Spin 48

ISSUE

48

Sept/Oct 2011

€5 including VAT £4 NI and UK LIVE LINK

SCIENCE

SPIN

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

www.sciencespin.com

Wild carrots Nanotechnology Fracking

Brain

Trilobites

BUrrEn Where creativity and great science meet LIVE LINK

www.dublinscience2012.ie

The Brownshill Dolmen in Co Carlow, dating to circa 3000 BC, is the largest in Europe with its granite capstone weighing over one hundred and fifty tons.

Photograph by Ian Michael.

Du Noyer Geological Photography Competition 2011 Entries are invited for the 13th Du Noyer Geological Photography Competition George Victor Du Noyer, who served as a geologist with the Geological Survey of Ireland from 1847 to 1869, was a skilled field artist whose numerous sketches and pictures, with their combination of artistic skill and technical accuracy, were the “field photographs” of their day.

This competition seeks to encourage the same blend of artistic and scientific skills through the medium of photography.

Prizes will be awarded in two categories, Irish and Foreign, and a prize fund of €800 applies.

Entrants may submit a maximum of 4 photographs, print or digital, illustrating any aspect of field geology or scenic landscapes. Previously published photographs are not eligible for entry, and the organisers are not in a position to return entries.

The competition will be judged by a panel including representatives of the Irish Geological Association, the GSI and external nominees and their decision will be final. Entries will be exhibited and prizes awarded at a GSI Cunningham Awards ceremony in early December 2011.

We will acknowledge all entries by e-mail. Winners only, will be notified directly in November 2011 and results will be posted on the GSI website in December 2011.

GSI reserves the right to reproduce entries in its publications and promotional activity with due acknowledgement.

Print entries should be posted in an envelope marked “Du Noyer Competition” to: Cartography Unit, Geological Survey of Ireland, Beggars Bush, Haddington Rd, Dublin 4 or digital entries should be e-mailed to info@planetearth.ie

What are the judges looking for?

LIVE LINK

Creativity, technical skill, and above all, good geological content.

Closing date for entries: Friday 7th October 2011

SCIENCE

SPIN Publisher Science Spin Ltd 5 Serpentine Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. www.sciencespin.com Email: tom@sciencespin.com IVE Editor Tom Kennedy tom@sciencespin.com

L LINK

Contributing editor Seán Duke sean@sciencespin.com Business Development Manager Alan Doherty alan@sciencespin.com Design and Production Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo

2

Upfront Banking on the brain

Veronica Miller that researchers need to know where they stand

A fracking problem

Margaret Franklin suggests sticking to the cool facts

Marine vents

John Joyce reports on the latest findings offshore

Trilobites

Anthea Lacchia introduces us to some of our Irish fossils

The Burren

Tom Kennedy reports on adding value to the attractions

Picture research Source Photographic Archive www.iol.ie/~source.foxford/

Nanotechnology

Printing Turner Group, Longford

Naomi Lavelle explores static electricity

Marie-Catherine Mouseeau brings us up to date on European research

Dr How

Hot power, happy hens and safer cycling

Tom Kennedy and Séan Duke report on young science projects

Subscribe for just €30 a year, six issues.

Register to receive free links to our digital issues. www.sciencespin.com

Tyndall

Seán Duke writes about one of Ireland’s greatest scientists

The well bred carrot

Tom Kennedy traces the roots back into the wild

War outside, peace at home

Tom Kennedy on what we can learn from watching wasps

Reviews

Tuning in to the water beetles.

SCIENCE

ON AIR Go to

www.sciencespin.com and listen to what researchers have to say

Geological Survey of Ireland Suirbhéireacht Gheolaiochta Eireann

10 15 17 19 22 26 30 31 33 35 37 40

www.sciencespin.com

Dead end

Evolution does not always lead to greater complexity, and parasites often shed the ancestral traits that enabled them to survive in the past.

Powdery mildew is one example, and researchers from the Max Planck institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne found that this pathogen has whittled its gene count down to just 6,000.

Powdery mildew cannot fix nitrogen, it cannot harness energy through fermentation, and it cannot produce metabolic products that would enable it to survive without the help of a host plant. According to the researchers, Powdery Mildew lacks 99 genes that enable bakers’ yeast to lead an independent existence. Because it gets virtually everything it needs from the host, the powdery mildew fungus had no need to retain these genes, but that also meant it was trapped into an

UPFRONT

evolutionary dead end. this does not mean that the organism is a failure. its simplicity means that it offers few targets for the host’s defensive system to attack, and as a highly successful parasite it can destroy entire harvests. one of the peculiarities of this fungus is that, in spite of its relatively low number of genes, it has almost

Powdery mildew on a barley leaf. Photo: Anja Reinstädler.

120 million base pairs. one of the researchers, Ralph Panstruga, explained that this big number is due to resorting and jumbling up of genetic material, due to the activities of ‘jumping genes’.

Elements

Plant hunters and sheep eaters

tAkE a tour around the national Botanic Gardens without leaving home, or walk around the plants with your own personal guide. Choose an iPhone app or MP3 version for a commentary that helps you discover what’s so special in the Gardens.

Broadcaster, Mary Mulvihill, with Garden Director, Matthew Jebb, orchid expert Brendan Sayers, and wildlife guide, Glynn Anderson have produced this free guide. the guide has three 40 minute tours, so you can choose the glasshouses for rainy days, a stroll around the gardens, or a walk by riverside wildlife. to download the guide go to: www.ingeniousireland or LIVE www.botanicgardens.ie LINK

This Summer all the elements are on show at the TCD Science Gallery. How much nickel do you have? See some of the wallpaper that made people ill, Sue McGrath shows kids how to make up a chemical mix, and learn how Mendeleev made up the Periodic Table.

Exhibition ends 30th September 2011.

LIVE www.sciencegallery.com LINK

Non-verbal communications

thE MothER of an autistic girl found that little picture cards are a help in breaking the communication barrier. however, cards can get damaged or lost, so one day she spotted an advertisement for an iPhone, and saw that this could provide an ideal solution to this and other problems. the mother, lisa Domican, explained that with less than one hour a week of speech therapy being provided by the hSE for an entire class of children with severe autism, her daughter lisa, was simply not getting enough attention. “it was up to me to teach her to communicate so i did the parents course and set up the picture exchange system myself. it was hard work but i stuck with it. they told me that she would never talk, but Gracie can now speak in three word sentences using the app and her independence grows each day - we proved them wrong.” the app, supported by o2, telefonica and irish Autism Action was developed with a games creator, Steven troughton-Smith, and since its launch on itunes, there have been thousands of downloads, and lisa has received many requests for translation into different languages.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 2

www.sciencespin.com

The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium team at Teagasc Crops, Environment and Land Use Research Centre, Oak Park, Carlow (from left): Dr Istvan Nagy, Dr Dan Milbourne, and Marialaura Destefanis (Teagasc Walsh Fellow).

UPFRONT

Potato mapped

The genetic code for the potato has been cracked. An international consortium of 29 research groups, including Teagasc in Ireland, has succeeded in mapping out 86 per cent of the potato genome. This has great significance for researchers who want to improve strains or deal with diseases.

Dr Dan Milbourne, the molecular geneticist who led the Teagasc team, explained that the potato is one of the world’s most important source of food. In a statement to the press, Dr Milbourne said that the genetic blueprint “will permit potato breeders to reduce the 10 to 12 years currently needed to breed new varieties.”

The work of sequencing was divided out between the different groups, and at Teagasc, the researchers performed an in-depth analysis of chromosome four, a region that has

genes conferring resistance to late blight and the potato cyst nematode.

Rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology and software advances at the Beijing Genome Institute made it possible to locate approximately 39,000 coding genes for the potato.

As Dr Milbourne explained, Teagasc has been breeding new strains of potato for the past 40 years, and among the successes are the popular Red Rooster and Cara varieties.

“We have already started to exploit the knowledge of the chromosomal location of naturally occurring disease-resistant genes in the Teagasc potato breeding programme,” he said. Initially this work is focused on disease control, but the longer term aims are to look at factors that influence cooking quality, nutrient uptake and other complex characteristics.

Of the 14 per cent that remains unsequenced, Dr Milbourne said this consists of highly repetitive sequences that are relatively poor in functioning genes. “The 86 per cent of the genome sequenced,” he said, “covers about 95 per cent of the genes.”

Hepatitis C

TCD researcher, Dr Aideen Long, and PhD student, Daniela Petrovic, have found that the Hepatitis C virus produces a special protein that protects them against attack from our immune system. The protein, known as E2, acts like a switch, turning off the ability of white blood cells to attack invaders. The E2 protein traps an essential enzyme, Kinase C beta, locking it into a cell membrane compartment so it is effectively kept out of action. Without the enzyme, we cannot produce immune system regulators known as cytokines.

As Dr Long commented, the Hepatitis C virus is very good at evading the immune system, but knowing how it does this gives researchers a target to mount a counter attack.

Releasing methane

A sTuDy across 49 different sites in North America, Europe and Asia, has shown that microorganisms in soil release methane and nitrous oxide in response to carbon dioxide. Dr Kees Jan van Groenigen, from the Botany Department in TCD, and lead author of a paper on the results, said that an increase of these gases goes hand in hand with an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Increasing carbon dioxide, the study found, boosts emission of nitrous oxide in all ecosystems, and in wetlands, more methane is produced.

The releases are due to anaerobic microorganisms, which flourish when carbon dioxide levels increase. In response to higher levels of carbon dioxide, plants grow faster and they consume less water, and as a result, anaerobic microorganisms thrive because of less oxygen, while being fed by nutrients from bigger plants.

As a result of these findings, many of the current estimates based on the ability of plants to lock up greenhouse gases by mopping up carbon dioxide may have to be revised.

LIVE LINK

www.marine.ie

institute.mail@marine.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 3

LIVE LINK

www.sciencespin.com

UPFRONT Artists impression by Mark Witton of what the crestless female and the male could have appeared.

The female Darsinopterus fossil and a close up of the egg. Photographs, L端 Junchang, Chinese Institute of Geological Sciences.

Sexy dinos

Determining the gender of long extinct animals is not easy, but with the discovery of a flying reptile with an egg has provided the first firm evidence that Jurassic females were different in appearance from males. the discovery was made in 160 million year old rocks at the Liaoning Province in northeast China by a team of scientists from the the Chinese Academy of geological Sciences working with colleagues from the University of Leicester. The fossil flying reptile, known as pterosaurs, is of a type that the team had already

described, but what makes this find so special is that it preserved with an egg.

David Unwin, a palaeobiologist from the University of Leicester, explained that flying reptiles often have large head crests, sometimes five times the height of their skull. It was thought that the crest could have been for courtship display, but until now it was not known if it was confined to males. The crestless female provides good evidence that this indeed is the case.

The pterosaur, classified as Darwinopterus, had a wingspan of 78 cm and appears to have perished

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 4

during a violent storm or eruption which broke her left forearm. A well developed shell indicates that she was just about to lay the egg. Unlike the male, she had wider hips, and no head crest.

Dr Unwin said that finds such as this are extremely rare, and gender determination in fossils is always a big problem. Sometimes the uncertainty has led to classification into separate species. Now that scientists have a female, a whole range of characteristics can be referred to in determining the gender of pterosaurs.

www.sciencespin.com

UPFRONT

Change

aS Polar ice retreats, a passageway has been opened for animals and plankton to cross over from the Pacific to the atlantic. one form of phytoplankton, neodenticula seminae, has made a return to the Atlantic after an absence of 800,000 years, and observers have spotted Pacific Grey Whales off the coasts of Israel and Spain. Three hundred years ago these whales were driven to extinction in the atlantic by hunting, but it appears that they have made a comeback, and some made their way down into the mediterranean.

Under an information gathering project, Clamer, involving scientists from a number of countries, including Ireland, the transfer of species is likely to have a significant impact on ocean life.

One of the numerous sea squirt species, Clavelina moluccensis, photographed by Paulag Gustav.

Growing old

In hUmanS dividing cells grow old, but animals that reproduce asexually can delay the ageing process. at the University of Gothenburg, marine researcher helen nilsson Sköld, has shown that organisms that reproduce by cloning protect their Dna by activating a special enzyme, telomerase.

The enzyme is so effective in turning off the ageing process that some species of deep sea corals remain alive for tens of thousands of years.

To discover more, helen decided to study the ageing process in sea squirts (Ascidiacea) and starfish, where both forms of reproduction occur. In those that reproduced by cloning she found that the process is not just a matter of keeping everything alive. While the telomerase enzyme provides the Dna with protection, worn out parts of the animal are broken down, the junk discarded, and the rest recycled.

Some species of starfish reproduce sexually, while others divide into clones, and helena found that the asexual species enjoyed better health. however, long life comes at a cost. as helen observed, there is little genetic variation in clones, so when things go wrong, or when the environment changes, they cannot adapt, so in the end they lose out.

Burn out

If The behaviour of bustards is anything to go by, males who strut their stuff, burn out faster than their less ostentatious rivals. In the journal, Ecology Letters, D Brian Preston from the University of Burgundy in france, reported on reproductive burn out in houbara Bustards, birds of prey that live in Persian Gulf and Gobi deserts.

While young, the strutting males are highly fertile, but even though they continue with elaborate displays, the show becomes a sham. According to Dr Preston’s findings, the old posers pass their reproductive prime sooner than the more subdued males. one of the conclusions is that early reproductive success comes at the cost of early physiological decline.

Galway’s EuropEan 2011 rEsEarchErs niGht

For onE niGht only EVEryonE can BE a sciEntist!

New courses

neW add-on degree courses for pharmacy technicians, dental nurses, and veterinary nurses are on offer at athlone Institute of Technology. head of nursing and health Science, Dr Pearse murphy, said the courses will enhance skills and equip graduates for a wider range of jobs. With a move towards a more patient-centred approach new skills are needed to support that development, and there is also a need to be more competent in business-related tasks and management.

The BSc in Clinical Pharmacy Practice will provide additional skills in the areas of clinical pharmacy, medicines management, purchasing, governance, ethics and aseptic practices. Work placement is part of the course, to give students direct experience in the work place. among the aims of the BSc in Veterinary Practice management are to provide skills in clinical nutrition, drug development and management of small to medium sized practices. more information about these courses is at www.ait The admissions office can be contacted at: admissions@ait.ie or phone: 090 6468130

LEISURELAND & GALwAy AtLANtAqUARIA, Salthill, Galway.

FRIDAY 23rd SEPTEMBER 11am to 11pm

opEn to EVEryonE - FrEE EVEnt!

Come and discover the mysteries and miracles of science and research involving the Sea 2 Sky all around us, as part of the European Researchers’ Night.

Phone: 091 492490 Email: Sea2Skygalway@gmail.com web: www.Sea2Sky.ie Follow us on...

Promoted by

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 5

Galway

LIVE LINK

www.sciencespin.com

UPFRONT

ecently it was announced that researchers led by a Canadian scientist had succeeded in isolating a human blood stem cell. This is a cell that has the capacity to regenerate all the cells of the entire blood system, and the success in isolating it is regarded as a breakthrough by scientists working in this field. The researchers, were led by John Dick, Senior Scientist at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine and the Ontario Cancer Institute. In paper published in the journal Science, Dr Dick describes the discovery, coming 23 years after his research began, as a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

Dr Dick already has an impressive record in stem cell research, and among his achievements was the replication of the entire human leukemia disease process in laboratory mice, and his work with Drs James Till and Ernest McCulloch led to the use of stem cells in bone marrow transplantation for leukemia patients. This has become the most successful clinical application of stem cell therapy to date and thousands of patients around the world have benefited from this lifesaving research.

The ultimate aim of stem cells scientists, such as Dr Dick, is to develop a pure stem cell line that could be controlled and cultured to provide a sufficient supply for transplantation. As Dr Dick has explained, it’s not just a matter of quality, but of quantity. For many treatments, he said, samples from a single donor are not sufficient to produce enough cells for effective treatment. The latest discovery, he added, brings researchers closer to the promise offered by regenerative medicine.

Dr Dick’s team have been using high-technology flow cytometry to sort, shift, and purify blood cells into meaningful batches that help them map the molecular switches that initiate specialisation into different cell types.

Commenting on this news, Stephen Sullivan, an Irish stem researcher working in the US, said that the discovery has great significance as it means that scientists can now get a much clearer view of gene expression, and as he said, “we can learn what makes these cells tick.”

As Stephen explains, stem cell research is not just all about topping up with replacement cells. To understand many diseases, he said, you need to be able to isolate the cells that originally give rise to the problems. His own research is focused on stem cells that make the placenta, known as trophoblasts. “If you can isolate and culture that,” he said, we can find out a lot more about serious conditions such as preeclampsia, accreta, fetal growth restriction and miscarriages.”

While some of these terms might seem strange and unfamiliar, the conditions they refer to are very serious, and one way that stem cell research can help is in screening of potential drugs.

