Science Spin 58

ISSUE

58

May/June 2013

€5 including VAT £4 NI and UK

SCIENCE

SPIN

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

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Marine biodiversity Fixing DNA in a flash Big lesson from small flies Weird and wonderful animals

How long is Ireland’s coast?

THE SENSATIONAL

BRAIN What is it and how it works Dr Veronica Miller BRAIN

ucIng Introd

the br a

In

a few to know t enough e each ain it’s no might be, becaus and the br ey is is To underst ls, important as th In many ways th d . e whole hree blin e, eyes ical detai th “T ys ov e of m ph th rt s t muscle ty just pa from India abou gers feel, tongue tastes. A is in reali ry y d cient sto t beats, fin ttle a ked to se our hear ar, toes tingle an degree in anatom like an an elephant.” ah was as tween those a he r body in n’t need en and an In this story, a raj see, ears ld ou m el ou court be d fe w old sight. we can ute in his life was eternal an e e sp on sis di y four year he find ved om da es synt who belie did not. In order to u that. Fr us our ey o to tell yo e ink tells m wh bl e co us os ick uld th qu tells the men co action. A i pepper out how on such on a chill ock conclusion the rajah A nibble s taste. And a sh to a firm er, ue ts rtant matt en and sent our tong m sets our hear po im an m t ste an six blind to the sy showing us wha gathered encounter , r e jungle to d to return thumping d shoot about ou them to th oo were tol makes bl elephant ant. They e ph th ele ibe . bodies t and descr u ask a to the cour But, if yo what side r old elephant’s to him. s on the four-yea does, e a wall. his hand d ain being lik ld lai br an their e rajah as to just blind m th d ly st to an ab t fir s e ob an sk Th p tu eleph they’ll pr s in ant’s shar The third ribed the eir head and desc man felt the eleph more like a spear. scratch th d perhaps s nd ant was An phant wa The seco d the eleph wonder. knees an that the ele nk and said that o. e s to es kly jah lse ld in ra Th e pu ou s. wr th you w ical im r brain phant’s tru felt the elephant’s t, apart of electr nd in ou felt the ele Billions milliseco ove our limbs , ye know fourth e y er Th . ev uced ds, m w we snake-like are prod our min onder ho motivate u may w it does? actively ache, yo odd head and what exactly from the ng ki 7 or w is the brain

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BRAIN

fake; if you show people a series of pictures showing smilers most of us will pick out the fake from the true smiles. With age we learn that facial expressions can be faked to some extent, but blushing and shaking with nerves are less likely to be faked. These subtle and not-sosubtle clues about emotional states are all registered within the brain.

stimulation of the hypothalamus in animals produced euphoric, rage or attack behaviours.

Secondly, and up a level, we have the limbic system consisting of the hippocampus and amygdala. The amygdala controls our fear and anxiety responses, and the hippocampus makes short term memories, so that we know what to do next time the emotional respons Three, two, one, go e is needed.

If you stop the hippocampus So despite the fact that our spines tingle A cross section through the brain stem. and amygdala working in animals by and hearts race with excitement, it’s cutting off their blood supply, you actually the brain that controls our find emotions. Inside our that the animals become very docile brains are pleasure pain and fear and centres in our limbic lack normal emotional responses, such as fear or anger. and cortical brain areas. You could rank our emotional The third tier of emotional cake is the input to responses, much in the way that our the James-Lange theory cortex and output generated by it to the limbic and does into three different levels. autonomic areas via the relay station in the thalamus to Firstly we have the autonomic system response. The help us make informed decisions as to how to respond to primary autonomic areas in the brain are the brainstem the emotional situation. Whether to fight or take flight. and the hypothalamus. The brainste m mediates our heart rate, breathing sweating and eyes dilating Eye sense fear and I feel afraid and is the first area of the brain to be activated in Fear can be fast and slow— an instanta emotional situations. Then message neous fright s are fired from it when somebody jumps out at you to the hypothalamus to trigger the as you walk along a release of different darkened corridor, and a longer-l chemicals into the bloodstream preparin asting feeling of unease g us for an as you walk home at night-time along emotional response. James Olds a dark road. Quick and Peter Milner fears are processed within seconds discovered this in 1954 after finding in our bodies and are that electrical mainly processed via the autonom ic and limbic systems.

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The sensaTional brain Dr Veronica Miller explains what goes on inside our heads — what makes us smart, why we get emotional, how memories are stored and what happens when things go wrong.

