billion has been allocated for ICT, and through leverage, the plan is to double public spending on research and development every year.
One of the recommendations made by the pharmaceutical sector is that placement in industry become a more common part of courses in the physical sciences and engineering. Through placement, students become more familiar with industry, and companies gain from better links to the higher education institutes. As a report from IBeC notes, manufacturing alone will not keep the industry in Ireland, so the emphasis has to be on maintaining a lead through product improvement and innovation. The report, Innovation and excellence, is available as a PDF from Siobhan Murphy at IBeC. LIVE siobhan.murphy@ibec.ie LINK
Innovation Union
UnDer Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, proposals to improve innovation are being presented to the eU Council for approval. Under the banner ‘Innovation Union’ a number of actions are being proposed, and a target is being set to increase r&D investment to 3 per cent of GDP right across europe. Some of the elements in the plan include provision of seed corn funding to make participation in projects more attractive to investors. At the same time measures are to be taken to create a cross-border venture capital environment. In line with the aim of establishing the european research Area, red tape is to be cut and remaining obstacles to the free movement of researchers
are to be removed. At the same time, access to the results of publicly funded research is to be improved. Another action is to use public procurement as an instrument to stimulate innovation. This is an action with considerable potential to boost the development of innovative firms. At present, public procurement and tendering processes leave a lot to be desired, and improvements could result in channelling about €10 billion a year into performance related support for business and industry. In general, the aim is to increase the uptake of research across europe, and apart from using a checklist of 25 indicators to help identify innovating firms, an independent ranking system is to keep the performance of universities under review.
Ballina expansion
The hollister healthcare plant at Ballina is to expand. The US based company is to invest €65 million to increase manufacturing capacity. hollister manufactures ostomy and continence care products for the world market and has been operating from Ballina for the past 35 years. The parent company is owned by its employees and is headquartered at Libertyville, close to Chicago.
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SPIn ACTIVe Innovation Alliance
Healthcare
The Australian healthcare company, Probiotec, is to expand its manufacturing operations at dundalk, Co Louth. The development involves a substantial rise in employee numbers from 15 at present, to an estimated 70 or so within three years. The company manufactures a range of dietary replacement products which were launched into the Irish and UK markets in 2007. The expansion will enable the company to expand into european markets.
Keeping distance
ShAne Tuohy, a final-year student of electronics and computing at nUI Galway has won the Avaya 2010 award for his work on developing a system to calculate the gap between moving cars. Shane, from Strandhill in Co Sligo, worked with Valeo Vision Systems to develop software capable of calculating distance by analysing data from a car mounted digital camera. The Connaught Automotive research group at nUI Galway specialises in the development of in-car camera systems, and dr Martin Glavin, the course director, said that higher traffic densities and speeds mean that collision avoidance has become a more critiical issue. http://car.nuigalway.ie
Student performance
ASSeSSInG the clinical performance of medical students traditionally involves a lot of paperwork, and at nUI Galway software has been developed to make this task easier. A campus spin-off company, Qpercom, has developed this into a software package, and recently this has been supplied to the Belgian Leuven University where it is to be used to support training 450 medical students a year in clinical skills. According to Professor Andrew Murphy from General Practice in nUI Galway, performance of the new software product has exceeded expectations, and it has resulted in substantial savings on administration.
Under the Innovation Alliance between UCd and TCd an Innovation Academy has been established with the aim of turning experts into innovators. According to the academy’s mission statement, innovation is to become a key outcome of Phd training alongside research and education. The first module in the joint innovation diploma course began in September 2010. Under the recent PrTLI awards, the Innovation Academy has been given €1.72 million in support, and in July Prof Paul Coughlan from TCd, and Prof Suzi Jarvis from UCd, were appointed as course co-directors.
Global database
dr ALex Polleres at nUI Galway’s digital enterprise research Institute would like the Web to become a vast worldwise database where users can find the answers to complex questions. The current search engines, he maintains, are not good enough, and he aims to improve performance. dr Polleres, who worked in collaboration with collegues at the University of Vienna, has just been awarded a best paper award at a Web conference in Italy for his theoretical work on more efficient compression of highly structured information.
Plant power
reCoVerInG the energy stored in plants would be easier if enzymes could break down lignocellulose. This is the tough material giving plants their structural strength and rigidity. The fact that lignocellulose is so hard to break down means that a lot of energy that could go into biofuels remains locked up in wood and straw. At the Biotechnology and Biological Science research Council in the UK, researchers have found that it may be possible to get around that problem by knocking out some of the genes that help build lignocellulose. The researchers, based at Cambridge, have identified two enzymes that are involved in giving plants their structural strength. As the lead scientist, Prof dupree, explained, the aim was to weaken rather than eliminate the toughness, so that the modified plants would be easier to digest. Using what has become the plant equivalent of the ubiquitous fruit fly, the cress plant, Arabidopsis, the researchers found that knocking out the genes for two particular enzymes, resulted in plants that are just a bit weaker than normal. The team also found that fermenting these plants to produce sugar was a lot easier. According to Prof dupree, the next stage of their research is to see if modified willow and miscanthus grass can be grown as high yield energy crops.
Medical products
The healthcare company, Covidien, is investing €900,000 in r&d at nUI Galway. The support, covering the next two years, involves collaboration with nUIG’s national Centre for Biomedical engineering Science the network of excellence for Functional Biomaterials, and the Centre for Pain research. The deal with nUIG follows the establishment of a european Service Centre at Cherrywood in dublin. Commenting on the development, Barry o’Leary, Ceo of IdA Ireland, said that more than half the companies in the Irish medical sector are now involved in research and development.
Recycling plastics
The Shabra recycling plant in Monaghan has expanded operations to process over 40,000 tonnes of mixed plastics a year. A new plant, located near Castleblaney, has been opened to recycle plastic bottles. The Shabra Group, was established in 1986 by rita Shah and oliver Brady. recycled paper and plastics are used to produce a range of products.
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Department of Chemistry, NUI Maynooth
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he field of chemical research has contributed significantly to medical advances and the capacity to enhance our quality of life. In practice, this equates to innovations in drug design, medical imaging systems, biosensors, and biochemical models of living processes and diseases which impact on our society. With 12 academic and 6 technical staff, over 480 undergraduates, 42 research students and 7 postdoctoral fellows, the Department of Chemistry at NUI Maynooth is a vibrant Department that offers excellent facilities and high standards, in both teaching and research. Research cuts across the traditional disciplines and is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach. A wide range of research is carried out from synthesis and environmental monitoring to bioanalysis and neuroscience. The Departmental vision is to expand within these areas under the general themes of Biological (Medicinal/Pharmaceutical) and Environmental Chemistry. The Department has strong research activities and has young, enthusiastic staff committed to the interdisciplinary approach that underpins the research strategy of the Department. Currently, the following research groups/areas are operating at NUI Maynooth: NeuroAnalytical Chemistry; Electrochemistry, Materials and Environmental Chemistry; Organometallic Chemistry and Polymer Chemistry; Synthesis and Application of Carbohydrate-Based Bioactive Molecules; Low Temperature Photochemistry and Spectroscopy; Inorganic Synthesis with Medicinal Applications; Synthetic Organic Chemistry; Synthetic Methodology/Asymmetric Synthesis; Coordination Chemistry - Applications in Catalysis, Energy Transfer and Medicine; Environmental Technologies & Biomaterials; Protein Phase Diagrams, Protein Condensation Disease and Phase Transitions in DNA-Lipid Assemblies; Biosensors, Electrocatalysis and Selective Biological Analyte Detection. The BioAnalytics and Neuroscience group is studying the application of microdialysis and the development of (bio)sensors to selectively monitor important neurochemicals in the living brain, in order to assist the understanding of the complex functioning of the brain in terms of behaviour and disease, e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease. Electrochemistry and Materials Chemistry is concerned with the formation of new polymeric materials that can be programmed to bind and release drugs, relevant for the controlled delivery of drugs and the development of drug-delivery systems. Spectroscopic investigations of biomolecules, namely recombinant proteins, under in vitro conditions, allow chemists
to determine how protein confirmations can be used to understand disease states and develop new drugs. Activities in synthetic and bioorganic chemistry are at the interface of chemistry and biology – a key growth area – and among other initiatives involve chemical modification of genomic material with a view to enhancing its potential for medical research and the treatment or prevention of disease. The quality of the research activity in the Department of Chemistry is highlighted by the number of international collaborative links, including links with both Oxford and Cambridge Universities and with industry. The Department has been very successful in competing for research funding: Currently, research in the Department is funded by SFI, Enterprise Ireland, HRB, EPA, Department of Agriculture, IRCSET, EU and PRTLI4 (partner in the successful PRTLI4 bid made by IT Tallaght to establish the CASH centre). Current funding, excluding PRTLI4, is €7.6M. The Department has also forged significant links with National and International Industrial partners including Intel, HP, Emerald Environmental Services Ltd., Millipore, GSK and Eli Lilly and Co. NUIM (through Chemistry) is also involved in the newly established Lilly Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) which is a consortium of academic and industrial scientists seeking to enhance the probability of clinical success for molecules targeted at conditions involving cognitive dysfunction. The Department/ University is the only Irish research institution involved in this network along with King’s College, London, and the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, and Cardiff. In 2007 three licence agreements (the first in the University’s history) were signed with Pharmaceuticals companies worth in excess of €80,000. A further two were signed in 2008 bringing the total revenue from such agreements to over €150,000. Licence agreements with Eli Lilly are currently under negotiation through the Lilly CCN. Five patent applications have been filed by academics in the Department over the last two years. Recent consultation and funding (€912,794) from Enterprise Ireland under its Commercialisation Fund, has resulted in the spinning out of a campus company (Blue Box Sensors, see www.blueboxsensors. com) in 2009 to commercialise the sales of developed sensor technologies. The latter are devices which enable real-time monitoring of neurochemicals in the brain and have the potential to revolutionise global drug development by improving animalto-clinical translation, accelerate attrition and enable early identification of efficacy. For more information see: www.chemistry.nuim.ie/ http://research.nuim.ie/
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LIVE LINK
Point of view
To become better at communications, scientists must first learn how to accept the difference between explaining facts and expressing opinions. Tom Kennedy reports from ESOF Torino
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cientists can be experts in a particular field, they know their facts, but when it comes to expressing opinions on how those facts are to be interpreted, they can be just as ignorant and biased as everyone else. As Elizabetta Tola, a Bologna based expert in science communications, found, scientists are far from infallible. Elizabetta discovered just how irrational scientists can be when her agency, Formicablu, which she established in 2005, started running courses in communications. Like many others, Elizabetta knew that people involved in research often need to become better at communicating their results, but when she started running courses, she found that training in presentation is not a quick fix for problems that actually lie a lot deeper. Elizabetta was soon convinced that simple training was not producing good enough results, and to make scientists into better communicators, she concluded that what was needed was a fundamental change in attitude. Scientists, she said, often see themselves as somehow apart from society, and because this self-image is wrong, they often conclude that lay-people simply do not understand what they have to say. However, as Elizabetta explained, when it comes to assessing the significance of results, it is often the scientists, rather than the lay-people who are failing to understand the issues involved. As far as Elizabetta was concerned, the real barrier to good communications, lay in overcoming the attitude that scientists are apart
rather than part of society. So, Elizabetta changed her approach, and instead of launching immediately into the practicalities of talking to the media or how to make a presentation, her courses began with in-depth self-assessment. As Elizabetta admitted, while this took more time and effort, the results were much better. Elizabetta gave a presentation to scientists attending the ESOF event in Turin, and at this she described how the courses began by asking the scientists to jot down a few notes on what they wanted to communicate and why? Not surprisingly, a standard response to the latter question is that what the scientists has to say, is good for the public. At this stage, the scientists are jolted out of any cosy assumptions that because they are the experts, everything they say is right, and no one has a right to disagree. Instead of just discussing this in an abstract theoretic way, a series of real-life issues involving science, as reported in the media, are presented to the scientists. They are then asked to debate issues such as stem-cell research, and quite quickly the scientists come to see that while they might know all about the detailed technicalities, they are in no better position than an non-expert in science to say how the knowledge should be used. Taking this debate a step further, the scientists then have to play out a role in which they have to justify their opinions. Elizabetta explained that one of these ‘games’ involves interviewing a number of people
presenting themselves for IVF treatment. This jury has to decide on who is to be allowed have this treatment. “All of this debate is observed,” said Elizabetta, “and as she remarked, none of the questions raised in these interviews are scientific or technical. “Everything is decided on cultural and ethical issues,” she said, and this happens every time. For example, she added, it would be unusual for an Italian researcher to offer IVF treatment to a gay couple, yet such a decision would be made without ever asking if there had been studies made on the subject of whether or not gay couples made good parents. The great benefit from this approach, said Elizabetta, is that participants come to understand that while they may be extremely careful to stick to the facts in their own research, they are just like everyone else when it comes to forming opinions. Scientists have to have reached this level of understanding, said Elizabetta, before they progress on to the actual practicalities of training in communications. Only then, she said, can they understand their audience.