“The more human stem cells we can isolate the better,” said Stephen, “so that we can learn the differences and similarities, and learn how to control them.” Initially that’s going to happen in the test tube, he said, but the day will come when this knowledge will be applied to patients. In effect, by harnessing a patient’s stem cells, the patient will be helping themselves. Ultimately,” he said, “this is the ‘Holy Grail’ of stem cell research.”

Stephen has been very active in promoting stem cell research, and one of the reasons he left Ireland, he said, is that it is so difficult to make progress in the absence of clear guidelines. As most of us know, there are serious ethical and other issues to be addressed, and in Stephen’s view, there is a legislative vacuum in Ireland. The shut down of the Bioethics Council last year, he maintains, is a fairly clear indication that these issues are not being taken seriously enough. Given a clear framework, he said, Ireland could be doing a lot more in this fast developing field, and without guidelines, we will simply be left trailing behind the rest of the world.

Minerals

Micro-meteorites

Avoiding the issue Tom Kennedy reports on concerns that lack of legislation is holding up stem cell research in Ireland.

R

SwITCHInG over to solar power and going all electric in transport means that we will have to find and mine more rare metals. At a meeting of the US Geological Society last november, James Burnell from the Colorado Geological Survey said that we can expect the competition for mineral resources to hot up.

Metals such as gallium, indium, selenium, tellurium and high purity silicon are needed to make photovoltaic panels. To make batteries, zinc, vanadium, lithium and other rare earth elements are needed. Platinum minerals are needed for fuel-cell cars, and as Burnell remarked, the market is becoming very competitive.

China, he said is gearing up to build 330 giga-watt of wind power so will require about 59,000 tons of neodymium to make high-powered magnets for the generators. At present, China is a major supplier of neodynium, but this demand will mean a complete shutdown on exports of this rare element.

“Trade wars are on the horizon,” remarked Burnell, and policy makers need to act now to avoid a crisis. “we need to find those ores and start exploiting them,” he said, “and that means more mining — it’s the only way we can stay competitive.”

DUrInG the earlier period of the Earth’s history, four billion years ago, sulphur dioxide is thought to have acted as a cooling blanket. Following a study of this period, Prof Mark Sephton from the Dept of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, concluded that the Earth, like Mars, was subjected to a bombardment of micro-meteorites.

As these meteorites, most of which were no larger than sugar grains, entered the upper atmosphere, they heated up to about 1,000ºC, causing them to release sulphur dioxide and other gases. Prof Sephton calculated that micro-meteorites, coming from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, would have delivered about 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide every year during this period.

As a result, the Earth would have been chilled by about 10ºC, and at the time, the Sun’s energy was 30 per cent less than it is today. This would have meant that the Earth, shrouded in an acidic blanket, would have been completely frozen over.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 6

At the Foundation website

www.irishstemcellfoundation.org

The Irish Stem Cell Foundation is Ireland’s National Stem Cell Research Organisation.

A Member of the International Consortium of Stem Cell Networks, the Foundation is committed to the pursuit of International cooperation, collaboration and excellence in the stem cell field.

LIVE LINK

learn more about: l basics of stem cell biology l latest stem cell research and therapies l common misconceptions about stem cells and the realities l how stem cell research is changing the way we think about and learn about a range of human conditions like spinal injury, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, and Cancer l Ireland’s role in the International struggle against ‘stem cell tourism’ where patients are scammed by the modern day equivalent of ‘snake oil salesmen’

Spelling game

ClaIrE McNelis from Buncrana, Co Donegal, has developed a computer game that makes it easier for people with dyslexia to learn how to spell. Many students find it difficult to make the connection between spelling and reading, but the game, Spelling Rules, provides an alternative pathway, linking audio directly to written words. Claire is a final year student at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at NUI Galway.

Her aim was to develop an affordable solution that would enable young students between the ages 8 to 14 years to teach themselves. the application is freely available on the Internet at http://spellingrules.ie/

Irish Mammals

Pat Smiddy and Paddy Sleeman have compiled a guide to books and papers relating to Irish wild mammals. a limited number of copies, costing €25 are available, and at a later date there are plans to include the details on the Irish National Biodiversity Data Centre website. the previous edition had 1,389 entries, and this new edition has 2,663. the guide can be ordered from Paddy Sleeman, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, North Mall Campus, Distillery Fields, Cork.

Limerick’s learning hub

third level colleges, schools, local communities and companies have collaborated in establishing a learning hub to encourage greater participation in science and engineering. Young people are being partnered by undergraduate mentors so that they can get to grips with subjects that might otherwise be out of reach to them. among the supporting partners are the University of limerick, limerick Institute of Technology and NUI Galway. http://www.learninghub.ie/science-at-the-hub

Boole papers

at UCC thousands of items from the George Boole collection are being digitised to make them available to the public. Boole, whose work laid the foundations for modern searchable computer programs, was the first Professor of Matematics at UCC. The project has been supported by the company, EMC, which has a significant presence in Cork. the Boole library is just one of eight organisations around the world chosen to receive funding from the EMC Heritage Trust because of its importance.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 7

www.sciencespin.com

UPFRONT

Under a cloud

A local exchange back in the days of manual switching.

Memories

WeLL knoWn for support of the young scientist and Technology exhibition, BT itself has quite an impressive track record in research. For more than a century the company has been conducting research, and this year BT’s records of this work have been recognised by unesCo as having Memory of the World status.

Many of the projects undertaken by BT have had an enormous impact on how we communicate. Among the firsts, was microwave radio relay transmission in the 1950s, the first television broadcast to cross the Atlantic in 1962, the first digital telephone exchange in 1968, and possibly the biggest impact of all came with the development of extremely pure glass fibre in the 1970s. Those who are old enough to remember life before the Internet might remember how Prestel, the first step in delivering information over the telephone network caused such excitement.

The earliest records, from the 1870s, are concerned with telephony, which, at the time was very new. More recent work

by BT has brought them to the Tyndall national Institute, where research is underway into extremely high high speed long distance communications.

Images and films on the archives can be seen at www.bt.com/archives-telefocus More information at www.bt.com/archivesonline

Teaching maths

A survey of 180 students taking maths in the Leaving Cert highlighted big classes and lack of teaching skills as a problem in secondary schools. The survey, conducted by engineers Ireland, suggests that many students are being turned off maths by an inappropriate teaching environment. In the survey, 46 per cent of the students said that they needed to take grinds in maths outside the normal school hours.

John Power, Director General of engineers Ireland, said that people involved in education need to take note of what the students are saying. Because so many students are weak in maths on leaving school they are not in a position to take up the jobs on offer from pharmaceutical, biomedical and engineering companies. At present, said John Power, these companies have 1,200 jobs on offer which they have been unable, so far, to fill.

DrInks that are supposed to enhance sports performance are not always so good for health. According to the european Joint research Commission, hundreds of such drinks containing phthalates, which are banned in europe, have been exported from Taiwan. Among the countries receiving these products in volume were Germany and the uk. The phthalates, added to give the drinks more body, have been banned because they have been associated with reproductive disorders and development problems in children.

Instead of phthalates, most producers of these drinks use palm oil based substances, but on investigation, the Taiwanese Food and Drug Administration found that more than 300 companies were cutting costs by using bis-(2ethylhexyl) phthalate. In one case a company was using di-iso-nonyl phthalate, commonly used in industry as a plasticiser. Concerns about leaching out of these chemicals from plastics has lead to an eu ban on their use in toys and childcare products.

The Joint research Centre has developed three new methods for the detection of phthalates, and details of these are available from: http://irmm.jrc.ec.europa.eu/activities/phthalates

SCIENCE SNAPS Terms and Conditions a. Closing date for receipt of entries is Friday, October 14th 2011 b. Winners will be announced during Science Week November 13-20th 2011 c. There will be three categories open for entry – junior cycle students, senior cycle students and the general public (post second level). There will be one main winner per category plus one runner up. Runner up prizes include annual membership to the Gallery of Photography, as well as photography course places. d. Image entries can be uploaded at http://pix.ie/go/ sciencesnaps. Hard copies cannot be accepted. e. Submissions are restricted to two entries per person f. Photographs must be the entrant’s original work g. The decision of the judging panel is final. No discussion will be entered into pre or post judging h. The organisers of the competition reserve the right to publish and exhibit competition entries and may make these images available to the media for the promotion of Science Week i. Discover Science and Engineering does not accept any liability for non-received, delayed or lost entries, or for the cancellation or postponement of this competition j. No cash equivalent is available as an alternative to the prizes offered k. Prizes are non-transferable and will only be awarded to the prize winners l. By entering this competition participants agree to be bound by these terms and conditions

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 8

aps ce Sn n e i c S to ospen hool s p i a n ce S condary sc the n e i c S e to s and esn is op stusdcehnotoll public. ra ry onda gene he

sec aSnndatps s Photo theme: The Chemistry of Life t n e e d c public. n e stu i c S eral en to op l genis choo Shortlisted images will form a public s y r Get Photo theme: Theduring Chemistry of2011 Life da e n h o t exhibition Science Week c d se n a s nt and the winning snaps will be blic. stude ato u p l displayed by Bus Eireann on r gene incl. a laptop, cameras & photography courses! Shortlisted images will form a public

snapping win great prizes

commuter routes throughout Ireland!

Get snapping during Science Week Photoexhibition theme: The Chemistry of2011 Life and the winning snaps will be to win great prizes displayed by Bus Eireann on To enter go to: http://pix.ie/go/sciencesnaps Shortlisted images will form a public incl. a laptop, cameras & photography courses! commuter routes throughout Ireland!

Get snapping exhibition during Science Week 2011 Closing date: Friday 14 October 2011 the winning snaps will be to win great prizes and displayed by Bus Eireann on th

LIVE LINK

To enter go cameras to: http://pix.ie/go/sciencesnaps incl. a laptop, & photography courses! commuter routes throughout Ireland!

Science Snaps is run by Discover Science & Engineering and Tyndall National Institute.

Closing date: Friday 14th October 2011

ToScience enter go to: http://pix.ie/go/sciencesnaps Snaps is run by Discover Science & Engineering and Tyndall National Institute.

Closing date: Friday 14th October 2011 SCIENCEScience SPIN Issue 48 Page xx and Tyndall National Institute.

Science Snaps is run by Discover & Engineering

PART TEN

BANKING ON BRAINS Dr Veronica Miller explains that while Ireland has a lot to gain from excellence in research, scientists are being frustrated by an absence of guidelines and structural supports.

B

more of the hippocampal cells died than when the tissues rains are big business in the Irish economy. Not just had a normally functioning 14-3-3 protein after a seizure was because about 700,000 people in the country have a chemically induced. This told them that 14-3-3 is essential to neurological disorder. But also because a number of new help cells in the hippocampus survive seizures. companies which are vital to our recovering economy are Prof Henshall is hopeful that his work could lead to new involved in the manufacture of drugs and devices aimed therapies to help neurons survive in the hippocampal tissues of at making our brains work better. Currently 13 of the people with epilepsy who have seizures. world’s largest 15 pharmaceutical His team now has mice which were companies such as Wyeth, Abbot specially engineered to manufacture and GlaxoSmithKline have plants supra-normal levels of 14-3-3. They in Ireland. They manufacture many figured that if shushing 14-3-3 meant drugs designed to treat neurological fewer cell’s survived a seizure, then by disorders, and directly employ 24,500 increasing the levels of the protein, more people providing a major boon to cells should survive. And excitingly our economy. In order to attract these they’ve found that mice with higher high-skills jobs it’s important we levels of the protein are more resilient have a highly-educated research rich to seizures, which suggests that 14-3-3 population. For this reason we’re can protect against brain injury. This currently investing heavily in science clever molecular approach should lead and technology. to better treatments for people with Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) epilepsy. receives about €160 million per year of Investing in research attracts additional government funds dedicated towards investment from abroad. research. With investment from overseas SEEGing seizures and indigenous companies, estimated by Not only are SFI funded researchers the IDA at €400 million annually, that are directly driven by the trying to help treat seizures, they are also trying help diagnose research strengths in Ireland, some would argue it’s an enviable them. Seizures are uncontrollable electrical impulses which return. And coupling our academic research with partners in can affect any area of the brain. Like lightening, they industry is a key to this return. can hit randomly and trigger all kinds of problems.

In older people its easy to detect seizures, because we have a wide-range of usually co-ordinated and Silencing seizures predictable behaviours. So when people appear Professor David Henshall is one of many SFI funded blank-faced and unresponsive, clinical staff can guess scientists doing cutting edge brain-research. Professor this is because they are having a seizure in a region Henshall is particularly interested in people with that regulates their normal behaviour. epilepsy and understanding how to better treat In babies however it’s a different story. Babies seizures. One part of the brain that’s activated during often times burping, smile randomly at strangers seizures is the hippocampus, which also helps forms and stare blankly at overhead hanging mobiles. Their memories and is located inside your head above your behaviour can be random and unpredictable. This ears. Cells in the hippocampus can die off in some Prof David makes it very difficult to know when they are having people with epilepsy. Prof Henshall’s team at the Royal Henshall is working seizures or are simply sleepy. And the current ways College of Surgeons, are hoping in helping them to on epilepsy. of diagnosing seizures, using complicated electrical survive better. detection leads, are not easy for clinical staff to use.

Prof Henshall and Dr Niamh Murphy who is now However, now, thanks to an invention by Dr Geraldine Boylan based in Trinity College Dublin, discovered a protein, named of UCC and colleagues, it’s easier to detect them.

14-3-3 which is altered in people with epilepsy. Then they used Originally Dr Boylan, a graduate of University of London, a clever molecular biology approach to neuter the protein was working on neonatal neurophysiology and she studied in order to understand how the cell functioned without the seizures and blood flow regulation in the brain in very ill protein. The specialised technique that Prof Henshall used is newborns. Through funding from SFI and the Wellcome Trust, known as RNA interference. Like diverting traffic down a deadshe and collaborators developed a seizure detection system end road to clear the roads of cars, RNA interference, effectively that is simple to operate, easy to interpret and provides “Shh’s” RNA and prevents it from translating instructions reliable accurate information. According to Dr Boylan, “Early from DNA into proteins. This means you can switch off the detection of seizures will allow prompt and effective treatment production of bad or harmful proteins in disease processes. and should translate into better long term neurological Professor Henshall’s team silenced the 14-3-3 seizureoutcome for the smallest and most vulnerable members of the related protein in a hippocampal brain-tissue based model of population.” epilepsy. They then discovered that when 14-3-3 was shushed,

€400m

€160m

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 10

The new technology, EEG Seizure Detection, was a collaboration between UCC’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the School of Medicine involving Dr Stephen Faul, Dr Andrey Temko, Dr Liam Marnane, Dr Gordon Lightbody and Dr Geraldine Boylan. More recently, her cross disciplinary approach helped establish a Newborn Brain Research Group in Cork, which helps scientists, clinicians and engineers come together to come up with solutions for problems facing newborns.

the marketplace, because of its potentially dangerous side effects.

His research has also led to the formation of spin-off companies such as Genset and Biontrack.

Why fat-heads may be good

In this age of diet-induced obesity, it may seem counter-intuitive that fats are good for your brain.

However, researchers have found Detection of seizures in babies could eliminate some mental that fish oils, particularly the health problems in later life.

Omega 3s can help maintain healthy brains with age.

Dr Geraldine Boylan, below, and her group has developed Every cell in your body is lined seizure detection technology that is easy to use. with a thin membrane composed No pain no gain of fats and proteins. With age, Pain is important. Not just for drill these membranes lose their structural integrity, sergeants trying to school naive soldiers. But, like saggy elastic bands and this means that also for us to help avoid danger, and alert us to brain cells don’t function as well as they used to. illnesses. In Ireland, one in eight people suffer So by taking fish oil supplements, it’s thought from chronic pain forcing absence from work, you can help fortify your brain cell’s outer costing about three million work days. And linings and help them function better with age. almost one in six people who suffer from chronic Or at least that’s what people used to think. pain have lost their job because of the condition.

More recently, researchers in Trinity College SFI funded Dr David Finn is trying to discover led by Professor Marina Lynch have discovered better ways of treating such chronic and stressthat fatty acids have other properties which can related pain. help your brain age better. Professor Lynch and Usually when scientists think of pain, they her team have been studying a molecule termed think of the opoid system. You may be familiar eicosapentaenoic acid or EPA for short. with the opoid system after you or your friends After taking a couple of molecular were given morphine to treat a chronic painful medications, EPA can become one of the hopeful Omega-3 injury. Neurofen, the once over-the-counter pain relief drug is polyunsaturated fatty acids which we’re told we should eat a member of the opoid family. Although opiates are powerful more of. However, unlike the other fatty acids, EPA isn’t a pain-relievers, and pleasure inducers, they also have addictive pivotal part of the cell’s membranes. This made people wonder properties. For this reason they are regulated more tightly than how exactly it helps your brain to age. paracetomol for example.

