Science Spin 51

ISSUE

51

March 2012

€5 including VAT £4 NI and UK

SCIENCE

SPIN

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

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CLOUD COMPUTING

What’s it all about?

SPACE JUNK

A hazard we could do without

CITY OF SCIENCE

Science for everyone

LICHENS

Looking at some of Ireland’s 1,200 species

BAMBOO

Plants with a peculiar clock

STEM CELLS

Why can’t humans be more like fishes?

IRISH FOSSILS

Amazing Ammonoids

Where creativity and great science meet LIVE LINK

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SCIENCE SCIENCE

SPIN SPIN Bamboo is imported by Europe, yet a number of species can be grown there.

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

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LICHENS Looking at some of the 1,200 Irish natives

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Geo mapping Discovering a trail of life in ancient rocks

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Space junk Seán Duke reports that Ireland is involved in tracking the dangerous space debris

Contributing editor Seán Duke sean@sciencespin.com Business Manager Alan Doherty alan@sciencespin.com

Upfront

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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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Regeneration Tom Kennedy reports on why it would be a good idea to study stem cells in different species

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Making things work A growing interest in creative construction

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City of Science Launching a year long programme of activities

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The cloud Some of the issues involved in getting connected

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Dr How’s science wows Naomi Lavelle looks at transpiration

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Young scientists Projects from this year’s exhibition

25

Irish fossils Anthea Lacchia writes about the amazing ammonoids

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Bamboo Tom Kennedy writes about plants with a peculiar internal clock

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Books War weapons, observing space, and how to get better results from research

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SCIENCE

ON AIR Go to

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

14

Geological Survey of Ireland Suirbhéireacht Gheolaiochta Eireann

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UPFRONT

Cancer tissue bank

For some years breast cancer researchers have been calling for the establishment of a tissue bank. Such a bank was needed to store and supply researchers with tissue samples from donors so that they could identify the factors that lead to disease.

In January this year a breast cancer bank, funded by the charity, Breast Cancer Campaign, was established. The bank, based in the UK, currently houses tissue samples from 2,500 donors. More samples are to collected and added by different medical institutions, and these are being made available to all researchers in the UK and Ireland.

In a review among more than 50 of the world’s leading cancer researchers, difficulty in sourcing suitable tissue samples was given as a major obstacle the development of treatments.

LIVE www.breastcancertissuebank.org LINK

New head for SFI

ProFeSSor Mark Ferguson has been appointed Director General of Science Foundation Ireland. Professor Ferguson, a graduate of Queen’s with degrees in dentistry, anatomy, embryology and medical sciences, was just 28 years old when appointed Professor of life Sciences at the University of Manchester.

Apart from academic distinctions, Prof Ferguson co-founded renovo, a biotechnology company involved in developing pharmaceuticals, and in 1999 he received a CBe (Commander of the British empire) for his services to health and life science.

Dr Graham love who has been SFI’s acting Director General since the departure of Prof Frank Gannon, is returning to his position as Director of Policy and Communications.

US EU collaboration

DUrInG an address to the european Institute in Washington earlier this year, Commissioner Máire Geoghegan Quinn called for a strengthening of relations between the US and the eU. The Commissioner had been pushing a range of reforms in europe to encourage innovation, and she made the point that in a number of areas, the eU and the US have interests in common. Apart from global issues, the Commissioner specifically mentioned the auto industry. once a major driver of the economy on both sides of the Atlantic, europe and the US have been hit hard by a collapse of companies that failed to maintain their once dominant position in the world market. As the Commissioner pointed out, collaboration across the Atlantic in developing a new generation of autos could help that industry regain position.

With rising interest in electric cars, she said, it is important for the eU and the US to adopt a common approach and agree on common standards.

Animal origins

WhAT makes pets and farm animals different from their ancestors? In a european research Council funded study, Professor Dan Bradley from TCD will be tracing the genetic changes that brought animals in from the wild over the past 10,000 years. one of the possible outcomes from this study is that breeders and farmers will gain a greater understanding of

how to prevent diseases and maintain productivity.

For genetic analysis, researchers will look at the remains of cattle, sheep and goats, and this includes parchments in ancient manuscripts. Before paper, animal skins were used, and one fifth of the €2.5 million grant will be used

by Professor Matthew Collins at the University of York to identify the species from which the parchments have been made.

Clean water

WhIle most of us only have to turn on a tap to get clean water, millions of people around the world would like to do the same, but can’t. Water contamination is a major problem, and young children are often the ones to suffer most from infections.

Two TCD engineering scientists, laurence Gill and Joanne MacMahon, looked at the problem, and, as they observed, the need for clean water is often greatest in regions with an abundance of sunlight, and the UV in sunlight is a highly effective killer of pathogens.

The engineers devised a system of glass tubes backed by a reflector to concentrate the light, and when installed at a remote village in Kenya, the solar powered disinfection system worked well and was able to provide clean water to 600 people before drought cut off the supply. Once an alternative source of water can be found, the solar system will be back in action.

Joanne, who is studying for her PhD under the department head, laurence, said that this relatively low-cost, low-tech system could be used quite widely in developing countries, and she added that it can also deal with arsenic, a common and very harmful contaminant. ww.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nVJhlSrA2GI

Raw alcohol

TAx on alcoholic drinks is a big revenue earner for the State, and not surprisingly there are lots of people who would like to find cheaper supplies. However, as a lot of people who bought cut-price diesel from dubious dealers found out, the product could turn out to be a harmful substitute, dressed up to look like the real thing. raw alcohol is used in a variety of products, and as it is not subject to excise duty, most countries, and all states of Europe, render it unfit for consumption by adding strong smelling or bitter substances. Blue coloured methylated spirits is just one of the examples.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 2

however, as the Joint research Centre has found, over one hundred different substances are being used to make alcohol unfit for consumption. Tax authorities are not too happy with this situation as it makes it more difficult to detect drinks that have slipped through the duty net. According to the JrC, tax exempt alcohol is finding its way into the drinks market, and an added problem is that some of the additives are easier to remove than others.

A group of technical experts is now working on ways to standardise the practice of rendering duty free alcohol unfit for consumption.

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Entering the 4th dimension

UPFRONT

UPFRONT

launched. This is to be a gravitational observatory with the capacity to probe so deep into space that it will reach into the early Universe.

As the Universe expanded from a single It will be some years before LIsA point, it may have started with just one is launched, but already there is some dimension. This is a theory proposed 450 million yeara old Crustacean, with fossilized softthat stojkovic and evidence to suggest byADejan stojkovic physicist at the complete parts, has been found in Herefordshire.

One of the scientists ProfEssor Marymount are on the right track.

University of Buffalo to resolve some of involved in the problems discovery,in Prof David Siveter from the University frank Barry, Extremely high energy cosmic ray the fundamental particle of Leicester, said that what made the 5mm particles, long fossil so specialwith the early Director of associated physics. isDejan not that it is a previously un-named species, but that soft to lie along a twoNCBEs, the Universe, are the observed stojkovic suggests that the parts have been preserved so well that eyes and the antennae can National Centre dimensional plane.

Universe then developed into two be made out. for Biomedical such a radical shift in our dimensions, before becoming the three The fossil, flata, belongs to the same group Engineering understanding, the authors argue, would dimensions thatnamed we areNasunaris familiar with as water-fleas andisshrimps.

Their are descendants are common science at help to resolve some problems, such as today.

His argument that physicists today to in the lakes and oceans, and geologists use theneed fossils NUI Galway has become the first the present toas artificially adjust the coming wrong conclusions because often indicators of pastbased climates. scientist outside the Us to receive the mass of the Higgs boson to make it fit in theories are being on what we Marshall r Urist Award for Excellence with the standard model. There are also know about the Universe in its current Internal image of the fossil showing the soft parts eyes. Image: in Tissue regeneration research. The other and problems that are proving difficult state.

David J. Siveter, Derek in E. Physics G. Briggs, Derek J.toSiveter and Mark D. incompatability award, named after Dr Marshall r resolve, such as the In a paper published Review Sutton.

Urist, a pioneer in the study of bone between quantum mechanics and general Letters, stojkovic and his co-author, morphogenetic proteins, is presented to relativity.

Loyola Marymount, maintain that a outstanding by the fearing orthopaedic The authors maintain that if the early failure to detect gravitational waves, in Later, one of David’s successors,scientists King Hezekiah, that research society. universe had just one orthe two dimensions, deep space would provide evidence to Assyrians would take Jerusalem using the same approach, Profcity Barry, Cork, worked mathematical discrepancies would back up this theory. argument isby the underlying rerouted thebewater into the via afrom 550 Cobh metrein long tunnel.

It JERUSALEM’s fateTheir was determined geology. with osiris Therapeutics in the Us, resolved and we may find out why the that such waves can only exist in three proved to be a good decision, for in 701 BC, Jerusalem wasa the At the annual Geological Society of America meeting last company involved Universe continues to expand at an dimensional space, so if we look back only city that the Assyrians failed to take.in developing stem October, Michael Bramnik from Illinois University explained therapies, before becoming Director accelerating rate. At present, the cause farthat enough into the early stages ofin the Water still remains cell a major factor in shaping modern history underground passageways the karst limestone enabled of the regenerative Medicine Institute at of this expansion is not understood, but Universe, gravitational waves will not be in the region, and Michael Bramnik said that when he went in King David to take the city. Water was drawn from the Spring NUI Galway, a post he continue to hold stojkovic and Marymount suggest that a detected.

However, producing this sort of search of hydrological maps for other towns and settlements of Gihon, which lay just outside the city walls. David’s soldiers in with addition to heading the NCBEs. further progression of the into a evidence haveinto to wait until the Laser he Universe was often rebuffed a claim that such maps do not climbedwill down the spring and by tunnelling under the fourth dimension may be responsible.

Interforometer space Antenna exist. walls got access to the city. (LIsA) is

Honour for Irish scientist

An old water flea

Bedrock of history

www.gsi.ie gsisales.gsi.ie

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UPFRONT

Other worlds

Snowflakes

AfTER reading an article about snowflakes, Professor Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at the Californian Institute of Technology, became fascinated by all the different forms he found around his home in North Dakota. He began recording these, and has since become well known for his books of snowflake photographs.

Not content with capturing their beauty, Prof Libbrecht wanted to know why these flakes take so many forms. It was known that ice crystals begin to grow into thin plates at minus 2°C, and approaching minus 5°C they form slender columns and needles.

As the temperature goes down to minus 15°C thin plates form, and below minus 30°C they go back into forming columns.

To find out what was going on, Prof Libbrecht observed how the snowflakes formed under different conditions, and he discovered that there is a relationship between temperature and humidity. As the flakes form, small changes in conditions can influence growth resulting in a wide range of final forms.

THE Universe may have lots of planets similar in size to Earth, and those detected by the space telescope Kepler are likely to be just the first few of many to come. The planets were found orbiting a star about 1,000 light years away from us, and the fact that they could be detected from such a distance means that it is almost certain that more will be found orbiting other stars.

According to scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, the detection of these planets in December 2011 is a breakthough because it is the first time that that such near-Earthsized planets have been recorded orbiting a star.

The Kepler space telescope, launched from Cape Canaveral in March 2009, is equipped with a 95 megapixel camera. The camera was pointed in the direction of the northern constellation, Cygnus, covering an area believed to have over 4.5 detectable stars. About 300,000 of these stars are likely to have Earth-like planets in orbit around them.

Planets are spotted by slight periodic dimming, indicating the passage of an orbiting object between the star and the observer.

Of the five planets detected, one is orbiting at a distance from the star that could allow liquid water to exist, and for life, as we know it on Earth, this is would be important. That particular planet is twice the size of Earth, while the others range in size down to just 7,000 miles across.

