Science Spin 49

ISSUE

49

Nov/Dec 2011

€5 including VAT £4 NI and UK

SCIENCE

SPIN

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

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gold frenzy

Ireland’s gold rush how To win a noBel

The firsT europeans Bring Back The Birch

MeTeoriTes

and the Moon

Where creativity and great science meet

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BE PART OF IT Whtititi Ctititititititititititititititititititititititititititititititi tiubltititititititititi2012tititi SCIENCESPIN SPIN Issue Issue48 48 Page Pagexx xx SCIENCE

SCIENCE

SPIN Publisher Science Spin Ltd 5 Serpentine Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. www.sciencespin.com Email: tom@sciencespin.com Editor Tom Kennedy tom@sciencespin.com Contributing editor Seán Duke sean@sciencespin.com Business Development Manager Alan Doherty LIVE alan@sciencespin.com LINK Design and Production Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo Picture research Source Photographic Archive www.iol.ie/~source.foxford/ Printing Turner Group, Longford

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Upfront Prehistory on view

Tom Kennedy reports on ancient art and cave dwellers

Gold Frenzy

The search for Ireland’s gold

How to win a Nobel prize

Anna Nolan reports from a gathering of researchers at Lineau

Telling the future

Researchers describe plans to boost Ireland’s economy

Brilliant bivalves

Anthea Lacchia writes about Irish fossils

Meteorites and the Moon

Mike Simms explains why meteorites on Earth are not typical

Biomaterials

Harvesting novel biomaterials from the sea

Dr How’s science wows

Naomi Lavelle explores acids and bases

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Life in the soil and inherited patterns

Young science projects

Bringing back the birch

Native trees to relive a gloomy view

Stem cell restriction

A new rule is creating big problems for researchers

Reviews

Slow light and a quest for alien life

SCIENCE

ON AIR Go to

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10 14 17 22 24 25 29 30 33 35 37 39

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Arctic thaw

UPFRONT

Satellite observations show that the area of ice covering the arctic has halved over the past 30 years and that is faster than models predicted. Before the 1970s not a great deal is known about the extent of ice cover, and how it might have changed over time, because the arctic was so inaccessible. However, since satellites came into action, it has become possible to chart the changes with great precision. One result of the change is that shipping companies have seized the opportunity to take short cuts across the arctic Ocean. as researchers from the Université Joseph Fourier and the Massachusetts institute of technology report in Geophysical Research, the shrinkage recorded by satellite, is progressing about four times faster than previously predicted, and if current trends continue, summer ice in the arctic Ocean will be a thing of the past before the end of this century.

While ice is retreating on one side of the globe, the situation in the antarctic appears to be more complex, due, it is thought, to the fact that there is land below the southern pole. there, satellite observations show a gain in sea ice, but a steady reduction in overall ice mass over land.

Water on Mars

tHe crescent to the right is the surviving portion of a 65 km wide crater that was largely obliterated by the debris thrown up by another greater impact. the rim of the 140 km wide crater is to the right. this image, captured by Mars express during

august 2009, revealed the presence of a delta fanning out from the remains of the smaller crater, which has been named eberswalde. the existence of the delta provides clear evidence that the eberswalde crater, formed more than 3.7 billion years ago, must once have held a lake

Habituation

Once the novelty wears off we tend to ignore new smells, sounds or other stimuli in a process described as habituation. the alternative is to be in a constant and nerve wrecking state of alert, and to avoid that happening, our response to repeated stimuli weaken.

Habituation is not just confined to humans, but is common across the animal kingdom, and at tcD, researchers working with colleagues from the national centre for Biological Science in Bangalore, have been looking at the behaviour of fruit flies. As the researchers report in the journal PnaS, although habituation is ubiquitous, not much is known about the underlying mechanism.

Prof Mani Ramaswami’s group at tcD and Prof Veronica Rodrigue’s group in Bangalore combined genetic, anatomical and high-speed imaging techniques to see how the living brain responds to smell. the researchers found that the fly’s antennae continue to detect an odour, but the brain cells that receive these signals become progressively inhibited as surrounding cells release a negative neurotransmitter, known as GaBa. the inhibition is reversible, and in discussing their results, Prof Ramaswami pointed out that dishabituation can be just as important. a danger signal is likely to abruptly put us on high alert.

Some human neuropsychiatic disorders are due to defects in habituation, and a better understanding of the neural circuitry involved could help in the development of drugs or treatments.

Three way support

tHe US national Science Foundation with SFi in the Republic, invest northern ireland, and the Dept of employment and learning ni, has invited submissions on collaborative research in nanotechnology, sensors, telecommunications, energy and sustainability.

Details from Darren Dutterer at nSF, dduttere@nsf.gov

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Switching on algae

UPFRONT

CynobaCteria, known also as blue-green algae have a lot of potential in biotechnology, but one of the problems is that they switch off under stress. During periods of dark, for example, they stop burning up energy so that they can take a rest while waiting for conditions to improve. at the ruhr Universitaet in bochum, researchers working with colleagues from the tokyo institute of technology, found that they could stop cynobacteria from taking a rest by knocking out an enzyme switch. Cynobacteria use the universal atP-aDP reaction to store and release energy, and when stressed, part of the atPase enzyme reacts to stop it breaking the energy rich phosphate bond.

Curious to know what would happen if left on, the researchers managed to disconnect the switch. in a report in the Journal of biological Chemistry, the researchers said that the results came as a surprise. instead of making the cynobacteria suffer, they grew well in the lab and instead of diverting energy into an atP store they remained available for biotechnical work.

While scientists dream about the possibilities of artificial photosynthesis, cynobacteria have no problem using their energy for water splitting work. according to the researchers, the genetically modified cynobacteria would boost the yield of solar powered hydrogen production.

Walking maths

a SerieS of walking trails to explore the mathematical side of Dublin have been launched and are available free as an audio download. Developed by science author, Mary Mulvihill in collaboration with educational specialists from St Patricks College, the Dublin by numbers walking

Horizon

the 7th Framework programme, under which research is funded by the european Commission, is likely undergo some changes, including the name. Speaking at an event in Dublin during october, Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn, who is in charge of the Framework programme, said the proposed changes are in line with calls from member states to make funding more accessible and more effective. “root and branch simplification of research and innovation funding under horizon 2020 will help the less experienced researchers, institutions, companies and regions to become fully involved in european projects. it will help SMes as well,” said the Commissioner.

When the current Framework 7 comes to an end in 2014, it is to be replaced by horizon 2020. an 80 billion euro budget for horizon, said the Commissioner, will be up for discussion in the european Parliament. acknowledging the need for fiscal restraint, the Commissioner said that it is important to invest in the future. on the economy, she said, we have to be ‘smart’ rather than just reductive. the economies of Germany, Sweden and Finland, she said, benefited greatly from their investment in R&D, and Ireland is likely to reap similar rewards from an increase of 9 per cent to 460 million euro for Sti in 2011. trails act as a guide around some of the lesser known sites around the city. there are three trails, each taking 60 to 90 minutes and with the download comes a PDF booklet with map and 13 pages of activities. ingeniousireland.ie/podcast-audio-tours/dub1in-bynumb3rs-free www.ingeniousireland.ie

School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin

“Making a difference since 1711” This year, the School of Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin celebrates its Tercentenary. With 43 academic, administrative and technical staff, and more than 100 postgraduate students it is more active than ever before. It occupies state-of-the-art laboratory facilities on-campus and in the newly commissioned Biosciences Building in Pearse Street, Dublin. The School has an impressive array of modern equipment, and arranges that its undergraduate students, as well as postgraduate researchers, can gain experience of these instruments.

To mark its Tercentenary the School has run a series of events during 2011, including the recent “Elements” exhibition at the Science Gallery. Our next public event, linking Chemistry with the Life Sciences and with Medicine, is the inaugural Cocker Lecture

“A Little Light Relief”

Professor David Phillips (President of The Royal Society of Chemistry) 6 p.m. Thursday, November 17th Tercentenary Hall, Trinity Biosciences Institute, 152-160 Pearse Street “Light, particularly sunlight, is believed to be good for our health with a mystical power attributed to it by many civilisations. In this lecture, Professor Phillips will use his expertise in photo-medicine to demonstrate that there is both truth and fallacy in such beliefs. Renowned for his entertaining lectures, Prof Phillips will discuss the effects of light on the skin, as well as diagnostic and therapeutic uses of light (eg photo therapies to treat skin complaints and neonatal jaundice, and interactive viral, bacterial and fungal infections). The talk will also include revolutionary applications of lasers in medicine, including surgical uses of infrared and ultraviolet lasers, and the use of lasers plus chemical sensitisers to destroy tumours selectively (photodynamic therapy).”

Don’t miss this exciting occasion!

Admission is free of charge, but tickets must be obtained in advance from the School of Chemistry LIVE Contact Ms Jill Galvin 01-8961726, or email: galvinji@tcd.ie LINK

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UPFRONT The orbit of Hartley 2, shown in white, in relation to the orbit of the five innermost planets of the Solar System. The comet made its closest pass to Earth on 20th October 2011, coming within 19.45 million km of our planet, and this is when the instruments on Herschel were able to record the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium.

Water from space

The Earth, when new, was extremely hot, and this makes scientists wonder how come that two-thirds of the surface is now under water. a likely explanation is that the water was added later, and that it came from space.

We now know that comets can be like dirty snowballs, orbiting through space, and every so often they smash into planets. in the past, when the solar system was new, such collisions would have been frequent.

While this theory seems to fit the facts, scientists were hesitant to state categorically that this is what happened until they had some sort of proof. Esa’s Herschel infra-red space observatory has now strengthened the view that our water came from space. The ratio of deuterium and hydrogen in a comet, Hartley 2, has been found to a perfect match for the water in the Earth’s

Rocket fuel

MicroorganisMs can produce an enormous range of chemicals that could be next to impossible or far too costly to produce synthetically. one of these microorganisms, the bacterium anammox, can produce nitrogen from ammonium without having to use oxygen. This discovery led Mike Jetten, professor of microbiology at the radboud University, nijmegen, to postulate that the same bacterium could be used to produce a rocket fuel, hydrazine. in september, Jetten’s group confirmed that Anammox can, indeed, produce hydrazine, and they have discovered that production depends on a pathway involving a reaction between ammonium and nitrogen monoxide. That reaction evolved a long time ago, and the researchers believe that after millions of years the bacterium has since moved on, so to some extent this is evolutionary baggage. in its natural state, anammox appears to have no need for hydrazine, so it’s just a intermediate by-product, but by introducing an extra protein, the researchers were able to capture the fuel.

oceans. although the ratio between hydrogen and its heavier isotope, deuterium would have been fixed about 13.7 billion years ago, formation of ice in space resulted in variations, and all the comets that were looked at before Hartley 2 had deuterium levels that were twice as high as those found on Earth. The conclusion from these findings went against the idea that water could have come from space, but the latest findings from Hartley 2

show that comets could, in fact, have brought us our water.

Paul Hartogh from the Max Planck institute, who led the investigation, has explained that Hartley 2 may be different from other comets because it came originally from a frigid region beyond Pluto, whereas the other comets formed near Jupiter and saturn.

The conclusion is that our water may have come from the cold outer reaches of the solar system.

Flash of extinction Massive explosions in space result in the earth being bathed in bursts of high energy radiation. These highenergy bursts can deplete ozone, allowing ultra-violet through to damage life.

The intensity and duration of these bursts depends on where they come from, and as Brian Thomas, an astrophysicist at Washburn University in the Us argues, short, intense bursts may have had a much greater impact on life on earth, than the longer less intense bombardments. at a meeting of the Geological society of america at Minneapolis in October, Brian said that the most intense bursts could have been amazingly brief, perhaps produced in less than a second. such intensity could possibly be produced by collision of black holes, or neutron stars, and the impact on earth would have been severe enough not alone to knock out the ozone, but to make free oxygen and nitrogen combine into nitrous oxides.

How likely is this to have happened? Brian Thomas estimated that such an event, based on what we observe among other galaxies, might occur once every 100 million years. as the earth is a lot older than that, it could have been exposed to intense bursts of radiation several times.

Galaxies do not remain the same, so Brian does not hold out much hope of finding evidence for such bursts in space, but as he remarked, they may have left a calling card in the form, for example, of an isotope, iron 60.

Brain’s aim now is to see if palaeontologists can match up that calling card with one of the earth’s great extinctions.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 4

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Pulsars

UPFRONT

Rapidly rotating stars of enormous mass known as pulsars emit great flashes of light. They are formed at the end of a star’s life, and are so dense that their mass, about one and a half times that of our Sun, could fit into Galway Bay, and the light they emit can outshine an entire galaxy.

Among those studying these extreme events is a team at NUI Galway led by Dr Andy Shearer, and at the end of August, they announced that, contrary to previous ideas most of the light is emitted from the surface. The team had been observing the Crab pulsar, which formed in 1054 AD, although 1,600 light years distant from Earth, when it was visible as a star by day. Such observations are rate, but Irish monks recorded the event in their annals.

The study, in which the NUI Galway astronomers worked with colleagues from Italy, the UK and the US, combined optical observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, and data from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray observatory.

For forty or so years, said Dr Shearer, scientists have been wondering how pulsars work, and finding out that most of the light comes from the star’s surface is another step towards understanding what’s happening.

What do people think?

in January 2011 over ten thousand Europeans from ten countries, including Ireland, were asked about their attitude to climate change. From this survey, the Irish co-sponsors, the Marine Institute, the EPA and the Heritage Council, concluded that while people are aware of large physical changes, they know less about subtle changes, such as shifts in species distribution. Strangely enough, concerns about melting ice in the Arctic were stronger in the south of Europe than the north, and the Dutch, who are most at risk are the least concerned about rising sea levels.

Commenting on the results, Marine Institute CEO, Peter Heffernan said that the survey helped to show how Irish views to common problems compared to those in other parts of Europe.

Back to life

Many gene like structures have been written off as junk because they did not seem capable of coding for proteins, so had no known function. In evolutionary terms, it is thought that some of these are on the way to be discarded as redundant.

However, as researchers under Dr Parie-McDermott at DCU have discovered, one of these ‘pseudogenes’ is not dead, but very much alive and is involved in the regulation of folic acid.

This has significance as disruption of pathways involving folic acid are associated with failure of the neural tube to close over properly, giving rise to condition known as spina bifida.

The immediate significance of this discovery, is that the gene, DHFRL1, could become a new target for treatment of women at risk from having a baby with this condition.

The longer term significance of this discovery is that many other so called ‘pseudogenes’ may have a function.

Commenting on this, Dr Parie-McDermott said that “our findings call for a reassessment of many human pseudogenes and urges researchers to challenge the assumptions made in the past. It is possible that given the many of the thousands of known pseudogenes, many more may not be zombies at all.”

Butterfly children

IN ABOUT 300 Irish families children have, or are likely to develop a skin condition known as epidermolysis bullosa.

The condition, which is genetic, is severe and it involves weakening of skin. The different layers, which are normally bound together, are loose, and the extremely fragile condition of skin which has led to the term ‘butterfly children’ is painful and those affected are likely to die young.

The charity, DEBRA, was established in 1988 to give support to those affected and to raise funds for research into the condition. To date, over €2 million has been raised to fund research, and as DEBRA’s research manager, Dr Avril Kennan, reports, progress is being made to develop treatments. It is not just an Irish problem, and worldwide the condition arises once in every 18.000 live births.

At the beginning of September, DEBRA hosted an international conference on the condition, and as Dr Kennan reported, Dr Mark de Souza, founder of Lotus Tissue Repair in the US was among the speakers. $26 million is being invested by this company to develop a protein replacement therapy for the most severe form of the condition. This involved culturing of genetically engineered human collagen so that it can be applied to wound areas.