Prof Lynch’s group decided to study the functions of EPA, Recently we’ve recognised that another system, the and fed it to very old rodents to see how it affected their brains. cannabinoid system is important for pain modulation. And yes, They discovered that EPA actually helped dampen down the the cannabinoid system is the same pathway that responds to hyperactive and problematic neuro-inflammatory response marijuana or hash, which is why some people propose the drug associated with aging. They found reduced numbers of neuroshould be legalised to treat people suffering from chronic pain. immune cells in the brains of the aged rats. Prof Lynch suggests However, that is not the focus of Dr Finn’s research. that the uncontrollable misfiring of micro-glia that release Instead he’s been looking at how endogenous cannabinoids, dangerous cytotoxic molecules may contribute to problems in produced by your own brain, are increased during times of the aged-brains. So if EPA can reduce neuroinflammation with stress. Dr Finn has discovered that cannabinoids are actually age, it may actually also improve brain function. vital for mediating pain responses when you are subjected to physiological stressors. And it appears that the cannabinoid system doesn’t work alone, but may actually work in concert Reaping research rewards with the opioid system. This means it may be possible to As it stands the Health Research Board has an annual research generate drugs which act hand-in-hand, affecting both pain portfolio worth almost €200 million, funding 200 researchers response systems rather than only one, to more effectively treat in 10 hospitals and 10 third level institutions, many of whom chronic pain. are directly engaged in neuroscience research. They claim NUI Galway itself is the home of Ireland’s first and only that the payback for this research investment comes not only Centre for Pain Research, co-founded and co-directed by Dr with better health for the Irish population but also via spin Finn. According to Dr Finn “the critical mass of pain and out industries, and cite Prof Marina Lynch’s work as a good neuroscience researchers at NUI Galway, coupled with a example. strong spirit of collaboration and good research infrastructure, According to the HRB, her work will help us better provides an excellent environment in which to carry out understand how to maintain healthy brains with age. In the integrative whole-systems neuroscience research.” longer term this could be particularly useful for us because of In UCD they’ve also had success studying pain. Research our growing “grey workforce.” More tangibly Prof Lynch has led by Prof Des Fitzgerald on drugs used to treat pain and also collaborated with two industrial partners to help develop arthritis, such as Aspirin and Vioxx has led to improved dosing drugs for clinical trials including one drug for age-related treatments for pain, and also the withdrawal of Viox from memory impairments.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 11

While Prof Lynch is at one end of the aging-spectrum, researchers in Galway are looking focusing on the other end, and trying to figure out how aberrant neuro-immune responses can contribute to psychiatric problems from birth.

O’Mahony and colleagues may be able to help develop new treatments for psychiatric and gastrointestinal disorders.

Are ethics a luxury?

The Irish Council for Bioethics was established in 2002 as an independent, autonomous body to consider the ethical issues Blaming it on your raised by developments in parents… science and medicine. In 2010, Pregnant women supposedly thanks to the economic crises, have crazy hormones. It’s all the Council ceased to operate. too easy to blame their mood Most people in Ireland were changes on hormones. And probably unaware of this fact, oftentimes offensive. But you’d given the huge economic crises At NUI Galway Dr David Finn heads Ireland’s Centre for Pain rarely blame their children’s facing the country. You may Research. mood-swings on pregnancy wonder why research oversight hormones. Yet, it’s possible that is important. Does it matter stress-related hormone changes during pregnancy may lead to that unlike the US, Japan, Canada or other European countries, lasting neuropsychiatric problems in children.

Ireland has no oversight body for research?

In the field of developmental neuroscience, it’s common Well, if you were asked would you bank your bucks in knowledge that if you stress a mom, her offspring will have all a country that had no national banking oversight, then it’d kinds of behavioural abnormalities. But what’s not clear is how probably take you less than a split-second for you to stick your this stress-process works and what we can do to reduce these wallet back in your pocket, and say no. In essence by failing to behavioral changes. legislate or regulate research, particularly research on sensitive Cork based researcher Dr Siobhain O’Mahony, recently won topics such as human tissues, or stem cells, then we may be the prestigious internationally recognized ‘Ray Clouse Award putting off international research investors. for Paper Most Cited’ given by the Rome Society for her work You might also think it’s a little odd to spend about €46 on maternal-stress related changes in offspring. million on HRB funded research and €162m on SFI funded Dr O’Mahony, who works at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic research, or approximately €200 million per year in total, on Centre (APC) in Cork did a study looking at how separating research aimed at stimulating investment by international moms and pups can affect the pups immune system and companies, in the absence of ethics oversight, or legislation on hormonal responses as they grew older. Her findings, published research, such as the use of human embryonic stem cells for in Biological Psychiatry, were that maternal stress increased example. stress hormone levels and responses In 2010, in its final report, the Dr Siobhain O’Mahony at the APC in Cork found to bacterial immune challenges in Bioethics council stated, that “a failure to that offspring are influenced by maternal stress. offspring. The co-authors of her study provide a comprehensive and cohesive included Professors John Cryan, regulatory system to govern stem cell Timothy Dinan, Eamonn Quigley, Drs research and its application undermines Julian Marchesi, Paul Scully, Caroline the moral value of the human embryo.

Codling and Anne-Marie Coelho.

It may also hinder developments in this Previously her group had also found field of research in Ireland.” changes in serotonin, which is the Back in 2005 the same council found key mood-regulating chemical in our that over half of Irish people would use brains, after maternal stress. Altogether, new treatments for diseases developed her findings suggest that one reason using embryonic stem cell research, and children may have mood-related believed that the government should psychiatric changes after maternal stress support embryonic stem cell research. is because their immune systems are Yet, despite this favourable response, differently formed, and may become six years later the government has yet hyper-responsive. to take stock of the situation.

She also found changes in the gastroCurrently they have avoided intestinal responses of offspring who’s filling what the current director of the mom’s had been stressed. You’ll know Irish Stem Cell Foundation; Dr Orla that when you’re nervous or upset Hardiman, a prominent consultant your stomach and digestive system are neurologist based at Beaumont uncomfortable. And gastro-intestinal and neurology researcher, termed a problems are very common in people “legislative vacuum”. Because of this, who have neuropsychiatric disorders Ireland’s public funding agencies, SFI including autism. So it’s possible that and the HRB, under direction from the in the future, by better characterizing Department of Health, cannot fund abnormal brain-gut interactions in stress work involving human embryonic stem models of developmental disorders Dr cells.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 12

That’s not to state that legislation has to promote science or progress in order for research to proceed. The Irish government could take notes from the neat side-stepping of the issues by the US Bush-based government earlier this millennium.

US and them

However, due to a lack of legislation, or communication with your funding partners, you aren’t allowed to get them. Instead you receive permission to make inducible or mesenchymal stem cells. These cells, which sound very much like embryonic stem cells, actually can only be used to make a few different cell lines, which means your options are limited. You’re disappointed, but unlike the unwanted voucher, you can’t swap them for embryonic stem cells.

In this economy cash is better than store credit. This is why researchers in Ireland are pushing for legislation on embryonic stem cells. Because it would enable them to use their knowledge, and the research resources in our country to more effectively put them on a par with competitors in the EU, US and Asia.

Carefully aware of the conservative Christian basis of his vote, the then President of the US, George Bush, passed a series of legislation aimed to reduce embryonic stem cell research.

Essentially the 1996 Dickey-Whicker law, named after the two republican US senators who proposed it, prohibited the use of federal dollars on any research that harmed or destroyed a human embryo. In effect this meant that all other researchers, such as those in private industry, or using funds from non-profit groups were free to use the embryonic stem cells.

Whistle-blowing in the wind When the Obama administration took If a researcher was to take a few of their funding over in 2009, they said they would appeal the euros, purchase a new Ferrari, then invent data Dickey-Whicker law and as of July this year, In Ireland there based on imaginary experiments you’d be a little the US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with are no safeguards annoyed. But what could you do about it? Not the administration and overturned the Dickymuch actually. Because currently, not only do we Whicker injunction on stem cell research. against fraud in lack legislation on stem cells for example, but we The director of the National Institutes of research and there also lack a national oversight body for research.

Health — the US version of our HRB, said “this are no ethical This means there is no national entity that a ruling will help ensure this groundbreaking researcher can report fraudulent or scientific research can continue to move forward.” This guidelines that misconduct to. new open climate of research in the US has now scientists can follow In the US for example they have what is attracted some of our leading lights in stem known as the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) cell research such as Stephen Sullivan who was which serves as a watch-dog across the country founding director and CSO of the Irish Stem Cell and ensures that people who use public funds do so in an Foundation. appropriate way. In Ireland we don’t have a similar oversight body. That’s not to say we have had any high profile incidences Stemming cell research of scientific fraud. Although that that’s a little like saying we That’s not to say we have no prominent scientists doing stem have no criminal problems, because we lack a judicial system to cell research at the moment. In fact there is a center for stem cell incriminate them….. research in Galway, the REMEDI institute, and there are several Not only is oversight useful from an ethical standpoint but SFI funded scientists using non-embryonic stem cell lines. also an economic one. So much so that even the Organization One of these researchers, SFI and HRB funded Dr Gavin for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stated Davey of Trinity College Neuroscience Institute Dublin, is that “at a time when scientific advances are considered to be trying to use what are termed Inducible Pleuripotent Cells (iPS critical in areas such as economic competitiveness, health, cells), to generate new neurons that could provide treatments national security and environmental protection, public officials for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. are strongly motivated — indeed obligated — to ensure the iPS cells are essentially normal adult blood cells or highest levels of integrity in research.” fibroblasts. They can be reprogrammed using advanced technologies to generate other different types of cells. By taking cells from people with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Saving our brains for the future When people talk about brain banks, you may imagine garish or Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis, for example the hope is to ghouls wandering around dark corridors mumbling about generate neurons, and then use them to study how the diseases their need for brains. Brain banking is however a far cry from work, and how the cells respond to toxins and treatments. You Hammer horror flicks. may wonder if we already have stem cell research in Ireland, The purpose of storing and analysing brains from people then why all the brouhaha regarding legislation? who had brain diseases is simply to help doctors understand where and how brain illnesses occur. In fact, many of the major Cash or store credit? brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease Imagine it’s your birthday. You are twelve years old, and have can only be identified by looking in the brains of the person no steady income. You receive an envelope in the post from a who had the disease. It’s important to understand which areas wealthy relative. Seconds later you’ve torn it open, shaken out of the brain are hit, and how they have been hit in diseases. the birthday card. You discover a voucher. You pause. You read For example we can discover if they affect neurons, immune the voucher, and are happy about the Euro amount, but looking cells, blood vessels, or the drainage system of the brain, so that closer, it’s for a store that you don’t shop in. You frown. It’s we can generate treatments for people who newly develop the almost worthless. Perhaps somebody will buy it off you. disorders in the future.

Now imagine you’re a stem cell researcher. You’d like to And although superficially gory, over half of people in be able to do the best research you can, and build cells for use Ireland said back in 2005 that they would be happy to donate to restore function in any kind of damaged bodily tissue. You tissues to a national non-profit tissue bank. Six years later, and know that embryonic stem cells are the only ones, like cash, despite the fact our population is greying with more and more that can be used in any store, or to build any kind of tissue.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 13

people affected by brain-aging diseases, we’ve yet to develop a national brain bank, or even guidelines for national brain banking.

Molecular Medicine Ireland (MMI) a consortium of scientists, are keen for us to harmonize guidelines for collecting clinical specimens to develop best practices for tissue storage. In fact, they have published “MMI Guidelines for Standardized Biobanking” on their website. Moreover, MMI are promoting banking of genes in Ireland, and said they would “be happy to receive guidelines for brain tissue banking.”

The advantages of living on an island

If you go abroad you’ll find that most strangers assume all Irish people know each other. And because we live on such a small island, and are a very chatty people, it’s fair to assume we’re all only a few degrees of separation away. More often than not, you’ll find you know a stranger’s cousin’s bridesmaid’s uncles….

It’s a huge leap to take our relative familiarity with each other to suggest that we are all family and related. However, thanks to the fact that famines and poverty rendered Ireland pretty unattractive to world migrants for many hundreds of years, we have a pretty homogenous population. The relative lack of ethnic mixing until recent years is actually a boon to geneticists because it gives them a huge population to use.

Simply stated, they can compare Irish people of a similar genetic background to each other, and, for example figure out why some families more likely to get cancer than others.

Building a GeneLibrary

Genetic studies of populations are really just games of spotthe-difference on a huge level. Imagine if you had to compare every book in the library with another one and then explain how they were different. You wouldn’t know where to begin.

Now imagine you only had two books, by the same author to compare to each other. Say a James Patterson, Enid Blyton or Agatha Christie book. Essentially the authors write the same book over and over, with slight differences in main characters.

You’d find it much easier to tell somebody how the stories were similar or different.

Genetic studies are the same. It’s much easier to spot which genes are different between a person with a disease, and a person without, if their genes are mostly similar That’s why scientists prefer studies involving twins. But if you have a population of thousands of people who have a relatively similar family history, you can create an incredibly useful resource to find genes associated with specific diseases. Naturally if you know which genes increase the risk of the diseases, it’s easier to identify people at risk, and also start developing treatments.

The “GeneLibrary project” is an ambitious proposal to utilize our natural population resource for such health and lifestyle based studies. Essentially, the “GeneLibrary project”, proposed

by MMI aims to bio-bank 10,000 DNA and blood samples from healthy volunteers from Ireland and Northern Ireland, and use this bank as a resource to study genes involved in diseases.

By coupling this GeneLibrary, to a brain-banking facility we could set up a research facility to rival any in the world. For example it could be possible to link genes in people’s blood with brain changes at early stages of diseases and predict who may be at risk of developing dementia in old age.

Unfortunately, despite our readily available population, because of budgetary cuts, it looks like the GeneLibrary project won’t be funded in the near future. This is unfortunate because currently 200 organisations in 24 EU member countries are jointly planning an EU infrastructure to manage the estimated 10 million biological samples currently stored for research in the EU and it would be a shame if we were left out.

However, even though it did not receive funding from the HRB, MMI still hope to establish a world-class all-island biomedical research infrastructure in the future.

Neuro-economics- from brains to bucks

Compared to the US, where funding obtained from private industry, government and non-profits was estimated by the Journal of the American Medical Association to be worth about $100 billion dollars, our research investment portfolio may seem comparatively small. However, we also have the highest number of third-level graduates in Europe. For example, almost fifty per cent of 30-34 year olds in Ireland have a third level qualification, which is way greater than the forty per cent target set by the Europe 2020.

Against this background, and a number of tax incentives offered to, alongside a creative, mobile, and relatively young population we stand a good chance of converting our investment in brains into bucks in the future, as long as our scientists, universities and industries continue to work with support from the public and help transform our brains into bucks.

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. Her book on how the brain works is due for publication in early 2012. Currently Veronica is working in the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health laboratories, researching how environmental toxins contribute to the risk of disease from womb to tomb, with a focus on autism, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

THE BRAIN Veronica Miller’s fascinating series explaining how the brain works is being published as a book, due out early in the New Year.

Read all the Science Spin chapters with lots of additional text and pictures.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 14

Introducing the brain The moody brain — gender and the brain Sensational brain — Intelligence Mental illness — Dreaming and lots more Albertine Kennedy Publishing

To receive details and avail of a special discount to Science Spin subscribers send us an email mail@sciencespin.com LIVE LINK

Photo of Lough Allen and Corry Island by Andreas F Borchet.

Ireland’s Natural Gas

A FrAcking Problem

Margaret Franklin writes that decisions about developing our natural resorces should be based on sound scientific findings and not on scaremongering.

T

he discovery of natural gas off Kinsale Head in the 1970s ushered in a new era of economic activity in this country. For years, the gas provided a valuable source of hydrogen for the production of ammonia by Nitrogen Eireann Teoranta (NET), which allowed our indigenous fertilizer industry to flourish. The other raw material for ammonia, NH3 is nitrogen, which is always readily available from the air.

Some of the ammonia was transported to Arklow, where it was made into nitric acid (HNO3). When ammonia is neutralised with nitric acid, we get ammonium nitrate, which is extremely soluble in water and is an excellent fertilizer. Sadly, for an agricultural country, we now import all of our nitrogenous fertilizer. Kinsale gas was also used for power generation, while a natural gas pipeline was laid to bring the gas to Dublin and other towns around the country, for domestic use. Now that the Kinsale field is almost exhausted, the gas pipeline network is used to distribute gas imported through the two interconnecters from Scotland.

When the Corrib Gas field was discovered off the Mayo coast, it seemed we had found another source of natural gas, to replace the Kinsale gas.

Natural gas lying below in the Carboniferous basins of Clare and the Northwest may yet be used to top up Ireland’s grid.

Unfortunately, a decade later, this gas is not yet flowing through the distribution network. The project has been dogged by controversy, as the local residents were not consulted about the route of the pipeline and neither the Government nor the company concerned succeeded in allaying the fears of the people of west Mayo regarding the safety and environmental risks posed by bringing the gas ashore. Let us hope that lessons have been learned and that a similar controversy will not prevent our inshore gas resources from being developed.