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The European Science Open Forum, ESOF, held last July in Turin, was a big international showcase event for science. In 2012 Ireland will host the event when Dublin becomes Europe’s next City of Science.
Problem solvers in demand Tom Kennedy reports that Irish researchers were in Turin to explain how knowledge is being put to work in industry.
Going into industry
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career in industry is likely to follow on from postgraduate research, and Derek O’Brien from the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology, IRCSET, observed, this is the process that effectively gets knowledge to work. At the ESOF event in Turin, Derek explained that in Ireland, there has been a steady rise in the number of PhDs being taken on by industry. Between 2001 and 2007, he said, there has been a rise of 20 per cent in the number of PhDs going into Irish industry. These people are seen as problem solvers, and not just because of their scientific or technical expertise. In a broader sense these PhDs are more valuable because they can act as a much-needed bridge between academic and industry, and they also bring a whole network of valuable connections with them. In Ireland, said Derek, progression into industry is recognised as a good career move, and to make this easier to achieve, IRCSET has an enterprise support scheme. Under this scheme, IRCSET provides two-thirds of the funding, and industry provides the balance. While studying at university, postgraduates engage in practical work in industry, and after receiving their PhD many choose to stay on there. This approach has worked very well in Ireland, said Derek, and after starting off with just one in 2004, the enterprise support scheme now involves over 90 companies. As part of their involvement, companies provide mentoring support for the researchers, and this is another way of narrowing the gap between theory and practice.
In Ireland, industrial success has usually been based on innovation, and the same could be said of Europe. In Europe, he observed, one of the biggest challenges now is in finding more effective ways of transferring knowledge into industry.
Making it easier for researchers to progress into a career in industry would certainly help to solve that problem, and the Irish experience with the partnership programme looks like a good model to follow.
The voice of experience
Rathnait Long has been through the process. After studying electrical engineering at University College Cork, she went on to conduct research at the Tyndall National Institute with support from Intel. So, how did she find the experience? As Rathnait explained, she always liked physics, and at school this subject appealed to her more than general science because, as she said, “I wanted to see the applications of what I was doing.” After studying electrical engineering, she went to Tyndall, but was not yet convinced that she wanted to do a PhD. “I went into industry to get some experience,” she said, and that made her realise that her best option was to go back into research in partnership with industry. The IRCSET enterprise partnership was just what she wanted, and it helped that her supervisor, Dr Paul Herley, was already working in collaboration with Intel. This brought her into the world of industry, and at Intel she was provided with a mentor, while at Tyndall, there was also an Intel research in residence for her to talk to. Structures and protocols, she said are quite different in the two environments. Having the experience of both, she added, makes it much easier to understand what is required at work. “By working with industry,” she said, “PhDs become more adaptable, and if they go on to jobs in industry, it’s not going to be a big culture shock.” Working with industry, while engaged in research, she said, was a great way to broaden her experience and build up contacts that she expects to benefit from throughout her career. “Education for experience, that’s what this programme gave me,” she said.
Transferring
In discussing the move into industry, questions were raised on the possible transfer back into academia. This is becoming more of an issue as an increasing number of industries begin to work in collaboration with universities and research organizations. As Derek O’Brien from IRCSET explained, a lot depends on the field of expertise and the sector, but in general there is a big difference in attitude between Europe and the US. In Europe, the move into industry is generally one way, but in the US having industrial experience is often seen as a plus in securing an academic position.
Under IRCSET’s enterprise partnership programme postgraduates gain that experience, but as Derek explained, not all go on to work in the sponsoring companies. “Some have gone into academia, some have gone into other companies, and one has set up a company.” Whatever career route the postgraduates decide to take, they have gained valuable experience, and as Derek said, this is a good long-term strategy for establishing a better network of links embracing academia and industry.
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A kNOwLEDgE INTENSIvE ENTErPrISE INTEL is a knowledge intensive enterprise, so the connection to research is strong. Padraig O’Muirichu from Intel Ireland explained that 90 per cent of the 5,000 staff has third level qualifications, and 30 per cent have conducted postgraduate research. Staff, he said, are encouraged to work towards a PhD, and apart from supporting them with mentors, Intel runs an annual get-together conference to foster networking and exchange of ideas. On production, the goals being set by Intel are extremely high, and for example, during their time in Ireland, there has been a progression from 0.5 micron technology to 65 nanometres, less than the diameter of a flu virus, and the wafers from which chips are cut, have gone up from 200 to 300 mm diameter.
As Padraig explained, it takes a lot of knowledge to achieve this level of progress, so the association with education is seen as essential. This association goes well beyond research, because without the right kind of technically qualified staff Intel may be able to innovate, but it cannot stay ahead in production. During the 90s, said Padraig, companies such as Intel were starting to run into a problem due to lack of suitably trained electro-mechanical technicians. “Something had to be done,” he said, “so a meeting was set up between industry, government, and education. As a result, a certification in technology manufacturing was started.” This was a sandwich programme, involving six months intensive knowledge acquisition in an academic intuition,
Timber up
Carbon surprise
gOOD news for forestry, the price of wood has been rising due to global shortages of timber. The home industry is now believed to be approaching €2bn a year and according to Coford, there has been a big upsurge in felling licences as Irish growers respond to rising demand from the mills.
How much?
AS EvEN the dogs on the street know everyone is paying now to make up for the unchecked greed of a few, but how many people really understand what’s going on. Just to take one simple example, how many headline writers or their readers actually know how much a billion is? Is it 1,000,000,000,000, or is it 1,000,000,000? No matter which, forty or more times a billion is still a lot of money to go missing, and while it’s still extremely hard to puzzle out where a lot of that went, we can take some consolation in the fact that a billion in this part of the world is just a measly 1,000,000,000.
followed by another six months skills acquisition within industry, followed in turn by another six months back in college. Taking this kind of hands-on approach to training and education, said Padraig, solved that problem, and much the same willingness to work with institutions, such as Tyndall, applies to creating the right kind of researchers. while working for a PhD, researchers may not yet have decided what kind of career route to follow. The good thing about being exposed to an industry culture, which is quite different from academia, said Padraig, is that PhD students become better equipped to decide what career route to take.
ONE Of the most remarkable materials to emerge recently is nothing more than carbon. what makes it special is that is that the carbon is arranged in one-atomthick crystals. known as graphene, these crystals are of huge interest, especially to the electronics industry, because of their unusual conductive properties. Two of the leading researchers in this field, Prof konstantin Novoselov, and Prof Andre geim have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on this two-dimensional material. During their research at Manchester University, the scientists found that they could produce flakes of just one atom in thickness, and surprisingly, this novel material is stable and strong. As a conductor of electricity is is as good as copper, and as a conductor of heat is is better than any other known material. Almost transparent, yet it is so dense that atoms of helium cannot pass through it. An array of possible applications has been opened up by this new form of carbon. The conductive properties are likely to spark off innovations in electronics, and and mixed with polymers, is is likely to form super strong composites.
Protection as a barrier
MANy researchers aim to profit by patenting their results, yet patent protection can become a barrier to further research. One example comes from genetic engineering, where the gene transfer technique currently being used is restricted by patents. researchers at Teagasc Oak Park working with colleagues from UCD, have found a way around this problem by developing an alternative to the usual technique which is based on using the bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens to ferry genes into the host. Dr Ewen Mullins from Teagasc, and Dr fiona Doohan from UCD have found that another bacterium, Ov14, can do the same job just as well. In the current issue of TRearch, the scientists state that the lack of restrictions will make it easier for researchers to work on gene transfer projects.
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EuRoPEAn RESEARCH – we are recruiting! Here are the fields concerned: DiD you know that the European Commission has its own l Chemistry, Biology and Health Sciences Joint Research Centre (JRC)? The JRC is there to give technical and scientific support for Eu policies. That means it works on big l Physics cross-border projects which affect several Member States such l Structural Mechanics as flood control, public health issues, soil quality, food allergies, l Quantitative Policy Analysis renewable energy and more. l Spatial Sciences Eu Member States face many common problems such as l Environmental Sciences climate change, an ageing society and globalisation. while Eu l Energy Sciences policy tries to come up with some answers to those problems, l Communication/information Technology the JRC does important scientific research which feeds into the policy making and aims to move beyond national scientific For information about the competition, please go to: research to look at the continent as a whole. So the work http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/index.cfm?id=5750 JRC scientists do is close to the policy-making process but is The JRCs are not the only option for researchers looking independent of private or national interests. The JRC is based in at possibilities in the Eu. There is also a Researcher’s Mobility five separate sites around Europe. Portal at http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/. This sets out career The JRCs fall under the remit of the irish Commissioner for opportunities and provides practical information and assistance Research, innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. for all researchers seeking a job, university fellowship or grant in She is keen that all research carried out in the Eu contributes to Europe. meeting challenges like climate Finally, there is the Marie change, energy and food security, Questions about the European Union? Curie programme at http:// health and an ageing population. Check out our website at www.euireland.eu cordis.europa.eu/fp7/people/ She wants to use public sector Email us at: eu-ie-info-request@ec.europa.eu which is a kind of ‘Erasmus’ intervention to stimulate the European Commission Representation in ireland programme for researchers. private sector and to remove European union House, 18 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 The Marie Curie Actions are bottlenecks which stop ideas aimed at researchers at all reaching the market. stages of their careers, in both And the JRC is recruiting – deadline for applications to the public and private sectors. it is also designed to promote equal open competition is 4 November 2010. opportunities and aims to help people to resume a research in all, they expect to make up a list of 270 successful career after a break such as maternity leave. candidates from around the Eu who will then be called as For more information about JRC, please go to: needed. Successful candidates may eventually have the http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/index.cfm opportunity to work in one of the JRC’s seven institutes on the LIVE LINK basis of a permanent contract as a research administrator.
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 27 SPIN ACTIVE
Looking for a partner to help with expansion here or abroad, or have you technology that would help an Irish SME to expand?