Application on animals has shown a reduction of the blistering caused by the condition, and human trials are about to start.

Dr Kennan said that any progress through research is bound to give hope to families that have to struggle with the condition.

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UPFRONT

Cure all

Dr Joshua Balsters, a neuroscience researcher at TCD, observed that testing of drugs is often confined to people affected by a particular condition, such as Alzheimer’s. This limits our understanding of how these drugs work, and as Dr Balsters remarked, “it’s clear that we should also be testing them on healthy individuals as well.”

The observation arises from the results of a study conducted by scientists at TCD in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline and St James’s Hospital in which drugs, normally used only to treat patients with Alzheimer’s were administered to healthy individuals. It was found that those taking the medication, Donepezil, performed worse in memory tasks than individuals taking a placebo.

Two technologies were combined to gain a better understanding of when and where the drug acted on the brain.

According to the TCD Institute of Neuroscience, this is one of the first times that a combination of electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging has been applied in studying the effects of drugs on healthy individuals.

Knowing how a healthy brain reacts to a drug, such as Donepezil, is likely to result in the identification of targets in the treatment of Alzheimer’s.

Repairing mutations

IN A groundbreaking development, scientists have shown that it is possible to take cells from a patient and correct a genetic mutation. The researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge focused on a mutation in a gene known as alpha1-antitryptin which is responsible for causing cirrhotic liver disease and lung emphysema.

Reporting their findings in Nature, the researchers explained that they first transformed skin cells into stem cells, and these were then repaired by inserting a correct version of the gene before being reprogrammed to develop into liver cells.

The transfer of the gene evolved using what is known as a ‘molecular scissors’ to snip the genome at the right place, and a DNA sequence, known as piggyBac, was used to insert the gene. Once inserted, the piggBac sequence was removed, leaving no trace as the stem cells continued to develop into liver cells.

Six of the best

The European Research Council has awarded grants to six early career researchers from Ireland. These grants, which can be worth up to €2 million each, are only awarded to exceptional researchers engaged in pioneering work. The awards are open to all fields of science, and in this round almost half were selected from the physical sciences and engineering.

Eoin Casey, from University College Dublin was selected for his work on analysis of biofilm fouling in nanofiltration membranes.

Paolo Guasoni, from Dublin City University is working on the mathematics of financial systems.

Jeffifer Claire McElwain, from UCD, is investigating the role of oxygen as a driver of plant evolution over the past 400 million years.

John Michael Nolan from Waterford Institute of Technology is working on the enrichment of macular pigment, which could have a significant impact on preventing loss of sight.

Sean O’Riain, from the National University of Maynooth, is working on economics, and Carola Schuizke, from Trinity College Dublin is working on evaluation of monodithiolene molybdenum complexes as a potential treatment for isolated sulfite oxidase deficiency.

In laboratory in vi trio and mouse tests, the liver cells produced normal alpha1-antitrypsin, showing that the repair had succeeded.

While the research is still in its early stages, one of the lead scientists, Dr Ludovic Vallier from Cambridge, said that it represents a first step towards personalised cell therapy for genetic disorders of the liver. “We now have the tools necessary to advance towards this essential objective,” he stated.

Human trials are not far off, and the researchers followed up these findings by taking cells directly from a patient with an alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency. Following the same procedure, the mutation was corrected, and the resulting cells produced the normal protein.

Prof David Lomas, who, as a consultant physician at Addenbrooke and Papworth hospitals in the UK, has long experience dealing with this disease, commented that successful treatment could make an enormous difference to patients. Currently, he said, there is no other cure other than transplantation.

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 49 Page 6

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 E LIV LINK

CITY OF SCIENCE 2010 European Science Open Forum

What is it?

ESOF is a showcase for the best in European science.

Previously held in Stockholm, Munich, Barcelona, Turin the European Science Open Forum is being held in Dublin during 2012. Thousands of visiting scientists will come to hear some of the world’s most distinguished speakers and to attend workshops at Dublin’s Liffey side Conference Centre.

In addition, scores of supporting events will take place throughout the country.

What’s on the programme?

Among the numerous subjects to be discussed by leading scientists will be the most recent findings about exoplanets, where we stand now on stem cells, vaccines to combat diseases, understanding volcanoes, the future of nuclear energy, scientific archaeology and communicating science in more effective ways.

During each day several topics will be covered in a number of parallel sessions, so there will be lots to choose from. From hundreds of submissions, an international programme committee has selected 95 for inclusion in the final programme. Each of these 90 minute presentations will conclude with questions and answers.

CAREERS

Early career researchers from Europe and beyond will be much in evidence during the City of Science event. Career development has become an issue of growing importance both to young researchers and for the asdvancement of science in general. Increased mobility, networking, and aquisition of additional skills are just some of the topics that concern early career researchers. Up to 1,000

What’s it all about?

FOOD l HEALTH ENERGY l ENVIRONMENT CLIMATE l SCIENCE & CULTURE FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE INFORMATION EDUCATION & INNOVATION

There will be workshops, debates and panel discussions on some of the most important issues facing humanity now. Some of the questions that will be open to debate will be: l Will we starve, and can the world strike a balance between growing crops for fuel or harvesting for food? l Can we eliminate some of the world’s worst diseases, and what sort of cures can we expect from stem cells? l Can we live with climate change, and what is more likely, another ice age, or are we all going to roast? l What makes us human, are we still evolving, or will information technology leap ahead of our intelligence? l How does Europe compare to the US and Asia in terms of science and research? Are we different, and can Europe compete?

Who will be there?

young researchers will be discussing these and other challenges during a special Careers Programme in ESOF 2012.

The Career Programme will focus on three main themes: l Is the 21st century researcher fit for purpose? l The diversity of opportunities in career development. l International mobility.

The Careers Programme will include face-toface engagement with potential employers.

There will also be a Marie Curie Fellowship satellite meeting where more than 400 researchers funded under this mobility programme will attend a special conference prior to the main ESOF event.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 7

Helga Nowotny, President of the European Research Council, the body that funds frontier research.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist born in Northern Ireland who discovered radio pulsars.

Peter Doherty, the Nobel Prize winning immunologist and 1997 Australian of the Year.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, particle phycist and Director of CERN. Huanming Yang, a leading geneticist from China who was involved in the Human Genome Project.

Tania Singer, German neuroscientist and world expert in human empathy.

Jean-Jacques Dorain, Director General of the European Space Agency.

Máire Geoghegan Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.

www.dublinscience2012.ie LIVE LINK

Treatment in sight

iN The western world degeneration of the light sensitive macula at the back of the eye is the main cause of blindness. Researchers have been trying to find effective treatments for what is known as age related macular degeneration (AmD), but were being frustrated by a lack of knowledge about processes that trigger the condition.

A build up of a harmful by product of oxidation, known as malonaldehyde is known to be involved, and in October this year researchers at the medical University of Vienna led by a PhD student, christoph Binder, published their findings that the body has a defensive mechanism that normally removes this substance before it causes harm.

A collaborative research project with the University of San Diega, University of Jena and John hopkins University, has also revealed that this break down of malondialdehyde depends on the presence of a common blood protein, known as factor h. however, variations in the gene that codes for this protein, mean that some people are more at risk of developing AmD. According to the researchers, those genetic variations can result in a seven to ten fold increase in risk of developing the condition. having discovered the processes involved, researchers are now concentrating on finding a way to prevent the accumulation of malanoaldehyde in those most at risk from developing AmD.

Detecting meningitis

A RAPiD detection test for meningitis has been developed by scientists in the Royal Victoria hospital, Belfast.

The test, which makes use of now well established rapid polymerase chain reaction to amplify tiny traces of genetic material, means that doctors no longer have to wait for 24 or more hours before diagnosis is confirmed.

Meningitis is extremely difficult to diagnose and that makes if harder to intervene in time.

The test has now been licensed out to hiberGene Diagnostics, a start-up company based at Nova UcD. ceO of the company, Brendan Farrell said the test is extremely sensitive and plans are in place to launch it into the global market in 2012.

Uranus viewed in near-infrared to reveal its otherwise faint pattern of sharply angled rings.

Image: L Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison from Keck Observatory

In a spin

The earth spins at a 23 degree angle to the orbital plane, giving us our seasons.

Jupiter spins at three degrees, Saturn and Neptune spin at 29 degrees, so it is generally accepted that these angles more or less fit in with the notion of planets condensing from one great ring of material as the solar system formed. however, Uranus, recently demoted from its planetary status, also turns out to be an exception in having a 98 degree spin.

Astronomers have been puzzling about how Uranus came to be such an oddball, and it was assumed that it was knocked on its side by a massive impact. however, the problem with this idea is that the 27 moons of Uranus should have continued following their original orbit, but they too, match the 98 degree tilt.

Scientists, led by Alessandro morbidelli from the Observatoire de la cote d’Azur in Nice, have come up with an explanation for this peculiar orbit. if Uranus had been hit while still in the process of formation, the protoplanetary material would not yet have condensed into moons, so everything would have been tilted together. modelling by morbidelli’s group suggested that if this had happened, the moons should orbit the other way around, yet, this is not what astronomers actually observe.

The explanation appears to be that the theory is correct, but Uranus was not just hit once, but that there were at least two collisions. in another announcement Dr Pedro lacerda from Queen’s University Belfast, told those attending the european Planetary Science congress at Nantes in October about the discovery of another spinning object, tilted almost at 90 degrees to the ecliptic plane. The object, known as 2001QG298, is not just peculiar because of its tilt, but it appears to be shaped like an hourglass and is rotating like a propeller.

During 2004 the object was spotted by Dr Scott Sheppard and Prof David Jewitt in the Kuiper Belt, where the shattered remnants left over from planet formation orbit beyond Neptune. Although too far away for the details to be seen, the binary form and rotation could be deducted from variations in brightness. As the object moves around the Sun the whirling propeller shape gradually opens out from edge-on to full-face, making the brightness change.

Although surprised by the angle, the astronomers said that such a tilt and oddshaped binaries might not actually be all that rare in the Kuiper Belt.

Blood cancer

A chemicAl, known as PhA 767491 hydrochloride, which has been found to inhibit cell proliferation in a number of human cells, has produced promising results in the treatment of a common form of blood cancer.

Scientists at NUi Galway have been investigating the impact of this substance on chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, often known simply as cll. Professors corrado Santocanale,

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michael O’Dwyer, and Afshin Samali have published results in molecular cancer Therapeutics showing that a PhA 767491 based drug is an effective killer of leukaemia cells, including those that have become resistant to existing chemotherapy. According to the researchers, resistant cells are a problem because they can act as a reservoir, giving rise to a relapse after initial, and apparently successful, treatment.

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

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

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

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

www.MyScienceCareer.ie

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

PrEhIStory oN vIEw the vézère valley with its meandering river has been occupied continuously since humans first arrived in Europe. At the end of the last ice age cave art reached a peak, and as tom Kennedy reports, people continued to live in troglodyte villages until the 16th century.

The vivid paintings of Lascaux, left, are far from being the only examples of prehistoric art. Thirteen sites have so far been discovered along the Vézère valley, among them the Les Combarelles where images of mammoths, above, show that people lived among animals that are now extinct.

P

eople who head off to the sunny by those who placed the cup-marked Dordogne are following an extremely stone over her grave. old tradition, for that is where the cave The Neanderthals were not just dwellers found shelter from the ice sheets confined to the Dordogne, but occupied that covered a large part of Europe. an enormous area stretching from the One valley in particular, along the south of Spain to Kurdistan and the long and meandering Vézère river, north of Europe, but in a material sense offered sanctuary among caves and they hardly changed over 50,000 years, overhanging ridges that had been cut into yielding finally to what we like to think the limestone. During the last ice age, the of as modern people. Was there a conflict, valley, providing game, flints and fuel, or did they just fade away? No one remained clear, and it is thought that really knows, but all non-Africans have this may well have been the case during inherited some of their genes, and its previous periods of glaciation, for the area thought that growing up too fast stunted has been occupied since Homo erectus their cultural development. arrived about half a million years ago, By about 35,000 years ago Homo before giving way to the Neanderthals, sapiens, slower to mature, but seemingly who left their chipped out arrowheads smarter, was at work here making and ochre adorned dead. As far as we slightly superior scrapers, blades and know, the Neanderthals were the first to spear tips that became better use fire, and in spite of their bad and better over time. press, they were caring people, These people also and were probably not much began to express different from us. They themselves in lived together, liked to wear art, engraving personal adornment, and outline images they seem to have looked of the animals after the old and infirm, they hunted for at one ancient site, La in stone. This Ferassie, the remains was before of an “old man” of the last Ice Age, about 45, too infirm but as conditions to survive alone, were became colder and drier, found, and there is also people seem to have become more the burial pit of a three inventive, and indeed, the focus year old girl, which after was no longer, if it ever had been, on 40,000 or perhaps even technical progress. Female A Neanderthal skull discovered statuettes began to appear more years ago, can still connect us to the sadness near Les Eyzies is about 70,000 in abundance, usually years old. that must have been felt headless, and literally

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Along the valley, one layer of Cretaceous Era limestone lies over another, and where they meet, the older rock has been eroded back, leaving a flat ledge and an overhang that often served as a shelter for cave dwellers. stripped down to the bare essentials.

Unlike the message we usually get from back-street graffiti, however, these Venus figures are more likely to have been symbols of fertility, a celebration of motherhood that would not be out of place today over much of Europe.

Technical advancements were being made, notably the eyed needle, but it was art that really began to race ahead.

The low relief sculptures and incised lines of this period, known as the Upper Palaeolithic, are amazingly true not just to life, but to the essence of life, and that seems to be what the artists wanted to capture above all.

At the end of this period, 18,500 to 11,000 years ago, this art reached a peak, and it was a long time before the world saw anything to match it in quality or sensitivity.

By a piece of geological luck, a remarkable number of these incised drawings and paintings survive within the caves along the Vézère valley. Best

The salmon at Abai du Poisson, at 25,000 years old, the first known representation of a fish.

Due to intervention by Denis Peyrony, the carving was saved, but not before the surrounding edges had been chipped away. known is the cave at Lascaux near Montignac, often described as the Sistine Chapel of Palaeolithic art. Lascaux may be well known, but it is far from being the only cave with ancient paintings and drawings. In the Vézère valley fifteen cave sites have been given UneSCO World heritage status, and it is possible that more will be discovered. the area of deeply eroded limestone is riddled with underground passages, yet the presence

for the area. this 1.05 metre long sculpture at Abai du Poisson, the first known representation of a fish, is now one of the highlights of the area, and denis realised that removal of such items, which had begun almost as soon as sites were discovered, had to be stopped. At one site in the previous century there had even been a stall where objects were for sale.

In 1913 the fish was declared to be a national monument, and denis, continuing his campaign to establish a world capital of prehistory, set about establishing the Musée de Préhistore at Les Eyzies, which is now the focal point for studies, and a big tourist attraction.

of art in these caves has only been known to science for 150 years.

Much of the credit for preserving and protecting these caves is due to a school teacher, turned archaeologist, denis Peyrony. Incensed by a particularly ignorant attempt early in the 20th century to hack out a 25,000 year old figure of a salmon from one site so that it could be removed to the Berlin Anthropological Museum, Denis sought official protection The cave of Les Combarelles is long and narrow, and most of the 800 engraved drawings are well in from the entrance.

The largest number of drawings are within the area circled here in red.