Earlier this year, licences were awarded to three companies to explore for commercial gas in the Northwest Carboniferous Basin (more commonly known as the Lough Allen basin) and the Clare basin. The Lough Allen Basin is a huge area of 8,000 square kilometres, extending through part of Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Mayo, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo and Tyrone. The Clare basin includes

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 15

parts of counties Clare, Cork, Kerry and Limerick.

Two companies have been granted licences for the Lough Allen basin; the Australian company Tamboran Resources and the Irish Lough Allen Natural Gas Company. Enegi Oil Plc was awarded the licence to begin exploration in the Clare Basin. These licences allow the companies to undertake shallow drilling and to carry out technical studies ro ascertain whether it is commercially viable to extract the gas. The licenses are for a two year period only and are subject to agreed work programmes, which include geological and geophysical studies. If these initial studies prove successful, the companies will have first option to apply for a more expensive exploration licence, which would bring them a step closer to extracting the gas. At this stage, the actual extaction of the gas is some years away.

It has already been established that there is gas in the Lough Allen Basin.

Exploration in this region started in the 1960s and twelve vertical wells were drilled in the licensed area between 1960 and 2001. Every well yielded gas, but at the time, it was deemed uneconomic to extract it. However, with rising oil prices and the increasing use of natural gas

as a fuel and the development of new technology, it may now be economically viable to extract the gas from the Northwest Carboniferous Basin.

Natural gas is composed mainly of methane, CH4. It is a clean-burning fuel and is more environmentally friendly than coal or oil. It can be used both for domestic heating and cooking and for electricity generation. It would be beneficial for Ireland to develop natural gas as an indigenous energy source.

Unfortunately, there are technical problems, as this gas will not be easy to extract.

Natural gas was formed, millions of years ago, in a marine environment.

It arose from the decomposition of the remains of millions of tiny plants and animals that died and sank to the sea bed and became trapped in sediments of clay or sand. In conventional gas fields, natural gas may accumulate in pockets, when it is trapped under a dome shaped layer of impermeable rock. Vertical drilling through the overlying rock will readily release the gas.

The Lough Allen Natural Gas Field is an unconventional carboniferous gas basin, formed 350 million years ago. At that time, Ireland was part of a greater land mass, see Science Spin 37, and the Lough Allen field was once contiguous with the Appalachian Basin in the USA, where natural gas is being extracted at present. It consists of tight gas sandstone reservoirs, which are less porous and permeable than in conventional fields, making it difficult to extract the gas.

However, in recent years, a new method has been developed to extract natural gas from tight gas and shale gas reservoirs.

This method uses horizontal drilling, combined with hydraulic fracturing, colloqually known as ‘fracking’. A vertical bore is first drilled to the required depth, then several horizontal drills are

made. Then liquid is pumped in to force apart the layers of rock strata, making it easier to release the gas.

Already, concerns have been expressed about the use of this method of extraction in Ireland and local activists in the Sligo/Leitrim region are opposing the exploration. It is feared that disturbing the geological strata in this way could cause seismic tremors. There are also fears that substances in the fracking fluids could leach into the ground water and cause contamination. There is even a mobile cinema travelling through the region, showing a documentary film, made in America, called ‘Gaslands’, which aims to show the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing. The plot of a recent episode of CSI dealt with the same theme and showed dramatic images of water from a tap apparently catching fire and a huge explosion erupting from a well, because there was so much flammable gas entrained in it. No doubt this makes for good TV and cinema viewing, but it also serves to scare people and make them worried about any attempt to extract natural gas from such unconventional fields.

If it turns out that there is a commercially viable gas prospect. in the Northwest of `Ireland, both the companies and the licencing authorities would do well to take time to explain to the public, in precise detail, exactly how it will be extracted. Modern fracking fluids consist mainly of water, but they usually contain certain additives, most of which are substances already in common use and should pose no great risk to the environment. In any case, it is likely that the gas reservoirs would be at a much lower level than the water table and there would be a natural impermeable barrier above the gas field, preventing contamination of ground water. But the public need to be reassured about this.

Additives in use at present in fracking fluids in the USA include the following: potassium chloride to reduce friction, hydrochloric acid to remove drilling mud damage, gluteraldehyde to prevent microorganisms from fouling the fractures and dimethyl formamide (DMF) which is an oxygen scavenger, to prevent corrosion of the pipes. These substances are all in common use.

Potassium chloride is a component of argicultural fertilizers, and is present in our own body fluids, hydrochloric acid is produced with the gastric juices in the human stomach, glutaralhedyde is used in the healthcare industry for sterilization and DMF is used in the pharmaceutical industry. However, to reassure the public, Tamboran has recently announced that it will not use any additives in the fracking water, other than sand, which helps to keep the gas-bearing strata apart after the water has seeped away, thus facilitating the escape of the natural gas. Without the usual additives, the extraction of the gas will be more costly, because higher pressures will have to be used. This is a price the company is willing to pay, in order to reassure the public.

Whatever decisions are made with regard to developing our natural resorces, they should be based on sound scientific findings, not on uninformed scaremongering. Having said that, there should certainly be a public debate on the issue, because, left to themselves, planning authorities don’t always get it right.

Margaret Franklin is a chemist and former Senior Lecturer at Athlone Institute of Technology. Margaret is co-author of the book, Colour, what we see and the science of sight.

IDEAL FOR THE LIBRARY Subscription €30 a year, six issues, and on sale in newsagents.

Local and global science viewed through Irish eyes.

www.sciencespin.com SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 16

LIVE LINK

IrISh ANd UK SCIENtIStS ExPlorE UNChArtEd dEEP SEA VENt FIEld Chimneys composed of metal sulphides and white anhydride formed by hot mineral rich fluids erupting from the mid-Atlantic ridge.

These vents, some over 10 metres high, lie 3,030 metres below the sea surface. They have never been observed before.

Right, the scientific crew on arrival in Cork with Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine, Mr Simon Coveney TD, and CEO of the Marine Institute, Dr Peter Heffernan.

Photo: Provision.

John Joyce reports on a mission that led to the discovery of deep sea vents in the mid Atlantic.

A

n Irish-led team of scientists from Ireland and the UK has discovered a previously uncharted field of hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — the first to be explored north of the Azores. The VENTuRE mission, led by Dr Andy Wheeler of University College, Cork (UCC), together with scientists from the National Oceanography Centre and the University of Southampton in the UK, NUI Galway and the Geological Survey of Ireland, spent twenty-five days at sea on board the national research vessel RV Celtic Explorer on an investigation 3,000 metres below the surface of the sea using the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Holland 1. A wide range of scientific disciplines was represented on board including; marine geologists and geochemists to study the hydrothermal

vents themselves and marine geneticists and biologists, whose main interest was the new and unusual life forms that live in this harsh and forbidding environment.

Hydrothermal vents, which spew mineral-rich seawater heated to boiling point by volcanic rock in the Earth’s crust below, are home to a rich variety of marine life that thrives in complete darkness on bacteria fed by chemicals.

At the press briefing on board the vessel in Cork, Dr Wheeler explained how such high concentrations of toxic chemicals and near-boiling point temperatures would have killed most living things that were not adapted for this unique environment.

“On the first dive, we found the edge of the vent field within two hours of arriving on the seafloor,” he said. “The

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 17

ROV descended a seemingly bottomless underwater cliff into the abyss. We never reached the bottom, but rising up from below were these chimneys of metal sulphides belching black plumes of mineral-rich superheated water. Often the search for vents takes much longer, and our success is a testament to the hard work and skill of everyone on board.”

Speaking from the RV Celtic Explorer in Cork on the return home of the mission on Friday 4th August, Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine Mr Simon Coveney said “This work is an example of an exciting new discovery made by the Celtic Explorer and its present crew of Irish and International scientists.

Through vessels like the Celtic Explorer, Irish academics and scientists can work with other international experts to explore the sea bed in the Atlantic and

Preparing the ROV Holland 1on board the Celtic Explorer.

make groundbreaking new discoveries.

Ireland is positioning itself as a centre for marine research from a European and international perspective and this work should be supported and welcomed.”

Dr Bramley Murton of the National Oceanography Centre in the UK, who first saw clues for possible vents on an expedition aboard the UK research vessel RRS James Cook in 2008 and who led the mineralisation study on the expedition, said, “Our discovery is the first deep-sea vent field known on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge north of the Azores. Although people have been crossing this ocean for centuries, we are the first to reach this spot beneath the waves and witness this natural wonder. The sense of awe at what we are seeing does not fade, and now we are working hard to understand what our discovery tells us about how our planet works.”

Patrick Collins from NUI Galway’s Ryan Institute, who led Ireland’s marine biological team investigating this unique ecosystem, is working in collaboration with Jon Copley of the University of Southampton to catalogue and characterise the species found at the vents. “Everyone on board is proud of this Irish discovery, which we have called the ‘Moytirra Vent Field,’” said Collins. “Moytirra is the name of a battlefield in Irish mythology, and appropriately means ‘Plain of the Pillars.’ The largest chimney we have found is huge – more than ten metres tall – and we have named it ‘Balor’ after a legendary giant. In comparison with other vent fields, Moytirra contains some monstrous chimneys and is in an unusual setting at the bottom of a cliff—a real beauty.”

“Using the ROV’s high-definition video camera, we’ve watched unusual orange-bodied shrimp crawling around the chimneys, among clusters of tiny green limpets,” said Jon Copley.

“Elsewhere there are writhing scaleworms, swirling mats of bacteria and eellike fish — a riot of life in this unlikely haven on the ocean floor.”

The investigation was supported by the Marine Institute through the 2011 Ship-Time Programme of the National Development Plan under the Sea Change national marine research strategy and by the National Geographic Society, who filmed the work for inclusion in an upcoming National Geographic Channel series, Alien Deep, premiering globally in 2012.

“This project clearly demonstrates Ireland’s capacity to undertake worldclass marine research on a significant scale, a capacity created through strategic national investments in facilities such as the Celtic Explorer and the Holland 1,” said Dr Peter Heffernan, Chief Executive of the Marine Institute. “This targeted use of research funding by our organisation, which has enabled senior Irish scientists to lead this survey in partnership with international colleagues, has resulted in scientific discoveries of global interest

which will enhance Ireland’s growing reputation in deep-sea exploration.”

In addition to its major discovery on the Moytirra Vent Field, the VENTuRE expedition has also mapped significant areas of deepwater corals in the MidAtlantic Ridge area. Like their tropical counterparts, deepwater (or coldwater) corals are colonies of simple animals resembling sea anemones that secrete calcium carbonate to protect themselves, forming extensive and delicate reefs.

Over millennia, these reefs build up to form “carbonate mounds” on the seabed, which can be detected using sound waves. Because their delicate nature makes coldwater coral reefs susceptible to damage from dredging or deepwater fishing, and because they form unique ecosystems offering shelter to a wide variety of marine life, many coldwater coral reefs around the Irish coast have been declared ‘Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).’

The VENTuRE expedition has mapped the coral reefs on the western Moira Mounds and deployed the ROV Holland 1 to estimate the abundance and density of live coral.

This Deepwater Remotely Operated Vehicle was co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and is named after John Phillip Holland from Liscannor, Co. Clare, Ireland, who was an early inventor and builder of submarines. It was designed and built

by SMD Ltd (Newcastle, UK) and is designed to accommodate a wide range of user equipment without modification.

Ample space is available within the vehicle frame for accommodation of scientific payload, numerous survey ports for a wide variety of equipment including multi-beam, CTD, and nutrient sensors. Numerous spare serial and I/O ports have been incorporated into the system to allow a wide range of scientific sensors to be deployed. The vehicle is equipped with a high level of auto control features, including auto hold which is invaluable in the completion of delicate scientific tasks. The vehicle is also equipped with the latest underwater camera equipment, including a HDTV camera and recording system to allow the capture of highdefinition footage for a variety of uses.

IrIsh FossILs serIes Plaster cast of the two cm long Phillipsia kellii, an Irish Carboniferous trilobite from Ardipodien, Co. Kildare. Courtesy, TCD Geological Museum.

Terrific TrilobiTes Anthea Lacchia introduces us to some Irish fossils

T

Since trilobites are now extinct, the only way to study them is through fossil evidence. As with any organism, it is extremely rare for any soft parts to be preserved as fossils and it is the dorsal surface of trilobites that is usually fossilized. In fact, any discarded moult found on the sea floor would have represented a potential fossil.

In Ireland, trilobite fossils have been reported in the following localities, among them Portrane shore, Co. Dublin, Hook Head, Co. Wexford, and Tramore, Co. Waterford.

Just look for the gleaming eye in that shale!

Trilobites certainly hold a special appeal in the imagination of palaeontologists and fossil enthusiasts alike. For instance, take a stroll through the streets of Prague, the city where Joachim Barrande, French palaeontologist, made pioneering discoveries on trilobites in the 19th century, and you will find the “Trilobit Restaurant”, named and decorated in honour of these

rilobites are an extinct group of marine organisms, superficially resembling present day woodlice. They are classified as arthropods, a group that also includes crustaceans and insects. Turn back the clock to Ordovician times, circa 488 to 443 millions years ago, and look into the murky waters and there you would witness trilobites crawling on the sea floor, burrowing their way into ancient sediments, or eerily floating in swirling water masses. What were these creepy crawlies of the deep really like? A lot is in the name; trilobites had a body divided into 3 lobes, specifically one axial and two lateral lobes, and they can also be divided into head, thorax and abdomen, known in scientific circles as cephalon, thorax and pygidium. They possessed a tough exoskeleton, which they periodically moulted as they grew, and their eyes and limbs are complex enough to fill the pages of many scientific papers. Both shallow and deep-water forms existed and it is generally thought that trilobites which were either blind or had reduced vision dwelled in deep waters, below the photic zone. They Triarthus eatoni from Beecher’s Trilobite Bed, certainly colonised a range of different ecological environments and reproduced Ordovician, New York, which shows appendages preserved in iron pyrites. sexually by laying eggs. Some fossil trilobites have been found with associated Ptychoparia striata, a Cambrian trilobite from brood chambers, a discovery, to the Ginetz, Bohemia, Czech Republic. palaeontologist, akin to that of a cowboy striking gold. The limbs were sometimes used for swimming and some trilobites developed spines that may have been used to aid floating. interestingly, when danger loomed, trilobites could “enrol” or curl up into a ball or capsule and await safer conditions.

curious arthropods and serving delicious dishes such as “Mr.Barrand’s meat” and “Trilobit feast.”

Trilobites first appeared in the Early Cambrian (c. 542 million years ago) and became extinct at the end of the Permian (c. 250 million years ago). The Permian mass extinction was also responsible for the demise of many other taxa, such as rugose and tabulate corals, and its cause is still a matter of debate. Perhaps, had this extinction event not occurred, trilobites would have lost their allure by now, and we would consider them nothing more than common pests, to be fished out of rock pools by children and carefully avoided by scuba divers! Then again, the magic of palaeontology lies in its ability to evoke lost worlds. Some say trilobites do it best.

Anthea Lacchia, a TCD geology graduate is working on a two-year research masters in palaeontology.

To find ouT MorE Irish Fossils by Patrick Gaffikin, Appletree Pocket Guides.

Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution

by Richard Fortey.

Searching for gold in County Wicklow, by the late 18th century Irish landscape artist, Thomas Sautelle Roberts. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

DUE OUT OCTOBER 2011 Price €20

GOLD FRENZY The story of Wicklow’s gold by Peadar McArdle

In 1795, following the chance discovery of a nugget, there was a gold rush as people were drawn by the prospect of picking up instant wealth from Wicklow’s Goldmine River. Gold has always been mankind’s enduring passion, and long after the initial rush which the Government tried to crush, the belief persisted that great wealth remained undiscovered among the Wicklow hills. Charles Stewart Parnell was among those eager to support the prospectors, and with independence, nationalists were convinced that Ireland was about to rediscover its source of ancient gold.

In his entertaining and highly informative book, Peadar McArdle, former Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland, describes how the frenzy has never really died down, and to this day, panners dream that one day they might strike it rich.

Hardback €20 IBSn 0 906002 08 7

Gold Frenzy will be available from the Science Spin website, selected bookshops and the Geological Survey of Ireland.

Booksellers can order this and other titles direct from Albertine Kennedy Publishing at favourable terms.

Enquiries to: mail@sciencespin.com

LIVE LINK

Albertine Kennedy Publishing, 5 Serpentine Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4

SPIN ACTIVE APPLIED STI

Convergence

StAte agencies, IDA, SFI, Shannon Development, Forfás and the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government are working together with IBeC through a Convergence Council. At a conference held in May, the Council stressed the important role being played by companies involved in the life sciences. Nine of the top ten pharmaceutical giants are located in Ireland, eleven of the top-twelve medical device companies are manufacturing here, and as Julie o‘Neill, deputy head of IBeC, and GM of Gilead Sciences commented, there are big opportunities to combine the interests of these companies in creating new combination products. through the Convergence Council, she said, medical technology, pharmaceutical, ICt, financial services, Clean tech and food and drink companies are collaborating with Ireland”s State agencies.

telecommunications

INDuStry is to contribute €4.8 million to top up State funding of €19.5 million for the Centre for telecommunications research, CtVr. the centre is designing the wireless and optical networks of the future. Although based at tCD, CtVr under the direction of prof Linda Doyle involves the collaboration of researchers from six other universities.