LINKS FROM TSSG at WIT Network traffic control ASYST is a product which manipulates network traffic to prioritise some traffic over others. This can be useful in networks where congestion is a threat. In a service providers network, you may want to prioritise real-time traffic (phone calls, video) over (internet browsing, email). In an enterprise network, for WAN optimisation, you may want to prioritise SAP system requests over internet browsing. ASYST operates like some other solutions on the market (such as Ipanema Technologies ip|engine) except that ASYST is a purely software solution with no extra hardware required. For more information visit ASYST http://www.asystnm.com/ LIVE LINK Monitoring energy use With ASTRAL , the TSSG is currently developing a product which will allow users to monitor and control energy usage on a per device basis. This product shows the energy used by each device in the office or home. The user can enter policies to define how they want their devices to operate. For example • Shut down all devices from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am or • Shut down any device that has not been used for 30 minutes or • Schedule energy intensive activities during the night when energy is less expensive This device is in final trial mode before commercialisation. For more information visit ASTRAL http://www.asystnm.com/astral/ E V I L LINK
Local enterprise
In Spin Active LINKS we include short notices highlighting opportunities for collaboration. Notices for inclusion in LINKS are welcome, but they must be brief, to the point, and of genuine interest to Irish SMEs.
FROM NUI Galway RiboTech – a platform molecular diagnostic assay for the detection of microorganisms NUI Galway have developed a Nucleic Acid-based diagnostic assay based around a novel gene sequence LepA. This allows for the precise identification of specific bacterial species. For more information on licensing this technology please contact Dr Ruairi Friel ruairi.friel@nuigalway.ie LIVE LINK
Stenting technology Lipostent developed by NUI Galway represents the latest development of stenting technology. It uses non-viral proprietary gene transfer to deliver a pro-healing gene to the blood vessel wall enhancing the body’s own repair. Impressive results to date and a variety of clinical applications available for this technology. For more information on licensing this technology please contact Dr Jacinta Thornton jacinta.thornton@nuigalway.ie E V I L LINK
Biomaterial Novel mRNAs Cholecyst (gallbladder)-derived Novel miRNAs represent a new and Extracellular Matrix CEM is a natural exciting class of therapeutics for a host based biomaterial derived from the gall of human diseases. This NUI Galway bladder of pig and has a complex meshdeveloped technology describes a range like architecture. CEM will be of interest of miRNAs and their protein target to those in the wound healing and soft which can be utilized as a Cardiovascular tissue repair markets. Unique mechanical Disease therapeutic. properties that could be adapted to a For more information on licensing or whole raft of other clinical applications. further collaborative development of this For more information on licensing this technology please contact Dr Ruairi Friel technology please contact Dr Ruairi Friel ruairi.friel@nuigalway.ie LIVE ruairi.friel@nuigalway.ie K N E I L LIV LINK
Simply send us an email your notice on what you want, or have on offer, and, subject to space constraints and suitability, we will do our best to include it in our next issue. Don’t forget to include an email and web address, and these will be live in our digital edition. Bear in mind that SMEs are mainly interested in ideas or technologies that are ready to work now. Send your notes to: tom@sciencespin.com
LOCAL enterprise boards are to get another €3.3 million from the Department of ETI in a bid to get more businesses off the ground. Ireland has 35 county and city enterprise boards, and their brief is to support firms employing ten or less people. Although many people in high-tech or specialised business,
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would argue that this cut-off based on numbers directly employed can be restrictive, firms employing less than ten are classed officially as micro-enterprises rather than SMEs, so they are supposed to rely on local enterprise boards rather than national agencies for support.
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RED MUD Margaret Franklin gives the background to the toxic spill that caused such damage in Hungary.
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hether it is an oil rig exploding in the Gulf of Mexico, or the rock collapse in a gold mine in Chile that trapped 33 miners underground for more than two months, or the more recent disaster in an alumina plant in Hungary, there is no doubt that extracting materials from the earth comes at a price. The red toxic mud that has killed several people in Hungary has also injured many more, who have suffered caustic burns. The mud engulfed the village of Kolontár and the surrounding countryside, destroyed fish life in a number of rivers and posed a serious threat to the Danube itself. The mud is a is a waste product of the Bayer process, which is used to separate alumina (aluminium oxide) from the other components of bauxite ore.
Red mud flowing out into the surrounding countryside in Hungary during October. Image: Digital Globe. Bauxite contains approximately 50 per cent alumina, while the remainder is composed of oxides of other elements, mainly iron. It is the iron oxide that gives the sludge its red colour. The sludge may also contain traces of harmful heavy metals such as mercury, but one of the main problems with the Hungarian waste seems to be its caustic nature. This is
Mud farming at Aughinish, and, right, a rehabilitated area.
No wet ponding in Ireland
In Ireland, Aughinish Alumina in the Shannon Estuary, near Foynes, operates a large refinery that processes 1.8 million tonnes of alumina a year. After extraction from imported bauxite, the alumina is exported to the UK, Scandinavia and Europe. The refinery, now owned by RUSAL, has been in operation since 1983. UC RUSAL was formed in 2007 by the merger of some of the world’s largest
aluminium producers, and the company now has interests in 19 countries around including Ireland. Responding to media enquiries, Sean Garland from Aughinish Alumina, explained that the Limerick refinery does not have a bauxite lake or pond. Wet ponding, he went on to explain, is an older process, and at Aughinish a method, called ‘dry stacking’ is used. This involves dewatering of the bauxite within the plant, and the residue is washed, vacuum filtered, and then transferred to a disposal area as a thick paste.
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because sodium hydroxide, commonly known as caustic soda, is used in the Bayer process. This process uses the fact that aluminium is amphoteric, which means that its oxide can behave as either an acid or a base. This is in contrast to most metals, whose oxides are usually basic and do not react with sodium hydroxide. When finely gound bauxite is treated with hot caustic soda
Further dewatering of this paste takes place, and the resulting fluids are recycled back to the alumina plant. In a statement to the press, Sean said that the major advantage of the dry stacking process is that there is no hazardous waste, and after compacting it can be driven or walked on, and the area can be reinstated to its natural state. A large nature park has been established on the plant’s island site. Followng visits from EU technical experts, the dry disposal approach taken by Aughinish was used in EC guidelines as an example of ‘best available technology’ for design and operation of residue facilities. Apart from being the best available technology, Sean Garland, in his response to the media, said the Irish Environmental Protection Agency would not have given permission for the wet ponding that caused such a disaster in Hungary. (TK)
solution, the sodium hydroxide reacts with the alumina to form sodium aluminate, a soluble substance, which therefore dissolves. The other oxides do not react and remain insoluble and can therefore be separated from the aluminate solution, either by filtration, or by allowing the undissolved solids to settle. The solution is heated to evaporate off some of the water, then cooled to form a supersaturated solution, which is ‘seeded’ with aluminium hydroxide crystals. These then grow into larger crystals which settle out of solution. The aluminium hydroxide ia calcined at a temperature of over 1,000ºC to release the water of crystallisation and yield pure dry alumina as a white powder. Unfortuntely, the residue, a sludge which is red in colour, due to the high iron oxide content, is of no commercial use and has to be disposed of by storing in large ponds. It was a weakened wall in a reservoir holding
such waste that resulted in the release of about one million cubic metres of sludge in Hungary recently. Here in Ireland, Aughinish Alumina, in the Shannon Estuary, is Europe’s largest alumina refinery and also uses the Bayer process. The purification of alumina from bauxite is only part of the process in the production of aluminium. To obtain aluminium metal from alumina (which is in fact aluminium oxide) requires a chemical reduction, i.e. the removal of the oxygen, which is very strongly bonded to the aluminium. The process therefore requires a lot of energy and can only be achieved by an electrolytic process. So the alumina produced at Aughinish is exported for further processing in countries where electricity is cheaper. However, each of us can do our bit to help reduce our carbon footprint in relation to aluminium use, by recycling beverage cans. Waste aluminium
metal can be melted and re-used and this requires far less energy than is expended in the extraction of alumina from bauxite and the subsequent electrolytic reduction of alumina to aluminium metal. So think twice before throwing away those aluminium cans with general rubbish. Recycle them, as the metal can be re-used. It would be great if our supermarkets would take a lead here, by accepting cans for recycling and perhaps even paying money to customers who bring back their empty cans, as is done in the USA. In the meantime, why not collect your own empty cans, crush them and return them to Hammond Lane, who may be propared to actually pay for this useful metal.
NANOSCIENCE By building on a tiny scale, scientists are opening up a whole new range of possibilities — novel materials, faster, energy efficient electronics, and drug delivery systems. To enter and keep ahead in this fast moving field, scientists need an ability to combine physics with chemistry. A special course, Nanoscience, Physics and Chemistry of Advanced Materials has been developed to prepare students for a career in this area. The four year N-PCAM honours degree course combines the strengths of the Schools of Chemistry and Physics at Trinity College Dublin. In the first two years, students gain a solid foundation in Physics and Chemistry, and in the final two years, they study Nanoscience in depth. Nanoscience is a field with a great future, and as a former PCAM graduate, Dr Michele Keyes remarked: “it is already around us. There are nano materials in make-up, toothpaste, computers and teddy bears.” To learn more
www.tcd.ie/chemistry/nanoscience
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SPIN
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ENERGY & DESIGN LAB
National Centre for Plasma Science & Technology/School of Electronic Engineering, DCU
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he Energy & Design Lab in the National Centre for Plasma Science & Technology and School of Electronic Engineering DCU is a relatively new addition to the University’s research interests. The lab is headed by Stephen Daniels. One of the goals is for the lab to engage directly with industry to develop solutions based on focused research and commercial know-how. There are numerous on-going projects which can be complemented by projects from undergraduate and postgraduate students. So far, the main area of focus has been on sustainability in terms of energy monitoring, awareness and conservation. A great deal of work has taken place on campus with local schools to create an energy consumption awareness and demonstrations of alternative energy sources. During the 2009 Engineers Week, the students from the energy lab assisted groups of primary school children to build their own small hydrogen powered cars. This activity allowed the children learn the process of producing hydrogen through electrolysis and then utilizing that hydrogen to power their model cars. On the DCU open days prospective students are encouraged to use a power generating bike built by students in the lab. This bike is connected to monitoring equipment which indicates how long they would be able to power common household equipment based on the amount of energy they generated in a 30 second cycling session. This allowed students to appreciate the level of power required to power items such as their XBOX 360, if only for a few seconds in some cases! A prototype energy simulation game is being developed which will allow children of all ages to control the traditional energy sources in Ireland. Using a point based awards system; users will be encouraged to find alternatives sources of energy to supply the needs of the country. The energy sources will be based on real world values thus educating users on the realities of power generation. This experience would demonstrate the advantages or disadvantages of renewable energy and traditional energy sources. These sources would be vulnerable to common issues such as calm weather, soaring oil prices and varying demands on the power grid etc‌ as is the case in their real life operation. It is intended that this game could be used as an educational tool in primary and secondary schools to help inform children about how the energy industry works and the effort required to build a sustainable energy network. The lab is also working with an innovative power solutions company, Cinergy Ltd. This company provides renewable and hybrid power sources to telecoms companies both nationally and internationally. One of their products facilitates telecoms base stations, which may not have access to reliable grid power, to transition from traditional AC generators to more efficient DC energy sources. Another product involves the use of an innovative monopole structure which contains all of the operators’ transmission equipment and also utilises a wind turbine on the top of the structure. This setup allows operators to quickly deploy a transmission site and use the power generated by the wind turbine to offset their power consumption on sites connected to the grid. One of the PhD students in the lab is working with Cinergy to provide innovative monitoring solutions for each of the different types of telecoms installations. This work involves physical wiring of the sensors, data acquisition from those sensors and analysis of the data which provides valuable feedback of the day to day operation of each system. Any improvements in the system can then be more easily identified leading to further savings for both Cinergy and their customers. A model environment is also under construction to simulate energy usage in the home. This will demonstrate the power consumption of appliances based on their size, type and energy rating if applicable. Once the model has been constructed, a physical representation of household appliances will be built to verify the accuracy of the software based model. Over time the physical system will be monitored with potential areas of energy conservation identified. This work will also be applicable to the labs relationship with Musgraves who are looking to reduce energy usage in all of their equipment, particularly fridges. LIVE LINK
Mr Shane Phelan and Dr Stephen Daniels. Email: stephen.daniels@dcu.ie http://energylab.eeng.dcu.ie/energylab/ and www.ncpst.ie
REGI - Renewable Energy Game Ireland
Cinergy Monopole and Hybrid Generator undergoing testing before deployment to the UK.