Grotte des Combarelles At the end of the 19th century archaeologists were informed by the local landowner that there were ‘beasts’ in a cave. With some difficulty the archaeologists gained access through a narrow opening leading into a long and narrow cave. As the explorers made their way deeper into the cave, they were astounded to find not just a few, but hundreds of animal figures engraved into the walls. Over 800 of these horses, bisons, aurochs, lions, reindeers, wolves, rhinoceroses, foxes, and fish adorn the passageway, most of them concentrated into a 150 metre long stretch 70 metres in from the entrance.

In the slanting light of a torch, the lines stand out, firm and drawn with the sort of sure, confident strokes that only a skilled and talented artist could achieve. these drawings are certainly not the work of amateurs, for they show a maturity of style that must have taken time and effort to develop.

It is thought that the drawings were made during two phases of the Magdalen period, between 13,680 and 11,380 years ago, and in places they are so numerous that the lines go through each other, almost as if looking at animals in motion.

Obviously this art was important, yet these remarkable engravings were never on open view. even when new, access to the narrow cave was restricted, and in places there is just enough room for a single person to squeeze through. there is, of course no light, and not much air.

To make the engravings, the artist would have had to creep in and find a suitable surface before scratching out a figure by the light of a smoking lamp. Within an hour or two the smoke and lack of air would have made it impossible to continue, yet in that time a drawing would have been made, and perhaps tinted with ochre to give the drawing body.

Given that the drawings had to be done quickly makes it all the more remarkable that the artists did not just

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50 metres

look for a flat even surface, but sought out contours that could help give the image shape. Did they practice outside for weeks, did they come in repeatedly to plan where to draw, and did artistic talent give these individuals special status? No one knows, but one of the most popular theories is that the caves were places of initiation, where people on reaching a certain age would be brought for a rite of passage involving close study of the images. The fact that the drawings were so inaccessible suggests that this may well have been the case.

As in the other locations, humans are of far less importance than the animals. At Grotte des Combarelles, only 40 of the 800 figures are recognisably human, and even these are vague and schematic, so while we can linger over the details of long extinct mammoths, we cannot see what these people were like.

Drawings faithfully copying the cave engravings, and, above, how the originals appear.

A 40 by 50 km area of the VÊzère valley contains 147 prehistoric sites, of which the Lascaux Cave, discovered in 1940, is best known. The area is remarkable because it has been inhibited for so long, and no where else in the world has yielded such an abundance finds that go back before the last ice ages right up to late medieval times.

600,000 to 250,000 years ago

Lower Palaeolithic, Acheulean Homo erectus arrived in Europe Pebble tools, sidescrapers and flakes During this time there were glacial, and interglacial cycles.

250,000 to 40,000 years ago

Middle Palaeolithic, Mousterian Homo sapiens neanderthalensis Sidescrapers, points and worked flints Engraved stones, cup-marks, and use of red ochre Interglacial and glacial cycles.

40,000 years ago

Upper Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals disappear Worked blades and use of red ochre.

Mostly mild climate.

The Venus of Laussel holding up a buffalo horn, carved from stone about 25,000 years ago and thought to have been a symbol of fertility.

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35,000 to 28,000 years ago

Early Upper Palaeolithic, Aurignacian Homo sapiens Scrapers, blades and spear tips.

Animal representations engraved in limestone.

Cold, becoming temperate

28,000 to 23,000 years ago

Middle Upper Palaeolithic, Grevettian Shaped points Low relief carvings and female statuettes Cold, becoming drier

23,000 to 18,500 years ago

Middle Upper Palaeolithic, Solutrean Invention of the eyed needle Low relief sculptures, female figures Dry, cold, becoming glacial.

18,500 to 11,000 years ago

Late Upper Palaeolithic, Magdalenian Greater variation in crafts Animal sculpture and painting reaches its peak.

End of glacial period.

A vertical village, at la Roque Saint-Christophe, and a model of how it would have looked in the 17th century.

Troglodyte village

The French have never abandoned their caves, and wherever there is a cliff face, the chalky limestone that covers most of the southwest has been picked away to create the perfect storage space for wines. heat above, and a constant cool temperature below, and usually rent free. Sometimes these caves have been greatly enlarged as underground quarries, providing stone for the surrounding houses, and in a number of places caves have been converted into troglodyte homes.

These rocks were once the bed of a warm shallow sea that, like the central plane of Ireland, was raised up. however, unlike Ireland, these lime rich rock are younger, and often softer.

erosion and dissolution by water has created many caves in the south west of France, and in the Vézère valley, steep sided valleys with enormous overhangs are a prominent feature of the landscape. The meanderings are due to the river meeting harder rock, and the overhangs were formed along the boundary between rocks from two different periods of the cretaceous. The overhangs usually have a flat floor, and above this a convex ceiling, forming a perfect cover for those in search of shelter.

One of the most spectacular of these natural shelters is La roque Saint-christophe, which was inhabited until the 16th century. Long before skyscrapers, this was a vertical town in which a thousand, if not more people, occupied five terraces of the sheer cliff. There were hundreds of houses, cut back into the rock and fronted with half-timbered façades, a forge, a smokehouse, a slaughterhouse, and a cowshed. There was even a main street, perched high above, overlooking the valley.

The inhabitants probably felt secure, and indeed, all they had to do was lift a drawbridge at the bottom and they were safe from whatever strife went on below. however, all that came to an end with the Wars of religion. In 1588 the town was destroyed, and the long history of occupation going back to prehistoric times came to an end. not that the place has been abandoned. On some days the numbers who wander through the streets and houses of La roque Saint-christophe would greatly outnumber the original population.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 13

Gold Frenzy

In Australia, Alaska and South America thousands of prospectors set off with high hopes of striking gold. Ireland also had a gold rush just before the Rebellion of 1798.

Tom Kennedy delves into a new book that traces the history of gold in County Wicklow.

Because

gold is difficult to find, and because there is a limited supply, it holds its value while paper currencies can spiral down through inflation. The Pound, the Yen, the Dollar and the Euro are, in reality, just so many IOUs, so when confidence in State guarantees goes down, gold is widely seen as secure hedge. As long as there has been trade, gold has been the internationally recognised symbol of wealth, and as such the precious metal has always acted like a magnet for those who want to strike it rich. Adoration of the golden calf is nothing new, and the lure of the precious metal can, literally, drive people into a frenzy, especially when it is supposed to be just lying there, like a lottery ticket waiting for a lucky winner to pick it up.

Searching for gold in County Wicklow.

A romantic view by the Waterford born landscape painter, Thomas Sautell Roberts, c1760-1826. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

This is the sort of hope that led to the great gold rushes of Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, California, Alaska, and as Peadar McArdle writes in his new book, Gold Frenzy, Wicklow also had its rush. In the closing years of the 18th century hundreds of prospectors were at work in the Goldmine River above Avoca frantically panning for the elusive glittering grains that they believed would bring them instant wealth.

In his book Peadar explains that this particular free-for-all rush began on the 15th of September 1795 with the chance

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 14

discovery of a half ounce nugget among the roots of a fallen tree. The invasion that followed caused considerable alarm in Government circles, and as the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Camden reported, two hundred soldiers were dispatched ‘to prevent the plunder of the ore’, a barracks established, and fifteen guards posted to make sure that the ‘peasantry’ did not take what ‘by right belonged to the King.’

Although the Rebellion of 1798 diverted attention, working had resumed

of Dr Simoens, a Belgian geologist, who, two years later, and for the rest of as Peadar McArdle,writes, while hardly that century geologists continued qualified to comment on the matter, to search for the ‘mother lode’ boldly stated that gold is abundant in while locals were content to Wicklow. supplement their income by The appeal of gold continued, and picking up occasional grains. in 1934 Sean Lemass, Minister for Peadar McArdle follows this Industry, issued a prospecting saga of high hopes and, more often, lease covering six townlands disappointed dreams. In the first in the Goldmine River area. flush of activity it is thought that as No doubt, lofty ideals of selfmuch as 250 ounces of gold may have sufficiency lay behind that been recovered, but as Peadar explains, decision to grant a lease, but as it bystanders usually gained more than turned out, no gold was forthcoming, the prospectors, and slim pickings never and the project descended into a mud produced enough returns to justify the slinging match. A story began circulating investments. While free-lancers had Model of a 22 ounce nuggets found in the in the Dáil that gold worth £17,000,000 simply relied on luck, geologists tried to Goldmine River, and below, locations where was going to be extracted, and the fact work out where the gold came from and gold has been found. that the lease holders, Senator Michael where it might accumulate. One of these Comyn and Robert Briscoe TD, geologists, Thomas Weaver, had were members of the Minister’s trenches dug down to bedrock for Gold localities party, only added fuel to a distance of 12.8 km, and a 320 Avonbeg River accusations of corruption. Sean metre long tunnel was driven into Avonmore Placer workings Lemass, a very honest individual, the side of Croghan Kenshelagh River was furious at this insult to his in the hope of hitting a gold rich Trenches made in integrity, and, in fact it was the vein. Lack of success did not deter search of gold reefs lease holders that almost ended others from continuing the search, up being conned before they for, as everyone was convinced, the Boreholes decided to withdraw from a abundance of ancient Irish torcs and NORTH dubious shareholding deal. other precious objects, was proof As the author points out, that there must be an abundance of AVOCA there has always been a cast of gold in those there hills. colourful characters involved in Among those to be snared by AUGHRIM the search for gold. the allure of gold was the local Aughrim River Avoca River Gold certainly exists, not just landowner, Charles Stewart in Wicklow, but in a few other Parnell. His estate at Avondale s s localities around Ireland, and covered hundreds of acres, and 112m 152m prospecting is likely to continue. he had a large number employed Clare River At present Clontibret in Co not just in farming, but also in Monaghan is a focal point of forestry and quarrying. Parnell, WOODEN BRIDGE Coolbawn River attention, and gold occurs at an ‘improving landlord’, and a s Clontibret and Curraghinalt, strong advocate of Home Rule, 201m Co Tyrone. At Cavanacaw, was a visionary, and part of his Gold Mines River s near Omagh, Galántas Gold dream was to create wealth for 174m s Corporation is adding value Ireland by properly managing 217m to Irish gold by making it into natural resources. He was right in jewellery, and there is gold by many respects, such as forestry, Croagh Patrick in Mayo. but, in spite of keeping up the Peadar reports that gold, latest mining journals he never s if not abundant, is certainly managed to find enough gold to KILOMETRE 606m widespread. Alluvial gold can make a wedding ring for the love be panned from streams at over of his life, Kitty O’Shea. not help matters that the Director of the 100 localities. It can mean a lot Parnell’s high hopes for gold Geological Survey, G A Cole, was for of hard work for little or no return, but was shared by all those who marched to the Union, and he had referred to the as the author, who knows from first the tune of a ‘Nation once Again’, and abundance of gold in Wicklow as a myth. hand experience, writes, “panning is the notion of Ireland being cheated by Much more appealing were the claims addictive!” the alien invader became popular. It did MANy of those who joined in the rush believed that they were about to rediscover Ireland’s ancient source of gold. The abundance of gold ornaments from the Bronze Age was accepted as proof that the source still exists and has simply been lost. However, while the ornaments are Irish, some of the gold, may have been imported. During the Bronze Age there was extensive trading, and as we know from the ancient mines in Killarney, tin must have been imported to make the bronze axes that were exported to Britain. Perhaps these axe heads, which were highly prized, were paid for with gold.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 15

Where does gold come from?

Ultimately, from space, for this heavy element was formed by fusion in immense neutron star explosions. In fusion hydrogen and helium, are forced together to become progressively heavier elements, and when the star ends its life as a massive explosion, these elements are strewn out into the Universe.

When the planets began to form from condensing matter, the gold, being heavy, sank into the molten core. The Earth’s core is much more dense than the crust, and it probably holds all of our original gold. However, while the early Solar system was beginning to take shape, the planets were being bombarded by asteroids, and it is thought that most, if not all the gold that we can find now comes from this secondary source.

In the four and a half billion years since, all of the material on the Earth’s surface has been churned up and redistributed. The floating crust has broken up, continental sized masses have drifted and collided, hot magmas have welled up to fill the cracks and water, trapped far below, became a superheated fluid capable of dissolving minerals. In areas where the Earth’s thin crust is being pulled apart, as in the Mid Atlantic ridge, these super-heated fluids come to the surface as ‘black smokers’ aptly named from the dense clouds formed by the immediate precipitation of minerals out of solution as they meet chilling seawater.

At one time what is now County Wicklow was under the long vanished Iapetus Ocean, and it had its black smokers drawing minerals up from the underlying rocks. This was the Ordovician period, a time of great volcanic activity about 450 million years ago when an ancient, and long lived fracture, roughly following the Vale of Avoca, allowed super-heated fluids to rise and vent to the surface. It was this spewing up of materials that led to a concentration of minerals in that area. Some of these minerals were capped with enormous volumes of volcanic ash that slumped down into the ocean floor, and this is why Avoca came to have such an abundance of copper ore. For years mining, mainly for copper, was a big industry, while at the same time prospectors had little luck in their search for gold upstream.

While the picture for copper is clear, the way in which native gold was deposited and exactly where is not so obvious, and indeed, if there ever had been a ‘mother lode’ it may well have been washed away, or it could have been worn down by ice.

Unlike other minerals, such as copper, gold occurs as a pure metal, and this is why prospectors can, with luck, find ready made nuggets. More often than not, however, the native gold is in the form of small flakes, washed down from its source into the sand and gravel of streams.

Geologists gold panning on the River Dodder. Gerry Stanley, on right, pans stream sediment aided by Eibhlin Doyle, with sieve, and Barry Long ready to lend a hand with a suction pump.

Rarity

On average most minerals are distributed through the Earth’s crust in parts per million, but with gold it is just one part per billion. To be worth working, gold must occur at about 1,000 times that level, and at the world’s deepest mine, Mponeng in South Africa, three tonnes of material have to be drawn up from a depth of over 3 km to produce just one ounce of gold. Although this comes at a cost of between $300 and $600 an ounce, the selling price, which hit $1,900 an ounce produces a healthy profit.

The prospect of earning a healthy return makes gold an attractive investment.

41 per cent of the world’s expenditure on mineral exploration goes into the search for gold, and while most of it goes into jewellery, 400 tonnes a year goes into industry where gold is valued because it so stable and it is an excellent conductor in microelectronics where price is not such an issue because a little can go such a long way.

While Wicklow’s contribution can be measured in ounces, about 164,000 tonnes have been mined over the years from deposits around the world. As we know, gold is valued, and it is durable. Most of the gold ever mined is still in circulation.

Gold Frenzy, the story of Wicklow’s gold by Peadar McArdle is in bookshops now, and you can order direct from the Science Spin store www.sciencespin.com LIVE LINK Price €20 hardback

A ‘black smoker‘ from the Mid Atlantic Ridge. During 2011 a team of scientists led

by Dr Andy Wheeler from University College Cork discovered a previously uncharted field of hydrothermal vents in deep water north of the Azores. Vents, such as this one, discharge hot mineral-rich fluids, which on meeting cold water, form chimney like structures that can be over ten metres tall.

Photograph: Marine Institute.

Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo

The harbour at Lindau.

Photograph: Lofty

How to win

a nobel award for science H

nobel laureate sir Harold Kroto gave unusual advice in lindau for

ow should a scientist anyone wanting to win a nobel award for science, and also gave go about winning a anna nolan some tips for irish scientists with tight budgets.