Staying in production

pFIzer’S move out of Shanbally in Cork was not meant the end of production there, and in June, the uS company, BioMarin announced that it had acquired the bulk manufacturing facilities. the $33.9 million investment by BioMarin is linked to a number of new products in the pipeline, one of which is N-acetylgalactosamine 6-sulfatase (GALNS) which is undergoing clinical trials for the treatment of mucopoloysaccharidosis (Morquio A Syndrome). this is the first time that the company is to manufacture products outside the uS.

All Island

Support for all-island collaboration in r&D is being offered under the Innova programme. €5 million has been allocated to this Inter trade programme. up to €300,000 in funding will be awarded to 18 collaborative projects covering life and health sciences, polymers, agri-foods, advanced engineering, materials, telecoms, environment and ICt. one of the companies to benefit from cross border collaboration is Biosensia. the company, based in the republic, worked with an NI electronics partner in developing a point of care diagnostics product. Instead of sending samples to the lab, the rapiplex device provides medics with results on location. the portable device can also be used by security personnel to detect illegal drugs.

More information at www.intertradeireland.com/innova LLIVINEK

one to watch

Dr FIoNA Lyng has been singled out as ‘one to watch’ by enterprise Ireland for her work on a cervical cancer diagnostic system. Dr Lyng is developing this system in collaboration with the radiation and environmental Science Centre at DIt, the Coombe Women and Infrants university Hospital. the research is expected to result in a commercial spin-out to help diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer worldwide. At present, diagnosis depends on examination of smears by a skilled cytologist. Software developed at DIt helps to automate that process, and at the same time adds to the sensitivity of tests.

Getting down to business

A SMALL Business Advisory Group has been established to improve dialogue between firms and government departments. Chaired by John perry, Minister for Small Businesses, the members are Conor Healy from Chambers Ireland, Sherri Brennan from Skip trans, tim Fenn from the Irish Hotels Federation, paul Gallagher from Buswells Hotel, Mark Fielding from ISMe, John ryan from Certification europe, patricia Callan from the Small Firms Association, Ian Martin from Martin Services, Jim Barry from the Barry Group, Jacqueline Hall from partners in Communication, John McDonald from Mediateam, John trethowan from the Credit review office, eamonn McHale from Department of Jobs, enterprise and Innovation, Vincent reynolds from the County and City enterprise Boards, tom Hayes from enterprise Ireland, Declan Hughes from Forfás, and Maria Ginnity from Forfás.

Instead of being set up to issue yet another report, the group is to focus on maintaining productive dialogue between the Minister and SMes.

Space

SeNSL, based in Cork and established in 2004, has won a three year contract with the european Space Agency for low-light detection photomultipliers. the silicon photomultipliers are used in a variety of applications, and the extreme sensitivity makes them valuable in space. they are also a more cost effective, solid state alternative to the previous generation of vacuum tube photomultipliers. the €1 million contract is seen as just one of the many benefits arising from Ireland’s €14 million contribution to the european Space Agency. Apart from the eSA, the technology often turns out to have multiple applications, and in this case low-light detection is useful to a number of sectors. SensL technology is being used in medical imaging, radiation detection and X-ray imaging of baggage at airports. the company has over 1,000 customers. www.sensl.com SCIeNCe SpIN Issue 48 page 21

A rocky stray, an erratic transported and then deposited by melting ice near Doolin.

A John Hinde postcard of Lisdoonvarna in the 1950s.

Tom Kennedy reports on how visitors can continue to enjoy a fragile environment

O

nce the harvest was saved, bachelor farmers would take a break and head off in droves to Lisdoonvarna where there was a good chance that they might find a suitable wife. That old custom undoubtedly began because of the shale that lies beneath the grey Burren limestone. The springs that emerge from

the shales are rich in phosphate, iron sulphide, calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate and other minerals, so with 18th century rise in popularity of ‘taking the waters’, Lisdoonvarna became a big attraction. By the 19th century there were baths, pump houses, and big hotels where many of the bathing beauties met

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page xx

their match. In 1895 20,000 visitors were recorded, and while that is a high enough figure, it is just a fraction of the numbers that come into the area now. While the fashion of taking the waters has gone into decline, interest in the flora, fauna, history, music and rocky landscape of the Burren has continued to rise. The iconic Cliffs of Moher, attracting close to a million people a year, is possibly the biggest draw for visitors in Ireland.

The Burren has a lot to offer, but as the geologist, Ronán Hennessy, observed, bringing in more people only makes sense if the area is properly managed.

The Burren is special mainly because it is an exceptionally fragile environment, where rare Alpine and Mediterranean flowers can grow together as close neighbours in the karst landscape.

It would be all too easy to overwhelm the Burren, but as Ronán explained, good management does not mean that visitors should be excluded, and in fact one of his primary aims is to attract these people by providing them with a more rewarding experience.

Ronán is one of an all embracing group that brings together all those with a common interest in maintaining the Burren, not as a museum, but as a

Long before the Burren rocks that we see now began to form, there was a bare and stony desert. The deposits from that time, known as the Devonian, remain below as old Red Sandstone.

About 359 million years ago the land began to sink under rising water. This was the beginning of the Carboniferous era, and for most of this time, the average global temperature was about 8ºC higher than it is now, and there was about 15 per cent more oxygen in the atmosphere.

The present day Burren area was a warm, shallow sea, and as countless billions of marine organisms ended their lives and fell to the bottom, their calcium rich

Lower Limestone Tubber Limestone

Slievenaglashna Limestone Clare Shale

ffs of M

oh er

Gull Island Formation

Cli

living landscape with a vibrant local community. A number of groups are co-ordinated through the Burren Connect Project, and with support from the geological Survey of Ireland, Ronán Hennessy was brought in to provide on the spot geological expertise.

While the Burren offers a mix of attractions, there have been few, if any dissenting voices in declaring wholehearted support for a common strategy to maintain the Burren’s most valuable cultural and natural assets. one of the advantages of geology is that it helps to bind all of these various interests together, and for this reason the concept of promoting the Burren as a geopark is highly attractive.

The term, geopark, as Ronán explained, is not lightly used.

Winning the right to use the term officially requires meeting quite stringent conditions. An international organisation must be satisfied that the area defined is of outstanding, and possibly unique, geological interest.

That’s not all by a long shot. The area must be managed in a sustainable manner, the project must be financially viable, and it must involve the local community.

Satisfying these conditions, said Ronán, is quite difficult, but it is a challenge, and the rules provide a blueprint on how to develop an area of outstanding interest without destroying its attractions.

A number of geoparks now exist around the world, and in some ways they could be compared to World Heritage

Burren Limestone

Central Clare Siltstone, Sandstone and Mudstone Group

Devonian Sandstone

Sites. In Ireland, the Copper Coast, Co Waterford, is an official Geopark, as is the Marble Arch Cave in Fermanagh which features in Science Spin issue 42.

If the Burren succeeds in gaining this recognition, it would be a huge boost for the region but as Ronán pointed out, winners are not allowed to rest on their laurels.

Performance is always kept under review, and if targets are not being met, the recognition can be withdrawn.

In aiming to satisfy these demands, the educational aspect of the Burren is highly important, and this has

been helped enormously by collaboration with partners in norway, Finland and Iceland. Ireland is in a partnership with these countries through the northern Environmental Education Development, nEED. The objectives of nEED are to create geological and environmental learning resources, and in Ireland this has resulted in the production of outstanding material for students and teachers on the Burren. Working with Maria Mcnamara, the geologist who had formerly worked with the Burren group and is now researching soft tissue fossils in the US, Ronán produced a set of informative and attractive resources which are being made available to schools.

remains built up into an enormously thick layer that solidified into limestone.

About 326 million years ago the basin became deeper, and the limestone was covered by deep sea sediments. Clay, washed down from rivers, was added to these deposits. Deep, dark, and starved of oxygen there was an abundance of dissolved mineral sulphides in these deposits, and the only organic matter came from the animals that swam far above. The black shales, and the phosphate deposits come from this period.

About 8 million years later there was a large influx of silt and fine sand, as

material, washed down from a land mass to the west, fanned out into a giant delta.

Compared to the rate at which the shales built up, this new build up of materials was extremely rapid. Hundreds of metres were deposited in under two million years, compared to just 12 metres of black shales in eight million years. Because the rate of deposition was so high, some of the silt and sand mounds, becoming unstable, spilled over into slumps.

Solidified as rock, these slumps can be seen exposed by the sea at Doolin.

As continental plates continued to move, another period of mountain building pressure pushed all the old

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 23

deposits up in a gentle two to five degree slope to the surface. The rocks were pushed with enough force to make them fold, and hot mineral rich fluids came up from deep below to fill the cracks.

Uplifting continued for more than 250 million years, but as soon as the rocks were exposed, weathering began. Most of the higher levels are long gone, so what we see now are the lower, older and worn down remains of deposits that were once completely covered by Late Carboniferous rocks. In some places 30 million years of limestone dissolution has exposed the Old Red Sandstone from the earlier, Devonian, period.

To the west, younger rocks have survived, and at the Cliffs of Moher, relatively robust siltstones and sandstones have acted as a protective cap for the softer shales below. Even so, those cliffs are being worn away, and two and a half million years ago they may have stood several kilometres to the west.

Layer upon layer of deposits built up over millions of years. The Cliffs of Moher, photograph, Tobias Halfrich.

Galway Granite Lower palaeozoic rocks Carboniferous Limestone Clare shales, siltstone or sandstone Old Red sandstone Flat flags with perfectly preserved ripple marks.

Deep Basins ThE CLIffS along the coast of County Clare are of particular interest to geologists because they are like a slice through the edge of an ancient basin. As the geologist, Peter haughton explained at last year’s Geoconference, such basins are often associated with the presence of immense reservoirs of oil and gas. In Clare, he said, the Lower Carboniferous rocks, which are hard, stick out into the ocean where they fringe the shales that lie at the edge of an Upper Carboniferous basin, formed millions of years ago as sediments were being washed down from a great delta into the deeper sea.

Dr haughton and his colleagues, Prof Patrick Shannon and PhD student, Colm Pearse from UCD have been studying this basin with support from industry partners and the Griffith Geoscience Programme.

A cut through section from Galway Bay to the Cliffs of Moher showing the gentle slope and succession of rocks over the granite and Lower Palaeozoic basement.

The biggest task is to get down into the sedimentary rocks, and this is where oil company expertise from Statoil and SLP Consulting comes into play. “Statoil has funded the drilling of five drill holes to date,” he said. The cores from these drills provide the raw data on how the sediments built up and where they occur.

It is also important to know where these sediments were coming from, and on this point another researcher, Shane Tyrrell, has been making a significant contribution. As reported on in Science Spin issues 22 and 44, Shane uses a mass spectrometer at UCD to examine sedimentary particles. The particular ratio of feldspar and lead isotopes indicates where these particles are likely to have come from, and, as Dr haughton commented, the techniques developed for this project, apart from being of benefit in Clare can be applied anywhere, and not just in Ireland.

sCienCe spin issue 48 page 24

At Clare, geologists have an unusual opportunity to compare outcrops exposed on the high cliffs with deep cores taken from behind them. As Dr haughton commented, “Clare is a very important area because we have the very high large cliffs. These cliffs are pretty well much of the same magnitude as those you would see on seismic data.” however, exposures on the cliffs are weathered, particularly the mudstones and shales, but the cores, said Dr haughton, yield samples that are in pristine condition. In addition, drilling goes lower than the cliff exposure, so the cores enable geologists to build up a more complete picture.

There is a lot of interest in the shale which were first encountered when the Ambassador Oil Company began exploratory drilling at Dunbeg in the 1960s. At the time, said Dr haughton, very little was known about the extent and where the shales occurred. It could

Late Devonian

370 million years ago

Early Carboniferous 359 million years ago

Early Carboniferous 350 million years ago

Middle Carboniferous 350 million years ago

Late Carboniferous 315 million years ago

Changes in sea level over time, from 370 million to 315 million years ago. Ireland was part of a larger continental mass, and following the Late Carboniferous the land was raised and subjected to mountain building pressure from the south east. In the Late Carboniferous deep basins, indicated by deeper blue, formed. well have been that they simply thinned out or became sandy towards Loop Head.

The shales do crop up on the other side of the estuary, north of Ballybunnion, but no one could be sure that they actually continued under the Shannon.

Drilling eliminated a lot of the guesswork. So far five drills have been made, varying in depth from 100 to 235 metres and as Dr Haughton commented, it all takes a lot of time because the rocks are so hard.

At Loop Head, where drilling went down to 235 metres deep the aim was to get through the overlying Ross Sandstone to the shales that should, according to projections, have lain below. Choosing where to drill, said Dr Haughton, involves a certain amount of risk. The unseen underlying layers might not be horizontal, so a vertical drill, if it has to penetrate rocks at an angle, might never hit the lower levels.

However, all went well, and last year the drilling team came up with results from Loop Head that indicated how the same Clare shales that are seen exposed further back in the cliffs, continue out and down into the basin. “We now know that the succession extends across the River Shannon and occurs beneath the level of the exposures at Loop Head,” Dr Haughton explained.

Overall, the picture that emerges is of a shallowing up from an oxygen starved basin floor with sediments coming in from the south west and gradually fanning out to the north east. “What we are looking at,” said Dr Haughton, “is a scale of about ten kilometres,” and that, he adds, is about right for the size of an oil field. Similar deposits, he said, are targets for active exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.

Conjenction in Spirogyra algae, image, John Alan Elson

Ancestral plants

IT WAS thought that land plants evolved from green fresh water algae belonging to the Charales group, but genetic analysis points to an origin in a less complex group of Zygnamatales algae. In the open access journal, EMC Biology, an international group of researchers has reported that the more advanced form of reproduction shown in the Charales group, with a big egg and small sperm, led scientists to assume that these algae would have given rise to land plants about 500 million years ago. However, as they discovered, the Zygnamatales algae were more closely related to land plants, yet they relied on a more primative method of reproduction, involving fusion of similar sized cells. As one of the researchers, Dr Becker, explained, it appears that the Zygnamatales, having raced ahead in evolutionary terms, then had to retreat, possibly due to the onset of adverse conditions such as the lack of water. Although they discarded some of their complexity in order to survive, genetic traces remained to show that they a number of traits in common with land plants, among them, the production of eggs and sperm.

Dr Haughton is keen to emphasise that there are very few places where such features can be examined in such detail, and as he remarked, there is a lot more to be discovered. As he commented, this is not just something of local interest.

Geologists from all around the world want to be involved in this research, and making them welcome would boost both to the community and to the standing of Irish geoscience. “Our dream,” he said, “is to have a science centre somewhere on Loop Head,” where geologists and students from around the world could come to study an ancient basin system.

Maps and charts based on the NEED project material.

Wild flowers

AfTeR spending more than 30 years tramping around the countryside with her camera, Zöe Devlin has put together an impressive collection on wild floswers.

Her interest was sparked off by an elderly aunt who, having taken her up a hillside in Glenmalure took out a magnifying glass to reveal the flower of an orchid in all its detail. As Zöe remarked, from that day onwards, she was hooked. eventually her own daughter suggested that it would be a good idea to set up a webside for all those images. The result, for all to see, is at www. wildflowersofireland for anybody interested in knowing what they are looking at when out and about, this is a great site, packed with photographs that make it easy to identify Ireland’s wild flowers. There is also a very useful guide to show what’s in flower now.

Zöe’s book on the wildflowers of Ireland is due out this Autumn from the Collins Press in Cork.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 25

NANOTECHNOLOGY W

e all have an idea that nanotechnology means dealing with something very very small. Rightly so, but paradoxically, nanotechnology, or nanotech (NT), is a huge area, encompassing all scientific disciplines from chemistry and biology to physics and engineering. Conversely, nanotech applications are very diverse. They can be found in medicine, electronics, biomaterials or energy production, to name but a few.

All these have only one thing in common: they involve the engineering of functional systems with at least one dimension at a molecular scale. By molecular scale we mean structures sized between 1 to 100 nanometres – that is one billionth to 100 billionths of a metre.

Speaking at EuroNanoForum 2011, Rudolf Strohmeier, Deputy Director General at the Directorate General Research and Innovation (EU) said: “Research in NT can add real value to our lives. It offers solutions in all major modern challenges including energy, climate change, health and environmental issues.”

EuroNanoForum 2011, held from May 30th to June 1st in Budapest, Hungary, was the 5th EU Nanotech conference, and with more than 1,000 participants, it has

Marie-Catherine Mousseau reports that with nanotechnology we have a lot to look forward to. been the most important conference on NT research so far.