InvIsIbIlIty
moving on from the realms of mythology to the reality of science
Chris Coughlan reports on how light waves may go around objects since time immemorial to the present day people have dreamt of having the power of invisibility. the concept of people and objects becoming invisible manifests itself in various guises throughout history, in ancient Irish legend the tuatha De Danann had the power of invisibility, in literature one of the popular works by H.G.Wells is the Invisible Man, in star trek the Klingons are able to invisibly cloak their warbird spaceships, in the television series Heroes there is a character with the power of invisibility and in many popular PC games invisibility has become a very standard attribute in role playing. but the most popular and widely known is Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, in J.K. Rowling’s novels, which renders invisible anything it covers. today scientists, using man-made nanostructures called metamaterials, have within their grasp the ability of realising this dream of invisibility.
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wo requirements are needed to render an object invisible, firstly light must not reflect back off the object and secondly light must be manipulated to bend around the object. The result is as if the object did not exist as it appears the light travelled through empty space and only the background behind the object is seen. In 2006, Sir John Pendry, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London working with David Smith and David Schurig of Duke University, North Carolina and independently Prof. Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland came to similar conclusions that invisibility is theoretically possible. Their calculations were inspired by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the geometry of curved space and by Maxwell’s Theory of Electromagnetism and the equations of electromagnetic propagation.
Firstly, by using Einstein’s concept and calculations of curved space and applying them instead to the path of light they were able to describe how light could be curved in three dimensions around an object. The next step was the application of Maxwell’s Theory of Electromagnetism. In summary this describes the full spectrum of electromagnetic waves ranging from large wavelengths such as radio waves at the long end to gamma rays at the short end with visible light roughly in the middle of the spectrum. Using Maxwell’s equations that deal with the interplay of electromagnetic waves and matter they were able to show that it is theoretically possible to manipulate and curve electromagnetic waves around an object or person if covered by a material with unique structural properties. Therefore the final component in solving the invisibility
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puzzle would be the availability of such a unique material. Through the application of nanotechnology these materials, known as “metamaterials”, have now been developed. Their unique properties enable the manipulation of waves of a specific frequency around an object they cover making the possibility of invisibility a reality.
Positive Refraction
To understand how metamaterials work we must first start with the basic science of refraction. An example of refraction is the “bent-stick-in-water” effect, which is observed when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Refraction occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material to another. According to Snell’s Law each material has its own “refractive index”, this describes how much light will bend in that particular material and is determined by how much the speed of light slows down while passing through the material. Therefore, when a beam of light crosses between two different materials its path or angle is altered depending on the difference in the refractive indices of both materials. The greater the difference the greater
the angle of refraction of the beam. Every known naturally occurring material has a positive refractive index greater than 1.
Negative refraction and metamaterials
Meta comes from the Greek meaning beyond, so the term metamaterial means to create something that is beyond or not found in nature. The unique characteristic of a metamaterial is that it has a negative refractive index (i.e. less than 1) so that it would direct or curve light around it. If water, for example, had a negative refractive index, it would make the stick in the water look as though it was bending back on itself. Therefore an object or person covered by a metamaterial will appear invisible as the metamaterial will not allow light to reach the object but will bend the light around it similar to the way water flows around a rock in its path and recombines in the same direction at the other side. It’s as if the light travelled in a straight line directly through and an observer only sees what lies behind the object.
The physics of electromagnetic waves and metamaterials
A new way of controlling electromagnetic waves by developing special materials was first predicted in 1967 by the Russian Physicist Victor Veselago, of the Lebedev Physics Institute. Using Maxwell’s equations he derived a special mathematical solution, based on the interplay of electromagnetic waves and matter, which described a theoretical man-made material with a negative refractive index that did not contradict the laws of physics Light consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields travelling in the form of electromagnetic waves. When a wave passes through a material, the way that its magnetic component interacts with the material is called the material’s “permeability” and the interaction of the electric component is its “permittivity”. He argued that a material with both a negative electric permittivity and a negative magnetic permeability would, when light passed through it, result in a novel optical phenomena of invisibility. Therefore, if you want to make an invisible cloak you need a material with
unique structural properties that can tune and control the permittivity and permeability of electromagnetic waves. In the mid 1990s John Pendry calculated how microwaves would be affected when passed through a material composed of an array of thin, parallel conducting wires. Such an array would be a metamaterial because microwaves don’t see the wires themselves, only the effects the wires have on electric and magnetic fields. He found that the metamaterial would have both a negative permeability and permittivity which gives them a negative refractive index whereas, in contrast, the permeability and permittivity values of water and glass have positive values. Metamaterials were first made by David Smith and colleagues, of Duke University, in 2000. They are artificially structured composite materials made from a matrix of tiny nano sized rods and metal rings. Smith built a working model to manipulate microwaves that have a single or specific wavelenght of over 3 cm. Currently unique cloaking matamaterials, smaller than the wavelength they are manipulating, have been developed to divert and control the flow of radar and microwaves. However, the “rainbow spectrum” of visible light is very problematic to manipulate as it has multiple wavelengths ranging from 400 nanometers for violet light to 700 nanometers for red. In August 2008 scientists, led by Prof. Xiang Zhang at the University of California, Berkeley, independently reported, in both Nature and Science publications, to have engineered a 3-D metamaterial that can negatively refract optical frequencies of visible and near infrared light. More recently, John Pendry calculated how it was possible to construct a metamaterial in which the permeability and permittivity vary continuously from
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point to point. This meant that it would be possible to steer light around a central region covered by the metamaterial so that anything covered by the metamaterial would be rendered invisible. Also, David Smith and Tai Jun Cui of Southeast University, Nanjing, China developed software that speeds up the design of next generation metamaterials. They claim that this will lead to the cheap manufacture of metameterials with different characteristics that will enable different functions.
Future possibilities beyond invisibility
The emergence of this new discipline of research in the design and manufacture of metamaterials holds the promise to produce applications which today we cannot even imagine. Eventually objects coated with metamaterials could have all types of military and civilian uses such as cloaking soldiers, warships, tanks, planes, cars and even buildings and unsightly structures. Another important future is in the whole area of imaging, in principal a lens with a negative index could produce a higher image resolution than that of a conventional lens. Such a super lens, that gives perfect image reconstruction, has been dubbed by Pendry as the “perfect lens”. Other proposed areas that metameterials can be used include, optical computers, nanocircuits, mass storage, 3D displays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), wireless communications, solar cell technology and acoustic cloaks which could act as protective shields preventing penetration of vibrations of sound and seismic waves. According to David Schurig, “we have a new paradigm for designing devices that interact with electromagnetic waves... it is impossible to imagine all the applications that will stem from this”.
Dr. Chris Coughlan is a Senior Manager at Hewlett-Packard, Galway and an adjunct Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Not ‘cobblestones’, but setts. From Charles Stewart Parnell’s quarry in Avondale, Co Wicklow.
WALKING ALONG DUBLIN’S
ROCKY ROADS Would you like to see some Jurassic creatures? Feel the smoothness of ancient volcanic ash? Run your fingers over desert sand? Or hear about Mrs Coade and the artificial stone she invented in 1766? Then come with Mary Mulvihill on a stroll through Dublin, where all this and more can be found written in the stones of our buildings and streets.
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e usually take our everyday surroundings for granted – they are, after all, ‘everyday’. Yet if we step back and take a fresh look, there are amazing stories and discoveries to be found in the very fabric of our towns and cities. At Ingenious Ireland, we’ve developed a new walking tour of Dublin that will give you a fresh insight into everything around you, from granite footpaths and old cobblestones, to Victorian railings and Georgian windows, and building stones packed with fossils. Take our tour, and we’ll have you stroking rock, looking for fossils, and peering up at roofs and down at pavements. The tour mixes architecture and history – Charles Stewart Parnell even makes a brief appearance – but the unifying theme is geology, for nearly everything in the built environment is geological, and had to be dug from the ground: the stones used in buildings, the clay bricks, the lime mortar, the concrete footpaths, the tarmac on the roads, the iron in the railings, the copper domes, the silica sand in the windows, and even the bronze statues that decorate our public spaces. All this had to be mined or quarried. So, to see rocks and geology you don’t have to visit a museum or quarry, you just need to open your eyes. The Ingenious Ireland rock tour starts with some of Dublin’s oldest
buildings, the Viking city walls and St Audeon’s Church on High Street (circa 1200). These were built with local Dublin stone, a dark grey, sometimes muddy, limestone. It is the city’s bedrock, the stuff Dublin is built on, and made from. For Viking and Mediaeval builders, it was also very convenient, and they quarried it locally in places such as Rathgar and Lucan. This limestone is about 320 million years old, and it was laid down from fine sediment at the bottom of a deep sea. So it is dark and fine-grained, and if you look closely you will see it has very few fossils. Next to St Audeon’s, and in pride of place on top of the city hill, is Christ Church Cathedral (built 1170), also made from local limestone. For the carvings around the doors and windows, however, the Anglo-Norman builders imported an exotic yellow stone. It is the colour of butter and as easy to carve, and it adds a sunny dash to the cathedral. It is probably also the first time an imported stone was used for an Irish building. Called Dundry or Bath stone, it comes from southeast England. Like the grey Dublin stone, it is a limestone, but a mere 180 million years old. It was laid down in a shallow tropical sea, and the rich warm colour comes from iron minerals in the rock. Two other types of stone that are widely used in Dublin buildings are Wicklow granite and Portland stone. Portland stone is
Below: Mrs Coade’s artificial stone at Merrion Square. especially beautiful: a creamy, white Jurassic limestone that is jam-packed with fossils, it was popularised by noted English architect and scientist, Sir Christopher Wren, when he used it to rebuild London after the great fire of 1666. Portland stone remains popular with architects, and is still used in modern buildings, including the new facade of Brown Thomas department store on Grafton Street. It is relatively soft and suited to detailed carvings, like that seen over the former Artillery Building (now the Wax Museum) on Foster Place, pictured here. Foster place is a short cul-de-sac off College Green near Trinity College Dublin (TCD), yet there is lots to see there: Portland stone and Wicklow granite in the fine Palladian building that was once home to the Irish Parliament, and which is now a Bank of Ireland branch; beautiful green slate in the modern building opposite (currently a Starbucks coffee shop). And the street itself is paved with “cobblestones” from Charles Stewart Parnell’s quarry. Strictly speaking, these are not cobblestones – you’ll notice, they are regular and rectangular, and they were cut or ‘dressed’ by quarrymen. True cobblestones are rounded, having been tumbled by water, and typically they are picked from beaches and river banks, and not quarried. Almost the only place in Dublin where you can see true cobblestones now is TCD’s front square. The stones in Foster Place are more accurately called setts. Charles Stewart Parnell is remembered as a nationalist politician, but he was also something of an entrepreneur, and he employed 200 men at a quarry on his Avondale estate in Wicklow, dressing stone setts to pave Dublin’s streets. The next stop on our tour is to look at TCD’s façade and count the windows. Amazingly, there are nearly 100 windows and over 1000 individual panes, some of which contain the original Georgian crown glass. Look carefully at the reflections, and see if you can spot any with the tell-tale imperfections or irregularities that
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were introduced when the glass was made, in the days before perfect plate glass could be manufactured. Georgian crown glass could be made only in small pieces, hence the multiple panes in a Georgian window. Today, we can make whole walls of glass, and forget how this amazing material was once precious and hard to come by. Something else to admire at TCD are the cast-iron railings. They were made by one of the great engineering companies of 19th-century Ireland, J&R Mallet, and the foundry name survives on the main uprights. This company is interesting because Robert Mallet is internationally remembered as the father of seismology, the science of earthquakes. Ireland doesn’t have many earthquakes, thankfully, so in the 1840s Robert Mallet used to make his own: he exploded kegs of gunpowder at Killiney and Dalkey, and measured how fast the shockwaves travelled through sand and rock. We still use many of the terms he coined, such as seismology and epicentre. As well as ironwork, modern streets are full of all manner of street ‘furniture’ – from lampposts and signs, to benches, as well as occasional relics from bygone times such as horse troughs and public drinking fountains. One of Dublin’s most ornate fountains is the Rutland Fountain on Merrion Square, opposite the National Gallery of Ireland.