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Upfront

2

Fixing DNA in a flash

Páric Keane explains how the first few trillionths of a second is important in protecting DNA from sunlight

Big discovery from little flies

Immunology owes a lot to fundamental research

Weird and wonderful animals

Sive Finlay introduces us to the Lowland Streaked Tenrec

The gene hunter

Seán Duke talked to Aoife McLysagh about her passion for science

Dr How’s science wows Exploring friction

Fractal Ireland

Stefan Hutzler explains how to measure the length of Ireland’s coast

Mapping ancient basins

Recording how some landscape in France took shape

Marine diversity

There is a lot more life at sea than on land

Young scientists

Taking a look at diesel laundering, wood-chip fuel and gas for the lab

The origin of feces

All about the subject no one wants to think about

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Asteroid close-up

As EsA’s spacecraft, Rosetta, came within 800 km of the asteroid steins, it captured this image showing how the surface has been battered and pockmarked by impacts. The asteroid is five km wide and the largest impact crater is about 2 km wide and almost 300 metres deep. The central crater is 650 km wide and 80 metres deep. About 40 craters have been noted in total.

Rosetta was launched in 2004 and following a long and complex trajectory making use of Mars and Earth’s gravity, it will finally arrive around the comet known as 67 P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will then remain in orbit around the comet as it travels on towards the Sun.

UPFRONT

In 2008 Rosetta went by Steins, and Ted stryk, professor of philosophy and part-time astronomer processed the data to produce this image showing up details in high contrast.

Open learning

dependent on self-motivation and sharing, open Learning Ireland also aims to serve those who have been alienated by negative experience in school, or have found themselves cut off from participation in formal education.

For more information: http://openlearningireland.com

Arctic camels

of collagen, one of the main protein components in bone.

By comparing the collagen to 37 present-day mammal species a close match was found with modern Dromedary camels. A close match was also found with another fossil camel from the Yukon area.

Although the match was close, the bone fragments show that the Arctic camel was bigger than modern species.

The tibia was about 30 per cent larger than those in living camel species.

It is thought that the camel lived in a boreal-type forest environment during a warmer phase. Camels may have originated in the far north, and scientists wonder if some of the features we see now could have been shaped originally in a much colder environment.

A GRoup of volunteers have launched an alternative education space in Dublin.

The organisers aim to foster self-directed learning where everyone is free to learn or impart their knowledge. unlike the prevailing top-down approach to education, this approach is largely

ThE last place we would expect to see a camel is in the Arctic, but three and a half million year old fossil bones show that they once inhabited that region. A team of scientists from the university of Manchester and the Canadian Museum of Nature found fragments of a tibia, the lower leg bone. The fragments were collected from a sandy deposit at an elevated site on Ellesmere Island and the scientists reported that the extremely cold conditions there had helped preserve proteins, adding enormously to the value of these fossils.

Digital imaging enabled the scientists to reassemble the 30 fragments, and it was possible to extract a small amount

China links

FoLLowInG an agreement between China and Ireland to co-operate on agrifood, nanotechnology, biomedical developments, ICT and other areas, the Irish Government has made up to â‚Ź1 million available to support suitable initiatives.

China is providing matching finance, and the Irish funding is being channelled through Science Foundation Ireland. university College Dublin and nuI Maynooth are leading projects that will involve all seven Irish universities, the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland, the Institutes of Technology in Dublin, Cork and waterford, and Teagasc. These organisations will be collaborating with about 30 research and higher education institutes in China.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 2

Battery implants

InSERTInG medical devices can keep our bodies working, but one of the risks is that the batteries might leak, and of course they can run out of power.

Researchers at the Polish Academy of Sciences in warsaw have come up with a safer and longer-lasting solution in the form of an air-breathing bio-battery.

The concept is much the same as the common experiment in schools in which two electrodes inserted into a potato or lemon can generate a current.

Instead of using a potato, the researchers make use of naturally occurring substances in or around the body. According to the researchers the zinc-oxygen biobatteries produce more power than existing batteries, and because there are no strong acids or bases, there is no need for a heavy protective housing. To generate power, the only requirement is to insert the electrodes into the body.

As the researchers point out, the concept is not new, but improvements to the cathode mean that a zinc-oxygen battery can continue to produce 1.7 volts for several hours. over the past few years the research group has been developing a cathode incorporating enzymes within a carbon nanotube and silicate matrix.