“It is vital for Europe to aim at leadership in NT,” Rudolf Strohmeier continued. While according to him, NT is one sector where the EU is still in the lead, there are two major challenges to maintain this leadership. The first one is to get NT innovation from the lab to the market place to deliver real practical solutions for society. And this step is far from straight forward, with a big financial gap resulting from investors often reluctant to take risks.

The other challenge lies in communication. “Science-based regulations, safety and public perception are crucial elements for acceptance of NT,” said Rudolf Strohmeier. According to him, and to many other participants, clear communication on the potential risk associated with different applications of NT is essential. “What we need is transparency of risk management

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 26

and public debate based on balanced information,” he concluded.

Clear communication is definitely a challenge, considering the diversity of approaches encompassed by the term nanotechnology. Let’s look at a few here in two of the most popular areas: energy and health.

ENERGY

The magic world of nanocrystals Prof Michael Graetzel, from the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, opened the energy topic on a rather gloomy note: “In the next 30 years or so, power consumption will double while at the same time oil will have run out,” he said. “That’s why a nanomaterial able to convert, generate, store energy very efficiently in the form of electric power would be very welcome.”

In 1931 Edison had already foreseen the problem and claimed that he would put his money in solar energy. However, at the moment solar energy based on silicon is not the optimal solution, with relatively poor efficiency compared to its cost. “What we need is low cost, high efficiency solar cells,” Dr Graetzel said.

There is one very promising candidate,

nanocomponents based on nanocrystals called nanocrystalline photovoltaic devices.

Unlike traditional solar cells, these new type of cells mimic the principles of solar-energy conversion that natural photosynthesis has successfully adopted over the last 3.5 billion years. They perform the two functions of harvesting light and transporting charge-carriers in two separate steps.

A prototype of such nanocrystalline devices, invented at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, is based on a process called dye sensitisation. Prof Graetzel explained the principle: this new type of solar cell involves what is called sensitiser molecules, and a nanocrystalline film of titanium dioxide (TiO2). The sensitiser molecules anchored onto the surface of the TiO2 film absorb the light and inject an electron into the oxide particles, which is transported to convert the light into electricity.

Dye sensitised solar cells have been around for 30 years. TiO2 sensitisation was tested in 1985 and the process went to mass production in 2009 in the form of power windows – electricity producing windows.

Compared to the traditional silicon based solar cells, this technology is much cheaper and more efficient. “Dye sensitised solar cells achieve power conversion efficiency over 10 percent,” Prof Graetzel enthused. They are also able to harvest and convert a larger proportion of the light spectrum– everything less than 900nm – which means that they have a broader absorption in infrared compared to traditional solar cells. They can also harvest at low light, interesting for indoor settings, or in countries such as Ireland.

Edward Crossland, postdoctoral researcher at Oxford, is also working on a project involving sensitised solar cells.

He believes the potential applications are numerous. “This nanocomponent would be the way to go for power roof or power windows with many colours, instead of the boring grey and opaque traditional power panels.” Changing colour window panes or flower lamps can also become elegant ways to join utility and aesthetics. But the potential applications are not limited to aesthetics.

“Sunglasses made of hybrid cells could replace batteries and charge iPods,” Dr Crossland said. “We can also make solar powered bags that produce light during the night.”

Dr Graetzel was particularly impressed by the use of dye-sensitised solar cells as cheap sources of light in the power cuts caused by the 2004 Tsunami. “It is a great satisfaction for science to contribute to solving problems at such critical times,” he said.

The XXI century wonder material There has been the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Steel age, and the Silicon age. The XXI century will be the age of graphene. This is according to Lazlo Péter Biro, researcher at the Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Sciences, Hungary. He calls graphene “the wonder material of the XXI century.”

Graphene is made of carbon-like graphite or diamond, but it’s two rather than three-dimensional. Thanks to its one atom thick planar structure - the thinnest possible material you can imagine — it combines a unique set of electrical and mechanical properties: “a combination that we thought for a long time was not possible in one single element,” said Prof Biro. As well as being the strongest material ever measured, graphene is also an excellent electric conductor. What’s more, it is easily stretched.

Prof Biro explained that graphene’s amazing properties are made possible thanks to different characteristics present in two different crystallographic directions (what he called nanoribbons with two orientations). “It is an extraordinary electronic structure”, Prof Biro concluded. No wonder that the two researchers who discovered it in 2004, both from the University of Manchester, were awarded the Nobel Prize last year for their contribution to

graphene research (research funded by the European Research Council). “Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov used a block of carbon and some Scotch tape to create graphene, a new material with extraordinary properties,” an achievement that was amazing, both for its do-it-yourself simplicity and the results.

According to Prof Biro, the potential for applications is endless. In the near future, cheap, transparent, graphene electrodes will be used in photovoltaic cells and touch screens. Thanks to graphene’s stretchable properties, your phone screen could be extended to be read as a newspaper, or its shape could change to turn it into a bracelet. Prof Biro believes it is a matter of only a few months to one year before South Korea starts to produce Samsung phones with a stretchable touch screen. And similar phones are currently being developed by Nokia.

Last but not least, in the longer run graphene might play a major role in electronics. At the moment, what is hindering its development in nanoelectronics is that graphene transistors cannot be switched off – this is a major obstacle to any digital application (indeed, working as a switch is an essential function of silicon transistors).

But solutions are being found which involve re-engineering its structure. The idea is to modify its surface locally by controlling the etching process and the crystallographic conditions. Prof Biro is positive: “graphene will eventually replace silicon.”

NANOMEDICINE

Nanoparticles for therapy and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease MOvInG away from physics and nanocrystalline structures, the following speakers presented life science projects making promising use of engineered biomolecules. Many belong to the vast arena of nanomedicine.

One such project tackled Alzheimer’s disease using well known nanoparticles called liposomes. Liposomes make particularly well-suited tools for nanomedicine. Made of lipid bilayers, these artificially prepared vesicles are biocompatible, non-toxic, biodegradable, and easy to prepare. Most importantly, their surface can be engineered to perform multiple functions.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 27

Massimo Masserini, from the University Milano-Bicocca, Italy, is using such nanoparticles to target amyloid plaques, a well known feature of Alzheimer’s. These consist in the accumulation of insoluble protein aggregates called amyloid-beta.

Prof Masserini went on to describe the three functions liposomes have to be given to be turned into a weapon against Alzheimer’s. Firstly they have to pass the blood brain barrier; then they have to be able to bind to amyloidbeta and thirdly researchers have to be able to highlight them by imaging techniques.

If the brain can be supplied with information, sight can be restored and to make the necessary connections, diamonds offer one of the best solutions.

Prof Masserini’s team, now half way through the five-year project, have already succeeded in designing multi-functionalised liposomes that meet these three criteria. Tested on cell cultures – that is on cells that are grown in vitro (e.g. co-cultures of endothelial cells and glial cells), these liposomes have already demonstrated their ability to pass the blood-brain barrier, bind to and neutralise the beta-amyloid proteins.

Now the team is testing their nanoparticles on transgenic mice with a disease resembling Alzheimer’s (called animal models of Alzheimer’s). The results so far are positive. Once injected in the mice, the liposomes could remove the amyloid beta from the blood and decrease their content in the brain.

Will that be enough to improve the mice’s condition? This is the key question. There has been an on-going controversy about what is actually causing Alzheimer’s. Prof Masserini himself is quite convinced of the role of the beta amyloid proteins in the development of the disease. While beta amyloid might not be toxic at the beginning (and may be even beneficial according to some evidence), progressively, as Alzheimer’s develops, their accumulation becomes toxic and is responsible for the death of nearby neurons.

But as Alzheimer’s takes time to develop, assessing any potential cure also takes time. Prof Masserini and his collaborators still have 2.5 years ahead of them to check whether the treatment is able to reverse Alzheimer’s in transgenic mice, and eventually in humans. ”Alzheimer’s affects more than 24 million people in the world with one new case every seven seconds,” said Prof Masserini. In Europe the number of people with Alzheimer’s is expected to double to reach more than six million by 2040. So there is a significant challenge to find a cure before then.

NanoEar Regenerating the ear and the eye NANOTEchNOlOgy could also revolutionise the management of some of the most disabling diseases, including hearing deficit and blindness.

According to Ilmaru Pyykkö, from the University of Tampere, Finland, hearing deficit is the ninth most severe disease in the EU, surpassing even blindness (the 16th) with more than 250,000 deaf people and 13 percent of the European population with bad hearing.

“The medical prevention and treatment is restricted by the fact that the inner ear is difficult to access as it is buried deep in the temporal bone and isolated from circulation by tight barriers,” Prof Pyykko explained. here again, production of targeted multifunctional nanoparticles may provide a solution and improve the life of thousands of sufferers.

The idea is that nanoparticules inserted in cochlear implants will carry and release drug/gene precisely to targeted tissue sites and selected cells in the inner ear. Prof Pyykko described the potential benefits: “The problem with cochlear implants is that people get completely lost when there is a background noise; they can’t even listen to music as it is painful for their ears,” he said. Nanoparticles introduced with the implant could stimulate nerve growth factors and therefore encourage the connection between nerve cells and

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 28

electrodes, resulting in improved hearing.

There are no less than 23 people working on what has been called the ‘NANOEAR consortium’. Still, according to Prof Pyykko, this technique might take a couple of years to achieve reliable results and get translated to the clinical practice.

DREAMS The development of blindness with age is very common. Age-related visual loss is typically caused by a condition called age-related macular degeneration (AMD), whereby the retina becomes detached, resulting in a loss of vision in the centre of the visual field (macula) – making it difficult or impossible for sufferers to read or recognise faces. There is another retina disease, called retina pigmentosa (RP), which is characterised by the degeneration of photoreceptors at the back of the retina, and also results in vision loss but this time around the periphery rather than at the centre.

AMD and RP have something in common which comes handy in the fight against these diseases: they only affect retina cells and not the neuronal cells that are in charge of the transmission of the signal from the retina to the visual cortex.

This means that by stimulating the nerve cells directly in the same way the retina does, it should be possible to make an AMD or RP patient see again.

Researchers are thus looking for the ideal retinal interface for sending electric signals to the optic nerve: one that’s both photosensitive and biocompatible.

“Amongst the solutions considered, diamond is one of the most promising,” said Philippe Bergonzo from the French Atomic Energy Commission, France.

“Diamond is a very well known semi conductor when you add boron to it, and we have confirmed it is biocompatible.”

“In fact, diamond is the only known bioinert semiconductor,” he concluded.

According to preliminary tests with the first implanted diamond-based prototype, their idea seems to work.

Diamond-based Bionic eye CEA researchers have been working on the diamond interfaces since December 2006 as part of the European project DREAMS. DREAMS stands for Diamond Retinal Artificial Microinterface Structures. The project combines physics, electronics and biology. A camera included in sunglasses sends a digitalised image to an implant located close to the retina. The image pattern of

In 2013 the EuroNanoForum will be held in Dublin. Liam Brown, from Enterprise Ireland, who is the National Delegate for Nanotechnology under the European Framework 7 programme, said that hosting the event will highlight the high level of success that Irish researchers have achieved in this fast developing area. pixels is converted into electrical pulses representing light and dark transmitted to the implant.

The implant is a diamond interface consisting of a few square millimetres of flexible plate with an electrochemical coupling, directly in contact with the retina. “It is an assembly of nanometric diamond crystals stuck together to form a film,” Prof Bergonzo explained. This contains a network of electrodes which work as the artificial equivalent of the retina’s photoreceptors. The electrodes

are stimulated in accordance with the encoded pattern of light and dark, as the retina’s photoreceptors would be.

In turn, the stimulated electrodes inject an electrical current travelling along the normal brain pathways (the optical nerves) to stimulate the visual cortex and generate a series of luminous points (an array of pixels) in the sightless person’s vision field.

The more pixels are excited, the more acute the vision will be. At the moment their prototype makes it possible for a patient to read, but only text with large letters and big contrast, so the scientists are focusing on increasing the number of pixels to improve resolution.

Marie-Catherine Mousseau has a PhD in neuroscience from Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris, and has a MSc in Science Communications from DCU/Queen’s.

Other health projects, such as DREAMS, might not be just a dream and may make possible the retrieval of lost senses. And beyond energy and health, there are many others still, in the environmental realm for instance, where nanoparticles are used to capture carbon or to sense contaminants in water.

‘Projects’, ‘future’, ‘if’, ‘potential’, ‘might’, may all be key words here. It takes about 20 years for a new technology to emerge from the lab to the market. So wait and see.

Poor relation

WATChIng molecules in action requires some very expensive equipment. At Stanford University there is an X-ray free electron laser and a kilometre long accelerator which can do that job, but it has a price tag amounting to a good few hundred million dollars.

According to the Technical university of Eindhoven in The netherlands, researchers there have come up with a low-cost tabletop alternative. Instead of using X-rays, research student, Thijs van Oudheusden, has designed a machine that uses electrons. As a result, the cost, at about half a million euros, is a lot less, and it can yield many of the same sort of results.

Observing molecules in action requires exposing them to extremely brief pulses of radiation and interpreting the diffraction pattern. At Stanford, electrons are accelerated and then converted into X-rays, but as van Oudheusden argued, why not use electrons directly? however,

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 29

because electrons repel each other a bundle of them together would spread, so it would not be possible to get down to the 10-15 of a second required to freeze molecular motion.

By using electric fields to control the shape and focus of these bundles, van Oudheusden was able to overcome this problem.

According to the researcher’s supervisor, Prof Marnix van Weil, the development is not just about saving money. As he observed, Stanford’s facilities are on the go non-stop, so anyone allocated time there has to stick to a very strict schedule. In addition, if coming from Europe or elsewhere, researchers have to bring a lot of supporting equipment to the US.

Dr. How's

What is Static Electricity?

Science Wows!

Static Electricity is a charge that can build up when two things are rubbed together

...exploring Static Electricity!

Matching charges of static electricity push each other away (repel) while opposite charges attract each other.

How Does Lightning Work?

Lightning is caused by a build up of static electricity in clouds.

As the charge in the cloud grows the base of the cloud builds up a strong negative charge.

This negative static charge creates a build up of positive charge in the ground below.

If the attraction between the cloud and the ground (or between two clouds) becomes strong enough, a spark of lightning will jump between the two.

Lets learn more!

Everything is made up of atoms.

An atom is the smallest piece you can break any object down to while still maintaining its properties.

Atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons.

Protons have a positive (+) charge, neutrons have no charge (neutral) and electrons have a negative (-) charge.

This lightning is a giant spark of moving electrons travelling between the cloud and the ground.

At the centre of each atom is a nucleus, this is where the protons and nuetrons are found.

The eletrons are found to the edge of the atom, they are constantly moving in a circular motion around the nucleus.

Did you know... that the heat of a lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the sun?

Nucleus

You will need...

A balloon and a good head of hair!

Blow up the balloon and tie it tight.

Rub the balloon all around your hair (this is called charging the balloon).

Now move the balloon slowly away from your head and watch your hair stand on end!

So What is happening?

You will need...

A balloon, a good head of hair and an empty aluminium can!

So what is happening?

Charge the balloon on your hair as before. Lay the empty aluminium can on its side on a table.

Then bring the charged balloon close to the can, but do not let it touch it. Slowly draw the balloon away from the can and watch the can follow!

You will need...

A balloon, a good head of hair and a running tap!

Bending Water

Turn on a tap to a small, steady stream of water and leave it running.

Charge the balloon on your hair as before.

Bring the charged balloon close to the stream of water and you should see the stream of water bend towards the balloon!.

Experiments you can try

Both the aluminium can and the water become attracted to the negatively charged balloon as the area around them becomes positively charged!

Attract a Can

When the balloon is rubbed on your hair electrons are passed from your hair to the balloon. This gives the balloon a negative charge and your hair a positive charge. As opposites attract your hair is attracted to the balloon and sticks to it while you pull it away.

Experiments you can try

Junior science by Naomi Lavelle

Hair Raising Fun

When two objects are rubbed together electrons may pass from one to the other, making one more positively charged and the other more negatively charged. This charge is Static Electricity.

Experiments you can try

Electron

Some things give up or take on electrons more easily Objects can be than others ranked according to how easily they give up or take on electrons and this ranking is called the triboelectric series.

Things listed at the top of the triboelectric series give up electrons more easily than those ranked below

YOUNG SCIENTISTS

Hot power

WITH a fridge electricity is used to produce a temperature difference, and as Ramez Tadrous, a fourth year student at Castleknock College, explained, a temperature difference can also be used to produce electricity. This was a discovery that goes back to an early 19th century observation that when two metals are in contact through a closed loop a temperature difference creates an electrical current. These days, said Ramez, semiconductors sandwiched between ceramics can do the same thermoelectric job much more efficiently.

Ramez became interested in thermoelectrics when he came across the news that a mobile phone company was planning to produce a charger powered from body heat. “I had never heard about thermoelectrics before,” he said.