Nobel award? By not trying, according to Sir Harold Kroto, a joint recipient of the Nobel chemistry prize in 1996. experiments on the carbon chemistry of He also emphasised that it was It was his work on carbon-60 the gas around stars, which Sir Harold necessary to put in hard work and long (buckminsterfullerene or “buckyballs” carried out in the US in collaboration hours (lesson number two). He never to you and me) that won him this with several others. Along with carbon had a huge budget and was often short prestigious accolade, but he never once chains they were looking for, the of necessary equipment: he revealed that thought of winning a Nobel, he told a he was lucky to be allowed use various scientists found a hollow, spherical group of almost 600 young researchers molecule made up of 60 carbon atoms lots of apparatus that belonged to other at this summer’s 61st Lindau Nobel bonded together in a pattern of 12 researchers. (Lesson number three – be Laureate Meeting (see box). pentagons and 12 hexagons (the same as ingenious.)

“I only did what interested me, and a football).

Alongside his work in chemistry, I never bothered with anything that his interest in drawing and design has didn’t,” Sir Harold told the researchers. endured. His talk at Lindau, which was Advice for researchers working in “I was totally amazed when I heard we on the general theme of creativity, was Ireland were getting a Nobel.” copiously illustrated with images such Stressing how much he enjoyed doing as a hand-drawn frog, a tree of life, With scientific research usually needing research, he traced his interest in science and of course a model of the famous big budgets, and breakthroughs back to his childhood, when he loved buckminsterfullerene. It looks rather frequently made by ultra large teams, playing with his Meccano set and visiting like a football, but was named after R. Ireland is at something of a disadvantage his father’s balloon factory. Later on, in Buckminster Fuller, the architect who in that while we have a reasonably good school, his main interests were chemistry designed geodesic domes. investment in research and development and art, and he revealed that he could The naming was in tribute to the per head of population, we have a just have easily spent his career as a inspiration the domes provided in comparatively small population so our design artist. So lesson number one in cracking the structure of the C-60 absolute spend is low on a worldwide getting a Nobel is to enjoy your research. molecule that unexpectedly turned up in scale.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 17

In an exclusive interview following his Lindau talk, Science Spin asked Kroto if he had any advice for us, as a small country. He had collaborate.

“All my work was with collaborators and I didn’t have any money for myself,” he explained. “For carbon-60 I used experimental equipment at the University of Texas, for example.

“I pinched and scraped and did what I could, and it always was a problem. The future is in collaboration – I did it as an individual, and countries can do the same.

“The trick is to come with something interesting to offer your collaborators, and make a case for your ideas,” he said.

“You have to be gregarious, think first about the science and then solve any ego problems afterwards.”

He stressed the need for all researchers, not just the Irish-based ones, to work hard.

“To be successful, a scientist has to be prepared to work 25 hours a day and stay up at night.”

Sir Harold’s message via Science Spin for any young person choosing a career, not just scientists is “find something you love and do it well; be first rate and don’t worry about prizes.”

Sir Harold Kroto’s advice is to stick to the science and not worry about the prizes.

her trump card of photographs of her granddaughter up on screen.

Reactions to the 61st meeting

Judging from the general atmosphere of intense enjoyment and animated discussions that characterised the meeting, the participants were all highly engaged, but does access to the thinking of Nobel laureates make the Young Researchers more determined to be really good at their work?

Marc Birtwis

tle

Other laureates

The crucial importance of enjoying one’s work was mentioned by many of the laureates in their talks, all of which were on a topic chosen by them, not the organisers.

Ei-ichi Negishi, who shared the Chemistry prize in 2010 for his work on organic synthesis, radiated enthusiasm.

“I love organic chemistry,” he beamed.

Ada Yonath, whose work on ribosomes, the factories that produce proteins, the building blocks of life, led to her sharing the 2009 Chemistry award, added the necessity to stick with the research despite setbacks to the formula for research success.

Dr Yonath also had strong messages of hope for the many Young Researchers, female and male, who were worried about whether it was feasible successfully to combine family life with a fruitful research career. “It’s perfectly possible,” she said as she put

Annett Linge

To find out, Science Spin spoke with two Irish-based scientists, Annett Linge from Dublin City University and Marc Birtwistle from University College Dublin.

Dr Birtwistle, who is from the US, is working at UCD’s Systems Biology Ireland, under a Marie Curie Fellowship, and attended the 61st meeting with support from QIAGEN. The Young Researchers all had to summarise their research motivation for inclusion in a meeting book. Marc Birtwistle’s is “firstly, an inherent love of and fascination with science and the desire to understand our natural world, and secondly, the ability to

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 18

make a difference in helping humankind to better treat disease and solve major world problems.”

With a BSc in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a PhD from work done in the University of Delaware and the Thomas Jefferson University Medical School in Philadelphia, he described his doctorate as “half chemical engineering, half medicine/ biology”.

One of the most important things he was taking away from Lindau was the insight he received from the Laureates explaining how they conducted their lives.

“They didn’t set out to hit a home run, they were excited, dedicated, hardworking and decided to investigate something and had the dedication to follow through,” he commented. “I think that is a very important lesson for myself and other young scientists here.”

He said the Lindau Meeting was also an exciting opportunity to network with peers, to form collaborations with likeminded people. He was glad to be able to tell them about the multidisciplinary work of Systems Biology Ireland, where he is working on mammalian signal transduction, taking tools from chemical engineering systems and applying to biological systems.

Annett Linge, who has an MD from her native Germany, gave her scientific research motivation as “the intellectual challenge of understanding and explaining causes and effects of scientific phenomena, and with respect to cancer research, the knowledge that can help to save lives”.

Dr Linge is currently working at DCU’s National Institute for Cellular Biology, and attended Lindau as a Fellow of the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung.

She was chosen to attend from a group of researchers with an MD. Her work at the NICB is concerned with cancer biomarkers, with an emphasis on breast cancer and a form of melanoma.

“I really enjoyed the meeting, there was a great atmosphere and it was a big honour for all of us being here,” Dr Linge told Science Spin. “It was good to have the interaction between researchers and laureates, and to hear what other people

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UPFRONT

are doing and how they The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings are working.”

FOr One week every year, nobel Laureates and student and postdoctoral researchers And was she inspired from around the world meet in the scenic town of Lindau in Germany. This small German to greater efforts? town, nestled among beautiful scenery on the shores of Lake Constance (Bodensee in She said that she German), forms a relaxing background to the intense intellectual activity that takes place would be even more over a week of lectures and informal meetings. enthusiastic if that was The fossilized annual Lindau A 450 million year old Crustacean, complete with soft meetings concentrate on inspiring the young scientists to do extra at all possible, given that she well of in their research careers. This means that they learn about the Laureates’ individual parts, has been found in Herefordshire. One the scientists was already highly motivated before to scientific discovery, discuss how scientists can help to solve present and involved in the discovery, Prof David Siveterapproaches from the University attending. “A great advantage was that I world and receive some practical suggestions about managing their of Leicester, said that what made the 5mm future long fossil so problems, special had time to think about my own research careers.

They also hear a wide variety of lectures and participate in discussions within is not that it is a previously un-named species, but that the soft and get new ideas.” the particular speciality parts have been preserved so well that eyes and the antennae can of the meeting. A key attraction is meetings with laureates where One theme running though the they can ask whatever they want to. be made out.

61st meeting was the responsibility of There is a regular The fossil, named Nasunaris flata, belongs to the same groupcycle through the years, broadly corresponding to the categories in researchers to help in solving world which nobel prizes are awarded: physics, chemistry and medicine/physiology. every as water-fleas and shrimps. Their descendants are common health problems. yearuse some today in lakes and oceans, and geologists often thelaureates fossils asfrom outside the category in question are invited to complement the “Of course we have to be main theme. every four years all three areas are represented. indicators of past climates. responsible,” she commented. “Our This year’s meeting category was medicine/physiology and the theme was global findings need to be useful to society, and health.

Internal image of the fossil showing the soft parts andTwenty-three eyes. Image: laureates from the fields of medicine/physiology, and also from I hope to help move a small step forward to health and biology, were involved in intense and enthusiastic David J. Siveter, Derek E. G. Briggs, Derek J.chemistry Siveter andrelated Mark D. with that – how can you prevent cancer if discussions with almost 600 Young Researchers - the official title given to the handpicked Sutton. you don’t understand it?” attendees by the Lindau organisers - from 80 countries. The Young researchers were

An old water flea

mainly PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, but some MSc students and Later,asone of David’s successors, King Hezekiah, fearing thatas undergraduates were included well. each had to pass stringent tests to be invited, the Assyrians would take Jerusalem using the same approach, the competition for places is fierce. And each is only allowed attend once. “If you want to Anna Nolan, a freelance science journalist, rerouted into they the city JERUSALEM’s fate was determined by the underlying come back geology. to Lindau, you have tothe getwater a nobel,” are via told.a 550 metre long tunnel. It with a BSc in Physics and Mathematics proved to decision, in 701nobel BC, Jerusalem the At the annual Geological Society of America Themeeting meetingslast are organised bybe thea good Council for thefor Lindau Laureate was meetings and an MSc in Science (Sciencefrom & Society/ only city that the Assyrians failed toattake.

October, Michael Bramnik Illinois University explained Lindau and the Foundation nobelprizewinners meetings Lake Constance. There is Science Communication), attended the fullkarstmore Water still remains a major factor in shaping modern history that underground passageways in the limestone enabledon www.lindau-nobel.org. information Lindau six-day in the region, and Michael Bramnik said that when he went in King David to take themeeting. city. Water was drawn from the Spring search of hydrological maps for other towns and settlements of Gihon, which lay just outside the city walls. David’s soldiers he was often rebuffed with a claim that such maps do not climbed down into the spring and by tunnelling under the exist. walls got access to the city.

Bedrock of history

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LINK Web: www.gsi.ie E-mail: gsisales@gsi.ie

SCIENCE Issue Page SCIENCE SPIN SPIN Issue 4941Page 19 4

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

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Fusion on the way

WIth the signing of an eleven million euro contract for construction, work on preparing Europe’s fusion energy site at Cadarache in the south of France has begun. the contract, with the Spanish company, Comsa Emte, is to put the essential power, water and roadway infrastructure into place.

Over the next eight years, the plan is to erect 39 buildings for this massive, and very ambitious project.

As described in Science Spin issues 1 and 14, fusion energy offers great promise for delivery of environmentally clean power on a large scale. Originally thought to be achievable within fifty years, that time scale has since been brought back to 30, but the technical challenges involved in maintaining and containing a fusion reaction are daunting. Developing fusion requires a huge investment, so a number of countries are involved in the ItER project, including China, Japan, the US, and the Russian Federation, where the concept of using magnetic fields to contain a plasma was first described by Soviet mathematicians.

Big valve

ONE of the problems with medical implants is that synthetic materials may not perform exactly like original body parts. With heart valves, for example, there can be a risk that slight changes in flow induce clotting in blood. this is a problem that designers of cardiovascular devices would like to solve. Globally about 125,000 mechanical valves are inserted every year, and recipients need medication to avoid side effects.

Modelling the flow in an artificial valve is difficult, and to help overcome this problem, researchers at NUI Galway have scaled up designs so that it becomes easier to observe performance. In the scaled up model, the working valve is six times larger than the real one, and it controls a flow one hundred times slower.

Performance is observed using laser light and digital imaging, and as one of the lead researchers, Dr Nathan Quinlan explained, tiny, short-lived eddies, that are just ten times larger than a blood cell, can be detected.

Shift in strategy

Bringing in the multinationals has been a highly successful strategy, and on the back of this Ireland has moved up from basic assembly to creation of high quality goods and services. In turn, this has changed Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the world, and in particular with the US, where, as Minister Richard Bruton, remarked, Ireland has become a significant employer. In an address to the a US/Ireland business conference at Farmleigh, the minister said that Irish companies in the US now employ almost as many people as US companies do in Ireland. this is a significant change from the long established approach of attracting inward investment, and as the minister pointed out, there is now an opportunity to provide international entrepreneurs with an Irish base so that we can continue to improve exploitation of knowledge and resources that already exist.

Biotech failures

BRUCE BOOth, a partner in the US Atlas Venture investment company made an interesting comment recently in his personal blog.

According to Bruce, many investors have been dismayed to find that academic science cannot be repeated outside the original lab. In one case, Bruce reports, a company spent about $5 million trying to reproduce results without success. Eventually, it was found that the researcher had massaged the data to make it fit a hypothesis. Bad enough if this was an isolated case, but according to Bruce, failure to reproduce results is all too common. “the unspoken rule is that at least fifty per cent of the studies published even in top tier academic journals — Science, Nature, Cell, PNAS, etc — cannot be repeated with the same conclusions by an industrial lab.” he claims.

Controlled exports

Bruce points to some underlying weaknesses that give rise to this situation. Academic researchers have to live with the strict rule, publish or perish, and no one wants to risk publishing negative findings.

As a result, venture capital companies, such as Atlas, are reluctant to get involved in the early stages of spin offs from research.

Bruce points out that results from a single lab should always be regarded with suspicion, and before parting with any cash, make sure that the work can be repeated in a totally independent or a contract lab.

Bruce’s advice for technology transfer offices is to put aside some of their seed funding for validation of results. third party support for results, he maintains, could greatly enhance the prospect of gaining venture capital support.

Ireland has export controls to prevent goods and services with military potential falling into the wrong hands. In agreement with many other countries, Ireland subscribes to a policy of non-proliferation of weapons, and when goods intended for civilian use are likely to have dual use application, manufacturers must apply for an export licence.

With the publication of a report on the Control of Export Act, a break down of licences issued and destinations has become available to the public. Commenting on this, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton, said the objective is to provide greater transparency on how the Government deals with such exports. the first report covers a period of 2008 to 2010, and according to the Minister, from now on, updates will be issued every six months. the reports can be downloaded from: www.djei.ie/publications/trade/2011/annual_report_control_of_exports.pdf SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 21

tellIng the future

researCh ProjeCts that Can boost the eConomy

AROLL

ControllIng release

One of the major problems in farming is pollution caused by the run-off of fertilizers. This is not just harmful to the environment, but it also represents a waste of expensive farm chemicals.

Ciarán O’Carroll explained that it is possible to eliminate most of that waste by using biopolymers extracted from crustaceans.

At NUI Maynooth, Ciarán has used these biopolymers to make hydrogels that can absorb chemicals for release at a given rate. So, instead of the benefits being washed away in the first shower of rain, the dosage is spread over time, and as a result, much less fertilizer is needed.

These hydrogels, said Ciarán, are completely natural, they are renewable,

sCIenCe sPIn Issue 49 Page 22

ConCrete solutIon

QU ILLI G AN

Aidan Quilligan, PhD student at UCD, said that proposals to increase the number of wind turbines in Ireland is not just going to change our energy balance. Construction of two to three thousand wind turbines would be a huge opportunity for the construction sector provided that the towers are to be made of concrete.

Replacing steel with concrete, he said, is almost inevitable, given the steady increase in turbine size. Steel A is nearing its limits AID in terms of strength and ability to withstand harsh conditions. Experimental towers of over 100 metres, he said, are already being made with concrete rather than steel, and as many of the towers being proposed for Ireland will be offshore, concrete rather than steel which is susceptible to corrosion, will be the obvious choice for construction.

As it happens, he pointed out, Ireland already has considerable expertise in concrete. Among the projects undertaken

by Banaher Concrete, the industry partner for Aidan’s research, were the Aviva and Croke Park stadiums, and they were also involved in the construction of the Dublin Port Tunnel. All of this expertise, said Aidan, is there, just waiting to be used, and apart from huge savings in imported steel, construction of the towers would enable Irish firms to bid for contracts around the world.

While Ireland’s requirements are large, and we have a favourable wind regime, the market worldwide for wind farms is enormous.