The discovery of these planets also raises a question of how they evolved. With our solar system, the rocky planets, including Earth, are closest to the Sun, while the gas giants lie further out.

With the recently discovered planets, a gas giant is the innermost of the five, followed by two other gas planets. This challenges current views on how planets formed.

Throw-backs

SometimeS ancestral traits crop up, and biologists have often thought of these as errors.

However, as Professor Ehab Abouheif from McGill University argues, the ability to reactivate ancestral traits is more likely to be a useful tool in evolution. Ancestral traits, he remarked, such as teeth in birds, or ape-like hair in humans, pop up regularly in nature.

Professor Ehab’s interest in ancestral traits was sparked off when examining anomalies in ants. Unexpectedly, he found that some Pheidole ants inhabiting Long Island had developed into much larger supersoldiers with big heads and jaws. While this was highly unusual, he found that similar supersoldiers were quite common in the American southwest.

By applying a juvenile hormone to the Long Island ants, researchers at Prof Abouheif’s lab, led by PhD student, Rajee Rajakumar, found that they could artificially induce production of supersoldiers.

Reporting their findings in Science, the researchers concluded that in the Long Island ants, the ancestral supersoldier traits had, in effect, been parked away. Such traits, they said, could remain dormant for millions of years, ready to be reactivated whenever a change in conditions makes it necessary to adapt.

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institute.mail@marine.ie

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Praeger Centre

UPFRONT

A field studies centre has been established at the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin. A grant from the Heritage Council has been used to equip the centre with binocular microscopes, an entomological cabinet and a library of publications from the field Studies Council.

The centre has been named after Robert lloyd Praeger, the distinguished naturalist who was responsible for the Clare island survey.

Broken chromosomes

THe longest human genes are prone to breakages that result in the development of tumours. The length, as researchers from the institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire at the University of Strasburg found, appears to create a problem. Because transcribing the genetic information takes so long, the host cell can replicate before the process is completed.

According to the laszlo Tora and the team of researchers, it is possible that the two processes interfere with each other. Until a study was made of cells going through a process of division, it was thought that the two processes were mutually exclusive, and that transcription from the genes would be finished before cell division began.

The studies revealed that transcription can continue after cell division has started, and the researchers suspect that some of the genetic instructions become scrambled, as some of the dNA template hybridizes with the RNA messengers to form loop-like structures. Their suggestion is that these loops destabilise the dNA, and if this is the case, these structures represent a potential target for anti-tumour treatments.

Promoting science

THe Patrick’s day parade and the festivities from the 16th to the 18th March will help show the world that science is being taken seriously in ireland. School children have been invited to participate by coming up with science themed exhibits.

As coverage of the parade and the festivities is beamed around the world, viewers will see that science is part of irish culture.

www.stpatricksfestival.ie LIVE LINK

Insect ears

foSSilS from fine lake sediments in Colarado show that insects from 50 million years ago had sensitive hearing. Professor Roy Plotnick from the University of Boulder’s Museum of Natural History and palaeontologists from the University of illinois, discovered this by examining exceptionally well preserved fossils from series of ancient lake deposits known as the Green River formation. Because the fossils are so detailed, the membrane covered cavities that enable insects to hear can be seen.

Unlike our ears, the thin membrane in insects that acts as an eardrum, is on the surface, and while we have ears on our head, insects can have ears on their legs or even on their wings. one of the objectives in looking at these ancient insect ears is to determine how they evolved. According to the researchers, reporting their findings in the Journal of Palaeontology, hearing in insects appears to have evolved at least 17 times in different lineages. insects can make a lot of noise as they signal to each other, but one theory was that avoiding predators originally triggered the development of hearing. it was argued that the ability to detect the ultra-high sonar of bats would have given insects a better chance of avoiding capture. However, as the fossils pre-date the appearance of bats, the ability to detect such predators could only have come into play after hearing evolved.

Funding software engineering

THe irish Software engineering Research Centre, leRo, based at the University of limerick has received a €16 million boost from Science foundation ireland. The Sfi contribution is being matched by €6.4 million from industry, giving leRo a high level of financial security for the next five years. leRo is one of the nine CSeTs, research centres with a strong focus on applications.

The centre works in collaboration with a number of third level institutions and companies.

EU funded research

iNfoRMATioN about all eU funded projects is available on line from the CoRdiS web site. The records, going back to 1986, have been put on line to provide researchers and other participants with reference material and examples of successful projects.

According to the European Commission, Ireland currently participates in over 2,550 funded projects and acts as the co-ordinator for 1,600 of these.

The records are at http://cordis.europa.eu/projects

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 6

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UPFRONT

Medical treatment

TRACKING SPACE

ULTRASOUND

SCREEN

As the probe is passed over the patient, it can trigger cue cards that appear in TRACKING CAMERA the appropriate position. A A computerised medical further refinement is speech system, developed to help recognition, so that hands are astronauts treat each other in kept free to get on with the space, could prove to be just as procedure. useful on earth where it could during initial tests at USER be used for emergency response the saint-pierre university situations. in the system, Hospital in Brussels, developed under the european untrained staff were able to space Agency, the person giving perform difficult procedures the treatment receives 3d without any other help other guidance from a pair of goggles. than the guidance from the COMPUTER the view combines a computer computerised system. generated model with a view the system was developed of the patient. initially the by a consortium led by development because it is known as a system works for ultrasound examination, versatile and effective diagnostic tool. space Applications services in Belgium but according to esA, other types of with the technical university of munich Although astronauts have some procedures can be developed. ultrasound and dKFZ, the German cancer research medical knowledge, this system can guide examination was chosen for the initial centre. them through more complex procedures.

LIVE LINK

peter.crowley@nuigalway.ie

LICHENS A

lthough lichens are a familiar sight, adding splashes of colour to walls and tree trunks, most people, including professional biologists, would be surprised to learn that almost 1,200 species have been recorded so far in Ireland.

In form and colour, the diversity is staggering, but this is not the only thing that makes lichens special. Lichens are unusual in that they are a combination of organisms, a fungus and a photosynthesing algae or cyanobacteria bound together as partners in a symbiotic relationship.

Because of this partnership, lichens are successful pioneers, capable of colonising nutrient poor habitats, such as bare rock.

Symbiosis appears to have offered the pioneers a neat solution to invade new territory, but all is not equality and happiness within lichens. The fungus dominates the photosynthesising partner, which often makes up less than 20 per cent of the lichen, but the two, or sometimes three species, can live in harmony for a long time. Some lichens are thought to live for thousands of years.

The dual nature of lichens was only recognised in 1869, and at first naturalists were reluctant to accept that such an ‘unnatural’ union could exist.

Clearly, the lichen exists as a distinct entity, but how could it be named as a species?

The solution was to name lichens from the dominant fungal partner, but strictly speaking, a lichen is not a species.

So, for every one of the 1,200 lichens known from Ireland, there is a fungus, while the number of algae and cynobacteria species is only about ten.

The lichens shown here are among those described, and illustrated in Paul Whelan’s new book, Lichens of Ireland. The book is a splendid guide to Ireland’s rich diversity in lichens, illustrating more than 250 types in colour, and describing their biology. The discriptions are accompanied by useful distribution maps, habitat preferences and notes to help with identification.

This is an outstanding eye-opener of a book that we can expect to become firmly established as one of the classics of Irish wildlife literature.

Paul Whelan, author of Lichens of Ireland is giving a one-day introductory course on lichens on April 28th, 2012, at the National Biodiversity Data Centre, Waterford biodiversityireland.ie.

Caloplaca flavescens. Develops as nice neat yellow circles but as it matures the centre falls away. The apothecia fruiting bodies are orange coloured. Found on many calcareous rocks and on cement gateposts, especially on the vertical surfaces. Loves the excess nitrogen that blows off farms.

Candelaria concolor. An egg-yellow lichen that was once rare in Ireland but is returning in recent years. Apothecia were also once rare, but are appearing with regularity on species today, particularly in the south of the country.

Dermatocarpon miniatum. Often looks like tiny pieces of discarded leather, this lichen is invariable found in rainwater runoffs over limestone, around freshwater lakes or near seashores. It is attached to the substrate by a single stalk or holdfast. The tiny pepper-like dots are the reproductive perithecia.

Common throughout Ireland.

Cladonia diversa. An upland species whose bright red apothecia often catch the eye of hillwalkers.

Usnea florida. In contrast to Usnea subfloridana, this delicate Usnea is very sensitive to air pollution and will only produce its sun-like apothecia in the cleanest of environments.

Grows high in the canopy so it is elusive to most lichenologists. A good exercise is to look for it on twigs on the ground after a storm!

Graphina anguina. One of Ireland’s most dramatic script or ‘writinglichens’. The serpentine threads are stretched-out apothecia. Its favoured habitat is around the edge of woodlands on smooth bark. Found thoughout Ireland.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 9

Evernia prunastri. Well known to amateur lichenologists because it is classed as a foliose (leaf-like) lichen yet it looks like it has a fruticose (shrub-like) body plan. This confusion ensures it stays in the memory. The underside is white and grooved (shown in the photo); the upper side is green-grey without grooves.

Aspilicia calcarea. Possibly Ireland’s most abundant white lichen and a great food source for snails and slugs. It occurs on limestone, particularly along the tops of walls and old bridges in damp areas.

Cladonia gracilis. A tall straight lichen that often looks like it emerged from a maritime environment such as a coral reef. Up to 6cm high, it has tiny tooth-like marks around the shallow cups. Enjoys living on sandy, acidic soils and decaying wood.

Caloplaca aurantia. Forms distinctive yellow patches with the central region often absent. Edges tightly adhering to the rock.

Prefers limestone. Common throughout Ireland.

Labaria pulmonaria. This large green leaf-like lichen mimicks the leaves of higher plants. It used to be found in every county in Ireland, but is becoming rare, reflecting the demise of Ireland’s broadleaved woodlands. This specimen shows reproductive apothecia that only appear after at least 15 years in a ‘perfect’ habitat.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 10

Clasdonia polydactyla. Woodland management teams would do well to leave some fallen trees as this beautiful species frequently grows among mosses on decaying tree trunks.

Lecanora muralis. A beautiful crustose lichen with a shiny finger-like periphery. Forms large encrustations on smooth concrete slabs and other calcium-rich substrates. Unrecorded in just one of the 40 vice-country in Ireland.

Cladonia ramulosa.

Develops relatively large apothecia that take on a beautiful semi-translucence when wet. Occurs on sandy heathlands, along old undisturbed walls and even growing on the stems of dead Sea Pink. Widespread in Ireland but difficult to find.

Teloschistes chrysophthalmus. An unmistakable and rare beauty, the distribution of this species in Ireland marks its northern limit. Found just a few years ago after an absence of nearly 140 years. It has a preference for hawthorn and beech.

Ophioparma ventosa. Apothecia develop as distinctive blood-red coloured cups in clusters on a creamy thallus. Occurs on silica-rich rocks such as granite (Donegal and Wicklow granite are favourite habitats).

Usnea subfloridana. Many fruticose lichens are sensitive to air pollution, but not this Usnea species, the most pollution tolerant of the Usnea group found in Ireland.

Occurs in all counties.

Lichens of Ireland, an illustrated introduction,

by Paul Whelan is available from bookshops or from the author’s website:

www.lichens.ie

LIVE LINK

The book is also available from the Publishers, Collins Press.

Price from the author’s website is €20 plus €3 post and packaging.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 11

CharTINg rOCKS IN aN aNCIENT laNdSCaPE

While mapping the rocks of Kerrera, a small island off south west Scotland, anthea lacchia was surprised to discover tracks left by ancient life.

Report, Tom Kennedy

Kerrera is a small island off the coast of Scotland within easy reach of the mainland.

Above, the view towards the island from Oban.