What surprised Ramez is not so much the idea that the device would be incorporated into a shoe, but that our body constantly produces and loses so much heat. instead of letting that heat go, he said, enough energy could be captured by a thermoelectric device to keep a phone or iPod charged.

We don’t always need big amounts of power, he explained, and while the semiconductors used in the sandwich are expensive,

Good indications

CyCling in Dublin city is a dangerous business due to large volumes of traffic, unsafe or totally absent cycle lanes, and an inability of drivers to read cyclists’ intentions.

Rory Hughes, a student at Gonzaga College can’t do much about the traffic or cycle lanes, but has found a way to help drivers better anticipate cyclists’ behaviour on the road by inventing a novel cycling helmet with built in indicators and a brake light.

Accidents can result when drivers misread cyclists’ hand signals, or miss such hand signals entirely due to a blind spot, inattention, or because of poor visibility. A cyclist turning right, for example, will be in trouble if a driver doesn’t spot a hand signal.

Enter Rory’s helmet, for which he deservedly won the Junior Technology Individual Award at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition back in January.

His idea is simple, yet ingenious. A cycle helmet that signals to following cars when a cyclist wishes to turn let or right, as well as having a brake light to show slowing or stopping.

When a cyclist wishes to turn left, all he has to do is simply lean his head to the left, and the indicator for left comes on, while a buzzer indicates to the cyclist that the indicator has actually come on. The same applies in reverse for a right turn.

we only need tiny amounts. For small scale devices, he said, thermoelectricity has massive potential, especially where electrical power is hard, or even impossible, to generate. This is why thermoelectrics are so important in space, he said.

With the help of his science teacher, Kieran Gallagher, Ramez began investigating these devices, and he presented his results at the BT Young Science and Technology Exhibition.

“In an experiment, the maximum temperature difference we got was 160°C, he said , and from this, he was able to generate 1.6 volts. That same device, he explained, could, in theory, produce 3 volts, but the temperature difference would have to be 260°C. As he admitted, that’s quite a difference in temperature, but for many applications, there is no need to go to extremes.

In the US, where many homes have stoves, thermoelectric devices are now being marketed as an alternative to solar panels, but, as Ramez pointed out, one of the biggest opportunities is in electronics where excess heat is often a big problem.

With thermoelectrics, that problem could be turned into an advantage.

Ramez Tadrous at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

Report: Tom Kennedy

This job is accomplished by an arrangement of built-in sensors, and wires, which Rory built himself, sometimes at school, and other times at home.

When the cyclist has gone all the way around the corner, the indicator light automatically turns off, using more sensors called gyroscopes – the type of sensors that are used onboard spacecraft to provide a clear sense of orientation in 3D space.

The original idea for a helmet with indicators came from one of Rory’s friends, but this initial idea involved wires and buttons and Rory felt that it would ‘annoy’ users.

Rory came up with the idea of putting the indicators and lights all inside the helmet, which will make it easier and more comfortable for cyclists to use.

He clearly impressed the judges with his schematic diagram, detailing how he had connected all the wires, motion sensors, batteries, and buzzers inside the helmet.

He filed a patent on the idea during the week of the show back in January, a process he said is complex and needs a lawyer. He is not sure whether he will take it further.

Certainly Rory is a credit to his school, and to his teacher, Mr O’Briain. As for the future, he said: “I’d definitely like to get into technology and I love building things, hardware, and then programming them to do things.”

Report: Seán Duke

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 31

YOUNG SCIENTISTS

Happy hens

If hens are warm and have the freedom to run around and flap their wings, they will enjoy good health and reward us by laying lots of eggs. As Annie Mae Doherty, a first year student at St Joseph’s in Charlestown, Co Mayo, remarked, it is easy enough to see when hens are happy, but, she was curious to know what makes the free-ranger more productive than its battery cousins. So, for her BT Young Scientist and Technology project Annie Mae began recording egg yields against day and night temperatures, and she also got in contact with battery hen producers in Carrick-on-Shannon and Co Meath, so see how their figures compared.

The producers, she said, responded with some good data on the number of eggs laid, the feed, and temperatures, and Teagasc also provided Annie Mae with a lot of valuable information.

Not surprisingly, Annie Mae found that hens like their comforts, and even if free to run around, low temperatures will make them lay less eggs. Another factor, which would be less obvious to most people, is that they need plenty of light. To keep them laying, said Annie Mae, they need their 14 hours of light a day. So, the hen house needs to be warm, but not too warm, and it needs a light.

Annie Mae was surprised at how few people in her locality were keeping hens, but with the downturn of the economy, that’s beginning to change. “Most of the people I talked to,” she said, “had only got into hens within the last 18 months or so.” A generation ago, practically every house in the area would have had hens clucking around the yard, and Annie Mae said it would be a great benefit to see their return.

Working on the project, she said, had fired her curiosity.

“I really enjoyed the doing the project”, she said, adding that “I’d like to follow up on this to find out how they incubate and hatch their chicks out.”

Above, Annie Mae Doherty at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

Report: Tom Kennedy

The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition will take place in Dublin from January 11th – 15th 2012. For more information on the exhibition, check out www.facebook.com/BTYSTE or twitter.com/btyste or www.btyoungscientist.com LLIVINEK PRIMARY SCIENCE

Entries are invited for the RDS Primary Science Fair and selected projects will be on show at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. Closing date 5th October 2011.

LIVE Details from Karen Sheeran at the RDS, 01 2407990. Email: primarysciencefair@rds.ie LINK

Sligo winners

STuDeNTS from Sligo were among the top winners in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition for young innovators. The competition, now in its ninth year, is open to students everywhere. Students have to submit projects that address serious global problems, such as road safety or poverty.

The students from Ireland, as Team Hermes, came tops in the Software Design section for a plug in device that monitors dangerous driving or hazardous road conditions.

As award winners the students were presented with $25,000 The team from Sligo Institute of Technology are Aíne Conaghan from Ballybofey, Donegal, James McNamara, a postgraduate research student from Ballyfarnon, Co Roscommon, Calum Cawley from Castlebaldwin, Co Sligo, and Matthew Padden from Ballina, Co Mayo.

Awards were also presented to students from the uS, Jordan, Taiwan, China, Romania, France, Poland, Brazil, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Oman, Korea, Slovakia, Japan and the Philippines.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 32

John Tyndall Co Carlow’s Brilliant ‘Polymath’ Seán Duke explains how much we owe to the founding father of spectroscopy.

T

he first researcher to identify the ‘greenhouse effect’, to explain why the sky is blue, and to develop optically pure air - the foreruner of today’s cleanroom technology, which is used in the manufacture of high-tech electronic devices. These are just some of the many reasons why John Tyndall, from Leighlinbridge Co Carlow was certainly one of the most famous 19th century scientists in Britain and Ireland. A multitalented man, he was also a brilliant science communicator, whose public lectures at the Royal Society in London were legendary, as were his many popular books on scientific topics. When he died in 1893 he died a rich and hugely successful man. Not bad for a man born into a humble Protestant family in rural Ireland.

Tyndall’s ancestors were from Gloucestershire and had arrived in the southeast of Ireland in the 17th century. His background was not a privileged one, and his father worked as a police constable. He attended local schools, where he learned subjects such as technical drawing and maths. He worked in Ireland as a surveyor for the Government doing land surveys and

mapping. He moved to England in 1842, now in his early twenties and did the same. He benefitted from the railway building boom in the UK in the 1840s, and made a lot of money working for the railway companies, doing surveying work in the second half of that decade.

It seems, however, that although he was always adept at making money, money was not his God. His main interest was in science and learning generally, and he went into teaching in 1847 at an English boarding school in Hampshire. He moved to Germany a year later, to do a PhD under Robert Bunsen, of bunsen burner fame, at the University of Marburg. He returned to England in 1851 and joined the Royal Society in London one year later. He would remain at the Royal Society all his working life, and became its Director.

Institute

The large and well-respected Tyndall National Institute in Cork was named in Tyndall’s honour. The reason the Institute was named after Tyndall is that he did a lot of research in areas that the Tyndall is interested in today such as the behaviour of light. Tyndall did some of the earliest investigations into the ‘guiding’ of light, and this is essentially what underlies optical fibre technology, which forms

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 33

the basis for modern communications, particularly the Internet. He also did a lot of work on what would today be called ‘cleanroom’ technology. His work involved studying things that float in the air, and he developed some of the very earliest ‘optically pure’ air. Today, cleanrooms are used as manufacturing sites for producing advanced semiconductors and opto-electronic devices.

Science communicator

Tyndall was a great believer in demonstrating things to students or the public in order to explain them. He gave lectures to the public on all kinds of topics, and he proved to be a brilliant natural science communicator and these lectures were very popular and attracted large crowds. This work also made him famous, and ultimately made him rich too. He succeeded the famous Michael Faraday as the Director of the Royal Institution and he continued the work of public outreach that Faraday had started.

Tyndall was an archetypal 19th century ‘polymath’, meaning he was interested in lots of different things. He belived in getting the message over by actually demonstrating things to the general public. He was profilic, publishing many books, 17 in total, and wrote 145 scientific papers.

Personal life

He married late, at the age of 55, to a woman 25 years younger. They had no children. He left just over £22,000 pounds in his estate when he died in 1893. This was an enormous amount considering that a London police constable was paid about £80 per year at the time.

If we do the comparative mathematics that means his estate was worth in the region of £6 million in today’s money.

He was someone who suffered considerable ill health. He slept badly, suffered from migranes and took ‘sleeping draughts’ to help him to sleep.

These draughts were tonics that people drank before bed to help them get to sleep. The draughts were administered to Tyndall by his wife, and they proved to be his undoing as he died from an accidental overdose of chloral hydrate when his wife got some bottles mixed up. The woman was distraught, and no blame was attached to her at the subsequent inquest.

Aside from science, the other great passion in Tyndalls’ life was mountain climbing and each summer form 1856 onwards, he visited the Alps. He was the

The Mer de Glace, from Tyndall’s book on The glaciers of the Alps, published in 1896. first to reach the top of the Weisshorn in 1861 and he climbed the Matterhorn in 1868, three years after the first ascent.

He had caught the mountain climbing bug when visiting the Alps for scientific reasons. Today he has a glacier in Chile named after him as well as a mountain in California and another in Tasmania.

Legacy

There were a number of things Tyndall did which were ‘firsts’. He was the first to analyse the trace gases in the atmosphere by employing a technique that would later become infrared spectroscopy. He used the technique to discover that

there were traces of carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmosphere. He concluded, showing brilliant insight, that they way that carbon dioxide and water vapour absorbed infrared radiation meant that they were keeping the Earth warm. He went further, and said without these two elements, life couldn’t exist on Earth.

He was the first scientist to attempt to describe precisely why the sky is blue. The simple version of his explanation is that it was all to do with the scattering of light. This was later replicated by Lord Raleigh, but Tyndall was the first to do it. He had many battles with creationists, who considered that life had arose spontaneously out of nothing. He showed that it was not possible for life to spring to life spontaneously through a simple experiment. He made a box very clean and took all the dirt out of the air, and waited. No life forms spontaneously arose.

Tyndall is one of Ireland’s greatest ever scientists, and his influence over many areas, including science communication, remains strong to this day.

From the 28th to the 30th September the Royal Irish Academy and the Environmental Protection Agency are holding a scientific conference to mark the 150th year since Tyndall’s experiments on infra-red absorption of atmospheric gases .

Details from http://tyndallconference2011.org

Biomedical winners

ENdA dowling and Emer Feerick, biomedical engineering research students at NUI Galway have been presented with awards for the exceptional quality of their work.

Enda dowling, from Kilkenny, was presented with the Engineers Ireland Biomedical Research Medal for his work on modelling how tissues (chondrocyte cells) respond to shear deformation.

Emer Feerick, from Milltown, Co Galway, was awarded the prize for Best Presentation at the Annual Symposeum on Computational Methods in Orthopaecic Biomechanics, which was held in California. This is the main forum for developments in orthopaedic biomechanics. Emer’s presentation was

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 34

on computer simulation of bone failure due to stresses induced by orthopaedic devices. By being able to model these stresses, designs for such devices can be improved.

PLANT LIFE

Flowering head of Daucus carota,

by Joaquim Alves Gasper.

The well bred carrot Tom Kennedy describes how carrots changed their colours while coming in from the wild.

I

t can be hard to sort out the umbrella plants, and at first glance all those flowering heads look a bit the same, but only in the way that all “black” birds, whether rook, cawing crow or sweetly singing blackbird, can look alike. There are a lot of umbrella plants, and it would be a bad mistake to mix up the hogweed or millfoil with the poisonous hemlock.

However, there is usually a well defined and easily identifiable clue that helps with identification, and with the wild carrot, it’s the cage.

The ancestor of all those orange carrots is among our common wild plants, and at this time of the year it is fairly easy to spot because the umbrella of white flowers closes up into a distinctive cage-like head. Although it is the right species, the roots of this particular Daucus carota bear little resemblance to the carrot in the shops.

Stringy, pale and going tough with age, the root of the wild carrot can be eaten, and perhaps this is why breeders decided to improve on nature. It is thought that selection and cultivation began about two thousand years ago in Afghanistan.

During the Soviet occupation, botanists who scoured the country for seeds, found that the diversity was unusually high, particularly for purple carrots, and these

were indeed the varieties that were first to go into cultivation.

The purple rooted carrot appears to have spread to the adjoining countries during the 10th century, and by the 14th

The flowering head of wild Daucus carota, with deeply cut leaves, and close up of the seed, with cross section shown on the lower left.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 35

century cultivation had reached the Mediterranean.

At that point, breeders managed to make the transfomation from purple to orange, and we know this from the writings of a 12th century Spanish Moslem scholar and agriculturalist, ibn al-‘Awwam, author of a 34 chapter book describing over 600 different plants and fruit trees.

From there, orange carrots went to the lowlands, and no doubt the rise of the House of Orange is the reason they became so popular in The Netherlands during the 17th century. From there, the orange carrot crossed over to England, where, the gentleman scholar, John Aubrey noted their arrival in Somersetshire.

Both forms, and their derivatives, are now among the world’s major crops, with something like 25 million tonnes being grown every year. Far from being grateful to the ancestor, growers are not too happy to allow wild carrots steal into their fields, and in the US, Daucus carota is classed officially as a noxious weed.

By nature, the flowering top of a carrot is popular with pollinating insects, and apart from liking to mix and mingle, the wild form might be a bit of an uncivilised hillbilly, but it is genetically superior.

PLANT LIFE Given an opportunity, a depleted cultivar will happily take back its genes, and the last thing a farmer wants to watch over is a carefully cultivated crop reverting to nature.

Another reason why farmers become protective of their crops is that while the flowers attract pollinators, the roots act like a magnet for the carrot fly, Psila rosae. Anyone who has tried to grow carrots in suburbia, is likely to be familiar with this pest, the grubs of which burrow into the roots, which being tossed aside in disgust, simply let loose the larvae to pupate into the next generation. In one season, the crops can be attacked twice, and as if this were not bad enough, the grubs can hide out in the wild relations while awaiting a return to the more succulent cultivars.

The purple colouring of the eastern carrots comes from water soluble pigments known as anthocyanins, but in the western orange varieties, these are replaced by carotenoids.

Those bright colours are important to us.

The parental command to, “eat your carrots” is usually followed by the homely advice that “they are good for your sight.” True, for the carotene that gives carrots their bright orange colour, helps to make the visual pigment, rhodopsin, and without rhodopsin we would not be able to see. The millions of rods and cones that line the back of our eye depend completely on rhodopsin’s reversible reaction to light. Oddly enough, for something so essential for sight, we have a blind spot when it comes to synthesising this essential chemical.

We have a missing link in the chain of reactions, so without a top up of the A vitamins with their carotene precursors, we can actually go blind. Normally, this is not a problem in this part of the world, but in many countries where a diet, lacking vitamin rich greens, is poor, loss of sight is all too common. According to the World Health Organisation, a third of the world’s children under the age of five are deficient in vitamin A, and up to half a million a year go blind because they do not have the essential precursor of rhodopsin.

The spreading umbrella of Daucus carota, and below the same plant in County Mayo beginning to close up into a cage.

Carrots, like other foods, are not just eaten to fill the stomach, and while sharing the role of providing us with enough carotene is important, they are also among the many plants that were valued as herbs. In their book, Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition, the authors, Allen and Hatfield, having gone through the records of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, noted that “folk tradition on the whole carefully distinguishes

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page xx

wild Daucus carota from the cultivated plant.”

A variety of cures are attributed to the wild carrot, but as is usually the case, distinguishing between the real and the imagined is next to impossible. The scientific literature presents a bewildering array of biochemicals, many of which could have an influence on our health, and an aromatic oil is produced for commercial sale by steam distillation of the seeds. One of the widespread traditions, going back to Hippocrates is that carrot seeds act as a contraceptive, and some researchers, basing their claim on tests with mice, think that some of the constituents may act by disrupting the implantation of the fertilized ovum. Another widespread belief is that wild carrots make good companions for tomato plants making them grow better.