Aidan is eager for Ireland to grab this opportunity. “It would be crazy not to start doing this immediately,” he said.

Engineering has always appealed to Aidan. “At home I was always taking things apart,” he said, and by the time he was in second year at school in Limerick, he already set his sights on being an engineer.

N

they are biodegradable and they are not expensive. The hydrogels, consisting mainly of water, can be in the form of beads or a liquid, and loading them up with chemicals, he said, is no problem.

Once something can be dissolved in a solvent, and it does not even have to be water, any chemical can be absorbed into the hydrogel.

Setting the clock for release is also relatively simple, he added. By introducing carbon chains to the biopolymer, the rate of release, whether that is in ten minutes, an hour, or a day, can be slowed down to suit the application.

Interest in applying this development to improve farming is high, and at present Teagasc is conducting field trials, and as Ciarán pointed out, being able to do more with less, would be of enormous benefit to Irish agriculture.

While the initial focus of Ciarán’s research is on better control of farm chemicals, he also sees the immediate relevance to the Irish pharmaceutical sector. As he notes, the industry has produced an impressive array of drugs, but in much the same way as farming, targeted delivery is often a problem.

Hydrogels, he said, have a lot of potential to improve delivery, for they are readily accepted by the body, and they have a big advantage in that they do not require potentially toxic chemicals to set the rate of release.

“First,” he said, “I am going to try to get my PhD, but I think there are a lot of options out there.

There is a significant niche there in drug delivery.”

Ciaráns interest in chemistry began in school. At St Finians RÁ in Maynooth, he said, “I CIA had a fantastic chemistry teacher, Joe Lynam.” Joe urged his students to become experts in organic chemistry, and as Ciarán remarked, “I took up that challenge.”

O’C

September ten PhD students were given an opportunity to explain how their research is going to help with economic recovery. More than 60 researchers had entered the ‘Future Voices’ competition organised by the Dublin Higher Education Alliance, and ten of these contestants were invited to make a presentation before Ruairi Quinn, Minister for Education and Skills.

The suggestions included opportunities to replace imported steel with concrete, more efficient use of pneumatics, controlled release of fertilizers and a cost-cutting invitro arterial test system. Ciarán O’Carroll, who conducting research in the Chemistry Department of NUI Maynooth, was declared winner for his work on using hydrogels to achieve more control on the release of farm chemicals.

Aidan Quilligan, research student in Engineering at TCD, was the runner-up with his proposal to replace steel with concrete in the construction of wind turbines.

All these projects have one thing in common in that they show how much research can be expected to have a big impact on the economy.

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In

RIS

AIr power

In manufacturing processes compressed air is widely used to drive drilling, wrapping, positioning and other machinery. Pneumatics, as Paul Harris explained, is one of the most widely used technologies in industry. It is relatively trouble free, a lot safer than electronics in explosively dusty environments, lightweight yet it packs quite a punch in delivering power.

Paul, who is conducting his research at TCD with industry partners including Hewlett Packard, said that in spite of the advantages, pneumatic systems waste a lot of energy. One of the reasons for this, he explained, is that pneumatics have been around for a long time, and because pneumatic systems perform so well, commissioning engineers tended

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MedIcAl devIceS

One of the fastest growing sectors in Ireland involves the design and manufacture of medical devices. Exports are worth about €7 billion a year, and as William Sheridan, a researcher at TCD, remarked, half of this is from vascular devices.

Before a vascular device, which comes into intimate contact with the body, can be approved, it has to pass a battery of tests. These tests, explained William, often have to take the impact on blood flow into account, for the slightest departure from nature can have serious

ScIence SpIn Issue 49 page 23

SH ER I

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consequences, such as unintended clotting. Because these devices cannot be used in humans until all potential problems have been eliminated, tests are carried out using pigs, but as William quipped, “we are not pigs.”

To come up with a test that would be a closer match to humans, William developed an alternative in which the pig continues to play a central role.

Arteries are taken from pigs, and in a process that uses detergents and other chemicals, all smooth muscle I LL cells are washed out I W of the protein matrix.

This process, taking about a week, leaves an artery vessel without any trace of pig cells. Having cleaned out the pig cells, William then introduces the equivalent human cells, but instead of leaving them lie on the surface, they are injected deep into the matrix. “This is where they should normally be,” said William, and when the loaded artery is brought into action, these cells start to behave as if they were in a live body.

This, more realistic modelling, observed William, could save the medical device industry a lot of money, effort and time. There is no shortage of material, he said. Pig arteries are there for the taking.

The benefits of this research do not end there. One important area of research, said William, involves developing a substitute for the grafts used in by-pass operations. The blood vessel for transplantation is normally harvested from the patient’s own leg, but in many cases this is not possible. In 30 to 40 per cent of the cases, he said, the vessel is not in a good enough condition to be used in a transplant.

The carotid artery from a 50 to 60 kilo pig, said William, could be a much better bet, and by cleaning out the cells, it would be possible to consider repopulating the vessel with cells taken from the patient’s own body. However, before that becomes possible, more work will have to be done on perfecting extraction, reprogramming, and culturing of human cells.

A M

Aisling Sheridan at UCD aims to reduce the high incidence of campylobacter infection in Irish food. As she explained, this is an under reported epidemic, with a higher incidence in Ireland than the EU average, so it is a serious problem for the food industry. Campylobacter is a bacterium that occurs in the intestine, but it is easily spread, especially by handling of poultry, and it only takes a tiny dose to cause diarrhoea, cramping and abdominal pains which can last for days. According to the Food Safety Authority, the incidence of infection from Campylobacter is four times higher than from salmonella, yet at least half of the illnesses it causes are thought to go unreported.

Campylobacter, said Aisling, is often hidden, poultry can appear perfectly healthy, and not everybody becomes ill.

Yet one drip, containing just 500 bacterial cells, can be enough to cause serious illness.

“It is evident that Campylobacter is out of control,” said Aisling, and “there is very little monitoring.” Because of this, Aisling’s research is focused on developing a rapid test that can help bring the incidence of Campylobacter under control. Apart from protecting Irish consumers, being able to market infection free foods would be a great boost for exports.

to ignore the energy penalty. However, over the past few years, energy saving has become a much bigger issue, and coupled with this, the technology itself has undergone improvements.

Using current technology, without having to leap ahead into what might be coming next, energy savings of 35 per cent are considered possible, said Paul.

It is not just a matter of applying the correct technology, he added.

The managers need to become more aware of the fact that while their machinery might be working well, good performance is coming at too high an energy price.

Paul said that pneumatics have a great future. Avoidance of sparks in potentially dangerous situations, such as often occur in the pharmaceutical industry is not the only factor in their favour. A lot of systems now are hybrids involving electronic processors, but lightness alone is always going to keep pneumatics ahead. To deliver anything like the same force, electrical equipment needs to be a lot bigger and heavier than a matching pneumatic devices.

Paul likes the idea that there are challenges ahead.

“I was always interested in power, machinery and how things work,” he said, and no doubt his dad, also an UL engineer, approves.

PA

H

Infected food

Report, Tom Kennedy

IrIsh FossIls serIes

Brilliant

BIvalves

anthea lacchia introduces us to some Irish fossils

s

callop, oyster, mussel, you name it.

Bivalves may be common on today’s menus, but their merit goes far beyond the kitchen. They have been around since the Early Cambrian (about 500 million years ago) and belong to the phylum Mollusca, which is an extremely diverse group. In fact, bivalves are the second most diverse mollusc group after the gastropods (snails and slugs). The almost 8,000 living species of bivalves are mostly distinguished using variations in shell shape.

The twin valves, united dorsally along the hinge line by a tough ligament, serve as protection for the soft parts.

However, in some bivalves, the soft tissues extend permanently beyond the safe enclosure of the valves. Although some are hermaphrodite, most bivalve species have males and females and reproduce sexually. Interestingly, bivalves did not develop a brain, relying on neural ganglia for similar functions. All bivalves are aquatic and extract food and oxygen from water to survive.

During the Palaeozoic, bivalves were somewhat upstaged by the brachiopods, bottom-dwelling bivalved organisms. But things changed after the Permo-Triassic extinction, when most of the brachiopods disappeared. Bivalves were then able to occupy vacant niches and diversify.

In contrast to brachiopods, bivalves are always composed of calcium carbonate and their two valves are generally mirror images of each other. Anyone who has ever tried, and miserably failed, to open a mussel shell on the beach, will appreciate the strength of the adductor muscles, which contract to close the shell when danger looms. The animal can open the shell by relaxing these muscles during quieter times.

So how did that pretty seashell you picked up on the beach actually live?

Bivalves developed a surprising range of life strategies, directly reflected by the shape and morphology of the shell. Some bivalves burrow into the ground and use tube-like organic structures termed siphons to connect to the surface waters, facilitating feeding and respiratory exchange. Others bore into hard substrates or occupy vacated borings, becoming cavity-dwellers.

Several groups of bivalves are capable of cementing themselves to hard substrates, while others simply rely on their weight to rest on soft surfaces. Byssally-attached bivalves anchor themselves to an object using collagenous threads. Some bivalves

are able to swim actively through the water column by clapping their valves together like castanets, while squirting water jets to propel themselves forward.

But all this may not be immediately apparent to the palaeontologist who finds a fossil shell fragment little more than 1 cm across in a limestone boulder. A detailed examination of how modern bivalves live and of fossil shell morphology can help infer the mode of life of fossil forms.

Bivalves, like most fossils, have a place in folklore. For example, take the Jurassic bivalve Gryphaea arcuata: due to its unusual shape, it has often been referred to as the Devil’s Toenail! This particular bivalve, which is related to the living oyster also features on the coat of arms of Scunthorpe.

In Ireland, bivalve fossils have been reported in the following localities, among others: Malahide beach, Co. Dublin, Coolcullen, Co. Laois, Portmuck, Co. Antrim, Waterloo shore, Co. Antrim and Burren region, Co. Clare.

Some food for thought the next time you take out that pearl necklace.

Coat of arms of Scunthorpe in England, with Gryphaea depicted Above: Devil’s Toe Nail, a Jurassic bivalve Gryphaea arcuata. Length of specimen is 6 cm.

To find out more…

Irish Fossils by Patrick Gaffikin, Appletree Pocket Guides.

Chesapectin jeffersonius scallops from the Pliocene deposits around the Chesapeake River, Yorktown, Virginia, USA. Width of specimen is 18 cm.

Plagiostoma giganteum, a large bivalve from the Jurassic.

Width of specimen is 15 cm.

Fossil photographs courtesy of the TCD Geological Museum.

sCIeNCe sPIN Issue 49 Page 24

Basic palaeontology by Michael Benton and David Harper, Addison Wesley Longman.

Meteorites and the Moon

1969

was a momentous year for those interested in the Solar System. Rock samples collected during the first Moon landing, and on subsequent missions, contributed enormously to understanding our nearest neighbour, but several meteorite falls that same year also had a profound influence on our wider understanding of the Solar System. Fortuitously, two of these meteorite falls, which by their very nature are unplanned events, also played a significant role in the analysis of samples brought back from the Moon. In this article I will outline how meteorites have contributed to our understanding of the Moon, and how the Moon also has provided information on meteorites.

Slanting light highlighting the pitted surface of the Moon photographed by Apollo astronauts in 1969. Image: NASA.

Mike Simms from the Ulster Museum explains that meteorites from the Moon tell us much that we could not have learned from Apollo, while Apollo itself revealed the true abundance of some of the rarest meteorites on Earth.

On 8th February 1969 a huge fireball broke up as it streaked across the northern Mexico sky, showering an area around the village of Pueblito de Allende with more than two tons of a hitherto

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 25

rare type of meteorite, a Carbonaceous Chondrite called a CV. Later that year, on 28th September, another spectacular meteorite fall showered the town of Murchison, in Victoria, Australia, with more than 100 kg of an even rarer type, a CM Carbonaceous Chondrite. These meteorites arrived at a most opportune time. The US government had spent millions of dollars building sophisticated state-of-the-art labs, at the Johnson Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, to analyse the Lunar samples soon to be returned by the Apollo missions. The Allende and Murchison falls – free gifts from Space – were the ideal material with which to test the new equipment, with enormous benefits both for those running

Section through a small Allende meteorite (field of view ~2 cm across).

The circular objects are chondrules and the irregular whitish patches are Calcium Aluminium Inclusions (CAIs), the oldest dated material in the Solar System.

the labs and for others more interested in what the meteorites had to say. It turns out that Allende retains evidence, in abundance, of some of the oldest material and the very earliest events in the Solar System, while Murchison contained amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and, ultimately, life, and so proved that these complex carbon compounds existed elsewhere in the Solar System.

The laboratories built to analyse the Apollo samples made major contributions to our understanding of Carbonaceous Chondrite meteorites and, in due course, carried out the task for which they were built – analysis of the returned Lunar samples. But these analyses also produced some unexpected results for meteoriticists.

Of all the meteorites that fall to earth, more than 75 per cent comprise just three types of stony meteorites called Ordinary Chondrites. In contrast, at least eight different types of Carbonaceous Chondrite have been recognized yet this group comprises less than 5 per cent of meteorite falls. Astronomers have long tried to match up the geochemistry of the various meteorite types with the reflectance spectra of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt but they have found that surprisingly few seem to match the Ordinary Chondrites.

Instead it has become apparent is that an awful lot of asteroids are rather dark ‘sooty’ lumps, much like some of the Carbonaceous Chondrite meteorites.

Various possibilities might account for this discrepancy between the abundance of particular meteorite types on Earth and the number of potential parent asteroids for each. The Ordinary Chondrite parent bodies might be more favourably located in the Asteroid Belt than the dark ‘carbonaceous’ asteroids, perhaps closer to certain Kirkwood

Gaps (the orbital resonance regions that ‘launch’ meteorites out of the Asteroid Belt) so that pieces chipped off in collisions have a better chance of reaching Earth. Perhaps the abundance of particular meteorite types on Earth reflects their toughness, or how likely they are to survive their fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere. Certainly, most Carbonaceous Chondrites are much more crumbly than many Ordinary Chondrites. Remarkably it turns out that the Apollo astronauts inadvertently came back with the answer. Among all the Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions were two small meteorites; a CM Carbonaceous Chondrite with Apollo 12 and an EH Enstatite Chondrite (another rare type that accounts for less than two per cent of meteorite falls) with Apollo 15. But this is far too small a sample to tell us anything about the relative abundances of the parent bodies from which the more than 100 different types of known meteorite are derived.

Instead it was the dusty stuff brought back, the Lunar ‘soil’, that proved of much greater significance. Analysis revealed that it is not just pulverised Moon rock but is contaminated by the remains of countless meteorites that have pummeled the Moon’s surface over billions of years. Without an atmosphere to filter out flimsy meteorites, this ‘soil contamination’ should represent the average composition of all of the meteorites hitting the Moon. Far from having the Ordinary Chondrite ‘signature’ that we might predict from meteorite abundances on Earth, the contamination, which amounts to ~two per cent of the Lunar soil, actually suggests that the dominant meteorites hitting the Moon are type CI Carbonaceous Chondrites. These are among the rarest and most crumbly meteorites to reach Earth, with only

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 26

five falls known. The chemistry of CI, and the closely similar CM, chondrites matches fairly well with the reflectance spectra of the C-type asteroids which account for around 75 per cent of known asteroids. So, the Apollo, and Luna, missions helped to prove that the 40,000 or so meteorites we have in collections on Earth are seriously skewed towards the tough stuff rather than representing the actual relative abundances of the various types of asteroid out in Space.

It’s now almost 40 years since samples were last brought back from the Moon.