Trinity College Dublin: geology in glass, bronze and stone. The statue is TCD graduate and writer, Oliver Goldsmith.
The carving over the former Artillery Building, Foster Place.
Written in stone
STARTING in the heart of Viking Dublin, the 2km tour passes through redbrick Georgian Dublin to end at St Stephen’s Green. In all, there are 16 different stops. You can listen to an extract from the walking tour on www.ingeniousireland.ie The audio download comes with all the commentary, a user guide and map, and a gallery of images, and includes Dublin actor Noel Purcell singing ‘Dublin Can Be Heaven...’ The website also lists useful resources, and details of visitor centres and museums along the route, including TCD’s Geology Museum and the fossil collection at the Natural History Museum. LIVE LINK
www.ingeniousireland.ie
TCD’s railings: by noted Dublin ironfoundry, J&R Mallet. Robert Mallet is the ‘father of seismology’. Erected in 1792 in memory of the Duke of Rutland, this fountain dates from a time when most city houses did not have running water. Instead, they relied on saving rainwater (which they stored in basements tanks), on water sellers (who sold water door-todoor), and on public fountains like the Rutland one. This substantial monument is made of Wicklow granite and dressed with Portland stone, but it also contains unusual ornamentation in an artificial stone. Look closely next time you pass, at the urns and medallions. Although they look carved from stone, they were actually cast in a ceramic material called Coade stone. Over 200 years old, they remain fresh, unlike the weathered Portland stone beside them.
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Coade stone was invented by an enterprising Englishwoman, Eleanor Coade in the 1760s. Her recipe included clay and crushed earthenware, and the mix was poured into a mould and then fired at over 1000°C for four days. Mrs Coade had a factory and showrooms in London, becoming famous around the world for her ceramic artwork. Today, there are only about 650 pieces of Coade stone known around the world, so these Dublin ones are rather special. Our tour ends on St Stephen’s Green, with a stunning but littleknown exhibition of Irish marble that can only be described as ‘rock art’. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you’ll just have to take the tour to find out. And I look forward to being your guide, on a walk that I hope will open your eyes. Mary Mulvihill’s new science guided tours are available at www.ingeniousireland.ie. This tour was developed with the support of the Heritage Council and the Geological Survey of Ireland.
An old surveyors ‘crow’s foot’ mark in creamy Portland stone, Newcomen Bank, Cork Hill.
BIRD WATCH Some prize winning shots from the 2010 N I Ornithologists’ Club Photo Competition
Geoff Campbell. Black Guillemots. 3rd in Advanced Category.
Harry Dale. Gannet, 1st in beginners category.
Ian Dickey. Oystercatchers, Ist Advanced Category.
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Ian Dickey. Teal. Winning portfolio in Advanced Section.
Nigel Snell. Mallard reflected. 2nd in Intermediate Section.
Craig Nash. Albatross. Commended in Advanced Section.
Cameron Moore. Kingfisher. Commended in Intermediate Section. David Adrain. Razorbill. Winning Portfolio in Beginners Category. Graham Chapman. Heron with fish. Commended in Beginners Category.
Karl Partridge. Common Terns. 2nd in Advanced Category.
Karl Partridge. Common Terns. 2nd in Advanced Category. Danny Boyd. Glaucous Gull. Commended in Intermediate Section.
Ian Dickey. Mute Swan taking off. Winning portfolio in Advanced Section.
Ian Dickey. Golden Plovers. Winning Portfolio in Advanced Section.
For more about the NI Ornithologists’s Club and the competition
www.nioc.co.uk
Allow me to introduce you to
Lady Luck by Sinéad Keane
A
n entertaining pastime for those of you who enjoy evoking scenes of terror and panic among your unwitting friends is to pose a simple maths question... ‘what is 12x9?‘ you ask, and watch the dismay flood many of their faces as you induce long suppressed memories of Ms. McCarthy in primary school, clattering her metre stick ominously on the ground. Yet, we are all (including those suffering from acute arithmophobia) highly mathematical creatures. In fact, we make decisions daily based on our understanding of a complex branch of mathematics. Probability! We use it every day. We have numerous terms for it...we refer to the chance, the likelihood, the probability, the odds.... Will I bring an umbrella today? The lovely Nuala Carey informed us there would be an 85 per cent chance of rain; therefore it would make logical sense to protect myself against the likely event of a downpour. I have heard the tragic stories of road traffic accidents occurring regularly on our roads. Is there a sufficiently high frequency of such occurrences to warrant leaving the car at home today (I choose to ignore the concept of my carbon footprint!)? I decide that it is worth such a risk; in fact the possibility of a random incident is so small that I decide the practical advantages of driving outweigh the likelihood of disaster. Probability is, simply put, the chance that any given event will occur, be it being born on the same day as your brother, coming up tails in a coin toss or suffering sudden death in the next ten minutes. So where did this idea of calculating the likelihood of something happening originate? Unlike many other mathematical concepts, Euclid, Pythagoras and their Ancient Greek friends gave little thought to the notion. The first record of serious discussion of the theory dates from the seventeenth century, when Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal and Chevalier de Méré contemplated some gambling problems. (Fermat is of course the same pesky little mathematician who posed the infamous ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’, which remained in the vestibules of the unsolved for three and a half centuries) They meditated among themselves which would be more likely, rolling a ‘six’ on four throws of the dice or a ‘double six’ when given the opportunity to roll it twenty-four times. The common belief at that time was that it would be advantageous to opt for the latter, purely because you have six times as many throws. The three mathematicians however, begin to analyse the probabilities involved and came to the conclusion that you have a better chance of winning if you bet on rolling of a six in four throws. Eureka, formal probability theory was born! If we toss a coin, what is the probability that it will land heads up? It seems intuitive that the chance of getting heads when a coin is tossed is ½. We trust that it is a ‘fair coin’, i.e. that both heads and tails are equally likely. Thus there are two possible outcomes, heads and tails. We want heads, therefore
Sinéad Keane, winner of the RDS McWilliams Young Science Writers’ Competition. Photo: Marc O’Sullivan, courtesy of RDS. the probability is ½. This forms the basis of this mathematical concept – the probability of an event is equal to the number of favourable outcomes divided by the number of possible outcomes. In this instance, there is one favourable option and two possible options – thus, our probability is ½. The second essential piece of knowledge when dealing with probability is to be able to compute the likelihood of two events occurring successively. What is the probability of rolling two heads consecutively? The probability of obtaining one head is ½, thus to calculate the chances of rolling two heads we can multiply ½ by ½ (1/4 for those whose knowledge of fractions is rusty!) Likewise, in order to roll four consecutive heads, you would raise ½ to the fourth power (½x½x½x½) This is calculated as 1/16, i.e. on average, if you rolled four coins sixteen times, you would probably only achieve one straight run of heads. Thousands of Irish people play a dangerous game with probability every week. The objective of the lottery seems a simple premise, simply pick the same six numbers that appear from the giant urn and a life of unimaginable wealth is achieved in minutes. We recognise it is very unlikely to happen, but to what extent and how can we calculate this? It is actually quite simple. There are 45 possible numbers which can be drawn in the Irish Lotto. To win the jackpot, all six numbers must be drawn correctly (we’ll ignore the bonus ball for the sake of simplicity.) Imagine the first number which will be drawn. There are 45 balls which could be drawn, and we will assume all are equally likely. Hence, for the second ball, there are 44 remaining possible numbers. The number of different arrangements of the two balls can be found by multiplying 45 by 44. Continuing in a similar pattern, the total number of ways in which the six balls can be arranged is 45x44x43x42x41x40. Grabbing for our trusty pocket calculator, this is computed as 5864443200 or 5.86 billion. Thankfully, as the order of the numbers is irrelevant, this figure can be reduced significantly once we divide by the number of ways of arranging six numbers. A similar method is employed for dealing with this task. Imagine we have six empty slots with six available balls (the numbers which have been drawn for the jackpot.)There are six possibilities for the first slot, 5 for the second, 4 for the third and so on, thus the total number of ways we can arrange six objects is 6x5x4x3x2x1, also known as ‘6 factorial’ or 6! Dividing the 5.68 billion by 720 leaves us with the possible jackpot combinations in the Irish Lotto – 8.154 million. Because only one jackpot
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combination will win, the odds of becoming an immediate millionaire are 1 in 8.154 million. It is extremely difficult to comprehend figures this large. As the seasoned probability sage, John Haigh made the analogy, ‘suppose you and your ancestors bought 50 tickets every week since 5000 years ago....with average luck your family would have shared only one jackpot.’ 5000 years seems quite a long wait for only a reasonable chance of success...and you would have spent 13 million euro in the process! On the other hand, you would have acquired quite an amount of historical knowledge along the way, having witnessed first hand the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the Medieval times, the Renaissance and all of modern history. The stark reality of the lottery odds has led to some labelling it ‘the tax on stupidity.’ Yet, although it might be mathematically illogical, €2 seems quite a small price to pay for an evening of pure imaginative ecstasy. Thousands of players continue to play the game every week, confident in the knowledge that the chance of them winning is not zero – and that is good enough. The fact that theoretically, you could be transported from the doldrums of financial woes to the living a life of privilege in the time it takes for six balls to be chosen is a beautiful, tempting and quite often addictive idea. Your hopes will be almost inevitably dashed at 7:59, but hey, there’s always next week (and every consequent week for 5,000 years!) Now we can calculate the set of lottery numbers which have the best probability of winning....wait, sorry, this ‘set of numbers’ doesn’t exist! Each combination of numbers is equally probable. Although a sequence such as ‘7, 25, 40, 3, 36, 44’ may seem more ‘likely’ than, for example, ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6’, there is the same likelihood that the first six numbers will be drawn as another seemingly ‘random’ selection – that is an extremely minute chance. The fact that ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6’ seems so improbable is merely testament to how unlikely every other choice of numbers is. The best strategy with which to choose numbers would be to pick the sequence which you believe is least popular. Employing this technique will at least try and minimise the amount of people you will be forced to share your winnings with in the unlikely possibility that you win. The only way in which to guarantee your success in the lotto is to buy every possible combination of tickets. This translates to buying 8.154 million tickets, so unless you have 12.231 million euro in cash tucked underneath your mattress, this really isn’t realistic! A Polish-Irish accountant, Stefan Klincewicz will forever be immortalised in the lotto swindling hall of fame. In 1990, he devised a plot with a syndicate of 28 people, to purchase every available lottery combination. At the time, there were only 36 numbers in the game, resulting in 1,947,792 possible number sequences and guaranteeing a jackpot for £973,896 in Irish punts. The National Lottery became suspicious when the amount of tickets being purchased rose sharply and tried to prevent Klincewicz’s success by turning off terminals the syndicate was using to purchase tickets. The team was only able to acquire 1.6 million of the available combinations. However their brute force attack succeeded and they won the jackpot, although there were also two other winners on the night. Their total prize money, including match 4 and match 5 prizes amounted to £1,166,000 – the syndicate made an estimated profit of £340,000. The National Lotto responded to his attack of the system by increasing the number of balls to 39 – adding 1314831 additional number combinations to the game! The game has become increasingly difficult over time, with forty five balls now in play.