2 Km

Below, Anthea by the convoluted folding produced when the ancient Dalradian rocks were put under enormous pressure.

here comes a time when students of geology have to put what they have learned into practice. Going out into the field and mapping is like a right of passage that students go through to become geologists. “Mapping,” said Pat O’Connor, Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland, ”is a key element in the formation of a young geologist.” To keep standards high awards are presented every

year by GSI for the two most outstanding mapping projects. The most recent awards, named after a former Assistant Director of GSI, Mark Cunningham, were presented to Vincent Toomey from UCC, currently studying for his masters in Canada, and jointly to Anthea Lacchia and Gavin Kenny from TCD. Anthea’s features on Irish fossils would be familiar to readers of Science Spin.

T

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 12

Vincent’s project brought him to Cape Wrath, and as Pat O’Connor remarked, the area is well named because it lies at the most northwesterly extremity of Scotland. It also happens to be an important spot for geologists, for it was from here that the terms thrusting and faulting were first used in explaining how the earth’s plates had crunched up against each until older rocks had ended up up lying on top of younger ones.

Anthea and Gavin Kenny also went to Scotland, but the area they choose to map was a small island, Kerrera, situated at the end of a fault in the Southern Hebrides. Once a stronghold of the MacDougall’s, the island’s population, never high, is now down to about 35 people.

Anthea explained that her supervisor, Dr John Graham, had suggested Kerrera as it has many different types of rock and an enormous gap in the geological record, known as an unconformity.

Last year Anthea and Gavin, having done an extensive literature search, set off for Scotland. The island, said Anthea, is quite small, about 12 km long, and quite isolated. “You have a mapping partner,” she said, “so you are not on your own,” and, besides, locals have become used to the sight of geologists picking their way over the landscape. The same features that brought Anthea and Gavin to Kerrera also appeal to geology students from the UK universities.

One of the features that makes Kerrera special is the unconformity. There is an ancient basement of rocks that are among the most ancient in the world, and then for millions of years there is

Easy to miss, and spotted by chance, traces of early life that would soon have been erased by erosion.

a gap of which no trace remains. It is possible, said Lacchia, that layer upon layer was deposited, but if so, all of these rocks have been eroded away, and the next deposits only appear in the late Silurian as it merged into the Devonian about 416 million year ago. There are conglomerates, roughly sorted rocks jumbled together into a solid mass after being washed down into the end of a river system.

The rougher conglomerates give way to finer sandstones and siltstones, and although not the first to walk over these, Anthea spotted something odd. “Just

by fluke I looked down,” she said, and saw a trace that looked like the track of an animal as it moved over a muddy surface. It was just by luck, for as Anthea explained, the light at that moment happened to catch the seven centrimetre long pattern. Anthea immediately took a picture and send it off to Patrick Wyse Jackson in TCD. Patrick confirmed that it did indeed look like a trackway, perhaps made by an arthropod such as a giant millipede. “It’s always a guess when you look at something like this,” said Anthea, “but it was quite exciting — it brightened up one of the days!”

Leaving the trackway to be eroded away, or even lost, was hardly an option, so it was carefully removed and is now preserved as part of the TCD geological collection.

Discovering the trackway was a highlight in six weeks of interpreting the geological record. “There were volcanics, with periods of intermissions, sedimentation would stop, lavas would come in, there was erosion, and then you add the faulting, so it all gets quite complex,” said Anthea. Everything was noted, and as Anthea explained, mapping is all about observing, and apart from using GPS to log locations, it is far more important to rely on skill, experience, a notebook and a good pair of boots, than technology. The technology, she said, comes in later, back in the lab.

Anthea was more than pleased to find the trackway as her interest is in palaeontology, the study of the world through its fossil record. “I’ve started a masters in biostratigraphy, looking at the fossils in the Clare Basin,” she said. The tiny fossils in sediments are of big interest to oil exploration companies, but Anthea is keeping an open mind on whether or not her future lies with academia or industry. A career in palaeontology appeals to her, but, as she commented, “the path is still open.”

Anthea has always been interested both in rocks and animals, and at one stage she considered zoology. After school near Turin, she began studying science at TCD, and is glad that first year offered a range of options that made it easier to decide to focus on geology. “At school,” said Anthea, “I did not really think of geology, but I always liked the outdoors.” Her father encouraged her interest in geology, and one of her outdoor activities was to go gold panning with her mother in the Italian Alps.

Left, looking at the uncormity that marks the enormous gap in time between deposits, and below, columnar jointing in lava from one of the volcanic eruptions that added complexity to Kerrera’s rocky structure.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 13

Left, a computer generated graphic to show distribution of objects being tracked to assess the threat they pose to spacecraft. The objects themselves are often tiny, but because they are travelling so fast they can hit with an enormous impact.

Space Junk As mankind prepares to move to the next stage of space exploration, where private industry will be more involved, and it will be more routine for people to travel to, and live in space, it’s imperative to clean up the huge amount of dangerous space debris, or ‘space junk’ that has accumulated since the 1950s.

Seán Duke reports that the amount of junk in space is staggering.

S

pace debris, also known as ‘Space Junk’ is defined as anything floating in the Earth’s atmosphere, created by humans, but no longer serving any useful purpose. It is estimated that there are 600,000 pieces of space debris, some large, some very small, in orbit around the Earth. This represents a significant hazard to satellites, rockets as well as the International Space Station and its occupants. This material has been accumulating since the first satellite went up, the Soviet made, Sputnik craft in October 1957. In the 55 years since then mankind has left behind bits and pieces, flecks of paint, bolts and even bits of metal shrapnel from its various operations in space. It should be remembered that even the tiniest piece of space debris travelling at thousands of miles per hour represents a serious threat to humans working in space, and future manned missions into space. The question is, as humans begin to more routinely travel to and work in space in coming decades and centuries, how

can we clean up space, keep it clean and make it a safer place for us all?

Mankind’s biggest single outpost in space is the International Space Station, or ISS, which began life in 1998. The ISS has had various bits added from many nations, including Russia, the US, Europe and also has involvement from Japan and Canada. The five agencies are concerned that a piece of space debris could collide with the station and risk the lives of its inhabitants. The reason that the ISS stays in orbit is that the forces pulling it out to space, and towards Earth are perfectly balanced. However, the ISS, like satellites, or pieces of space debris resident in space will eventually begin to fall out of orbit and hurtle back towards Earth. The majority of this material is burnt up in the searing heat of re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. The larger the object, the greater its speed on reentry and the greater the temperatures. For example, the heat of re-entry for a Shuttle craft could reach 1,650 Celsius. This means that space debris, in general, is not a major threat to people on the ground.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 14

The damage caused to the Shuttles is a good indication of just how serious the problem is. The image above is a scan of the damage caused to the window of a Shuttle after its return from servicing the International Space Station. The damage may have been caused by something as tiny as a flake of paint. Over 54 missions, windows, hit 1,634 times by small fragments had to be replaced 92 times. Many of the fragments would have been natural, but others were from junk left over from previous space missions.

The sheer amount of space debris that has accumulated since the late 1950s, however, is becoming a problem for space exploration. The amount of material up there is quite staggering. For example, there are thousands of defunct old spy satellites, dating from the Cold War that are still in orbit around the Earth. The number of these increases the odds of satellite collisions in space, which could damage GPS systems, and interfere with international phone calls, television signals or weather forecasts, as well as threatening the lives of those resident in the ISS. There have already been collisions, and the situation experts say is likely to get worse, as space becomes more congested and cluttered with debris. In February 2009, for example, an old Soviet satellite crashed into a private communications satellite, resulting in hundreds of pieces of deadly space junk flying around the Earth at a speed of almost five miles per second. This kind of event has led the leading space agencies to recognise that space debris is a serious problem and that something needs to be done about it.

The question is what can be done? The first priority for the space agencies is to track debris, as much as possible and to try and make sure that nothing hits the ISS and kills anyone. That is the primary

doubt if gold, or some other valuable moment what’s impeding the realisation focus at the moment, but it is only the asfirst a fuel and the development ofmust new be, made.

Then liquid is pumped to force Additives in useand at present in fracking of these plans, the plans of private material was found on Mars, in it might step.

Beyond this, the goal technology, it may now be economically apart the layers of rock strata, making it fluids in the USA include the following: lead to a high-tech gold rush at some industry is that space is effectively a not just to track and monitor the debris, viable extract thetogas from the and make easier the gas. potassium to reduce friction, pointto inrelease the future.

Certainly, mining is minefield chloride of dangerous flying rubbish, but totofind a way clean it up Northwest Carboniferous Basin.

Already, concerns have expressed hydrochloric to remove drilling one of the industries that been will be in the and until it isacid cleaned up then these plans space a safer place.

Natural gas is composed mainly of about the use thisexploration method of extraction mud gluteraldehyde to prevent vanguard of of space in the will damage, remain on hold. methane, CH4. It is a clean-burning fuel infuture, Ireland activists in the space microorganisms from fouling the asand willlocal companies providing Context and is more environmentally friendly Sligo/Leitrim region are opposing tourism services.

However, beforethe there is fractures and dimethyl formamide (DMF) Thecoal context forIta can space is the Big Dish than or oil. beclean used up both exploration.

It isinto feared thatitdisturbing which is an oxygen scavenger, to prevent any stampede space, is absolutely fact that private industry is likelyand to The National Cork is for domestic heating and cooking the geological strata in this way could corrosion of theSpace pipes.Centre Thesein substances crucial that space debris is cleaned up. a private, Enterprise Ireland backed be more and more involved in space for electricity generation. It would be cause seismic There are also are all in common use.

It is likely tremors. that an industry will ventures.for The US President, Barrack concern that chloride is home to 32-metre of beneficial Ireland to develop natural fears in the Potassium is aa component buildthat up substances that is focused onfracking tracking, antennae. The ‘big dish’ was built in in 1984 Obama, is one key leader has been gas as an indigenous energythat source. fluids could leach into the ground water argicultural fertilizers, and is present monitoring and cleaning up space debris, keen to encourage to take a to carry in the region of 300 telephone Unfortunately, there industry are technical and contamination.

There is even andcause that process has already begun.

Some our own body fluids, hydrochloric acid more leading role space. feeling calls at the same time between Europe problems, as this gasinwill notThe be easy to is aof mobile cinema travelling the things being spokenthrough about inthe terms is produced with the gastric juices in the and thestomach, USA. Today, the antennaisisused being that mankind is on the verge of making extract. region, showing a documentary film, human glutaralhedyde of the next stage of space exploration are a Natural move from its toe in space, to used to track pieces of space debris, and gas dipping was formed, millions made in America, called ‘Gaslands’, in the healthcare industry for sterilization mind boggling. For example, the Chinese travelling and working in space collaborative agreements have been ofmaking years ago, in a marine environment. which aims to showtothe risks associated have an ambition build a city on Mars, and DMF is used in the pharmaceutical agreed with Russian far more exercise. Thisofprivate It aarose fromroutine the decomposition the with hydraulic fracturing.

The plot of a industry.

However, to companies, reassure theand public, and to send 1,000 couples out there to sector involvement space is anand exciting recent episode of CSI dealt with the same talks are ongoing withannounced a number of USit remains of millions ofintiny plants Tamboran has recently that live. They are currently planning this firms, explained Rory Fitzpatrick. development and it will increase over the animals that died and sank to the sea theme and showed dramatic images of will not use any additives in the fracking project, and it is a real and live possibility. next 20,became 50 to 100 years, in as sediments governments The big dishthan in Cork be used bed and trapped of water from a tap apparently catching water, other sand,will which helps to The US have re-focused their ambitions to connect with otherstrata big dishes, in the pare traditional leading role. clay orback sand.their In conventional gas fields, fire and a huge explosion erupting keep the gas-bearing apart after to travel to Mars, and the European Space Russia, example.