These priceless rocks have told us a great deal about the Moon that we could not have learned otherwise, in particular providing a radiometrically dated chronology of Lunar events, but they have their limitations. The Apollo missions were, understandably, confined to ‘safe’ locations on the Moon’s near side and hence the samples brought back were necessarily biased and raised many questions concerning other areas of the Moon. Although there have been no sample return missions to the Moon since 1976 (Luna 24), this is far from the end of the story. Many Lunar samples have since been found on Earth having arrived here for free. These are Lunar meteorites, pieces of rock blasted from the surface of the Moon by the impact of large meteorites, eventually falling to Earth as meteorites themselves. The first was found in Antarctica in 1982 but many more have since been found by scientific expeditions to Antarctica and by commercial collectors in the dry deserts of northern Africa and the Middle East. A single small Lunar meteorite has also been found in Western Australia, and was indeed the first to be found outside of Antarctica, but none have yet been found in Europe, Asia or the Americas. Intriguingly, although four of the Martian meteorites are classified as falls (i.e. they were seen to fall), all of the Lunar meteorites are finds (i.e. they were not seen to fall but were picked up many decades or even centuries later). Furthermore, the numbers of documented Martian and Lunar meteorites is very similar even though the Moon is an awful lot closer.

Counterintuitive though both of these observations might seem, there are sound scientific explanations - but that is another story...

A total of 382 kg of rock, and 2,145 individual samples, were brought back by six Apollo missions, with a further 326 g of Lunar material returned by three Russian Luna landers. The total weight of Lunar meteorites found so

3.34g slice of NWA 3186 (paired with NWA 773 and six others) a breccia with pale fragments of olivine gabbro and darker clasts of mare basalts. Specimen in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin; reproduced with permission.

far is more than 60 kg comprising about 140 individual meteorites. This actually represents fewer than 70 meteorite falls as many of these individual stones are ‘paired’ (i.e. were originally part of the same meteoroid that broke up on entry).

Of this total, 25 kg comprises just two meteorites; the enigmatic Kalahari 009 and the awesome NWA (North West Africa) 5000, while at the other extreme some of the Antarctic Lunar meteorites are tiny and weigh less than a gram. But all Lunar meteorites, from the largest to the smallest, are immensely important for increasing our knowledge of the Moon’s geology because they sample areas, particularly the so-called ‘highlands’ (these are not necessarily the highest regions but correspond to the paler areas of the Moon, composed of anorthosite, which contrast with the somewhat younger, darker and generally lower areas, known as maria, that are composed of basalt), unvisited by any of the Apollo or Luna missions. Interestingly, the Lunar Prospector mission of 1998-99 revealed that all of the Apollo landings were in or near a geochemically ‘anomalous’ region now known as the Procellarum KREEP terrane, where the rocks contain relatively high concentrations of Potassium (K), Phosphorus (P) and various Rare-Earth Elements (REE).

Although a few Lunar meteorites are ‘KREEPy’, most come from essentially random locations elsewhere on the Moon and represent lithologies that are rare or

unrepresented among the Apollo samples but perhaps more representative of larger areas of the Moon. Each of these Lunar meteorites has a story to tell, but there is space here to talk about just a few of them.

North West Africa, encompassing mainly Morocco, Mauretania, Algeria and Tunisia, has been a major source of meteorites since the mid-1990s. Many thousands of distinct meteorites have been found by locals but few if any of these finds have precise provenance data and so local place names are seldom applied to them. Instead each has been assigned an ‘NWA’ prefix followed by a number. At least 35 of these are Lunar meteorites but, after pairing (where it can be recognized that several meteorites actually represent parts of one original meteoroid), this is reduced to fewer than 20, of which I will mention three here.

One of the effects of more than four billion years of impacts on the Lunar surface is that virtually all of the Lunar samples that we have are intensely brecciated, with the original rock shattered into angular fragments and then welded together by impact-melted rock. A typical example of such a ‘vitric breccia’ is NWA 6355 (and its pairings of NWA 4936, 5406, 6470 and 6470) which shows various mineral and rock fragments, including pale chunks of anorthosite, embedded in a dark glassy matrix of impact-melt. What makes this particular meteorite rather special is that

6.39g piece of Dhofar 467 (paired with Dhofar 026 and eleven others), currently on display in the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

The tiny holes are bubbles created during the impact shock that transformed the pale anorthosite into dark maskelynite.

27.3g slice of NWA 4881 (paired with NWA 3163), a granulitic breccia formed of shock-metamorphosed anorthosite and dark gabbro clasts. Specimen in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin; reproduced with permission.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 27

it has an overall composition very similar to the lunar ‘soil’ of the Apollo 16 site and may have originated from near there.

Another North West African meteorite, NWA 3186 (and its pairings, NWA 773, 2700, 2727, 2977, 3160, 3333 and Anoual), is also a breccia but it contains larger pieces of two very different rock types.

The paler breccia fragments are of an olivine gabbro, a coarsely crystalline rock type that cooled slowly deep beneath the Moon’s surface, while the darker clasts are of basalts from the lava flows that flooded some of the vast impact basins. Both the gabbro and the basalt are KREEPy yet they are distinct from any samples collected from the Apollo and Luna sites. What is especially remarkable about the gabbro is its age of around 2.865 billion years old. This is some 250 million years younger than any other lunar sample and around one billion years younger than any other KREEPrich rock.

Although most Lunar rocks have been brecciated by impacts, some have experienced such massive impact shocks that their original constituents have been metamorphosed into new minerals that form only under extreme shock pressures. Crystalline metamorphic rocks such as these are known as granulites and are not uncommon among Lunar samples. One such example is Dhofar 467 and its various pairings (Dho 026, 457468) which all come from the same small area of southern Oman, a region that has proven a remarkably rich source of lunar, martian and other meteorites. Dhofar 467 is pretty unprepossessing to look at, being not dissimilar to a blackened piece of melted plastic. Originally it was composed of the pale rock anorthosite but it was hit so hard during its time on the Moon that the shock converted it to a much darker mineral, maskelynite, and even partially melted it. Tiny bubbles in the impact melt of these meteorites indicate that the original rock was very near the lunar surface when the impact

7.52g slice of NWA 6355 (paired with NWA 4936 and three others), with chunks of pale anorthosite, darker rock and mineral fragments, and a few vesicles, in a dark matrix of glassy impact melted rock

occurred. Indeed, the event which brought about the metamorphism may even have been the same one that launched it on its journey to Earth.

Kalahari 009 is, at 13.5 kg, the largest of all lunar meteorites and also among the most enigmatic. It was reported to have been found in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana in 1999 but its discovery, and even existence, seemed shrouded in mystery until 2005 when preliminary analyses were published. Kalahari 009 is a mare basalt breccia, but it is no ordinary mare basalt. Most of these were erupted during or soon after a period of intense impact cratering known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, ~3.8-3.9 billion years ago, and hence occupy some of the huge impact basins formed during this event. But scientists were more than a little surprised to find that the basalt of Kalahari 009 (which has a pretty weird chemistry anyway) is 4.35+0.15 billion years old, indicating that basaltic volcanism started little more than 150 million years after the Moon had formed!

Returning to Northwest Africa, and more specifically Mauretania or Algeria, another example of a granulitic breccia is represented by NWA 4881 (paired with NWA 3163). Again, this started out as a largely anorthositic rock which subsequently experienced an extreme impact causing brecciation, recrystallisation and the formation of the shock-indicator mineral maskelynite.

However, some of the minerals show evidence for slow cooling from temperatures above 1000ºC, which suggests that, in contrast to the near surface impact metamorphism of Dhofar 467, these rocks were metamorphosed at a depth of several tens of kilometers.

As such it perhaps represents lithologies from deep beneath the lunar surface that were exposed only as a result of the vast impacts associated with the Late Heavy Bombardment.

There’s a huge amount more might be said about Lunar meteorites, covering aspects such as the processes that send them here, possible source locations on

the Moon and, of course, the apparent enigma of meteorites from the Moon being as common (or rare!) as those from the very much more distant planet Mars. For anyone particularly interested there is a wealth of information in various meteorite books, of which I would particularly recommend Meteorites, Ice and Antarctica by William Cassidy (CUP 2003). However, by far the single most useful and informative source on Lunar meteorites is the astonishingly comprehensive website (http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/ moon_meteorites.htm) that has been put together by Randy Korotev, a geochemist who has been working on Lunar rocks since the heady days of the Apollo missions.

Acknowledgements

I thank Dr Matthew Parkes of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, for providing images of their samples of NWA 4881 and NWA 3186.

Mike Simms is Curator of Palaeontology at National Museums Northern Ireland, in Belfast, but has had an obsessive interest in meteorites for almost a decade. He was responsible for the meteorite gallery (see http://www.bimsociety.org/miotm/0912.jpg for part of it) in the newly refurbished Ulster Museum, which reopened in 2009, and for the catalogue of the Ulster Museum’s meteorite collections on the British and Irish Meteorite Society website (http://www.bimsociety.org/ article-museums-ulster.shtml).

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

www.dublinscience2012.ie LIVE LINK

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 28

BIOMATERIALS INSPIRED FROM THE SEA

M

adhesion was offered by Prof Suzi arine animals and plants Jarvis. Suzi investigates the secreted -utilise a variety of biochemical adhesive fibrils (amyloids) from compounds to live and function in the marine flatworm Entobdella the diverse environmental conditions soleae characterising them from they are exposed to. Study of these the biophysical point of view with compounds using advanced life atomic force microscopy (AFM), science techniques and methods Raman spectroscopy and confocal can lead to the discovery of novel microscopy. The uncovered amyloid bioactives and biomaterials for use mechanisms at the basis of the fibrils in medical applications, healthcare wet-adhesion properties does not preparations and engineering. appear to be specific to a particular “Biomaterials Inspired from the Sea” environment, thus giving it the was a session co-sponsored by Marine potential to meet a broad variety of Biotechnology Ireland in collaboration possible adhesive requirements. with the Network of Excellence The session concluded with of Biomaterials and the European the keynote presentation of Prof Society of Biomaterials at the Annual Amir Sagi, from the University of Conference of the European Society Figure 1. Scanning electron micrographs of (a) cuttlefish Ben Gurion, in Israel. Taking the for Biomaterials (ESB2011), held at (Sepia officinalis), (b) sponge (Spongia agaricina), (c) red algae lead from traditional knowledge the Dublin’s Convention Centre, on (Corallina officinalis) and (d) coccolithophores (Emiliania : “… there are commonly to be Tuesday, 6th Sep. 2011. huxleyi) demonstrating a range of macro and microporous found at the sides of the [crayfish] The session’s aims were to bring structures. E.huxleyi micrograph courtesy of Katherine Fee. stomach two lenticular calcareous together national and international All other images courtesy of Dr. Susan Clarke, Queen’s masses, which are known as “crabsexperts in marine biomaterials University Belfast. eyes” or gastroliths, and were, in research, with a view to establishing old times, valued in medicine as new collaborative research projects. sovereign remedies for all sorts of Dr Ilaria Nardello, the national disorders.” (T.H. Huxley, 1880), Prof. Sagi coordinator for Marine Biotechnology synthetic imitations of the human bone conducts important research on the rapid Ireland said, “the session was carefully (Fig. 1). mobilisation of calcium deposits in the engineered to present to us the variety Wet adhesion – the ability of body of the crayfish. of domains where marine biomaterial mussels and sea worms to produce Crayfish, like many crustaceans, (Fig research can be applied ranging sticky compounds that 3) need to abondon their external skeleton from medical devices, such work underwater – was also (or carapace) periodically as they grow, as drug delivery systems discussed at the event. Prof and produce a new and bigger one, in a and surgical adhesives, to Philllip Messersmith, co-chair process called ‘moulting’. When this is food supplements and stem of this session with Dr Fraser about to happen, the calcium deposits cell research. It may take a Buchanan, introduced the are passed into the animal’s stomach, whole suite of very different chemical characteristics of where they are readily metabolised and approaches, including chemical, the aminoacides (catechols absorbed into the new shell. It is believed biophysical and molecular and lysin) contained in the that the amorphic state of the calcium approaches, to understand the adhesive proteins secreted by in the gastroliths is responsible for the physiology of organisms even mussels for attachment to wet rapidity of its absorption, and that this as simple and common as blue surfaces (Fig 2). His group characteristic of high bioavailability will mussels. While many questions at Nortwestern University Figure 2. A Mytilus (USA) is investigating the use be extremely attractive for the industry of still remain only partially mussel clearly nutraceuticals and dietary supplements. answered, the potential for of a biomimetic compound The event generated mutual interest applications is really promising, showing the byssus (dopamine) to provide the threads. among the speakers and the willingness especially in the health and food functionality of those groups of to establish a sectors.” aminoacids Figure 3. Australian red-claw crayfish Cherax network towards One of Ireland’s flagship research presumed to be quadricarinatu. ..You may eat the shell too! collaborative research projects - the Marine Institute funded responsible for funding. Marine Beaufort Award for Marine Biodscovery the adhesive Biotechnology Ireland research – develops a work package characteristics of the will be the main node entirely dedicated to the discovery of blue mussels. His of this network. Two new materials from marine organisms. research proves that funding programmes This research is run at Queens University dopamine can modify that could support Belfast under the direction of Professor the surface of most the relative actions Fraser Buchanan and is part of a larger materials from noble have been identified: multidisciplinary and multi-targeted metals to plastic, COST and FP7. research project, coordinated by the to provide a very National University of Galway. Dr Susan versatile adherent Clarke (QUB) reported on the potential coating for secondary advantages of natural occurring porous surface-mediated The event was sponsored by the ESB, structures, such as in sponges corals and reactions, with applications ranging from ShareBiotech, Marine Biotechnology Ireland coralline algae, in providing a suitable enginnering to prenatal diagnostics. and Queens University of Belfast. range of pore sizes and tortuosity which A different perspective on the could encourage bone growth, over understanding of mechanisms for wet

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 29

Dr. How's

What are Acids and Bases?

Acids and Bases are chemicals that occur naturally in lots of different substances Acids can be found in things like lemons and vinegar

Junior science by Dr. Naomi Lavelle

Did you know... that the word acid comes from the Latin word acidus meaning sour!

Feel it!!!

Make your own sherbert

You will need... icing sugar, citric acid, bread soda, flavoured jelly crystals, a teaspoon, a tablespoon and a mixing bowl.

Lets learn more!

The Bronsted-Lowry Definition of an acid and a base is...

Acids are substances that gives up hydrogen ions (H+).

Bases are substances that accept hydrogen ions (H+).

So what is happening?

These hydrogen (H+) ions can change things in many ways, including taste and colour!

The pH Scale The pH scale is a scale that measures how acidic or basic a substance is.

Lemons contain an acid called citric acid that gives them that sour taste!

The scale for acids goes from 0 to 7.

A very strong acid has a pH of 0.

Something with a pH of 7 is said to be neutral (neither an acid or a base).

An indicator is something that can determine wether a subsance is an acid or a base.

Many indicators are naturally present in nature.

The colour of anthocyanins changes depending upon the acid levels (pH) of the plant.

The bright red and pink colours of Autumn are due to anthocyanins and acid levels in leaves.

Pure water has a pH of 7.

Anthocyanins change colour from red to pink, to purple, to blue, to green as the pH changes from 0 to 14.

So what is happening?

Did you know...

Hydrangea flowers can change colour depending on the pH of the soil.

In acidic soils chemical reactions occur to make aluminium available to the plant, turning the flowers blue, in alkaline (basic) soil these chemical reactions cannot occur so the flowers remain pink.

See it!!!