Probability problems can often baffle, bemuse and bewilder. One such incidence was recorded in 1990. Marilyn vos Savant allegedly has one of the highest IQs in the world (estimations, based on the test used vary from 160 to 230; however there can be little doubt that she is fairly clever!) She writes a weekly column in the US magazine, Parade, where she answers various logical questions posed by readers. One such man, a Mr. Craig Whitaker, offered such a probabilistic conundrum: “Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He says to you: ‘Do you want to pick door No. 2?’ Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?” This deceivingly complicated puzzle has become infamous and is referred to as the ‘Monty Hall Problem’ – in reference to the first presenter of the TV game show ‘Let’s Make a Deal’. The intuitive answer would be to suggest that it makes no difference if you switch doors or not, you have a 50:50 chance of uncovering a car. Vos Savant however asserted that you should always switch doors, as the odds that you will soon be driving away in a shiny new Mercedes become 2/3. Her allegation was disputed by thousands of academics and mathematicians; however she was eventually proved correct. Let’s consider why that is the case: The key to the paradox lies in the fact that your host, Monty Hall (or Derek Mooney if you prefer) knows which door the car is behind. Thus, when he opens a door, he purposely chooses the one which will reveal a goat. The probability of the car lying behind your original choice is 1/3 and behind the other two doors is 2/3. When Monty opens door No. 3 to expose a goat, you know that there is now a 2/3 chance the car is behind door number 2. Increasing the number of doors to 1000, with 999 goats and one car can help to illustrate this. You choose your door, say number 7. Mr. Hall then proceeds to open 998 other doors revealing goats, avoiding door 546 all the time. Your instincts would tell you there is a greater chance the car is behind door 546. The critical clue we often disregard when asked this question is that Monty knows where the car lies, and his behaviour gives a clue to the location of the car. If however, he was also unaware of the position of the car, and opened at random, then, and only then, would the odds be equal at 50:50. I learned how to play poker when I was ten. Our family was holidaying in a little campsite in northern France. It rained almost continuously for the three weeks we were there, and my father, faced with the prospect of entertaining four very bored children, resorted to desperate measures. Our gambling career began, as he taught us the card game with 3 packets of Smarties as our ‘chips’. Probability theory is used by professional poker players to estimate their best strategy when playing the game. This allows them to cooperate with the odds, to ensure that they have the best chance of walking away from the table successful. How rare is it to get a Royal Flush in poker? The holy grail of all poker hands, it seems to exist only in poker legacy or at least occurring very rarely. How many possible five hand cards can you draw in the game? Well, there are 52 possibilities for the first hand, 51 for the second, 50 for the third and so on. This results in 52x51x50x49x48 = 311875200 possible arrangements of cards. As in the case of the lottery, it thankfully doesn’t matter what order you are dealt the cards in, thus we can divide
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by 5x4x3x2x1 (the number of ways of arranging five cards) Therefore, according to our calculation there are 2,598,960 possible 5-card poker hands. There are only four possible Royal Flush hands, as you must hold the 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace and there are four possible suits. Thus, the probability of obtaining a Royal Flush in a game of Peter is Gallagher poker 4/2598960=1/649740. At ten, I had no idea of the very achieved his aim in Fortunately, the odds for attaining one unfavourable odds. setting up the Solar pair compute to 1/1.36 – far more likely and at least you will Physics be able toGroup open at the game and then trade some cards, in the TCD,of improving your hand, all the while dreaming of the hope day you slam down a Royal Flush on the table in triumph. The area of probability has extremely important applications in numerous areas of industry, science and business, ranging from the insurance and pension sector, to Wall Street, to commodity markets and the pharmaceutical industry and “I was fascinated by atoms and molecules, but realised in college medical practices. thatThe physics toldinsurance you more about and that I could userisk my and entire tradeatoms is based on assessing maths. In chemistry, I found it too abstract. chemicals in thehigh uncertainty. Insurance firms need to setThe their premiums bottles didn’t help me understand how atoms worked.” enough to secure them from bankruptcy in the case of claims Thatmade, first yearbut in college, as for many people, was consumers a momentousto being low enough to encourage one Peter. Heinsurance met the twowith lovesthe of his life Insurance - Physics, and his takeforout their firm. companies talented wife Dr Emma Teeling.financial The love-life is a story employscientist professionally qualified mathematicians, for elsewhere, but intoterms physics, realised asThe soonactuary’s as called actuaries, deal of with suchPeter calculations. he in first year that wanted to be physicist. The and jobdid is physics to both evaluate thehelikelihood of afuture events exam results, reading ‘Brief History of Time’ by Stephen decrease theand impact of the undesirable events that do occur. For Hawkins, his fire even example,litsuppose an further. insurance company charges €200 for He read Hawkins, butcompany’s that wasn’t enough. devoured booksthat house insurance. The actuary He might calculate relating to Physics. launched into astronomy astrophysics,” the probability an“Iindividual customer willand have need to claim he “I took books out even during theaverage summer,amount and worked onsaid. the insurance is 1/20000 and the claimed through them.IfI loved physics, I couldn’t put thembase down.” is €200,000. our company has a customer of That 1 million kind of passion commitment would lead him do great things customers, theand likelihood is, 50 people will toclaim insurance in comingThis years. money. will result in total revenue of 200 million from the sale of insurance premiums, and costs of 10 million in payouts. The company expects to make a profit of about 190 million NASA euro. The actuary’s knowledge of probability will enable the Peter chose to do a post-grad in opto-electronics at Queen’s company to make a profit, even if in one year, 53 or 54 claims University in Belfast (QUB) after graduation. This was a hot area are made. at the time, back in 1996, and he learned about fibre optics, lasers, Probability can be a life or death situation. A medical test CCD cameras and the like. It was also a stimulating time to be might only have a 90 per cent probability of accurate diagnosis. in Belfast, and he was there for the signing of the Good Friday If on average, 0.1 per cent of the population have a certain rare Agreement in 1998. He came first in his class, and was offered a disease, you are tested and receive a positive test result, what PhD at QUB. The clincher was that the PhD would involve travel is the probability you are actually suffering from the disease? and interaction with NASA’s Goodard Flight Centre.
Consider the case in which 10,000 people are tested. Only 10 people will actually have the illness. The other 9,990 will be perfectly healthy. Of the healthy people, 90 per cent will be diagnosed correctly, but 10 per cent will be diagnosed as having the disease, 999 people. Of the people, 9 will diagnosed The PhD was10 inill Solar Physics, andbeinvolved usingcorrectly, NASA’s with a positive test result. The total number of patients who have SOHO spacecraft to make measurements of the Sun’s atmosphere. received positive test results is 999 + 9 = 1008. Only people He worked closely with engineers and scientists based at the9 SOHO are actually genuinely ill. Thus if the doctor tells you that your control centre. Then, following the completion of his PhD he was test result positive, A and the test has abeckoned. 90 per cent offered a jobhas by returned NASA at Goddard. career in NASA accuracy rate, thethree probability you have it is 9/1008, However, after years working as a senior scientistabout with 0.89 per cent. In this particular case, 99 times out of 100, will NASA he decided he wanted to come home. Why would heyou leave actually perfectly healthy even the diagnosis suggests what manybewould consider a dream job if and come back to Ireland? otherwise. “How the hell knows,” he answered (laughing). But, the decision Pascal two colleagues is remembered wasBlaise taken for verywith clearhis reasons, and he believes it was best forfor his contributions to probability. This is an area of mathematics his career. At NASA, he would have gone up the ladder in a big that defies conventions. Probability deals with that organisation, and could have ended up managing a everything spacecraft, for is uncertain, whereas ‘usual’ mathematics is the science of the example. But there were few opportunities for research. definite. Pascal believed that ‘The excitement that a gambler “It was a dream job at Goddard, but there was a barrier to feels when making bet is Iequal to to the he might win me scientifically to be ahonest. wanted setamount up a research group times the probability of winning it.’ Venture into any bookies that answer questions like, how the Sun produces explosions and on a flares? Saturday and the witness solar Howmorning, do they affect Earth the whenexhilaration they go off ?”on Hethe faces of those waging their bets horse, team returned to Ireland in 2006, and firstagainst lectureda at UCD.hurling Then came or a golfer. Even the most mathematically illiterate deal with the chance to set up a group at TCD, he took it and now he is doing probability on a daily basis, purely for the enjoyment it offers. exactly what he wants to do. Now, if you’ll changed excuse and me,have I’mthe offopportunity to play atofew more “I am constantly pursue rounds of poker. I’m holding out hope that the elite, the my own interests. If you are driven by a question, then as an most desirable,scientist the coveted Royal soon be But then academic you have the Flush luxurywill to pursue thatmine. question. The again, what are the chances? travel is the fluff. I travel to Hawaii for meetings, but the stuff that keeps you awake at night, the science paper beside the bed because you don’t understand something – that’s the joy of the discovery of References new things.” used: 1. The Taking Chances John give Haigh advice Peter–would to students considering science is 2. http://z\plus.maths.org/issue4/grimmett/index.html that, aside from the academic life, there are many career options, 3. The tiger Michael Blastland and many of that themisn’t are –rewarding. A recent astrophysics graduate of 4. Leaving Cert Maths Volume 1 – Aidan Roantree his, he said, is now working in a financial trading firm. There is the 5. 50 mathematical ideas you really need to knowspace – Tony Crilly IT sector, or teaching, or jobs in Ireland growing industry. He finishes on an optimistic note, from a person that describes himself as ‘an unrelenting optimist”. “I am very optimistic about Keane from St Aloysius’ College, Carrightwohill, theSinéad future for Ireland. I think we are going to explore new markets, Co Cork, is the overall winner in this year’s RDS new science and that ultimately that will bring growth and McWilliam Young Science Writers’ Competition. employment back to Ireland. I am very positive about the next five years.”
IDEAL FOR THE SCHOOL LIBRARY Rock around Ireland
Peadar McArdle describes the geology of Ireland. Paperback €15
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Margaret Franklin and Tom Kennedy explain all about colour. Paperback €15
SCIENCE SPIN What’s happening in Irish science? Who is doing the research? What’s happening in Europe and around the world? What’s it like to be a scientist? Answers to these and lots more in Science Spin, all Ireland’s magazine about science, nature and discovery. Great value sub, just €18 for six issues in print, and the on-line LIVE digital edition is free. LINK41 SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page
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CAREERS in SCIENCE
THE FIRE-STARTER
Claire Belcher, Marie Curie Fellow at UCD talked to Seán Duke about a change of heart that led her back to science. “It’s exciting running experiments. I actually get to set fire to things in a laboratory for a living, and see what happens, and how they burn. Not many people can say that.”