At a Young Scientist exhibition, about 25 years ago, two students, Anne Phelan and Cathriona Delaney from Tipperary presented an all too rare glimpse of how plants, such as the wild carrot, were looked upon in the not too distant past.

One of Anne’s relations, John Walsh, had kept a scrap book of herbal cures. In neat copperplate writing, John had noted that wild carrot with equal parts of Yarrow, Blood Wort, otherwise known as Herb Robert, and another plant, whose name I could not make out, could be boiled up and strained to give a drinking cure for back-pain.

Apart from the difficulty in defining what exactly constitutes a back-pain, this, like so many other claims and beliefs, this would be hard to verify without undertaking a battery of scientific tests, but that’s exactly how some of the world’s most potent drugs were ‘discovered’. With tradition, old is usually best. While we can ignore the silly modern fads, long established folklore is often a good indicator that there is something worth investigating.

PEACE AT HOME I

s it always necessary for researchers to have all the latest equipment, or can they make do with whatever comes to hand? One distinguished scientist, Raghavendra Gadagkar, thinks not, and with a cheerful smile he said “my experiments require very little money, very little facilities, and very little equipment.” However, as he added, “they do need a lot of manpower.”

Raghavendra, who has earned a worldwide reputation for his studies of insect behaviour, was at the European Science Open Forum event in Turin last year where he explained that the most important thing to do in research is to think. Observation alone is not the same as understanding, he said, remarking that “I love to do experiments that require a lot of thought.”

His particular fascination is with a species of paper-making wasps, known to science as Ropalidia marginata. “It started as a hobby,” he said, “and then, when I got my PhD in molecular biology, I thought, why not continue!” Now, forty years later, Raghavendra is one of the leading lights at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and he has a dedicated school of followers, who, like him, are prepared to spend hours watching and observing in the hope that they can discover what makes an insect society work so well.

“Why do I look at insects?” For that question, Raghavendra has a ready answer. “For the same reason that anthropologists look at humans.” Unlike anthropologists, however, biologists such as Raghavendra can delve much deeper into societies that have evolved over many millions of years. These societies are not the same, in fact there are many different types, but as he pointed out, many of the problems facing humans are similar to those that social insects have already

By watching insects we can learn some lessons about society in general. Tom Kennedy reports on a scientist that likes to get back to the bare necessities in conducting research. solved. It is not a question of trying to copy insects, he said, but of learning how insects have managed to resolve problems, such as leadership succession and how to find a balance between caring and aggression.

Although many insects, such as ants, bees and wasps live in colonies, the number of species that form colonies are actually in the minority, and the colonies they form differ both in size and in sophistication.

The paper wasp, is a south Indian species, and as their name suggests they make their home from paper rather than wax. The wasps scrape cellulose fibre from plants, chew it into a pulp, add chemicals which they secrete, and spread the material out into thin layers. “It’s real paper,” said Raghavendra, “you can even write on it.”

A community in their paper home.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 37

What makes the paper wasp so special is that compared to other societies, the numbers that make up a colony are relatively small, just 20 or 30 individuals, and a single reproducing queen. This means that observers can get to know the individuals, and as Raghavendra said, this is important. Quoting Frances Bacon’s classic observation that “nature does not unveil its secrets except under the torture of experiments,” Raghavendra took out his paint brush to spot the individuals. Before this is done, he said, all you could see were a lot of identical wasps running around, but the moment individuals can be picked out, the scene is completely transformed and clear patterns begin to emerge.

One of the first significant patterns to show itself was the division into quite distinct casts. The males are largely irrelevant, said Raghavendra. “They just laze about and do nothing,” so in the overall scheme of things, they play a minor role. The females rule the roost, and apart from the single queen, there is a stay-athome group of “sitters” that do little, there are fighters, and there are foragers who go out and find food.

This was all very interesting, but what are the rules that bind these casts into a working colony?

To find out, Raghavendra and his research students painstakingly charted every movement, every action and every change that could have an impact on the colony.

It was known that there was always a single queen, and the prevailing view, based on studies of other insect societies, is that

EurOSCIENCE OPEN FOruM TurIN

WAR OUTSIDE

EuroSCIENCE oPEN Forum TurIN

she would win her dominant position through a show of aggression. Therefore, she would come from the caste of fighters. This impression turned out to be false. The queen in fact comes from the lazy rank of ‘sitters’ and until the time comes for her to assume the role, there is nothing to distinguish her from the others.

“This is one of the nice things about research,” said Raghavendra, “there are always surprises.”

That surprise raised another question, and to find out how a queen emerges, the researchers discovered that removing a reigning queen sparks off a higher level aggression within the colony.

Aggression, said Raghavendra, can go up forty fold, and surprisingly all of this is caused by just one individual. This individual is the heir, and as soon as her position is secured, all aggression drops back down to its normal day-to-day level.

Many experiments, repeated over and over, confirmed that there is always an heir apparent, ready to step forward to assume the position of queen. By deliberately splitting the colony into two, the researchers found that re-introducing the original queen caused the heir apparent to step back and return to the ranks.

While a show of aggression was involved in becoming a queen, it was just a temporary phase. The queen, in effect, was above politics, and instead of her making demands, she got on with breeding, while the foragers and fighters regulated themselves. “This is a bottoms up approach,” said Raghavendra, “decentralised, and self-organised,” and this is where the normal low level of aggression comes into play.

A paper wasp tucking into its caterpillar prey observed at the Institute of Science, Bangladore.

When wasps are given more food than they need, they become less aggressive. This might seem a simple enough conclusion, but to test if it is true, Raghavendra’s doctoral students had to sit for hours gaining enough trust from the wasps to accept their offerings of food.

Starving the wasps resulted in a rise of aggression, but as the researchers observed, it was directed exclusively at the foragers.

As Raghavendra explained, aggression within a colony turns out to be a lot lower than expected, and the wasps avoid conflict among themselves, even when the researchers deliberately tried to provoke a row by removing, then reintroducing the queen. However, while peace is maintained at home, outsiders come under attack, a balance that reminded Raghavendra of Voltaire’s remark that “it is lamentable that to become a good patriot one must become an enemy of the rest of mankind.”

It sometimes happens that wasps from neighbouring colonies stray into the hive. If they are young foragers, they are allowed in to settle, and they may even end up as heirs to the queenship. If they are older, they are tolerated, as long as they keep well away from the hive, but a stray queen is immediately attacked, dismembered and killed.

The strict rule is, one queen and one heir, and any attempt to break that rule will fail.

What are the special qualities that distinguish the heir from all the other wasps? Raghavendra throws up his hands, “we don’t know,” and this is not for lack of trying. One of his research students spent four years trying to solve that problem. A negative result, he said, can be just as important as a positive one. “She got her PhD”, he said, “and we had great satisfaction giving her paper the title.“We now know that the wasps ‘know.’”

The strange ability of wasps to recognise an undisputed heir remains a mystery, which no doubt Raghavendra’s team will eventually solve. There are no advance warnings, no obvious clues, yet when the time comes, the heir has started to become active within thirty minutes of the queen’s absence. Chemical messengers, known as pheromones, may or may not be involved, and Raghavendra said this line of enquiry was one of the rare occasions when he needed the back up of advanced analytical equipment. Lab analysis revealed that the queen indeed produces a 24-component pheromone cocktail. “Now that we know what it is,” said Raghavendra, “I could go back to studying my wasps.”

DUBLIN CITY OF SCIENCE 2012 In 2012 Ireland hosts the European open forum on science

www.dublinscience2012.ie LIVE LINK

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 38

Orion Nebula The hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of the star forming Orion Nebula region.

More than 3,000 stars are in this picture, a composite of 520 images obtained between 2004 and 2005. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light years away from earth.

Observations of this region from eSA’s herschel farinfrared instruments have shown the presence of molecular oxygen, the first time that these molecules have been detected in space. All the oxygen that had been detected before was in atomic form, single unattached atoms, rather than the molecular O2 form that we breathe.

even in its atomic form, the low concentration of oxygen has perplexed scientists who calculate that its presence should be much greater. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe, yet herschel’s instruments recorded that every molecule of oxygen was outnumbered by a million of hydrogen.

One possible explanation for this apparent shortage is that the oxygen atoms freeze into dust grains, and as water ice they are effectively hidden. Although this has not yet been proved, that ice could evaporate in warmer regions, allowing molecular oxygen to form.

www.sciencespin.com

of all kinds make their own distinctive kept going for hours, and no two species sounds, but, apart from sun-seeking sound the same, their songs are just as holidaymakers being lulled to sleep different and distinctive as those in birds. every evening by the cicadas, how Like birds, insects almost certainly many of us can recall listening to our sing for a reason, and while not a lot grasshoppers? Some insects can indeed is known on the subject, community make a lot of noise, but in his recordings, communications and calling for a mate are thought to be involved, and one of the A 450 million year old Crustacean, completeTom withLawrence fossilizedbrings soft us right up to and just of beyond the edge of our perception. recordings is of a water beetle sounding parts, has been found in Herefordshire. One the scientists recording the insects that inhabit an alarm. The role of sound may even go involved in the discovery, Prof David SiveterBy from the University Pollardstown Fen, Tom allows us to far beyond simple signalling, and it has of Leicester, said that what made the 5mm long fossil so special listen in that to songs that are so unfamiliar been found that it can cause air bubbles is not that it is a previously un-named species, but the soft thatthe they may as can well have come from an in the body of a neighbouring insect to parts have been preserved so well that eyes and antennae alien world. Yet, these are the songs that a resonate in sympathy. be made out. water beetles would have The recordings were made on The fossil, named Nasunaris flata, belongswhole to therange sameofgroup been singing long before we came on the Pollardstown Fen in County Kildare, an as water-fleas and shrimps. Their descendants are common In tune the and insects scene. area of alkaline marsh, one of the last of today in lakeswith and oceans, geologists often use the fossils as To create these sounds, insects draw its type in Europe, and therefore of great indicators of past climates. ne of the few lessons I can remember one part of their body against another, ecological interest. It provides an ideal from image schoolofis the thatfossil just by sittingthe soft parts like aand bow.

Depending habitat for water insects, and its relative Internal showing eyes.

Image: on the roughness, still andJ.listening you will begin to hear the intensity, pitch and isolation from busy roads and urban David Siveter, Derek E. G. Briggs, Derek J. speed Siveterand andstroke, Mark D. all kinds of sounds. Since then it has other qualities of sound can be varied, sprawl means that it is quiet enough to Sutton. become a lot harder to tune into our and of course insects have no problem make recordings. The only intrusions surroundings. In much the same way as with rhythm. Regular strumming can be came from occasional aircrafts passing Later, one of David’s successors, King Hezekiah, fearing that bright lights, have made the stars high overhead. the Assyrians would take Jerusalem using the same approach, invisible, the rise of surround sound rerouted the water into the city via a 550Tom metre long tunnel. It JERUSALEM’s fate totally was determined has made us almost deaf to by the underlying geology.

Kennedy proved to be a good decision, for in 701 BC, Jerusalem was the At world. the annual Geological Society the Amazingly, we even add of America meeting last only city that the Assyrians The failed toWater take. Beetles of Pollardstown October, Michael Bramnik from noise to block out unwanted noise.Illinois University explained CD Water still remains a major factor in shaping modern historyby that underground passageways in the karst limestone enabled A remarkable CD recording by Fen by Tom Laurence was issued in the region, and Michael Bramnik said that when he went in KingLawrence David tohighlights take the city.

Tom justWater how was drawn from the Spring Gruenrekorder, Germany. search of hydrological maps10for other€14 towns and settlements of we Gihon, lay just outside the city walls. David’s soldiers far havewhich distanced ourselves tracks. he was often rebuffed withwww.gruenrekorder.de a claim that such maps do not climbed down into the spring from ambient sounds.

Birds are and by tunnelling under the exist. walls access city. not thegot only ones to to the sing.

Animals

UPFRONT An old water flea

O

Bedrock of history

LIVE LINK

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

SCIENCE SPIN 48 41 Page 40 4 SCIENCE SPINIssue Issue Page

www.sciencespin.com

IRISH SUPFRONT CIENCE HAND www.scie

ncespin.e

Presenti ng the b est of Irish s cience to thousan ds of peo ple from hom e and abroad

SCIENC E

SPIN

CHArtiN

BOOK

g tHe st

2012

u

ru C t u r e s, s t r e Ngt seC tOr s Of iris Hs AND H sCieN Ce

Biotechn olo Pharmace gy uticals IT and co mmunica tions Environm ental scie nces Medical d evices A chalcid wasp Energy A wasp, just under half a cm long, from the Engineeri (Trichogrammatidae) in Ethiopian ng famiuly Mymarommatidae. Naturhistorisches Fo amber, body length 0,6 mmod sciences Museum Wien Agricultu ral researc h Health ca re Marine sc ience Geology and earth sciences Educatio n and tra ining Mathema A REMARKABLY detailed snapshot of the Cretaceous period has tical scien ces Physics been preserved in amber. Amber, almost as clear as glass, is fossilized Astrophy si resin, the sticky substance exuded by pine trees.

Nanotech cs nolo A team of twenty researchers from Germany, France, Austria, Science ca gy reers Ethiopia, Italy, the UK and USA, have been examining the 95 million

Science Spin into will publish Window the ancient past The Irish Science Handbook to coincide with the Dublin ESOF Dublin City of Science year oldin plants, nematodes, fungi, Event Julyinsects, 2012.

It will be a and even bacteria encased in Ethiopian amber. The amber was found within sandstone from the shop window forof all aspects northwestern plateau Ethopia.

In reporting their initial findings in the journal PNAS, the researchers of science and innovation explain that they now have an unprecedented window into a Cretaceous woodland. This was a time in Ireland willplants serve as to appear. when the firstand flowering began Two of the scientists involved, Matthias aVávra, valuable promotional tool Svojtka and Norbert from the University of Vienna, explained that thirteen insect both home and abroad. familiesat have been identified so far. These include hymenopterans,

thrips, barklice, zorapterans, and remains of moths and beetles.

During the lifetime of these animals, Ethiopia was part of the ancient continent, Gondwana. As the researchers pointed out, amber from this region is rare, adding greatly to the value of the fossil record.

Until now the most significant Cretaceous amber deposits came from The Handbook will help everyone understand who is doing North America and Eurasia.

what in science and where the researchers are based. Many organisations are now deeply involved in science, and at most of the third level institutions there are large, well equipped research centres, such as the Tyndall National Institute, REMEDI in Galway, and Conway at UCD. Ireland has become the research base for a growing number of multinationals, and in all sectors, growth is coming from innovation.

Blocking infections

An 8mm long member of the Thysanoptera, thunder fly, family. Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

Includes an A-Z of organisations involved in science and research in Ireland, third level colleges, research Canida albicans biofilm under attack. institutes, state bodies, associations The fungal growth on the right has been andattacked organisations

by Pseudomonas. Confocal microscope image, Gordon McAlester.

Also, an OUT and ABOUT section Morrissey, who led the givingDra John county by county listing of research team, commented that “if we places to go and experience science can exploit the same inhibitory strategy throughout Ireland. P aeruginosa uses, that thre bacterium

it causes a severe infection. Acquired resistance to antibiotics is making it then we might be able to design drugs Thousands of visitors coming to Dublin the 2012toCity of Science event, morefordifficult keep these fungal MEDICAL implants, suchwill as be cathers that can bespace used in as The antimicriobials to To book Irish Science and apart from highlives, level but conference capital, partner organisations from attacks under control, but as the Cork and prosthetics can asave they in the disperse yeast biofilms as they form.” around an theunintended country will host be involved inresearchers an ambitious national programme Handbook contact Alan Doherty at report in the journal, of can alsoallbecome He also said that it might be possible to IVE local events.

Microbiology, another pathogen could for fungal infections. Thehe yeast, L alan@sciencespin.com incorporate such inhibitory drugs into LINK provide a solution to that problem.

Candida albicans, can form a biofilm the implants.

The bacterium, Pseudomonas which is difficult to eradicate, and The next step, he said is to eruginosa, invades burn wounds, so as researchers at University College chemicalswill are The Irish Science Handbook will beseen distributed at City of Sciencedetermine events,what lowkind costof copies it is as a troublesome pathogen.

Cork report, this is the most common being produced by the bacterium, and However, as the researchers found, hospital-acquired infection. be available to the public, and the digital edition will be free-to-view on our websites to discover how and where it targets it inhibits the growth of Canida Normally, the yeast is not a www.sciencespin.com and www.sciencespin.eu the yeast. albicans. problem, but in certain circumstances IVE

L SCIENCE SPIN Issue 41 Page 5 LINK

over

500 eventS natIonWIde

Science Week irelanD

13-20 november 2011 WWW.SCIENCEWEEK.IE for further detaiLs Log on to WWW.ScienceWeek.ie LIVE LINK

www.twitter.com/ScienceWeek

www.facebook.com/ScienceWeekIreland

13

ER 2011 VEMB O N - 20