Cabbage juice experiment Cut up half the red cabbage and add

You will need... it to a pan. Ask and adult to add A red cabbage, a knife, water and bring it to the boil then a saucepan, a sieve, an leave to cool. Once cool pour the ice tray, clear vinegar, cabbage juice through a sieve, water and bread collecting the juice in a bowl. Pour the soda juice into an ice tray and freeze until it hardens into ice-cubes.

Half fill three glasses, one with water, one with clear vinegar Red cabbage contains anthocyanin. and one with water mixed with a teaspoon of bread soda.

When the purple cabbage juice mixes with the acid (vinegar) it turns a Now drop a cabbage juice ice-cube into each glass and see red/pink colour; when it mixes with what happens. the bread soda solution (base) it turns a blue/green colour. The water is neutral (pH 7) so it does not alter the purple colour of the cabbage juice.

If you want to know HOW something works why not write to Dr. How and ask? Send your e-mail to naomi@sciencespin.com

Experiments you can try

A group of chemicals called anthocyanins are naturally present in a number of different plants such as apples, grapes, the leaves of many trees and flowers such as roses and poppies.

You have just created an acid-base reaction in your mouth!

When the citric acid, bread soda and saliva in your mouth combine they react together to give off a gas, called carbon dioxide, that forms tiny bubbles that you feel fizzing on your tongue!

The pH scale goes from 0 to 14.

The scale for bases goes from 7 to 14.

A very strong base has a pH of 14.

Acids and bases in plants!

Add one teaspoon of citric acid and one teaspoon of bread soda to the bowl.

Add three tablespoons of icing sugar and two tablespoons of flavoured jelly crystals.

Mix all together then place a small amount on your tongue!

Experiments you can try

Bases (also called Alkali) are found in toothpaste or many cleaning products.

Bread soda is a base.

Science Wows! ...exploring Acids and Bases!

Did you know... that bee sting venom contains an acid called formic acid!

Racing ahead

STuDENTS from Dundalk grammar School, Co Louth, continue to pick up awards in the F1 competition. To compete in the competition, students have to design and make a gas powered model racing car. Having come tops in ireland, the Dundalk students, Adam Matthews, Ben reynolds, Daniel Finnamore, Daniel McCarthy-Edwards, Kevin O’Malley and rollo Konig-Brock went on to compete with teams from around the world in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The additional awards were for best pit display and best website.

In the finals, the students have to make a presentation about their project, and the cars are then raced along a 20 metre track. The best performance to date has been a model racer entered by a Northern ireland team in 2007 which set a record of 1.020 seconds to cover the 20 metres.

The overall winners for 2011 were from Brooks High School in Australia, followed by a team from grootmoor gymnasium in germany.

Robert Boyle Science Festival

From 17th to 20th November 2011 Lismore, County Waterford Visit the portable planetarium, hear about the sceptical chemist, learn about the Earth’s peculiar atmosphere, or enjoy music and dance at the Booley House.

Details from Eleanor Howard at the Lismore Heritage Centre, 058 54975 www.discoverlismore.com LIVE LINK

Searching Mars

DuriNg Science Week there will be three media-rich presentations about the search for life on Mars. Kevin Nolan, author of ‘Mars, a cosmic stepping stone’ will explain how a robotic rover will go for a two year drive across the surface of the red planet.

Admission is free 14th November 2011 at 8pm, Mansion House, Dublin 16th November 2011 at 8pm, O’Tnuathall Theatre, Nui galway 18th November 2011 at 8pm, Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork Email: info@planetary.ie

Winners, Povilas Kavalialiauskas from Lithuana, Bailey Lovett from New Zealand, Pius Markus Theiler from Switzerland, and Alexander Amini from Ireland.

The winning Irish

AFTEr winning the top prize in the 2011 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 15 year old Alexander Amini, from Castleknock College in Dublin, has been awarded the highest accolade at the 23rd European union Contest for Young Scientists.

Students from all around Europe competed for these awards, which were presented to winners in September at a special ceremony in Helsinki.

Alexander was among the three selected from 87 projects. Pius Markus Theiler, a 19 year old from Switzerland was among the top three for his novel device to help mountain climbers, as was Povilas Kavaliauskas, an 18 year

Web: www.planetary.ie LIVE LINK

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 31

old from Lithuania for her study of how houseflies can spread antibiotic resistance.

Alexander’s project was to develop an automated system to monitor and assess the performance of tennis players. For his project Alexander analysed data collected by sensing the moves made by a tennis player. He was able to distinguish between thirteen different types of tennis stroke, a big advance on previous motion assessment techniques. The ability to automatically analyse complex movements has the potential to be used widely, including in emergency response situations.

The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition has undoubtedly provided a launch pad for many emerging talents, and over the past 23 years 13 irish students have gone on to collect the top award in the Eu wide competition.

Earth sciences

LotS of new activity sheets on the earth sciences have been added to the already impressive collection available as free downloads from Earthlearningidea. the activity sheets show how to arrange practical demonstrations on such topics as crystallisation, and there are clear, well illustrated explanations relating science to the world we see around us.

According to the Earthlearningidea team, which is based at Keele University in the UK, almost half a million PDF activity sheets have been downloaded so far by teachers and schools around the world. the team continues to add new topics, and all are available free for downloading from the website: http://www.earthlearningidea.com LLIVINEK

What are you made of?

SUGAr and spice and all things nice ... well, no, but you could be surprised to see just how much calcium, potassium and sulphur we carry around in our bodies. two new earth science resource downloads have a great DIy jig-saw showing how our elements compare to those in the rocks around us.

Prepared by the Earth Science Education Unit at Keele University, the PDFs can be downloaded from: http://www.earthlearningidea.com/ PDF/108_What_made_of.pdf http://www.earthlearningidea.com/ PDF/Minerals_into_me.pdf

Make a DVD

FANCy yourself as the next Jacques Costeau or an up and coming Stephen Spielberg. Now is your chance to make a prize-winning 15 minute DVD on a marine topic.

If you are between the ages 12 and 21 you can enter “the Seas and Us” movie competition being organised by the European Centre for Information on Marine Science and technology.

Juniors can win €2,500 and seniors can win €3,500, plus an all expense trip to Lisbon in September 2012 to collect the prize. the closing date is 25th March 2012 More information from www.eurocean.org/np4/2279.html

Rock around Ireland In this full colour book Peadar McArdle introduces us to the rocks that make up Ireland and describes how they formed.

B9845

Paperback €15 Available from Dubarry Books in Galway, the GSI book store, or order on line from Science Spin. www.sciencespin.com

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 32

SciFest

SINCE SciFest was launched the number of participants has continued to increase. In 2006 there were 67 projects from 170 students, and this year there are 1243 projects from 2907 students. one of the features of SciFest is that events are local, so students do not have to travel far.

SciFest has become so successful that the organisers have introduced a new level of participation in which schools organise their own science fair. SciFest provides these schools with support and advice.

Entries for 2012 should be submitted by 2nd March 2012 For more about SciFest visit www.scifest.ie IVE

Observatory nights

L LINK

WEAthEr permitting, the Imbusch observatory at Dangan in Galway, will have open evenings on the 9th and 23rd November, and on 7th and 21st December. Starting at 7pm, an informative lecture will be followed by viewing of the sky through the observatory telescopes.

Prior booking essential from tara.shanahan@nuigalway.ie

for as transition year students Edward Barrett, Anna and Kate O’Doherty from Scoil Mhuire agus Ide in Limerick were able to show, patterns are inherited.

For their project, the students took fingerprints from six different families, and they subjected them to the type of analysis that forensic experts use to determine if two prints match. The whorls, arches and other patterns are classified into a system that makes it easier to make comparisons, but as the students found, close relations can produce remarkably similar results. The basic patterns tended to be the same, but the differences are in the finer details.

Thumbs are usually used, but a similar system Anna O’Doherty and Edward Barrett with their could have been developed for toes, feet or palms, fingerprint project at the RDS in January. because they also have distinctive patterns which are widely regarded as being there to enhance, or amplify our sense of touch.

For more than a century fingerprinting has proved its value in fighting crime, and one of the reasons they are so reliable CrIMInALS are often caught because they leave their is that they do not change over time. We are born with our fingerprints behind. Those patterned ridges of skin, inked with distinctive signature, and while young adults give the clearest natural secretions, act like a rubber stamper leaving a unique print, the ridges do fade away with age. Wear and tear take signature. While no two people have the same fingerprint, the their toll, so old thieves are likely to leave less of a trace. differences between close relations can be in the finer details,

InherIted patterns

LIfe In the soIL MOST of us are familiar with the idea that plants take nutrients from the soil and they capture carbon dioxide from the air. However, without a lot of help from the fungi and bacteria that inhabit the soil plants fail to thrive. Three Transition Year students from Belvedere College, David Connellan, Beau Carley, and Killian Creaner, decided to investigate this symbiotic relationship by growing cress on different soils.

In Ireland, explained David, there are a number of different types of soil. Among them are the brown soils, are common in the midlands and eastern areas, peaty soils are typical of wet western counties, and there are the light grey gley soils which are difficult to drain. With advice from Teagasc and Coilte, the students set off to the Slieve Bloom David Connellan mountains in County Laois where they could gather samples of the four most common soil types in Ireland.

Back in school, David, Beau and Killian treated some of their soil samples to act as sterile controls. This involved a process devised by the great 19th century scientist, JohnTyndall, in which samples were heated, cooled, and reheated a number of times to ensure that all microorganisms had been killed.

A small sample of soil, said David, is typically packed with microorganisms, and these had to be eliminated. Samples were

incubated for half a hour at 100ºC,” said David, and then, without removing them from the incubator, they were allowed cool down to 25ºC overnight so that any remaining spores would germinate. To make sure that the soil samples were sterile, that process was repeated three times.

Having prepared their samples, the students planted cress, an undemanding plant that grows well in most situations. Plants on brown earth with lots of microorganisms thrived, while those in the sterile control were stunted and obviously miserable. That was a fairly good indication that the microorganisms had an important role to play, but when the students looked at the peaty soil, the story was quite different. Strangely enough, plants on the sterile control, did better, so as David remarked, soil microorganisms can hinder as well as help.

Last year the students entered a project on ants, which was reported on in Science Spin 42, and as David said, they greatly enjoyed the experience, so they immediately began thinking of what else could they do. This project, he said, was ideal because it involved combining different skills, and whenever they had to learn something new the teachers were there to give advice.

Reports, 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 LIVE LINK

IN NEWSAGENTS NATIONWIDE or SUBSCRIBE

Books from Albertine Kennedy Publishing Rock around Ireland Peadar McArdle shows us the structure of Ireland. paperback €15 Colour The science and art of colour explained by Margaret Franklin and Tom Kennedy Paperback €15 The Exemption Vera Hajnal has an extraordinary story to tell of survival through one of the world’s darkest periods. Hardback €25 St Vincent’s Fairview Aidan Collins describes the history and the literary associations.

Softback €20 Bewley’s Hugh Oram account of how the café became a national institution in this facsimile of the original book. Paperback €12

.... and more to come.

Watch out for new titles this year.

www.sciencespin.com

Silver birches at Cloonlara, Co Mayo.

Bringing Back the Birch N

ow that everything is so bare the birches, with their peeling white bark, stand out and that’s one of the reasons I planted them. They mask the gloomy sitkas and they should be good for another two decades. After that they are likely to have begun to die of old age, for birches have a much shorter life than sitkas which get the chop while still in their prime.

Unlike the sitkas, the birch is an old native, and while sitka only arrived from North America in the late 18th century, the birches, for there is more than one species, have been with us since the end of the last ice age. Strictly speaking, birches have been growing in Ireland for longer than this, for they had been in residence during a previous interglacial.

Birches are more tolerant of cold than most other trees, so when the ice began to melt, they were among the first species to come back, and for a time they more or less had the chilly landscape to themselves. As Ireland warmed up, the oaks arrived, and eventually pushed the birches out to the boggy margins where most of their descendants remain. Given an opportunity, birches would make a return, and in the earlier days of Soviet style State forestry, they were hunted

Tom Kennedy writes that the old native can bring back some magic into a gloomy landscape down because they were regarded as opportunistic weeds. Looks and biodiversity were not important, and wood from birches had no commercial value, at least none that the foresters were aware of.

Birch wood indeed has its limitations.

It is heavy and not very durable, but in northern countries where there are enormous stands of birch, the timber is used to make plywood. In the past much greater distinctions were made in quality of wood, and in the cotton industry, birch was favoured in the making of bobbins and spools. These days in Ireland, however, birch is more likely to make a contribution to biodiversity, and in the past it was regarded highly for some quite practical reasons, one of which was to help pave the way across bogland. Before the decline of the Gaelic order, Ireland’s midlands were criss-crossed with well maintained and carefully engineered trackways. Among the different types of wood selected for

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 35

these trackways was birch, and it is likely that considerations other than chopping down the nearest trees, came into play.

It is also likely that a distinction would have been made between the downy and the silver birch, both of which occur widely and are easily confused. The downy birch, which tolerates wetter conditions, is more common than the showy silver birch, but making a definite choice between the two is difficult because they hybridise. The easiest way to decide is to look closely at the leaves, many of which cling on into winter.

The leaves of the downy birch, Betula pubescens, have a regular row of notches along the edge, while the silver birch leaf is edged with double notches.

All of this may well have something to do with chromosomes, the number of which has been found to vary. According to the botanist, Charles Nelson, birches with 28, 56 or 42 chromosomes can look deceptively alike, so declaring a tree to be one species rather than another seems to be a bit risky. Silver birch, Betula pendula, is on record as a diploid, like us, while downy birch, Betula pubescens is a tetraploid, which means it has an extra set, and among plants this sort of playing around with the genetic rules is not so unusual.

Birches bleed when cut, and while I don’t know if anybody ever tried this in Ireland, collecting the sap and allowing it to ferment to make an alcoholic drink, is a long established tradition throughout northern Europe, Russia and northern Asia, and for those who wanted something a bit stronger, the wine was distilled. In Russia and Asia, birch sap is harvested in spring and bottled for sale as a popular drink.

In Ireland the peeling bark was collected to prepare tanning baths for leather, and a fascinating character from the 18th century, John Rutty, recorded that a birch dye was used on fishing nets and sails to make them brown. Rutty, who wrote on many subjects, including the flora of Dublin and mineral waters, also noted that sheep skin, dipped in birch and oak, was good for binding books.

Although little is known about sweat houses in Ireland, they were, apparently common enough to be recorded as numerous by 19th century antiquarians.

Like a more severe form of sauna, people shut themselves into a roasting hot stone cabin to sweat away their grime and possibly diseases as well, and beating bare skin with birch seems to have been part of the ritual. It seems that birch was seen to have a symbolic significance in driving out evil, and it’s hardly a coincidence that those scary self-righteous advocates of corporal punishment, without really knowing what they are saying, keep demanding that we “bring back the birch!” Amazingly, birching was officially condoned in British prisons until well into the 20th century. It did not necessarily

Looking at a real witch’s broom from stressed out birches in Leixlip, Co Kildare. involve birch twigs, willows also came into play, but even so, the punishment was always birching. Officially banned in mainland prisons only in 1948, the birch was still legal on the Isle of Man until the 1970s. The last judicially ordered birching was administered there on a 15 year old in 1972, a shameful and degrading

The double serrations show that this is a Silver Birch.

act that was subsequently condemned by the European Court of Human Rights.

Whatever about this bizarre and nasty twist to an old belief in driving out evil, birches are also firmly rooted in other magical traditions.