S
o says Dr Claire Belcher, a postdoctoral researcher based at UCD’s Palaeoecology and Palaeobiology Group, until recently when she took up a post in Edinburgh University. Claire has spent most of the past decade exploring the truth of the widely held theory that the dinosaurs died out because they were boiled alive, following a massive asteroid impact that caused a global firestorm to rage right across the surface of the Earth. It seems, however, from the studies of Claire and others, that the unfortunate dinosaurs were not boiled, but rather were frozen to death. The asteroid impact, which is not in dispute, happened, but it led to temperatures falling due to debris blocking out sunlight, rather than to a global firestorm.
INTEREST
Claire recalls first getting interested in science, at the age of five, and one of the early inspirations was a geology book her father had, called ‘Principles of Physical Geology’ by Arthur Holmes, which had lots of pictures of volcanoes. She found volcanoes really fascinating and wanted to learn more about them. Later on in school, unsurprisingly, she loved her science and geography classes, although she ‘hated’ maths. Her science teachers, for the most part, were fairly young and enthusiastic about their job. In particular she enjoyed GCSE chemistry (the equivalent of our Junior Certificate) and A-level geography. The reason she enjoyed these particular classes was that the teachers had a fabulous sense of humour and this really helped to make the classes fun.
BALLERINA
From secondary school level she always thought she’d do a degree in geology, but, interestingly, she thought
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the best option might be to come back and do this as a mature student. The reason for this way of thinking was that Claire had wanted first to see if she had what it took to become a professional ballerina. She trained hard, four nights per week, from the age of nine to achieve this goal. However, one month after she was due to start fulltime dance college, she had a change of heart, and began to ‘feel strange’ about the prospect of not learning science anymore. So, she decided, at the last minute, to apply for university. She was lucky in that there were still a few places left at Royal Holloway University, London, and she was accepted, and began studying for her B.Sc. in Geology in September 1997.
UNIVERSITY
Claire immediately took to the university experience and enjoyed the learning thoroughly. She does remember thinking, however, that the new way of learning was quite
hard, and almost overwhelming. The big change was in listening to a lecture as opposed to being taught in a more direct way in school. But, she soon adjusted and became drawn to palaeontology – the study of prehistoric life - a subject that she didn’t know much about before college. She had always been attracted to the Earth Sciences, which encompasses the study of earthquakes, volcanoes, geological process, oceans, weather, and anything else that relates to the natural process on planet Earth. “I think my mind is fairly visually stimulated, so that I derive my ideas from being able to put them in a context of that which I can see around me,” Claire explained. “Earth science to me is like placing the pieces together of a jigsaw puzzle – you can collect fragments of information that you can see in the rocks and then piece them together using that which we can see in the world around us today.” During her undergraduate studies, Claire became very interested in something called the ‘CretaceousTertiary’ (K-T) geological boundary. This is the time in Earth’s history, about 65.5 million years ago, when, for reasons that are still in dispute, there were “mass extinctions” of many plant and animal species, including, most famously, the dinosaurs. This mass extinction of species intrigued Claire, and she wanted to find out more. To this end, she began a PhD with the title: “Assessing the evidence for extensive wildfires at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.” The dominant scientific theory to explain the extinctions was that a large asteroid hit the Earth, and this triggered huge forest fires around the globe, that, in turn, killed off much of the life that then existed on Earth. She wanted to test the theory. She found evidence that indicated that wildfires could not have been as widespread at the K-T boundary as many scientists thought, and that there must, therefore, be some other explanation for what wiped out the dinosaurs. What the evidence now shows, according to Claire, is that there was indeed an asteroid impact that hit what is today the Yucatan Peninsula in modern Mexico, but that it did not cause forest fires. Because the asteroid hit an area that was under water at the time, huge amounts of seawater, dust and soot went up into the atmosphere,
creating an ‘impact winter’ that cooled the Earth’s surface by 10ºC for decades and led to the extinction of ‘cold blooded’ dinosaurs that couldn’t keep warm. In her relatively short career to date, Claire has had papers published in the world-famous science journals, Science and Nature. That brought recognition and it led to an appearance on a BBC TV Horizon programme entitled: What really killed the dinosaurs?
SUCCESS
Claire puts her success at a young age down to hard work, and long hours in the lab, and at the computer. Unlike many scientists, she does not like to read scientific papers full of technical ‘jargon’ that have no real story to tell. This perhaps is something that underlies her excellent communication skills, and ability to tell a story that ordinary people will understand. She is also highly motivated to solve puzzles, and gets excited when she manages to do so. She felt fortunate to have worked as a post-doctoral student in the UCD laboratory of Dr Jennifer McElwain, a researcher who established a world’s first for the university, when she set up a €900,000 laboratory that could re-create ancient climate conditions, and test what plants would grow under particular circumstances. Claire recently moved from UCD to Edinburgh where she will continue to study ancient fires as they impacted on the Earth, while based jointly between the departments of fire safety engineering and geo sciences. An ideal place for Claire to be, she says.
WORKING DAY
Claire’s average working day can vary. There are periods of time, perhaps months, where she would spend almost all her time in the laboratory, collecting data. The fun begins, however, she said, when the data is collected, and it is time to figure out what the data all means. Once an understanding of the data has been achieved, the next thing required is to communicate the results of that analysis to scientific colleagues, through scientific journals. A manuscript is drafted, and published by the journal, if it is considered sufficiently new and interesting. There is also plenty of time spent travelling to national and international
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 43
scientific conferences, presenting findings to other scientists and discussing ideas. The publication of research in leading journals, or speaking at important conferences, can be picked up by general media, who might decide it is something that the general public is interested in. This can sometimes lead to interviews with newspaper journalists and appearances on TV or radio shows.
ADVICE
She advises science students at secondary school, interested in becoming a scientist, to study hard first and foremost in science classes. However, she says that it is important to remember that being a university science researcher is not the only career path in science. “We can see science all around us,” said Claire. “It is what makes the world tick – from the internal combustion engine running your car, to the supports in your house holding up the roof. So science isn’t just about being in a lab and writing scientific papers. There are so many career opportunities the world over for people interested in science. Studying science can set you up for a career in many exciting things” That is not to say that like any job, there are things about being a scientist that Claire is not that happy about. The big one is the lack of job security these days for many university based scientists. Unlike decades past, when a job in a university was a job for life, with a great pension, and total security, these days, scientists typically work on short, three, or, if they are lucky, five year contracts. This can mean moving job every few years, and moving to difference countries. The downside here is that it can be hard to put down any roots in any particular place, or to maintain regular contact with family and friends. “But this is also an exciting aspect as it gives you the opportunity to experience new places and people,” Claire said. “In terms of the science, I love being able to study things that I am interested in, to answer questions about the Earth in which we live.” In our next issue of Science Spin, Claire writes about ancient fires and their impact on the dinosaurs.
Discussion Point
GM FOODS Humphrey Jones, science teacher, st columba’s college, Dublin, raises some topics for classroom discussion.
G
enetically modified, or GM foods. A threat to human health? Or a safe, cheap and effective way of feeding people, in a world with an ever growing human population?
GM Foods. What are the issues?
GM or “genetically modified” foods are food products that have been produced by plants or animals whose genetic makeup has been altered artificially. Such alteration is called genetic engineering and involves changing an organism’s DNA, usually by introducing a new gene. These changes can result in foods growing more quickly, growing larger, varying in colour or becoming resistant to a certain disease or pest. GM foods have been grown since the 1990s, mostly in the United States, and are typically plant crops like soya, maize or rapeseed, although some GM foods are produced from animals. The growth of GM crops has proven very controversial amid concerns over their effects on human health. A class discussion on GM foods is a great way to explore the science behind their production, their potential benefits and their harmful effects.
sexual Reproduction vs. Genetic Engineering During sexual reproduction, two gametes (sex cells) fuse forming a new organism. This organism is genetically different from its parents (i.e. its DNA is slightly different from both parents), with different characteristics. The changes are random and generally unpredictable. This is generally called cross or selective breeding and has been the principle means of creating new strains of crops or new breeds of food producing animals in agriculture. In some sense, all crops are genetically modified through natural and artificial selection, and by selective breeding and crossing. When we talk about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, however, we mean something more specific: organisms whose genetic makeup has been modified beyond what can be achieved through regular sexual reproduction. For discussion: Is selective breeding natural? Is it ethically right to alter genes in organisms?
Although the maize here has not been modified, Ireland may yet join the rest of the EU in growing GM crops. Photo: Teagasc.
How are GM Foods made?
GM foods are produced from GMOs, organisms whose DNA is altered slightly without sexual reproduction - the changes are not random but specific, and their effects are more predictable. Most GMOs are produced by introducing a gene sequence from another organism (e.g. a bacteria resistant to a pesticide) into the DNA of a food producing crop (e.g. potato). The result is the newly formed potato has a built in pesticide, therefore, not requiring pesticides to be sprayed on the crop during the growing season. For discussion: Is producing GMOs going against nature? What are the risks? Can these genes be transferred to “natural” crops? Are pesticide resistant crops preferable to crops sprayed with pesticides?
What are the benefits of GM Foods?
There are seemingly lots of advantages in growing GM crops. Disease and pest resistant varieties of crops can be grown without the need to spray fungicides, herbicides or pesticides. Plants can grow more quickly. Crops can get higher yields. Food will remain fresher for longer. Foods can be made more nutritious with added vitamins and minerals. Crops can grow in colder conditions and can become resistant to frost or drought. GM animals can produce higher yields of milk, meat or eggs. GM foods are better for the environment (no pesticide, herbicide or fungicides in ground water and GM pigs produce less “toxic” manure). GM foods can provide food for third world countries. For discussion: Are there more benefits to GM foods? Do the benefits outweigh the concerns?
Are GM Foods dangerous?
There are many concerns over the consumption and growth of GM crops. Many are concerned for the effects on human health, specifically the possibility of allergic reactions, transfer of antibiotic resistance and the unknown effects they might have on the human body. There are environmental effects – these new crops may transfer their genes to natural varieties of the same plant, reduce biodiversity, effect farm animals that may eat them or have a harmful effect on soil microbes. There are also social concerns too – GM varieties are the intellectual property of large multinational companies who could dominate the world’s food production and developing countries could become dependent on first world nations that produce these GM crops. Also, GM foods do not need to be labelled in some countries (principally the United States), meaning consumers don’t know they are buying these products. Is this ethically right? Mandatory labelling is required in the European Union (EU) on all products made using GMOs. There are also ethical issues – will GM animals experience undue stress during their lifetime? For discussion: What are the other concerns over GM foods? Do the concerns outweigh the benefits? What effect will the growth of GM foods have on third world countries? Are GM foods preferred to foods treated with potentially harmful pesticides, herbicides or fungicides? What are ethical issues around the production of GM animals?
GM crops and the Eu
EU legislation on GMOs has been in place since the early 1990’s specifically aimed at protecting human health, protecting
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 44 School Spin
the environment and ensuring the “free movement of safe and healthy genetically modified products in the European Union”. Additional pieces of legislation have been introduced over the last 20 years which have further regulated the production and sale of GM foods in the EU. In March of this year, the EU Commission allowed genetically modified potato varieties (resistant to blight) to be grown in some EU countries for the first time. However, Europe remains divided on the issue, with many countries unhappy with the reassurances given on GM food’s safety. The EU will most likely now allow
each member state decide for themselves on the growth of GM crops. But would Irish farmers be prepared to grow GM crops on their farms? Well, in a recent Macra na Feirme survey, 54.9 per cent of Irish farmers said they would consider growing GM crops on their farms, highlighting that young Irish farmers are open to exploring new technologies. For discussion: Should the European Commission allow GM crops be grown in the EU? Should the EU allow each member state decide for themselves? Should Irish farmers grow GM foods on Irish soil?