The cathode is in a cell containing an electrolyte which consists of a solution containing hydrogen ions. Pores in the silicate matrix allow oxygen in, and with the assistance of the enzyme, reduction takes place, and the carbon nanotubes transport electrons to the surface.

After about one and a half weeks the efficiency goes down because the enzyme wears out. The researchers are now looking at how the enzyme might be regenerated to prolong biobattery life.

Western wilderness

oVER 11,000 hectares of north west Mayo have been declared a wilderness area. An agreement was made between Coillte and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to return much of this area which includes the existing Ballycroy National Park and Nephin mountain to a wilder state. under this agreement Coillte is to take 4.400 ha out of commercial forestry.

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UPFRONT

The marsupial sugar glider, Petaurus breviceps, has no corpus callosum.

Boys to the right

hUMANS are not the only ones to be left or right handed. Many other animals also display a distinct preference for leading with the right or left paw or hoof. It was often thought that a structure known as the corpus callosum in the brain is involved. This particular structure acts as a communications bridge between the two halves of the brain. however, Dr Yegor Malashichev at Saint Petersburg State University has reported in BioMed Central that marsupials without a corpus collosum, such as the sugar glider or short-tailed oppossum also have a distinct preference in favour of the left or right and the preference is related to gender.

With non-marsupial mammals, males are usually left-handed, and females righthanded, yet with marsupials that walk on four limbs, males are usually right-handed, and females left-handed.

Magnetic bacteria

LoNG before sailors learned how to use a compass bacteria were orientating themselves along magnetic lines. At the University of Huddersfield, Amy Mornington has been studying how some bacteria have membrane-encapsulated magnetosomes. These magnetosomes contain magnetite, an iron oxide that also occurs in a variety of animals, including bees, pigeons and salmon.

While the role of magnetite in orientating organisms is easier to understand, Amy Mornington’s aim is to find out how it is produced. By understanding how the biomineralisation works in nature, it may become possible to mimic the process to produce magnetite commercially. Potential applications including drug delivery, are not viable at present, but discovering how bacteria produce magnetite might lead to a more cost-efficient process.

Mini-makers

oN Saturday 27th July 2013 ‘makers’ will be busy in and around Trinity College Dublin and the Science Gallery. Workshops, performances and other hands-on events are planned as participants build their own devices. Just making things has become highly popular as people apply a variety of skills in creating weird and wonderful devices. To a dedicated “maker” there is really no such thing as junk, but turning it into something useful or entertaining is the challenge.

Makers or groups who want to participate by exhibiting what they can do can download a submission form from: http://www.makerfairedublin.com/open-call-2013 More information from Shaun o’Boyle at the TCD Science Gallery, 01 8964405 or email shaun.oboyle@sciencegallery.com

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 3

More fellows

The number of postgraduates working on food and agriculture has increased.

Under the Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Programme 64 new postgraduates being approved for support. This is the largest number of approvals since the Walsh Fellowship Programme began and it represents a major investment of over €4 million in fostering emerging scientific talent.

The new postgraduates, many of whom are conducting research for a PhD, join the existing 140 Walsh Fellows and will work under the supervision of Teagasc and university staff.

Under the Walsh Fellowship Programme Teagasc works in collaboration with the universities and institutes, and there are well established links to research organisations in europe, the US and New Zealand. Professor Gerry Boyle, Director of Teagasc, said that Fellows are encouraged to engage with the best in international science and research.

For more details: www.teagasc.ie/research/postgrad

Killing cancer cells

WheN cancers develop the body can react by inducing the cells to selfdestruct. however, if a gene, known as p53, is defective, the defence mechanism does not work, and the cancer continues to grow.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found that it is possible to restore p53 activity by administering a substance known as APR-246. A study was conducted on 22 patients with advanced blood or prostate cancers, and the researchers, working under Dr Soren Lehmann, have reported positive results indicating that the p53 gene had become active, and in two of ten patents that were evaluated, there were signs of tumour regression.

These are preliminary results, and the main aim of the study was to find out how ARP-246 is tolerated by the body.

It was found that tolerance is good, and the researchers expressed confidence that this drug will help, especially in combination with other treatments. Up to half of the cancers including ovarian cancer and most tumours are thought to arise from a defect in the p53 gene. however, Professor Klas Wiman, who discovered APR-246, commented that tumours are extremely complex, so other factors are probably involved.