This connection Some parallels between what is natural gassee may accumulate in pockets, from a well, because there wasonsoplanning much water hasfor seeped away, thus facilitating Agency is planning to focus happening today under with space, and sea will provide a much better of when it is trapped a dome shaped flammable gas entrained in it. the escape of the natural gas.‘depth Without manned missions in space.

AtNo thedoubt field’ when observing debris, and, exploration venturesrock. in the 15th and layer of impermeable Vertical this makes for good TV and cinema the usual additives, the space extraction of the thus, provides accurate 16th century that to drilling through theled overlying rock will viewing, but it also serves to scare people gas will be more costly, because higher the discovery of the assessment of theThis speed readily release the gas.‘New and make them worried about any pressures will have to be used. is that the debris istomoving World’.

“It isAllen very similar The Lough Natural Gas Field attempt to extract natural gas from such a price the company is willing pay, in at.the Thepublic.

Space Centre was time that people isto anthe unconventional carboniferous gas unconventional fields. order to reassure were discovering America,” set up two with basin, formed 350 million years ago. At If it turns out that there is a Whatever decisions areyears madeago with Enterprise Ireland funding, said RoryIreland Fitzpatrick, chief that time, was part of a greater commercially viable gas prospect. regard to developing our natural and thebeagency executive of the National land mass, see Science Spin 37, and the in the Northwest of `Ireland, both the resorces, they should based retains on sound SpaceAllen Centre in Cork, a shareholding in the Lough field was once contiguous companies and the licencing authorities scientific findings, not on uninformed venture. a private company inBasin in the USA, with the Appalachian would do well to take time to explain to scaremongering.

HavingRory saidFitzpatrick that, there believes theredebate are great Midleton thatgas hasissigned where natural being extracted at the public, in precise detail, exactly how should certainly be a public on opportunities for Irish agreements with Russian present.

It consists of tight gas sandstone it will be extracted. Modern fracking the issue, because, left to themselves, companies to work companies recently to start reservoirs, which are less porous and fluids consist mainly of water, but they planning authorities don’tlooking always get it in space. He’d be glad to tracking and permeable thanmonitoring in conventional fields, usually contain certain additives, most of right. hear from anyone based space debris. making it difficult to extract the gas. which are substances already in common in Ireland that is seeking The big drive for However, in recent years, a new method use and should pose no great risk to the support to get aand space ordinary people in to extract natural gas has been developed environment. In any case, it is likely that Margaret Franklin is a chemist former related industry idea off Europe getand interested from tighttogas shale gas reservoirs. the gas reservoirs would be at a much Senior Lecturer at Athlone Institute of the ground.is co-author of the in America, and Latin This method uses horizontal drilling, lower level than the water table and Technology. Margaret America with in particular, was combined hydraulic fracturing, there would be a natural impermeable book, Colour, what we see and the science the discovery of gold.

No colloqually known as ‘fracking’.

A barrier above the gas field, preventing of sight. vertical bore is first drilled to the required contamination of ground water. But the depth, then several horizontal drills public need todish be in reassured this.

Thisare big 32-metre antennae Midletonabout Co Cork is going to be used to track dangerous space junk. Picture, National Space Centre.

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

Local and global science viewed through Irish eyes.

www.sciencespin.com SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 15 SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 16

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

Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

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

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

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

Gold Frenzy is available from the Science Spin website, Dubray’s, Kenny’, Hanna’s, the GSI store and from other sselected bookshops.

Hardback €20 IBSN 0 906002 08 7 Enquiries to: mail@sciencespin.com

LIVE LINK

Albertine Kennedy Publishing, Cloonlara, Swinford, County Mayo

European Science Open Forum

Why can’t humans be as good as other animals in repairing damage?

For a lizard, losing a tail is no big deal. It will regrow, and giving the spinal cord of an electric eel a chop is just a temporary inconvenience. At the European Science Open Forum, ESOF, in Turin, some of the world’s most distinguished scientists discussed how humans might be able to benefit from looking at the ability of some species to repair damage. Tom Kennedy reports that if stem cell researchers want to make some significant breakthroughs, they should not just restrict their attention to regneration in humans.

A salamander can recover from neurological damage that in a human would lead to Parkinson’s disease. Salamander photographed on Mt Olympus by Cristo Viahos.

M

ice live for about five years if not caught first by a cat which is old at fifteen, and while we might drift off into our eighties, some trees can live for three thousand years. As Luca Bonfanti, Professor at the Department of Veterinary Morphophysiology at the University of Torino explains, one of the main reasons why some organisms are better at living longer is that they maintain an ability to regenerate essential tissues. While length of life is a trade off between a variety of factors, stem cells play a critical role.

At the ESOF event in Turin, Prof Bonfanti was joined by other distinguished scientists, Gunther Zupanc from Northeastern University Boston,

Ferdinando Rossi from the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Torino, and Ernest Arenas from the Karolinska Institute in Stokholm in a discussion about stem cells and regeneration.

Stem cells, explained Prof Bonfanti, are quite common in nature, but their ability to regenerate tissues varies enormously. Some animals, such as the salamander, have a remarkable ability for regeneration, but for humans, loss of a limb or organ is a once off event.

However, in some areas, humans are well endowed with stem cells. Skin is continually replaced, the liver has a good ability to recover, and in the eye, stem cells are at work regenerating the cornea

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 17

to keep it transparent. As Prof Bonfanti pointed out, while stem cells might be a common part of regeneration, they are far from occupying a common environment.

There are, he said, many specific niches, and those niches are not even the same across different species. One of the lessons that we learn from this, he added, is that in regenerative medicine there is no one for all fix with stem cells because how they behave depends on their environment.

Until quite recently little was known about stem cells, and it was widely assumed that for many tissues, regeneration was impossible. University students were taught that nerves cannot regenerate, but as Gunther Zupanc from Northeastern University in Boston explained, until that dogmatic claim was challenged, researchers saw no reason to look any further. What these researchers failed to take note of, was that nerve recovery, neurogenesis, was known to occur in fishes. The Boston scientists exploded a long standing myth in 1998 by describing previously unknown sites of regeneration in the brain’s hyppocampus. “At the time,” he said, “there were probably just five groups working on this in the world,” but the discovery sparked off enormous interest.

“There are now about a thousand groups,” he said, and with most, the eventual aim is to enhance the brain’s proven, but limited powers of recovery from disease or injury.

If researchers only look at humans, said Gunther, they could miss out on making other significant discoveries. We should keep looking at different species, and not just mammals. Compared to mammals, fish brains have an amazing ability to rebuild themselves. “Electric fish,” he said, “can produce 100,000 new brain cells every two hours, and it’s not just from one or two sites, as in humans, but from 50 to 100 sites.”

In fishes, most of the new cells are produced in the cerebellum, which is in contrast to humans where the much more limited site is the hypocampus. From the cerebellum the new cells migrate into position using what are known as glia fibres as guides. On arrival, up to half of the new cells then differentiate into fully fledged neurons, and they keep on coming, so the brain continues to grow throughout life. Within a few weeks the brain of a fish can replace damaged tissue, and in the electric fish, a spinal cord, if severed, recovers both its form and its function.

In humans, damage to the spinal cord results in permanent and irreversible

damage, and as Gunther explained, a big difference between fishes and humans is in the way they respond to injury.

In humans, the initial response is to seal off the damage, and all the neurons, in isolation, die. In fishes, the injured cells undergo a process of orderly self-destruction, apoptosis, and new cells move in.

The researchers, interested to know what sort of mechanism lies behind this difference in response, found that a key enzyme, glutamine synthetase, is involved in both cases. In humans and other mammals, this enzyme is suppressed, but in fishes it is upregulated, and it acts on a glutamate, a chemical released in large amounts after injury, converting it into a non-toxic form, glutamine.

Taking up this theme of recovery, Ferdinando Rossi, from the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Torino said that the response in humans to brain and spinal injuries reflects the high level of specialization involved.

Simply replacing dead cells, he said, is not going to work because its not just cells that are involved, but function. To recover function, he explained, there would have to be a completely faithful replication of detailed structure. In a way, nature has taken the decision that some damage is just impossible to repair.

Regeneration, said Ferdinando, is much easier to achieve when tissues have no fixed structure, such as blood. “There are tissues that might lose some form, but continue to function,” he said.

This is not the only problem when it comes to replacing neurons. As Gunther Zupanc mentioned, the response to injury in humans is to throw up a scar tissue barrier. “During

However, this loss of function is not universal. In reptiles, the potential to recover function remains. In one Australian lizard species, the two eyes provide a wide angle of overlapping vision.

If the optic nerve of one eye is cut, it can regenerate. However, the lizard is left blind on that side. Then, if the functional eye is covered, the lizard begins to see again with what had become the blind eye. Thus, not alone does the nerve recover, but it can regain its Embryonic stem cells have enormous pofunction. tential because they have yet to specialise, Ernet Arenas from the Karolinska but how they behave when transplanted is Institute in Stokholm said that controlling determined by their environment. factors have a big influence on what stem cells can and cannot do, and he our evolution,” said Ferdinando, “there suggested that modifying them in vitro, has been suppression of central nervous before reintroducing them back into system repair.” This is an emergency the body, might induce them to behave response to reseal the blood brain barrier, as we would like them to. There is no and besides, if damaged neurons were doubt that stem cells have capacity in allowed to survive they would probably non-human animals to make the sort produce a proliferation of wild and of repairs that we would like to copy. unspecified connections.

Salamanders, for example, can recover There is good evidence to show from Parkinson’s disease. Within a that this wild growth would not help month, the damage has been repaired. survival. If a peripheral nerve axion is “What is the secret of the salamander?” cut, it will regrow, but is regrowth going asked Ernet. What are known as glial to restore function? Gunther, giving an cells, which also occur in humans, come example from a rat, thinks this is highly up with functioning replacements, and unlikely. If the main facial nerve in a rat as Ernest commented, if we can find out is cut it can regenerate, but the function it how salamanders do this, we might be had is lost. able to do the same in humans.

While the range of ability to regenerate tissues is remarkably wide across species, the uniformity of underlying mechanisms and structures is equally amazing. Just how much we have in common is borne out by a question put to Ferdinando Rossi, a leading expert on neuroscience. Are all nerves the same? Surprisingly, the answer from a scientist who has been looking at neurons all his working life, is yes. Whatever the species, he said, the form and strtucture are just the same.

“Morphologically, they are indistinguishable.”

After injury, a nerve will search out for new connections, but in mammals the former order has been disrupted, so while the neuron may survive, function is lost. In one species of lizard, this is not the case, and cutting the optic nerve does not result in permenant blindness.

European Science Open Forum

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 18

CiTY oF SCiEnCE 2012

Making

all sorts of things

work Tom Kennedy reports that hacking is on the rise as engineers, artists and crafty types get together to build novel devices.

Jeffrey Roe with the protyping machine that converts designs into solid objects.

A

re you into building, cutting and pasting, soldering circuits, or even weaving threads into interesting patterns? If so, there is a community group, TOG, based in Chancery Lane in Dublin, that would gladly down tools to give you an open armed welcome.

Jeffrey Roe, one of the inventive members, said that there are no hard and fast restrictions, and one of his favourite activities involves turning virtual designs into solid 3D objects. “We have people who build with wood, we have origami, and before Christmas members were busy making decorations … it’s as broad as you want,” he said.

The group simply grew out of a common interest in making things, and as Jeffrey explained, while the projects undertaken by the members can at times be complex, the organisation is strictly bottom up and basic. “It’s completely independent , community run, and funded entirely by members.” The group has a working space in Chancery Lane, and as Jeffrey pointed out, it means that members no longer have to struggle on alone at home. The group have managed to acquire a second hand CNC (computer controlled) machine for precision drilling and cutting, but contact with other members is far more important than the equipment.