Recommended apps for science teachers and pupils
This issue’s recommended apps are both produced by an Irish software development, eMedia from Galway. eMedia have two apps on the iTunes Store, both specifically targeted at biology students, medical professionals and science enthusiasts. eMedia produce their apps under the name Pocket Anatomy and their two apps are called Pocket Heart and Pocket Body. Pocket Heart is a brilliant app for the iPhone and iPad (Android version coming soon) which allows you easily explore the inner and outer workings of the human heart. The app uses breathtaking 3D animation which allows you easily explore the heart and it component parts. It’s interactive, with quizzes (which can be customised to a particular standard), factsheets, information pages and videos, which make self directed learning easily to accomplish. Pocket Heart is strongly recommended for anyone studying leaving certificate biology. You can download Pocket Heart for the iPhone for only €1.59 or the iPad for €3.99. Pocket Heart is also available to download for your PC or MAC.
Recommended DVDs
Pocket Body is the latest offering from the Pocket Anatomy team and again is available for the iPhone and iPad. It’s aimed more at third level students of medicine and anatomy, nurses and other medical professions and is a powerful reference tool for studying the workings of the human skeletal and muscular systems. The 3D imagery brings the body to life, and is much more effective than using 2D drawings in textbooks. Using your fingers, you can easily turn and zoom the body. Now, it doesn’t come cheap (€11.99 for the iPhone and €15.99 for the iPad) but we think it will be extremely useful as a teaching and learning tool. Before you buy, why not check out their website to see a demo of the app being used. Visit www.pocketanatomy.com.
Having a comprehensive DVD library for your school is a great way to enthuse pupils about the world of science and nature. There are a number of brilliant DVD series available to purchase, some for relatively small amounts, which can help pupils understand difficult scientific concepts more easily. In each issue we will recommend a DVD which can be used in the science class. Next up is the classic Private Life of Plants from David Attenborough. David Attenborough’s infectious enthusiasm brings the world of plants and fungi to life. The Private Life of Plants video series is excellent for supplementing the teaching of plant physiology in the junior cert science or leaving certificate biology course. Using some excellent CGI and time lapse photography, the episodes explain various elements of how plants work clearly and effectively; like the transport of water in plants, carnivorous plants, seed dispersal, methods of pollination, tropisms and more. Every science lab should have a copy and it can be purchased on Amazon for less than €10.
Conclusion
GM foods clearly have the potential to improve world agriculture in the future, eliminate the need for harmful pesticides, fungicides and herbicides and potentially improve the nutritional value and shelf life of our fruit and vegetables. But many concerns still remain around the effects of GM foods on human health, ethics, safety, society and transparency. Until these concerns are alleviated, their full potential may not be realised. A discussion on GM foods can cross various subject areas including agricultural science, biology, CSPE, geography, economics and history and can be an excellent way to further pupils understanding on the science behind the technology and, broadly, around the ethical responsibility of science.
YOUNG SCIENTISTS The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition will take place in the RDS, Dublin from 12th January 2011. Each year the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition winner receives the honour of representing Ireland in the annual EU competition. Over the past 22 years Ireland has taken home the overall title 12 times, second position twice and third position on four occasions. Last year when John D. O’Callaghan and Liam McCarthy took home the overall EU title from Paris. Students can now interact with the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition through Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, as well as our website www.btyoungscientist. com or by phone on 924 362 or from Northern Ireland 0800 917 1297.
www.btyoungscientist.com
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 45 School Spin
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FIELD TRIPS Humphrey Jones selects some places of scientific interest suitable for school field trips in, and around, our capital city.
S
cience field trips are a great way to enthuse your pupils about the world of science and nature. We are exceptionally lucky in Ireland to have so many attractions of scientific interest within easy reach and a few short days away can provide a huge range of teaching and learning opportunities. In each issue of School Spin, we will focus on a particular area of the country, highlighting the scientific attractions assessable within the area. This issue’s suggested field trip activities are based near our capital city, Dublin. Within the Dublin area there are some excellent activities of scientific interest to take in on a one or two day trip. Here are some suggestions:
The Science Gallery
The Science Gallery, found within the grounds of Trinity College, is one of the most interesting, unique and exciting science attractions in Ireland, if not Europe. The museum changes its exhibitions regularly and arranges events, talks, debates and workshops around the exhibiting topic. Coming up in November and December is their new exhibit – Green Machines. According to their brilliant website: Green Machines is the Science Gallery’s autumn/winter exhibition which will look at how cutting edge design from around the world is helping us generate solutions for a sustainable future”. The Science Gallery is a must for all science enthusiasts and entry is free.
www.sciencegallery.com
Dublin Zoo
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Dublin Zoo is one of Ireland’s top attractions and a great place to visit on a school trip. Founded in 1831 by the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, Dublin Zoo has evolved into a centre for education, research and conservation. The zoo’s exhibition areas are one of the best in the world and the large variety of animals are now hosted within purpose built areas, closely resembling their natural habitat. The zoo is a great place to explore but their education centre can also organise workshops on various topics like genetics, conservation, environmental awareness or even art for your school group.
www.dublinzoo.ie LIVE LINK
The Natural History Museum
Recently reopened, the Natural History Museum or “the dead zoo” is a brilliant place to explore the variety of life in Ireland and Europe. Containing a huge collection of animal galleries, the museum has a charm that all will appreciate. The museum has changed little in the last century but still remains one of the best places in Dublin for the science enthusiast to visit. The museum has a dedicated education and outreach programme which will facilitate school visits if pre-booked. For more information visit:
www.museum.ie/en/intro/natural-history
National Wax Museum
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This might seem like an odd addition to our recommended science attractions, but the new National Wax Museum now has an exhibit dedicated to science, invention and discovery. The science rooms display models of famous Irish scientists and inventors and their discoveries. There are interactive touch screens and live experiments which bring the inventions to life. This is a permanent exhibit and features both modern and historic figures in Irish science including John Philip Holland, Henry Ferguson and Aoife McLysaght (who took part in the human genome project). They also have a great website, with a downloadable poster of Irish inventors:
www.waxmuseumplus.ie/science.html
Guinness Store House
LIVE LINK
The Guinness Store House is a brilliant place to bring pupils where the excellent tour explains the procedures for making the famous drink. Spread out over seven floors, the well presented tour is relevant to biology pupils who need to be aware of
anaerobic respiration and bio-processing. The tour is generally self-guided but one can arrange a private tour group also. For more information visit:
www.guinness-storehouse.com
Dunsink Observatory
The wonderful Dunsink Observatory is the oldest scientific institution in Ireland. Built in 1783 for the first Andrews’ Professor of Astronomy in Trinity College Dublin, the observatory is situated on a hill 8km northwest of Dublin’s city centre. The observatory is open to schools for day and evening tours but pre-booking is essential. The observatory arranges various activities for Science Week too, which this year takes place from the 7th to the 14th of November. During that week, lectures on a wide variety of topics in astronomy are held, and weather permitting, students are given the opportunity to look through the Grubb Telescope located in the South Dome at Dunsink Observatory. Definitely worth a visit:
www.dias.ie/lang/en/cosmic/astro/dunsink
RDS Science Live Series
LIVE LINK
Throughout the year the RDS Science Live series allows science communicators to develop high quality workshops aimed specifically at primary and secondary level pupils. According to their website “the aim is to take science out of the classroom and focus on the interactive, practical elements of a topic in order that the students gain as much from the experience as possible”. The lectures have a nominal fee and pre-booking is required. Some of the workshops coming up in November and December include “The Nano Show”, “Anyone for Maths”, “Super Stringy DNA” and “Mad Machines”. The lecture series is a brilliant way of making science more practical and do check to see if one is available when arranging your trip to Dublin. For more information and to book visit: IVE
www.rds.ie/sciencelive
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 46
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ESA astronaut, Christer Fuglesang working on the construction of the International Space Station. ESA/NASA
SpacE
EdUCATION
Ruth McAvinia talks about her time on the Space Studies Program at the International Space University in Strasbourg earlier this year.
A
s a child I always watched spacerelated programmes on television – from Sir Patrick Moore narrating the Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet, to the sad losses of Challenger and Columbia, to science fiction – but space sciences had seemed to me as remote as Outer Space itself. It all changed in summer 2010 when I spent two months studying at the International Space University in Strasbourg. I had only found out about the course by chance through a Tweet from Enterprise Ireland, but when I was subsequently given funding from the European Space Agency, it proved to be a very lucky break. The Space Studies Program (previously known as the Summer Session Program) allows participants from diverse backgrounds to learn together and, often more importantly, to make new contacts and friendships within the space industry. As an Arts graduate, I was in a small minority – the majority of the class were engineers, followed by physicists – but ISU loves to bring in people from different disciplines and encourage them to explain and adapt their ways of thinking to work together.
There were 121 students from 29 different countries at SSP, and including faculty and teaching associates, 35 countries were represented. Lectures were held each morning (including some Saturdays!) for the first four weeks, broken up across different departments: Space Business & Management, Space Life Sciences, Space Physical Sciences, Space Policy & Law, Satellite Applications, Space & Society, Space Systems Engineering. Experts from all over the world presented lectures, workshops and panel discussions. The pace was relentless but enthusiasm seemed to make up for lack of rest and students were always keen to lever in an extra experience to an already full programme – whether it was the group who organized a visit to CERN, or those who went into the Vosges mountains to view the Perseid meteor shower.
All students sat an examination after four weeks, as well as presenting an individual or small group project and taking part in one of three larger team projects. Since much of the material was new to me, I was glad that the lectures and assessments were carried out in English. Although there was a lot to learn, many of the lectures were designed to be fun. Life sciences frequently lent itself to interesting demonstrations – such as that by an astronaut who had spent a significant time on the International Space Station showing how difficult it is to walk around corners after months of weightlessness (they have to stop, pivot, and then walk forward again or else they tend to walk into walls). It’s not surprising that one of the rationales for continued human spaceflight is the public relations benefit of someone being able to answer the question “What’s it like?”. Seven astronauts visited the programme over the course of the Summer – each with their own perspective on what it means to travel into space, and how it affected their lives on the ground. For some, a spaceflight of less than two weeks’ duration can define their whole lives. By the end of two months, every student was thoroughly exhausted. Many were returning to jobs at the big space agencies like NASA, ESA or the Canadian Space Agency. Some of the younger students were plotting their course to join them while others were planning a future in space tourism or space-based research. My idea of space science has changed from watching from afar, to being able to ask friends what they’re working on and how it will change life on Earth. Next year’s SSP will be held at Graz University of Technology in Austria, and I already envy those who will take part.
Enterprise Ireland and the European Space Agency (ESA) jointly offer scholarships for Irish postgraduate third-level science and engineering students to attend programmes at the Summer School Alpbach, Austria and the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France. Enterprise Ireland also supports students to participate in student internships programmes at ESA facilities across Europe. To find out more please go to Enterprise Ireland Space Education Scholarship Programme or find out more on what’s happening on facebook and www.twitter.com/EI_Space LIVE LINK
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 43 Page 47
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, Contributing 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. Group Course: Speaking Science is ideal for groups of up to ten people and can be held at your own premises, alleviating the need for traveling. To book or for more information and a copy of the course content, simply email alan@ sciencespin.com or call Alan Doherty direct on 01 284 2909. LIVE LINK
NOTICE BOARD To book a space contact Alan Doherty at 01 2842909. Email: alan@sciencespin.com Notices include a live link in our digital edition www.projectblogger.ie
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