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Research images

UPFRONT

Biomedical students at NUi Galway have exhibited a number of striking images that show off the artistic side of science. Although produced for research, the images produced in the lab often have such a strong visual impact that they rival conventional works of art. The second year biomedical students had these images up on display at a two-day exhibition in the Galway Museum. A number of NUI Galway scientists were involved in creating these images including Drs Maura Grealy and Eilis Dowd from Pharmacology; Dr Lynn O’Connor, Biomedical Science; Professor Peter Dockery, Alex Black and Drs Dara Cannon and Fabio Quondamatteo from Anatomy; and Professors Noel Lowndes, Brian McStay and Ciaran Morrison, and Dr Andrew Flaus from Biochemistry.

This image showing a thin slice of brain tissue comes from Dr Eilis Dowd in Pharmacology. Star shaped cells, known as astrocytes, have been treated with a green fluorescent dye to make them show up against the background. By studying these cells scientists are able to conduct research on neurodegenerative diseases.

This image is made up of 25 frames in a time-lapse series showing the progressive movement of the nucleosome in a cell during division. By observing the details of cell division researchers can spot the differences that might indicate disease. This image is from the lab of Dr Andrew Flaus, Biochemistry.

Hyaline cartilage, shown here, occurs in joints and elsewhere in our body.

Images such as this provide scientists with information about structure and function, enabling them to develop treatments for diseases such as osteoarthritis.

Image from the lab of Prof Peter Dockery, Anatomy.

Triggering psychosis SOME people have a genetic variant that affects the quality of an enzyme involved in the production of kynurenic acid, a chemical involved in nerve-to-nerve signalling. Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found that people with this particular genetic difference have a high risk of developing psychosis. Reporting their results in

Molecular Psychiatry, the researchers noted that levels of kynurenic acid are higher in the brains of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disease with psychosis.

Kynurenic acid is produced in response to stress or infection, and in people with the genetic variant, the levels produced are higher. According to Martin Schalling, Professor of Medical Genetics

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at the Karolinska Institutet, up to 80 per cent of those with psychosis related to bipolar disease have inherited the condition. Inflammation caused by stress or infection is a key trigger in setting off psychotic episodes. The researchers think that readily available drugs to bring down inflammation could prove useful in treatment.

Primary school students awarded for participating in the Explorers Education Programme

The Marine Institute recently presented up to one thousand primary school students on the East Coast of Ireland and Cork with the Explorers Certificate of Participation after completing activities and projects set within the Explorers Education Programme.

the Real Map of Ireland – including Ireland’s marine resource and identifying marine species found on Irish coastlines.

The Explorers Education Programme seeks to develop an interest in Ireland’s coast and extensive 220 million acre marine resource, which is one of the largest in the EU, among primary school students.

“The Programme now includes Dublin, Wicklow and Cork and continues to be an outstanding success under the guidance of the Lifetime Labs, Cork, and the Blackrock Education Centre and the National Sea-Life Centre Bray”, commented Dr Noirin Burke, Explorers Education Officer at Galway Atlantaquaria.

“Working with a dedicated group of marine educators with the common goal of introducing students to Ireland’s rich marine resources, the programme and workshops are currently used by over 50 schools reaching over 5000 thousand students”, she added.

On the East Coast of Ireland, Explorers aquarium tanks with a variety of sea life typically found in rockpools around Ireland were installed into nine classrooms of different schools for six weeks by the National Sea-Life Centre, Bray.

Celebrating the award at St Anthony’s National School, Cork the students’ experiences and caring for the aquariums provided a fantastic way to engage with the students on marine topics. Providing opportunities for students to develop an interest in the marine now will no doubt be of huge benefit to the sustainable development of our marine resource in the future”, he noted.

At the Lifetime Lab, Cork, students from 21 primary schools participated in the Explorers Primary Marine Science Workshops, engaging with marine related experiments and activities on topics such as St Kevin’s National School, Sallynoggin, Co. Dublin

“Using the aquariums to bring sea life into classrooms is an innovative way for students to learn about Ireland’s marine species and to gain vital skills in science, literacy, maths and geography”, said Tomás Ó Briain, coordinator of the Explorers Project at Blackrock Education Centre.

“Providing teachers with an information workshop and weekly visits to the schools to find out about

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Speaking about the popular workshops that ran for two weeks, manager of the Lifetime Lab and organiser of the workshops Mervyn Horgan said, “Raising awareness of marine science in classrooms brings long term benefits to students and to Ireland. The Explorers Education Programme and workshops are an innovative way of engaging in science education, combining topics of sea life, science and geography with practical experiments and activities”.