The Chancery Lane group is far from being alone. Many other people throughout Ireland like to make things. There are groups in Maynooth, Limerick, Cork, Galway and elsewhere, some with a specific focus, such as robots.ie, and as Jeffrey observed, they all get to hear about each other, so there is a lot of networking going on.

All of these groups are busy now getting ready for a day long Makers’ Faire, to be held at the TCD Science Gallery on 15th July as part of the Dublin City of Science 2012 programme.

David McKeown from the Irish Robotics Group said that sending out the call for submissions had not been too difficult.

Ireland is not that big, he said, and those involved in making things tend to take part in on-line forums.

Inventive makers get a lot of satisfaction from turning other peoples junk into things that work. When one marketing company found themselves stuck with about a thousand bright yellow plastic ducks, members were happy to give them a home, even though they were not quite sure what they could eventually be used for. Now the ducks have been arranged into a flat grid, row upon row, and each is fitted with light emitting diode, so they act as the pixils in a computerised display. The next step is to make a bigger grid of ducks, and put them on display behind a window, so that people walking by can use a non-contact keyboard to post a message.

One of the devices that Jeffey Roe has been using is a prototyping machine. This is a scaled down version of machines used by manufacturers to make models of new products. As Jeffrey found, it is possible to buy a self-assembly kit to make one of these machines. As he explained, the machine works a bit like an ordinary printer, but instead of ink, it builds up layer upon layer using a fast setting polymer. Thus, a virtual model, constructed in an ordinary computer, is converted into solid object, and just watching the form taking solid shape is fascinating. While not as refined as the prototyping machines used by the big manufacturers, the kit version does quite a good job of converting dreams into solid reality. “All you need do it press ‘print’” said Jeffrey, “and a small object might take about 15 minutes.”

TOG, the Hackerspace, has weekly meetings at Warehouse Unit C, Chancery Lane, Dublin 8. www.tog.ie More details about the July event at: LIVE www.sciencegallery.com/makerfaire LINK

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 19

CITY OF SCIENCE 2012 I

n January the City of Science 2012 was launched officially by a line up that included two government ministers, Dublin’s Lord Mayor, Ireland’s Chief Scientific Adviser and the comedian, Dara O’Briain. The line up reflected the importance of this event which will bring an estimated 7,000 delegates to Dublin in July. The core City of Science programme will consist of lectures, workshops and discussions on European research, and in parallel with this many other outreach events will take place in galleries, museums, theatres and other centres.

As Professor Patrick Cunningham, Scientific Adviser and the prime mover in bringing the City of Science to Ireland, pointed out, this is not just a one-off high-level conference, but it is a year long programme that will leave a permanent legacy because many of the activities sparked off this year will continue into the future.

One of the prime objectives of the City of Science is to emphasise the fact that

A warm up act at Dublin’s Convention Centre to start off the official launch of the City of Science 2012 programme.

In July Ireland will host Europe’s biggest conference on science, and as Tom Kennedy reports, there is also a year long programme of outreach events. science is as much part of our culture as are the arts. Dara O’Briain, although best known for his lightening quick wit, is a science graduate of UCC, and for him science and the arts are all part of the same cultural spectrum. However, as he pointed out, in Ireland, we talk a lot about literature, but while we do as much in science, it goes unheralded.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 20

Having taken part in science broadcasts, Dara remarked that the evidence is there to show that people are really interested in science. Some of those science programmes, broadcast in the UK, he said, were viewed by up to seven million people, that’s three million more than the entire population of Ireland.

There is a perception that science is stiff and dogmatic, and as Dara observed, this forbidding image is completely wrong. Science, he said, is about getting at the truth, and when old ideas no longer work, they are cast aside.

“In science, we know we don’t know everything,” he quipped, adding with a humorous twist that “if we did, we could take the rest of the day off.”

Dublin’s Mayor, Andrew Montague, said that science has always been part of his career. Andrew has a masters in the pulmonary diseases of dogs. “I think having that kind of scientific background is a huge benefit when you move into politics,” he said. In assessing issues,

CITY OF SCIENCE 2012 someone with a scientific background will look at the evidence, and they will have a good grasp of what charts and statistics actually mean. On this point, the Mayor said that one part of the City of Science programme that appealed strongly to him is the “Hacking the City” project in which the public will have open access to council data. Hundreds of data sets, he said, are being released, and, to take one example, people will be able to do their own analysis on the water supply, how much is there, and how it changes during the day. As he remarked, “Hacking the City” is a great way to get the public more involved in science.

Richard Bruton, Minister for Jobs Enterprise and Innovation, said that following the continued and sustained support for science in Ireland the City of Science event comes at a good time. It is important for people to see the relevance of this support, he said, and to appreciate that there are concrete benefits to the economy from the investment. “Thinking

of my own experience of science at school, it was too corralled, narrowing it down, and what this event is all about is the opposite.”

In spite of the challenge of convincing voters that a big investment is justified, Professor Patrick Cunningham remarked that there has been no division in the political will to maintain support for science and research. When the idea of inviting Europe’s biggest science event to Ireland first came up, he said “the tiger was in town, and all the graphs were pointing up.” As we all know, the cut-backs, when they came, were severe, and Prof Cunningham admitted to having some anxious moments that all the ambitious plans would have to be scrapped. However, as the government changed, the City of Science was seen as just the sort of event that would help Ireland recover, and indeed show the world that in many aspects of science and research, Ireland is now second to none.

The government, said Prof

Cunningham, is underwriting about half the cost, compared to previous events elsewhere, the European Commission has doubled its support, and industry is also expected to make a significant contribution. All of this, said Prof Cunningham, is very positive, and apart from the Irish perspective, we are hosting Europe’s biggest science conference at a critical time. The current Framework 7 programme, under which research is funded throughout the European Union, is coming to an end, and under Commissioner Geoghegan Quinn, a bigger, and more comprehensive programme, Horizon 2020, will be taking its place starting in 2014.

Ireland’s researchers will benefit from this, yet, as Prof Cunningham remarked, just a few years ago, all of this would have seemed impossible. When it came to getting support, Irish scientists were hardly at the starting line, but that has changed. “We are more than pulling out weight now,” said Prof Cunningham.

BIG AND GETTING BIGGER CITy OF SCIEnCE 2012 follows the European Science Open Forum event in Turin in 2010, and that in turn was two years after ESOF in Barcelona. The ESOF events were initiated by Euroscience, an independent group of scientists who saw the need to highlight the best in European science. In the US there is the well-funded American Association for the Advancement of Science, usually simply known as the AAAS, which acts as a showcase for American science.

The members of Euroscience thought that Europe needed to have something similar, so in 2004 the first ESOF conference was launched at Stockholm, and since then it has continued to grow as a biannual event, going on to Munich in 2006, Barcelona in 2008, Turin in 2010, and this year Dublin.

At a Euroscience Ireland meeting Prof Cunningham said the number of

proposals for the programme has greatly exceed expectations. Four months, he said, had been spent winnowing these down, and that meant that about three quarters of the submissions had to be turned down, and a number of these would have been worth including. “We are trying to do something about that,” said Prof Cunningham, and one of the questions on many peoples’ minds now, is just how big can the ESOF events get.

The success of ESOF has taken many people by surprise, yet it began as a bottom-up initiative by a group of scientists who retain their ultimate control and ownership. The group is independent, but as is often the case, independence can mean having to work within limited budgets.

As ESOF seems destined to grow and grow as a major event in promoting European science, Prof Cunningham

remarked that it might be a good idea to look at how it is funded. One of the recent developments that could be relevant, he said, is the recent regrouping of European organisations involved in supporting research. The former European Heads of Research Councils, EUROHORCs, has been reorganised, and rebranded as Science Europe, and the new organisation is made up of 42 research funding bodies, including the Health Research Board and SFI in Ireland.

While recognising that there would be issues to be resolved, Prof Cunningham said it is hard to escape the compelling logic — “Science Europe has endless money, billions, while Euroscience just has pennies,” he commented. yet, ultimately, while independence would have to be weighed up against political pressures, both organisations have similar aims.

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

www.dublinscience2012.ie SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 21

LIVE LINK

THE CLOUD Natasha Tarr and Tom Kennedy considers some of the facts that lie behind the cloud

T

he name suggests something illdefined, but is it really that vague?

Terms like iCloud, Dropbox and Microsoft Sharepoint might add to the confusion, so what do companies mean when they claim to be up-to-date and ahead of everyone else in using the cloud?

Essentially, what they are doing is moving their storage and heavy-duty processing to an external shared server.

Traditionally, these activities would have been done in-house using a local server or a personal computer. In a large organisation there would be a bank of servers on which most of the information and some programs would be stored.

Depending on their level, staff would have permission to log onto personal or shared files on these servers.

While a personal computer has the advantage of being a stand-alone machine, it has a finite memory, usually a limited number of programs, which are quite expensive to buy and need frequent updating, and unless logged into a server, it is impossible to share interactive files, such as would be used by a marketing team in keeping track of sales.

The cloud represents a step up from the company server in that it is bigger, more comprehensive, and open to everyone who signs on for the service.

This step up has been made possible by the increased capacity of the Internet

Racks of servers provide the cloud users with virtually unlimited processing power and storage to carry traffic. Instead of having to store and process everything on site, the hard work can be done externally on more powerful machines. Applications can be run, and massive files stored without having to rely on a particular computer or company server configuration. Thus, users enter the virtual world known as the cloud.

This has big implications on how expensive and fast changing programs are used. Instead of having to buy and install upgrades, the need to have software installed on all company computers becomes redundant.

A lot of the software packages that people use nowadays can be web-based and the cloud is taking advantage of that to bring users up to the next level.

Also, by outsourcing the processing intensive work, computers connecting to the cloud do not have to be as powerful as those that stand alone, and, as long as they have a broadband connection to the Internet, it does not matter where the servers are.

So, where is the cloud? Well, not quite everywhere, at least not the servers. The companies providing this service run

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 22

massive banks of servers in a number of strategically chosen locations. These companies look after the management, administration and technical trouble shooting involved in hosting the cloud.

While the concept remains the same, vendors offer different levels of service.

The most basic is called Infrastructureas-a-Service (IaaS), which is just servers ‘in the cloud’. This is mostly for tech companies who just want access to computing power but don’t want to be responsible for installing or maintaining it.

The next tier is Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) which is a cloud-based platform that companies can use to develop their custom applications or write software that integrates with existing applications.

These services often come equipped with software technologies like Java, the programming language, Python or the web development tool, Ruby on Rails, allowing customers to start writing code quickly. The vendor then hosts the code and makes it widely available.

Then there is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which is the largest and most mature part of the cloud. In this, an application or suite of applications sits in the cloud instead of on the user’s hard drive. One of the earliest SaaS successes was Salesforce.com’s customer relationship management software. This rapidly became a popular and widely

used alternative to on-premise CRM (customer relations management) systems for many companies when it was launched in 2000. Further developments now include productivity and collaboration software such as Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365 among other things.

Have you noticed how much more dynamic webpages have become? This is somewhat due to developments that allow everything you are browsing to be temporarily stored, i.e cached, externally on the cloud. With less demand being made on your computer it works faster, and for companies with something to sell, that translates into greater customer satisfaction; just another aspect of Internet progression.

Other less technical benefits of the cloud include a significant reduction in cost.

In fact, previously, companies often had to fork out more than they could afford for expensive server management teams, whereas now, it can all be done by a third party on a ‘pay as you use’ contract.

Having to employ IT staff and fixing servers when they break down, which happens, are major headaches, especially for a company or organisation whose core activities are far removed from computing.

The attractions are significant, and among them is ease of collaboration.

Microsoft Sharepoint, for example, which allows groups to share documents is being given out like candy at the moment to win companies over to the idea.