Witches were always carried aloft on a besom brooms, and they were probably flying high on the scarlet capped agaric, the poisonous fungi that is so prominent in fairy tale illustrations.

Fly agaric grows under birch and pines, and it has always been associated with magic, and indeed some questionable behaviour. I see in one of my old text books, “Phytopharmacy” by Ross and Brain, that “in Siberia an intoxicating liquor is concocted from this species and the urine of individuals who have drunk the liquor is collected and drunk again because passage through the kidneys enhances the intoxicating properties.”

The hardy pioneers who took up residence among the birch forests must have shared the awe on my children’s faces when I told them that the bundle of twigs they held up for inspection was not a bird’s nest, but a witch’s broom. That grabbed their attention, but of course they were still young enough to believe that everything their father said was true. My explanation, when it came, was received in stony silence. Instead of being the result of an aerial crash into a birch, the bundle of twigs was caused by an infection, most likely a fungus, Taphrina tugida. After that, there was not much point in explaining that witches’ brooms are quite common. The magic had evaporated, and as we trudged back home to hot soup I could hear vague grumblings in the background about another blooming lecture.

StEm CEll RUlE tom Kennedy reports on court ruling that will create rather than solve any problems EuropE’s highest court, the Court of Justice, has ruled that stem cells derived from an embryo cannot be patented.

Specifically, the wording of this rule is that “a process which involves removal of a stem cell from a human embryo at the blastocyst stage, entailing the destruction of that embryo, cannot be patented.” What this means, is that while there is no ban on conducting research, the results cannot be protected, This ruling, made in response to a legal challenge by Greenpeace, cannot be appealed, and it applies to all Eu member states including Ireland.

The challenge arose from work being done by a German researcher, Prof Oliver Brüstle, who had developed a technique to induce embryonic stem cells to grow into nerve cells. As a result of the ruling, his work, and the work of many other scientists can no longer benefit from patent protection. For these researchers, the ruling is a complete disaster, for it means that no one will be prepared to fund any aspect of stem cell research based on cells harvested initially from an embryo.

So, while harvesting of organs from the dead seems fine, a completely different approach is being applied to recovery of cells from an early stage embryo. The core moral issue here is that harvesting of stem cells kills the embryo, and unfortunately, the ruling is framed in such a way that it applies in a universal all or nothing way, making it more acceptable to flush the problem away rather than save stem ThE FACT that there are embryonic and adult stem cells can cause some confusion. In our body, stem cells occur in many different places and their role is one of generating replacements for more specialised cells that have been damaged or lost.

Essentially, they are undifferentiated cells that have stopped short of developing into more specialised forms, and this is why they are of such intense interest.

While specialised cells lose their ability to replicate, stem cells have the capacity to regenerate fully functional replacements for cells that have been lost through injury or disease.

A number of successful treatments have been developed using adult stem cells, and at rEMEDI, the Regenerative Medicine Institute, in Galway, considerable progress has been made on culturing stem cells that could be used to treat cardiovascular disease and arthritis. research is also being conducted out on using stem cells to deliver genetic material into tissues.

While adult stem cell therapy has been advancing rapidly with great success, one of the basic problems concerns the reprogramming of adult stem cells so that instead of becoming a blood cell, a muscle, or a neuron, it will grow into some other type of cell. A great deal of research is being focused on reprogramming of stem cells, and some researchers are attempting to reverse the

cells. There is no compromise, yet the rule is only concerned with patent protection, not with the harvesting itself or the actual research.

It appears that stem cell research was not the only thing on the agenda leading up to this rule, for in a statement to the press, the Greenpeace activists who made the challenge, said that they are opposed to the patenting of knowledge, and is another reason why so many scientists are worried because they know that no one, whether from a venture capital firm or a state agency, is going to fund research leading to results that are just going to be given away. Patenting may not be perfect, but it does at least mean that researchers, even if funded by charities, are in a position to protect their work, and ultimately, their results will enter the public domain anyway because all patents eventually lapse.

While it would be wrong to dismiss the strongly held beliefs of many people, and embryonic stem cell research raises moral issues that are not easy to resolve, this ruling seems to have been made with the minimum of consultation and little or no regard for the consequences.

The ruling, explained stem cell researcher, Dr stephen Sullivan, is likely to have a huge impact on Europe. In an interview with RTE, Stephen, who is now conducting research in the us, said that patents are an important part of bringing results out of the lab and into the clinic. Without protection of results, he said, stem cell research in Europe will simply be no longer viable. This will not, however, stop the rapid advance of stem cell research in the us and Asia, and ironically, Europeans may end up having to buy back the results as treatments for a whole range of illnesses are developed.

Dr Sullivan has previously been highly critical of the lack of ethical guidelines in Ireland which made it impossible for researchers to secure funding from state agencies. That situation, he said, had been improving, but now, “everything is thrown up into the air.”

process, so that stem cells could be generated from adult specialists.

However, all of this research is still in its early days, and instead of having to undergo a lot of reprogramming, which may or not work, stem cells taken from an embryo have greater flexibility and cause less problems. For stem cell researchers, embryonic stem cells have much greater potential, and they also need to know much more about how they develop and what triggers differentiation.

A common practice is to take embryonic stem cells from what is known as a blastocyst, which, technically, while as small as a pin-head and consisting of perhaps 100 cells, is an embryo. In many cases, this blastocyst has been produced by a technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, and as such is not a normal embryo.

Instead of the usual conjugation of sperm and egg, an ordinary cell from the body is stripped of its nucleus, before being inserted into a donated egg cell. The egg behaves as if it had been fertilized in the normal way, and after about a week of growth, the stem cells are harvested.

This procedure and the fact that the embryo is sacrificed, raise significant ethical issues, and at present a number of experts in this field are attempting to develop alternatives, such as extraction of just one cell which could then be cultured into a stem cell line.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 37

As Stephen observes, this rule comes at a very bad blow not just for European science but also for Ireland’s aim to foster growth of a knowledge economy. Health care, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are important to the economy, and having to side-step around stem cell research is not going to help promote Ireland as a place to conduct research.

One of the unfortunate consequences, observed Dr Sullivan, is that stem cell research is now going to continue without ethical guidelines, and this goes far beyond any considerations of whether it is right or wrong to harvest stem cells from an embryo. What Stephen refers to as “stem cell tourism” is on the rise. Seriously ill people, desperately seeking a cure, are being targeted by private clinics offering highly priced ‘stem cell’ treatments.

Dyspnoi, lateral view, above.

Eupnoi, lateral view, below

“This decision, and the legal complications of it,” he said, “are already being used on various scam websites as an enticement to patients to ignore medical and scientific advice.

Europe has a big problem with stem cell tourism, and it is now likely to get bigger.”

Dr Sullivan is just one of many scientists who have raised concerns that people in need of treatment, instead of getting help, are being exploited.

Undoubtedly, one way or the other, stem cell research is going to provide cures for a range of serious illnesses, but as Stephen remarked, it would be far better for these to be developed and delivered within an ethically acceptable environment.

No need for change after 300 million years THe daddy-long-leg insects that flitted around 300 million years ago were not all that different from those that we see today. Using computerised tomography on a fossil to create a three dimensional model, scientists at Imperial College London were surprised to see how little these insects had changed. Dr Russell Garwood, from the Natural History Museum, remarked that if one of these insects was brought back from the Carboniferous Era and released into a garden, it would not look out of place.

It seems that these members of the Dyspnoi and Eupnoi suborders of harvestmen had reached evolutionary perfection while their relations, such as the scorpions, were still struggling to come up with a better design.

Apart from revealing how little they have changed, the model also provided clues to how the two lineages of harvestmen had originated from a common ancestor about 305 million years ago. It appears that the eupnoi lived in foliage just above the forest floor, while the more robust and prickly Dyspnoi may have inhabited the woody debris below in much the same way as its modern relative in America, Acuclavella cosmetoides.

The scientists were quite pleased to have fossils that were so well preserved because normally the small, soft and fragile bodies do not survive. About 33 daddy-long-legs fossils have been found, a while traditional methods of cracking open a rock would allow researchers to look at the surface or its impression, tomography allowed them to examine the model insects in 3D. Thousands of x-rays were compiled to make the complete images, and the same technique is being used to examine other ancient insects.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 38

Slow light C

an anything travel faster than light?

According to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, where c is the speed of light, mass will always slow us down.

For space travellers that means having to accept that distant worlds will remain forever out of reach unless the equation is wrong, or we find some clever way of getting around the rules.

In his book, Slow light, Sidney Perkowitz wonders if we are really caught in a bind, for we don’t really know all that much about light, and no one can be sure whether photons should be regarded as waves or particles, for they appear to share the properties of both. As he points out, while 300,000 km per second seems to be the speed limit, and it fits in with calculations based on the equation, we don’t really know what actually sets that limit. What we do know, is that this is just the speed in a vacuum, for light can be slowed down.

In water the speed drops to 225,000 km a second, and that is why it abruptly goes off at an angle, giving us refraction which comes in handy when designing lenses, and in diamonds, refracting light produces the wedding ring sparkle.

As the author, a Professor of Physics at Emory University, who takes a keen interest in science fiction, points out, it often takes some creative imagination to see where behaviour like this, might lead.

The stories about glass that could act like a window on the past, are based on the

The quest for alien life

W

here are all the little green men?

Well, for starters, they might not be men, and even if life in space is green rather than yellow or blue, it is hardly likely to resemble anything on Earth.

However, what is highly likely, is that some form of life exists out there.

As the author of From dying stars to the birth of life, Jerry Cranford, explains, we are certainly not alone or unique in the Universe. We know that the Milky Way is vast, but the true scale of the Universe, where there may be 100 billion or more galaxies, is hard to comprehend. We once thought that the Solar System was special, but now that we can see deeper into space, other planets, orbiting around stars have been found. So far more than 400 of these exoplanets have been discovered, and no doubt many more are going to be found.

fact that it is possible to slow down the speed of light. The science fiction writer, L Sprague de Camp had published a short story in 1940 based on this concept, and later Bob Shaw had written about a man who sold glass that held Scottish Highland scenery that had been captured years before. Eventually all the light would have been released from the glass and the scene would disappear.

Of course, a lot of objections could have been raised by sober scientists, such as the impossibility of holding so much energy in a thin sheet of glass, but what if more exotic materials were used, or if the temperature was brought down to near absolute zero? These days we would be more inclined to say “improbable” rather than “impossible” for we have entered an era of decidedly strange, or as Einstein put it, “spooky” (spukhafte) behaviour.

As the author explains, the spooky behaviour that Einstein was referring to, called entanglement, may be the reason for the apparently dual nature of photons. In entanglement, two particles that once belonged together, continue to share behaviour, even when far apart.

Spooky indeed, and so far, no one knows why this happens, but it does rather upset all our old ideas about time and space.

Another unexpected twist in the ongoing story of light started with a paper written by the Russian physicist, V G Veselago in 1946 in which he suggested that the prevailing right-hand rule might not always hold true, and that refraction could also have a negative value. At the time, no one could think of a medium that would cause light to bend the ‘wrong’ way, but then in 2000, researchers at the University of California came up with synthetic composites known as metamaterials.

These carefully engineered materials can be used to produce negative refraction, as can natural crystals of calcite, but since the development of metamaterials, there has been an enormous growth of interest in how they could be applied in optics. The wavelength barrier to resolution in microscopes may yet be broken, and we already have the invisibility cloak on screen — so once again, fact is not so far behind fiction.

Jerry Cranford quite reasonably points out that it would not make much sense for life to be confined to one insignificant dot in the Universe, for the conditions that gave rise to life have been repeated many times in many places.

As he explains, conditions on early Earth would strike us now as totally alien. The Earth was once an extremely hostile place, blanked in toxic gases, yet these were the conditions that acted as an incubator for the earliest forms of life that we know of to evolve.

Although often referred to as primitive, the microorganisms that inhabited this chemical soup, were not simple. The Cynobacteria were highly complex, they had cracked the universal energy transfer ATP code, and not alone are they still with us, but they remain the dominant form of life on Earth. All the processes that keep us alive can, ultimately, be traced back to these microorganisms.

As the author states, if this happened here, why would it not happen elsewhere?

We know that major changes on Earth shaped the course of evolution, and if we fast-forward to a time of mobile, multicellular animals, another important factor came into play, for as soon as life began to diversify it came close to being wiped out. There have been at least five major extinctions due to the Earth being slammed into by massive asteroids.

Earth is not a very safe place, and the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs would have been about 10 billion times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. As Jerry Cranford observed, each time life made its return, it was meaner and stronger, so aggression is part of our inheritance. As he writes, “the single largest expense item in most of the major economies continues to be the building and maintaining of weapons

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 39

Slow light Invisibility, teleportation and other mysteries of light Sidney Perkowitz Imperial College Press Review, Tom Kennedy

with which to destroy our fellow humans.”

Apart from being dismayed, you might wonder what this has to do with aliens. The connections are that aliens, if they had followed a similar course of evolution, could be hostile, and if they are as aggressive as we are, they may well be on the way or have already followed a road to self-destruction.

Currently a lot of attention is being given to the possibility of life on Mars, but no one knows what lies further afield. Getting there is one of the big problems, and even if we ever manage to travel at the speed of light, it would take years to reach the

next nearest star. Voyager, launched in 1977, is still on its way at 39,000 miles an hour, but it would take 50,000 years at that speed to reach Alpha Centauri.

As it passed Pluto, Voyager looked back towards Earth, and all it could detect was a tiny blue dot.

On board were some calling cards from Earth, a miscellaneous collection of images and sounds that aliens, if they happen to be intelligent, could try to make sense of.

Among them, some old evergreen classics, such as Beethoven’s Brandenburg Concerto in F, and Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode — they still pack a punch after all those years, but what about after

20,000, 30,000 or even 50,000? Human culture is not much older than that, and if there are intelligent aliens out there, they too might also just be just a brief flash in the pan, and a million years one way or the other would make quite a difference.

The book provides very clear background to the subject, from early days when seeing was believing, to the scientific feasibility of space travel, and all of this stems from a fascination that began when the author was still at school. He thought long and hard before deciding to embark on a psychology and neuroscience career. As he remarked, it was easier to think of being an amateur star gazer than becoming an amateur brain scientist.

From dying stars to the birth of life Jerry L Cranford Nottingham University Press Review, Tom Kennedy

OLD BITE As a 120 million year old fossil shows, fighting is nothing new. Scars found on the jaw of a fossilised sea reptile found in South Australia are thought to have been inflicted by another member of the same species. Known as an ichthyosaur, the dolphin like animal was about six metres in length and it had a long snout armed with more than 100 crocodile-like teeth. These would have been fast-swimming predators, feeding on fish and squid and they inhabited a vast chilly sea at a time when the Australian continent was still part of Antarctica.

According to Benjamin Kear, Assistant Professor in Palaeobiology at Uppsala University, the bite marks were found during cleaning and reassembly of the skeleton. The wound had healed, showing that the animal survived and lived for some time afterwards.

Such rare finds, said Prof Kear, reporting the find in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, add to our knowledge of social structure among these ancient animals. The bite marks do not appear to have been caused by prey defending itself, and the pattern suggests that this was a fight between adult ichthyrsaurs. Facial biting, observed Prof Kear, is a common type of behaviour among animals now, often over a mate or in competition for food.

Reconstruction of an ichthyosaur. Illustration by artist Josh Lee from the book “Dinosaurs in Australia” by BP Kear and RJ Hamilton-Bruce (CSIRO Publishing).

Ichthyosaur bite marks. A close-up of the ichthyosaur snout showing the healed wounds. Photo courtesy Jo Bain, South Australian Museum.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 49 Page 40

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