Also, some smaller companies can benefit from the use of cloud analytic services, which gives them access to data from other organisations without having to generate it all themselves.

However, there is a downside to the cloud. In fact, there are a number of serious concerns, not least of which are ownership of data, security, and contract obligations.

Data ownership is an interesting one.

You, the client, have asked a third party to look after your files and information.

They have it stored on their servers, which can only be accessed using their applications and portals.

Often, companies offer either a dedicated or shared server agreement.

If dedicated, only your information is stored on a server, which is more expensive than sharing. Sharing costs less, but you run a higher risk of others gaining access to your data or even of bringing down the server. Also, most users would have no idea where the data is being stored, and as the example of MegaUpload illustrates, location can be important. MegaUpload was a file

hosting service operating out of Hong Kong, and in a high profile move the US Justice Department shut it down in January this year on the grounds that it was deliberately distributing copyright material. Apart from the fact that it was also hosting porn and promoting pirated material, thousands of users, who knew nothing of the site’s history, were suddenly cut off from files that they had stored.

The site’s owners, currently under arrest in New Zealand, argue that they were just offering a service, and what users choose to upload was not their responsibility.

Whatever about the merits of that argument, it has raised a major issue for the cloud on who takes responsibility for content. While the US has taken a hard line, leading to widespread protests that services cannot be expected to vet everything that passes through their servers, other countries, like Ireland, have taken a less draconian stand, declaring that the owners of copyright have the right to stop unauthorised distribution.

The EU has also just made a ruling that service providers cannot be expected or obliged by law to look at every file that passes through their servers.

Given the international reach of the cloud and the distribution of servers, this sort of problem is not going to be easy to resolve. Who is going to police content, and how is the vendor or their clients going to know that they are breaking the law?

There are also concerns about leakage of data, and in spite of reassurances from companies involved in promoting the cloud, many potential users are worried about security. Academic staff in Trinity College Dublin have been cautioned to be extra careful in trusting external services to host sensitive data, and a number of other institutions share these concerns.

While there are serious concerns, the cloud is already with us, and is here to stay. It is growing rapidly, and, according to the IDA and Enterprise Ireland it is likely to have a big impact on the Irish economy. The State agencies, backed by Microsoft and other IT companies based here are keen to see Ireland becoming an international hub for cloud services.

Microsoft has projected that 8,600 new jobs could be created in Ireland to service the cloud, and last year the company teamed up with the Irish Management Institute and Cork Institute of Technology to deliver a diploma course to prepare students for this development.

This is just one of the developments being made to anticipate rapid growth in cloud-based services. Following some

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 23

well attended events organised by a CloudArena group, the National College of Ireland in Dublin also announced that they expect to appoint a director soon to lead degree courses in cloud computing.

In February this year, Minister Pat Rabbite launched a joint government industry group. Members of the group include EMC, Cisco, VMware, VCE, Microsoft and Dell, and, according to the minister, the plan is to help organisations migrate to the cloud. Industry surveys had indicated that many companies are reluctant to make use of the cloud, not so much because they had fears about the security of sensitive data, but mainly because they did not know enough about the cloud and how it works. According to the minister, the new group will help organisations make that transition, and in this, there is a longer term view. A high level of competence will be an essential selling point in promoting Ireland as a hub for the cloud.

Ireland already has some significant selling points, not least being a strong track record in information technology, and many of the multinationals with a direct interest in the cloud, such as Microsoft, Dell, and IBM, already have a base here.

Making Ireland a hub for the cloud is not just about providing a service. Those services are run from enormous banks of servers, and while these server farms can be located almost anywhere, Ireland has a lot to gain by having them here.

There are probably about 20 fairly big server farms now in operation around Dublin, and the recent decision of Amazon to set up shop in Ireland gives some idea of just how big these can be. Amazon, better known to most people for their book marketing, provide cloud services, and to house their Dublin operation the company recently sought out one of the biggest industrial properties in Ireland, a 22,296 sq metre warehouse at Greenhills in Dublin.

One of the reasons why companies want to set up server farms in Ireland is, surprisingly, our mild climate. While we might complain about the wind and the drizzle, mid-range temperatures provide the ideal environment for server farms. With thousands of data crunching processors at work, servers have to kept at the right temperature, and being able to draw on the outside air saves an enormous amount of energy. For this reason operating costs in Ireland, can be a lot lower than elsewhere.

Dr. How's

What is transpiration?

Transpiration is the process whereby water is taken into a plant by the roots, transported up through the plant and released from the leaves as water vapour!

Science Wows! ...exploring transpiration in plants!

Did you know... trees and plants in rain forests help to make rain; if a forest is cut down the area around it may suffer from drought!

Junior science by Dr. Naomi Lavelle

Lets learn more!

Transpiration is a bit like perpiration (sweating) in humans it helps to keep the plant cool!

As the water vapour transpires out of tiny holes (called stomata) fresh water is drawn up from below.

Water travels up the plant through tubes called Xylem.

How powerful is transpiration?

Transpiration can lift water all the way to the top of the tallest trees!

The constant flow of water through the xylem tubes of the plant is called the transpiration stream; this stream keeps the stem firm so that it can support the weight of the plant.

Plants put roots down into the soil to draw water and nutrients up into the plant.

Experiments you can try

See it!!!

This means there is always an unbroken tower of water running from the bottom to the top of the plant at all times.

Collect transpired water!

You will need...

A potted plant, a clear plastic bag, an elastic band or tie

Place a clear plastic bag over a leaf of a potted plant and secure it with the elastic band or tie at the base of the leaf. Place the plant in a sunny place and keep it well watered.

Look at it after one or two days. what do you see inside the bag?

So what is happening?

The bag may have clouded up after a day or two with water droplets visible on its surface.

The water vapour given off by the leaf as it transpires gathers inside the bag creating a cloud, the water eventually forms into droplets on the insdie of the bag.

Did you know... transpiration accounts for up to 10% of water in the atmosphere!

See it!!!

You will need... a number of white flowers, clear cups or vases, water, food colouring

Put water into each clear cup or vase and add a few drops of food colouring to each, using a different colour for each one.

Place one white flower in each and leave for several hours or overnight.

Experiments you can try

Track the flow of water!

Some trees can loose hundreds of thousands of litres of water in a single day through transpiration!

The water vapour trees transpire into the air cools the air!

Photo courtesy of Kathie Riordan, Colaiste Choilm, Ballincollig, Co. Cork

So what is happening?

The coloured water travels up the stem and eventually reaches the flower where it changes the flowers colour

Stomata are tiny holes or pores on leaves, stems and even petals of the plant that allow Stomata can water out of the plant open and close to (transpiration) and gases (like carbon dioxide) into the plant. control the anount of water leaving the Most of the stromata of a plant or the plant are found on the amount of gas underside of the coming in. leaves.

LIVE LINK

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

BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition

Some of the projects on display at this year’s show

Magnetic accelerator

Joseph Wilson from Ballinamore Post Primary school in Leitrim has always been interested in magnets and how they can be used in so many different situations. One of these lesser known applications involves shooting out a projectile from what could be described as a magnetic gun. “I don’t think it is used much,” he said, “but I thougt it was interesting,” so he set out to construct a working example, which he had on show at this year’s exhibition.

The device, he explained, is quite simple. A number of magnets are set in place at regular intervals in matching pairs each side of a smooth channel. The device is loaded by placing a number of steel ball bearings into the channel.

For each pair of magnets, there is a ball bearing, held in place by magnetic

Inherited caution

Luke Coffey, Kian Buckley and Eoin Walsh, fourth year students from Colaiste Cholmáin in Cork, were curious to know how much of our behavior is rooted in our distant past. After all, as they argued, humans inherited their opposable thumb from our ape ancestors who were the first to find it useful in grasping branches, and we have a number of what are known as

attraction. In front of this, a second ball bearing is placed, which is also held in place, but with less magnetic force.

The ‘gun’ is fired by gently rolling a ball bearing up along the open end of the channel. As it gets close to the first set of magnets, it suddenly shoots forwards, and hits the ball bearing that’s already in place. However, instead of being displaced, that second ball bearing is held by the magnets, so the force of momentum passes on to the next ball bearing. That third ball bearing is held with a lot less magnetic attraction than the second, so given a hit, it shoots off to the next stage, where the whole process is repeated. At each stage, the ball bearing shoots off faster, so over a series of hits, there is acceleration, and at the end, the final ball bearing can fly out with considerable force.

As Joseph explained, there is a fair bit of fine-tuning involved, and it probably helped that his father is a mechanic, so he is fairly familiar with looking at devices that work. His teacher, Eamon Geoghegan also gave good support in helping Joseph get to grips with the theoretical aspects of his project.

While Joseph was more interested in the concept than in finding a practical application, he said that a magnetic accelerator could be designed to deliver a very precise force, and with a long enough track that could be considerable. vestigial organs. If we have vestigial organs we could also show ancestral traits in our behavior, so they decided to find out more.

Humans are cautious, and that’s a trait that would have helped our ancestors survive. Living among dangerous animals would have kept our ancestors on the alert, and failure to anticipate possible attack could, quite often lead to fatal results. Because of this, said Eoin and Kian, we now have a fairly strong tendency to see the bad side of things.

That’s not all, and as everyone knows, stress is not good for the digestion. Fear is not just an abstract impression, for you feel it in the stomach, and as Eoin and Kian point out, this is all part of a response system that we can see as one of the many gifts passed on to us through evolution.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 25

Ice takes shape

When making ice-pops or ice to put in drinks, you might wonder why the time taken to produce results varies so much.

Danielle Dawson and Ellen Stewart Gormley from St Andrew’s College in Dublin, decided to investigate, and they concluded that it all comes down to shape of the mould. Given the same volume of the same watery solution, one shape will freeze much slower than another.

In a test, Danielle and Ellen filled a varied selection of moulds with 10 mls, and put them to freeze in the fridge.

“There were eight different shapes,” they said, including a penguin, a heart, and a traditional cube.

The star-shaped mould, with six sides emerged as the clear winner, beating a spherical shape by the best part of two hours. The star froze in one hour ten minutes, while the sphere took three hours. “It is a huge difference,” said the students, and to make sure that they had got that right, the test was repeated four times. “Sometimes we got a variation of five or ten minutes,” they said, but the average clearly indicated that having lots of faces exposed to the cold speeds up freezing.

The same difference in speed applies in reverse, and how long ice takes to melt in a drink also depends on its shape.

RESULTS

All the results from the exhibition are available on the Science Spin website as a PDF download.

www.science.com

Night driving

iT MiGHT seem obvious that we see less at night, but it’s not just because there is less light. When light is low, our eyes are slower to react and they see less detail.

This is because we switch over from seeing colour and detail with our light sensitive cones, to our rods which give us night vision. rods and cones line the back of our eye, enabling us to see.

Tadhg O’Keeffe and Colm McKay from St Mary’s College in Dublin thought this must have an important bearing on how people drive at night, and as they pointed out, night is when most of the bad accidents occur.

When drivers are using their night vision, reactions are slower, and this is not the only problem. As anyone who has ever switched on a light at night would know, it takes quite a while to regain night sight when the light is switched

off again. This is exactly what happens in traffic, especially when approaching drivers don’t bother to dip their lights.

Having decided to look into this, Tadhg and Colm found that surprisingly little has been done to make driving at night safer. While drivers peer out into the darkness, the dashboard is often brightly lit, and there may even be a GPS display.

The windscreen, they said, is a big part of the problem. While windscreens have been improved in ways that make them less of a danger in accidents by being shatter proof, nothing has been done to improve visibility through them at night.

To find out if it would be possible to do anything about this, Tadhg and Colm examined the possibility of covering the glass with different types of light filtering film. “We tried to find out if anyone else had done this,” they said, but unable to find any examples from car manufacturers, they looked into what sort of films are being used on windows in office blocks. These are in widespread use so the students got onto the suppliers to get a selection of samples.

To test their performance, Tadhg and Colm set up a normal car window screen, over which they could put the filters. On one side they rigged up a traffic light, and on the other side, the person viewing the lights had to react when they went green.

That’s a fairly standard situation for a driver, but what was not standard was the

split second recording of reaction time.

The students were quite surprised to find that with the best filters in place, reaction time improved by four per cent.

That might not seem all that much, but as they observed, for a car travelling along at 100 kpm, that would give a half metre gain in stopping distance.

Strangly enough, the film that produced this improvement, was never designed as a light conditioner, but is used to stop shattering of windows caught by violent gusts of wind.

“We asked some of the car dealers if they thought this would be a good idea,” they said, and while the reaction was quite positive, the students were unable to get any kind of response from the manufacturers themselves.

However, what they did learn, is that some of the upmarket BMWs have an infrared camera. “That has a screen,” said the students, so it does not really solve the particular problem that they were investigating. Besides, they added, “you have to look down at it, so it’s a distraction.”

One of the things that got Tadhg and Colm interested in the subject is that in some countries, such as the US, good night vision is included as a requirement in driving tests, yet in ireland, where bright lighting is often followed abruptly by no light at all, there seems to be little awareness that drivers cannot always see where they are going.

WINNINg SCIENtIStS EriC Doyle and Mark Kelly, 17 year old students from Synge Street CBS were presented with the top award in the 48th Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition by Minister for Education and Skills, ruari Quinn, and Colm O’Neill, CEO of BT ireland, sponsors of the annual event.

Eric and Mark’s project, “Simulation accuracy in the gravitational many-body problem,” was described by Professor Pat Guiry, lead judge for the chemical, physical and mathematical section, as taking a novel mathematical approach to a range of applications such as satellite placement, or prediction of congestion in telecommunications systems. in their project, Eric and Mark revisited an 18th century mathematical problem associated with the movement of planets.

By devising their own algorithm the students were able to come up with a more accurate way to calculate the position of bodies, such as satellites.

This could have a big impact in making positioning of satellites and space crafts more accurate and efficient. in the opinion of the judges, the two students demonstrated an exceptional level of mathematical proficiency, and apart from the €5,000 award, they will have an opportunity to represent ireland in the forthcoming European Union Young Science competition next September in Bratislava.

The award for individual runnerup, was presented to Aoife Gregg from Loreto College, Stephen’s Green, for her project on “Cryptography, a study of the irish language.” in this project Aoife followed changes as irish language evolved.

Deirdre Harford and Colleen Kelly from Loreto Secondary School in Balbriggan were presented with the group runner-up for their project “A search for genes associated with drought resistance in potatoes.”

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 26

The best individual award was presented to Eoin Farrell from St Eunan’s College in Donegal for his project on developing a more accurate way to estimate the weight of children being taken into hospitals during an emergency.

When children have to be treated quickly, it is important to know their weight as this often determines the correct dose when drugs have to be administered.

More than 1,200 students took part in this year’s contest, and up to 40,000 people are thought to have visited the exhibition. Thousands of students from all around ireland made 1,743 submissions of which 550 were selected for the exhibition. record attendance was boosted by an increased number of participating schools, and by the expansion of the rDS supported primary science section.

IRISH FOSSIL SERIES

Amazing Ammonoids Anthea Lacchia looks at some more Irish fossils.

T

hey spray you with their ink, they seize you with their tentacles…

Ammonoids do have a way of drawing you in. These crafty molluscs represent one of the three main subclasses of cephalopods, together with nautiloids and coleoids. From some 300 million years to about 65 million years ago, ammonoids were dominant in most marine waters. They are thought to have evolved from the nautiloids in the early Devonian.

Ammonoids possessed an external chambered shell, which was generally coiled. Details of the shell are the main tool in distinguishing between these cephalopod subclasses, as well as the main tool in species identification. The chamber-dividing walls are termed septa, while the chambers themselves are termed camerae. The external shell often shows ornamentation in the form of ribs, spines and tubercles, but it can sometimes be smooth. The shape of the shell can be extremely varied, from globular to flat. Some ammonoids developed peculiar shapes that deviated from traditional planispiral (flat) coiling.

These rebel creatures are known as heteromorphs. Striking examples of this are seen in the Cretaceous genus Nipponites.

The suture is the line of junction between the septa and the inner side of the external shell. A tell-tale sign you are dealing with an ammonoid rather than a nautiloid is a complex suture line. Another means of distinguishing between these two subclasses is the position of the siphuncle, a tube made of soft and shelly components, which linked the chambers and was employed in fluid-level regulation in the chamber. In fact, in most ammonoids the siphuncle is marginal, while in nautiloids it runs through the middle of the whorl. All these shell features are crucial to any fossil description of an ammonoid. In fact, these are the kind of details that taxonomists crave.

Goniatites from County Clare, Carboniferous.

Electron microscope scans, Gillian Lewarne.

Elaborate and ornate as the animal’s home may have been, the living quarters consisted only of the last formed chamber, known as the body chamber.

The soft parts protruded from the living chamber, which was the last to form.

Movement can be thought of as a form of jet propulsion achieved via a flexible organ called hyponome, which was used to steer the animal.

Ammonoids of course include those well-known, all-time favourites: the ammonites, referred to as snakestones by pioneer fossil collectors. But they also encompass the fascinating goniatites, which dominated the Carboniferous seas, becoming extinct 250 million years ago.

As mentioned, ammonites were common from about 250 million years ago until 65 million years ago. A peculiar feature of theirs that has been described is sexual dimorphism: the females were larger than the males. The largest ammonite on record is Parapuzosia, a veritable Cretaceous giant that grew up to 2.5 m in size!

While all goniatites and ammonites are long extinct, a few species of Nautilus,

assigned to the subclass Nautiloidea, survive in present day tropical oceans.

This is great news. In fact, the elusive Nautilus provides invaluable clues to the palaeontologist who is trying to reconstruct the mode of life of extinct ammonoids.

All cephalopods are noted for their well-developed nervous systems and brains and there is no reason to suspect that ammonoids were an exception. Most were highly mobile carnivores.

In Ireland, fossil ammonites can be found in Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks, mostly in Co. Antrim and Co. Derry. Goniatites are particularly well represented in the muddy marine sediments above the Carboniferous Limestone. Many coastal sections in Co. Clare lend themselves to goniatite finds.

The fossils often consist of flattened moulds, but 3D, uncrushed specimens are also present, when preservation occurs in nodules.

In addition, ammonoids are extremely useful as stratigraphic indicators, since they evolved rapidly and achieved widespread distribution. Most of all, ammonoids were extremely diverse, with thousands of different species dancing in the oceans of aeons past.

To find out more…

Introducing Palaeontology: A Guide to Ancient Life by Patrick N. Wyse Jackson Fossils: the Key to the Past by Richard Fortey Goniatite in British Geological Survey collection. Photo Anthea Lachia.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 27

BAMBOO

M

ention the word ‘bamboo’ and most of us would immediately think of China, or pandas nibbling away at the young shoots. However, that’s an incomplete impression, for there are about 1,450 species, and while Europe has no natives, bamboos of one sort or another grow extensively in many parts of the world. In Asia bamboo is one of the most widely used building materials, flexible enough to be earthquake proof and strong enough to be used instead of steel in scaffolding.

While bamboos may not be native, they are grown in Europe, and not just in suburban gardens, where they sometimes make themselves so much at home that they push out the neighbours. Some people have become so enthralled by the elegant and perfectly formed rodlike stems, that they have established bamboo plantations. Some of the largest bamboo ‘gardens’ are in France, and even in northerly Holland, where Jules Janssen from the Technical University of Eindhoven and European Director of the International Network of Bamboo

Tom Kennedy writes that plants that are the fastest to grow are the slowest to flower and Rattan, is regarded as a pioneering advocate of bamboo. Imports for applications, such as flooring, are high, and some of the species could be grown successfully in Europe. After all, if North American Sitka can blanket the Irish landscape, some of the Asian bamboos could do just as well in Europe.

Not that Sitka and bamboo have that much in common except that they are exotic imports. Bamboo is a grass, not a woody tree. Hollow stemmed, with the plumbing, vascular bundles, dispersed rather than in a circle, bamboos have none of woody xylem that produces secondary growth. However, they grow fast and straight, some zooming up at an incredible 100 cm in 24 hours, and in maturing, the stems become extremely tough. Even the slower growers can manage more than 3 cm a day, and the largest can soar up to 30 metres.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 28

When a bamboo starts to grow, the shoot is soft and apart from pandas, many other animals, including humans, feed on them. As the stems mature, they harden, and that’s when they are harvested. After that, the fungi move in causing the stems to decay.

Bamboos are unusual in having long gaps between flowering, sometimes only every century or so, and in parts of Asia this odd habit has traditionally been associated both with renewal and with famine. For some reason, all the bamboos flower at the same time, and while no one has yet been able to explain how this internal alarm clock works, or why these long gaps occur, one theory is that they act as one because they are as genetically uniform as a clone.

Whatever the explanation, the long gaps between flowering means that sometimes there is an abundance of

Bamboos growing in the Jardin de Planbuisson at Périgord in Dordonge. seeds, leading to another theory that rodents, feasting on these, produce a lot more young, and when all the seeds are gone, the starving animals go raiding food stores and attacking crops. It’s a good story, and while hard to prove, mass flowering must have a significant impact on the environment.

One of these impacts first hit the headlines in the late 1970s, with news from China that pandas in mountain areas of north Sichuan were starving because bamboos, on which they rely for food, had all died back after mass flowering. Although lots of seeds were produced, by the time they sprouted and grew, the animals, already rare, and unable to move into new areas, would have starved. This was the time when the cuddly looking panda became the

well known icon for the World Wildlife Fund, and China began a big rescue programme, part of which involved collecting seed to propagate bamboo. Die back after flowering was also blamed for starvation of pandas on the Qionglai Mountains during the early 1980s, and at the time, Chinese scientists reported that 90 to 95 per cent of one particular bamboo species, Sinarundinaria fangiana, had died back, and that three other species had done the same after, as they reported to WWF, flowering “more or less simultaneously.”

Having achieved celebrity status pandas were then packed off on a world tour to highlight the plight of animals in danger of extinction. At one stage in 1986, a pair, Ping Ping, the 7 year old boy, and Ming Ming, his 6 year old

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page xx

female companion, arrived in Dublin Zoo. As each animal chews through 20 lbs of bamboo shoots a day, one of the challenges, apart from their reluctance to mate, was to keep these travellers fed during their 100 day stay. At the time, zoo keepers told this writer that any offers of bamboo from Ireland would be welcome, and that request was not all that fanciful.

Bamboos were often planted as an exotic on the old country estates, as visitors to Lough Key in County Roscommon might discover when they go walkabout.

Incidently, Ming Ming was one of the pandas that had been rescued from starvation in the wild, and becoming a world traveller seems to have done her no harm. Last May she died at the ripe old age of 37, considerably longer than the average for a panda who would be

regarded as “getting on” at 15, and older than most by 20.

Having been introduced in the past, bamboo plants have been making quite a comeback here in garden centres, but the need to appreciate the variety of species is as good a reason as any to take a trip to France. At the Bambouseraie near Nimes, or the Parc aux Bambous du Perigord in the Dordogne valley, you can stroll through great forests of bamboos, yet both grew from relatively modest beginnings.

In 1885, a young merchant, who had made his fortune in the spice trade, decided to plant bamboos in south east France. Five years later, Eugene Mazel’s obsession with bamboos had cost so much that he went bust, but not before he had established the beginning of a plantation that now draws in more than 350,000 visitors a year. Added to and improved by three generations of the same family, the Bambouseraie has become a major attraction for the region.

Near Périguex in the Dordogne valley, is another bamboo plantation, a 1.5 ha haven of light and shade, with walnut shell strewn paths winding through 150 different types of bamboo. At one time this was a walnut grove, and a few of the remaining trees stand in contrast to the dense clusters of pipe-like bamboos. The idea of starting a park took root when Michel Bonfils read a newspaper article about bamboo. He began planting, and now the Parc aux Bambous du Perigord has mature stands of bamboos from Asia, Oceania, Africa, and South America. In addition to the towering bamboos with stems in shades from light tan to pitch black, and varying in size from slender as pencils to thick as drainpipes, the garden also has tropical species that have to be kept under wraps in winter.

A male panda, Tai Shan, tucking in to a bamboo shoot at Washington Zoo. Like the bamboo clock, the restricted panda diet is a mystery. As a bear its ancestors would have been meat eaters, yet the panda, having inherited a short gut, chooses to eat food which is hard to digest.

All in all, the collection consists of about 260 species. Michel Bonfils kept adding to the collection, but a few years ago, he began to think about continuity.

What kind of future lay ahead for this special collection? Lots of people had shown an interest, so an association, with membership open to all, was set up to keep and maintain the collection, and in 2005 the Ministry of Culture and Communication presented a “Jardin Remarquable” award giving the garden

an official seal of approval.

The garden is indeed remarkable, but in a quiet and peaceful way. Tall stems, packed together into dense clusters allow dappled light through to create a jungle-like atmosphere, where the stripes of a prowling tiger would not seem out of place. Between, are sheltered glades where smaller grasses from around the world, many of them rare, grow.

Naturally they can be admired from the comfort of a bamboo bench.

Below and left, the entrance to the bamboo garden at Périgord, a leafy shoot and a young plant as it emerges from the ground.

www.planbuisson.com www.bambouseraie.com SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 30

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Secret weapons Brian J Ford’s interest in the weapons of war was stimulated when given access to secret files held in the former, German Democratic Republic, better known to most as East Germany. Since then he has become a leading authority on the subject. as he points out in his introduction to this book, what fascinates him so much is that during a war, developments that would have taken years in peacetime, are often completed within months. While the bureaucracy that slows everything is swept aside during war, opposing factions often remain in place, but, overall, progress in new developments is fast because everyone is swept up by a sense of urgency, which basically amounted to an attitude of “kill them before they kill us.”

In this book, the author’s focus is on World War II, during a time when technology in general was racing ahead at a speed that was never matched before. Within a few short years cumbersome flying machines had been replaced by sleek fighters and on a number of fronts, technology and applied science advanced as the opposing sides battled to outdo each other in spreading misery and destruction. after the madness of WWii there were a number of gems to be picked out of the ashes. Bombers became civilian aircraft, mass production of penicillian led to the mass availability of antibiotic “wonder drugs”, and rockets that had been developed by the German scientist, von Braun, to bomb London, sent Neil armstrong to the Moon.

The story of Wernher von Braun is an interesting one, and he is probably the best known of the scientists and engineers to be recycled, while others, considered less useful, were often charged with being war criminals. The curious thing about von Braun is that he ended up achiving his original dream. as a young man studying engineering, he belonged to a band of enthusiasts making up the Society of Space Travel. in the 1930s the society even produced their own magazine, “Die Rakete” and had an office in Berlin. However, people began complaining about the noise being made by rocket tests, and the Nazis did not approve of the society so rather than risk

upsetting the authorities, the group was disbanded.

Von Braun, however, unwilling to stop working on rockets, approached some contacts within the military, and convincing them that his research could be useful to them, embarked on a programme that eventually led to the V2 rocket attacks. Strangely enough, Hitler was not impressed, and following the Allied retreat at Dunkirk, he dismissed the idea that rockets could be useful.

Hitler believed that the Allies were facing defeat, and besides, in his view, rockets were not particularly effective. True, they struck terror into those on the receiving end, but he was quite correct in thinking that conventional bombers could do a lot more damage, and at less cost.

For a while, von Braun and the team were out of favour, but when the tide of war changed again, Hitler’s attitude underwent a complete reversal, and the order went out to the rocket makers to go into full production. as the allies sought out and destroyed construction and launch sites, the Germans kept on the move, while subjecting a number of cities including Antwerp, London, Paris, Maasdericht and ipswitch to a barrage of V2 attacks. More than 3,000 V2s were fired, but as author concluded, far from giving Germany a last ditch advantage, the rockets proved to be an expensive mistake.

“Was it really valuable as a weapon of war?’ he asks, and the answer is a clear no.

Hitler’s original assessment was correct. The 1,402 V2 rockets that hit London killed 2,754 people and injured 6,253. Misery, fear and death, but from a military point of view that made the V2s a costly failure.

Designs, such as this aerodynamic Delta IV influenced the shape of things to come.

With the defeat of Germany, von Braun choose to surrender to the Americans rather than the advancing Russians. Fleeing from the Gestapo, who would have shot him rather than let him fall into enemy hands, von Braun’s car crashed, breaking his arm.

With the defeat of Germany, there was a scramble to grab assets and among these were the experts, many of whom were given false identities, and as the author explains, illegally shielded from the courts, so former enemies now became useful “friends”.

Von Braun, officially a member of the SS, was noted as a ”danger” in Allied records, was whisked off to a secret location in the the United States, and soon he was back doing what he was best at, designing rockets, but for a

REVIEWS new paymaster. Twenty four years later, von Braun’s dream of reaching out into space came true as his modified V2 sent Armstong to the Moon.

Von Braun’s story says a lot about how scientists think, and in particular how their personal obsessions can blind them to the consequences of what they are doing. It is interesting to speculate on what would have happened if the young von Braun had decided to stay out of trouble, as his colleagues in the Society of Space Travel had done.

As the numerous examples in this book show, it is hard to escape the conclusion that many scientists are not particularly

concerned about who they work for, or how their results are used. Niels Bohr fled to the US to escape the nazis, but more than likely, many, and perhaps even most of the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb there, could, depending on where they came from, have swapped places with their counterparts in Japan. We all know about hiroshima and nagasaki, but what is not so well known is that Japan was well ahead in the race to develop an atomic weapon. In 1941 the Japanese Prime Minister, hideki Tojo, gave the go ahead to scientists to develop an atomic bomb, and prospectors were sent out to find sources of uranium ore. As in Germany, there was

a reluctance to spend too much on a project that might not be concluded before the end of the war, but as Brian Ford explains in his book, the intense rivalry between the army and the navy could well have been the main reason why Japan did not win that deadly race. no doubt, the scientists in Japan were every bit as dedicated to their work as those in America, Britain, Germany or Russia, and would have recoiled in horror at any hint that what they were doing was wrong. (TK)

The night sky

Universe. As she remarks, we need to understand that we are not just looking at pin-pricks of light, but are spectators at “the greatest show of all.”

Within a lifetime, our ability to probe into the depths of space has been enormously improved.

Since the 1960s more than 100 space telescopes have been launched, and while Hubble, with its 2.4 metre mirror might be best known, there has been the Chandra X ray observatory, the Spitzer Infrared, Galaxy and herschel to name just a few, all of which are helping us to understand how the Universe has been constructed.

Apart from giving an informative account of what we know now, the author

provides a lot of practical advice on how readers can embark on their own explorations. As she explains, beginners who might want to start recording what they see, can use adaptor rings to attach a camera to their telescope. Jane explains clearly what the options are and progresses on to describe how to construct a home observatory. There is also a very comprehensive section on different types of cameras, filters and recording media, such as charged coupled devices. (TK)

manage these organisations, in much the same way as a business or industry, and indeed, many people in Irish universities, the health servicers, and research organisations, will be familiar with this trend. however, borrowing a management style from business is almost certain to be counterproductive, and as John hurley remarks in his book; “These organisations all exist in order to ensure that activities are carried out in a standardised way.”

Implied by this approach, is an assumption that a flow of discoveries can be produced on demand, and this is not so.

This is not to say that scientists should be left alone to work in isolation, and another point that the nobel laureates stressed was that they had succeeded because they had been able to work in a supporting environment. Good guidance at the start, a strong supporting team, and control over how research is being conducted, all figured highly in comments, and interestingly enough, these observations could be applied in industry, where there is a lot of evidence

to show that morale and creativity are highest in groups that have control over what they are doing, so productivity goes up.

Another point that comes up concerns the distinction between problem solving and discovery. In problem solving, if all the relevant facts are known, it may be possible to deduct a logical conclusion, but discovery involves the sort of creativity that leads a researcher to ask a question that no one thought of asking before.

While the scientists were not able to come up with a neat formula that research organisations could apply to ramp us the number of discoveries, their observations certainly suggest that if we want exceptional rather than just good results, it would be a good idea to give our researchers more control over what they are doing. (TK)

When Voyager 1 took a look back towards earth from 3.7 billion miles away, twelve years after launch, our home planet was recorded as just a tiny speck, almost impossible to pick out from the star sprinkled background.

Stars and their orbiting planets are scattered throughout the Universe like great clouds of swirling dust. As Jane A Greene, in her book, Astronomy Manual, observes, our perception of the Universe has a lot to do with scale, and going back to the beginning, we are also dealing with dust. The stars that speckle across the galaxies, were, themselves formed from cosmic dust, and the planets, like ours, were condensed from fragments, drawn together by gravity.

In her book, Jane explains how readers can begin to explore this bewildering

Managing research

T

here are about five million scientists in the world, perhaps a lot more if we become more inclusive of people who work in the sciences, yet few will ever make a discovery of enough significance to merit a nobel Prize.

John hurley, Professor of Organisational Psychology at DCU wondered what sort of qualities made the 160 living nobel laureates stand out above the general mass of scientists. To find out, he approached the laureates, asking if they would agree to be interviewed, and his analysis is based on the sixteen who agreed to answer his questions and give their views on why some researchers seem to have a lot more luck than their equally bright colleagues in making discoveries.

The way in which scientists are allowed to organise their work was among the points most commonly raised, and as the author points out, the way in which many research organisations work actually inhibits creativity. It has become usual to

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 51 Page 32

Secret Weapons, technology, science and the race to win World War II. Brian J Ford. Osprey Publishing.

Astronomy Manual, the practical guide to the night sky.

Jane A Green hayes Publishing

Organisation and scientific discovery, 2nd edition John hurley Diane Publishing

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

IRISH SCIENCE

HANDBOOK SCIENCE

CHARTING THE STRUC

S P IN

2012

TURES, STRENGTHS AN D SEC TORS OF IRISH SCIEN CE

Biotechnology Pharmaceuticals IT and communications Environmental sciences Medical devices Energy Engineering Food sciences Agricultural research Health care Marine science Geology and earth scien ces Education and training Mathematical sciences Physics Astrophysics Nanotechnology Science careers

Science Spin will publish The Irish Science Handbook to coincide with the Dublin ESOF Dublin City of Science Event in July 2012. It will be a shop window for all aspects of science and innovation in Ireland and will serve as a valuable promotional tool both at home and abroad.

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

Thousands of visitors will be coming to Dublin for the 2012 City of Science event, and apart from a high level conference in the capital, partner organisations from all around the country will be involved in an ambitious national programme of local events.

Includes an A-Z of organisations involved in science and research in Ireland, third level colleges, research institutes, state bodies, associations and organisations Also, an OUT and ABOUT section giving a county by county listing of places to go and experience science throughout Ireland.

To book space in The Irish Science Handbook contact Alan Doherty at

alan@sciencespin.com

The Irish Science Handbook will be distributed at City of Science events, low cost copies will be available to the public, and the digital edition will be free-to-view on our websites www.sciencespin.com and www.sciencespin.eu SCIENCE SPIN LIVIssue 48 Page xx E LINK

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