Dr Burke also thanked the Marine Institute, noting that “The support provided by the Institute ensures that the Explorers Education Programme continues to engage with students on a variety of marine related topics early in their education. In addition to developing a richer appreciation of marine life at a young age, the students have gained essential skills in maths, literacy, geography, science and art required in their future education”.

The Explorers Education programme was developed by the Marine Institute in collaboration with a number of key partners including Galway Atlantaquaria, Sealife Bray Aqauriaum, Blackrock Education Centre, Galway Education Centre and the Lifetime Lab, Cork and has been running for over seven years. A wide variety of marine based lesson plans, activities and science experiments, including details on the Real Map of Ireland – Irelands marine resource, can be downloaded from www.explorers.ie.

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Downside of advances Many people who would have died from kidney or liver failure in the past can now survive in good health thanks to advances in organ transplanting.

Unfortunately, however, where ethical guidelines are lax or absent alltogether, organs are being harvested from people who have fallen into a poverty trap.

Monir Moniruzzaman, a medical anthropologist at Michigan Medical State University has drawn attention to an appalling situation in Bangladesh. Monir, who came originally from Bangladesh, began investigating the extent of this trade, and in spite of the fact that it is technically illegal, he found that entire families had sold organs to pay off relatively small debts. Ironically, the loans, which could be as small as $50, were often given to help people set up small businesses.

Monir, reporting his grim findings in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, said that in 2005 there was one transplant hospital in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh.

Since then the number has increased and will soon be ten. as Monir observed, the people giving up their organs out of desperation often fail to receive payment, people are left in poor health after botched operations, brokers forge documentation, and medical officials and doctors, who should be expected to know better, are in on this nasty racket because the illegal trade is so lucrative.

One of the victims of this obscene and unethical trade shows the scar left after giving up his kidney. Often there is no aftercare, health deteriorates, and many never even receive the money they have been promised.

Saintly scientists

nExT March a medal will be presented to a distinguished Irish scientist living and working in the US. This is to be an annual award presented to winning scientists each 17th March as part of St Patrick’s Day celebrations. nominations will be sought from the Irish diaspora by Science Foundation Ireland.

UPFRONT

Rock art

RockS don’t last forever, they just take longer than most other things to wear away. one of the big problems with ancient rock carvings, such as those on Ireland’s high crosses, is that leaving them in the open leaves them exposed to natural weathering. at the same time, trekking across the landscape to look at a polymer replica of the real thing, now housed under cover in a museum, is not such an attractive option.

Ireland is far from being alone in having ancient stone carvings out in the open, and researchers at newcastle University have drawn attention to neolithic and Bronze age examples in northumberland. David Graham, Professor of Ecosystems Engineering at the university said that these panels, with carved swirls and circles, are at risk. “We need to start looking at how we can preserve them now,” he said, and this involves understanding more about how these rocks deteriorate.

The researchers, working with Dr Patricia Warke from Queen’s University Belfast, have been studying 18 rock panels located across northumberland. Most of the panels are of sandstone, and the researchers were able to identify some factors that influence the rate of deterioration. as expected, the more exposed they are, the greater the risk, but the level of cations in local soils is also a factor. Improving drainage around the panels can help slow down deterioration. a paper on the study can be accessed from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1296207413000666

Carbon to carbon

DIaMonDS and graphene are just different forms of carbon, so what happens if attempts are made to bond the two together. When researchers from the national University of Singapore and Hasselt University in Belgium coated a diamond with graphene and raised the temperature to see if they would bond they came up with an unexpected result.

When the temperature went above 400°c water, trapped between the two layers, became highly corrosive.

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Professor Loh kian Ping from Singapore commented that the arrangement is like a pressure cooker, but what no one had known before was that superheated water could become corrosive enough to etch into the diamond.

The discovery opens up a new way to study the behaviour of liquids at high temperature and pressure, and it is likely to have applications in microelectronics.

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Applying results

UPFRONT

iN FebruAry the european research Council awarded 60 grants, each worth up to €150,000, to help researchers commercialise their results. This follows an earlier round in September 2012 under which 33 grants were awarded. in this round, one award went to a researcher at university College Dublin, Professor Martin Albrecht, who is developing a solar powered catalytic technique for splitting water to generate energy.

Research grants

reSeArCHerS have until 14th August to apply for Marie Curie fellowship grants. This year funding amounts to €227 million, and about 1,000 researchers will benefit this year.

Marie Curie fellows receive broad ranging support enabling them to gain experience in institutions abroad.

Losing fat

A pArticulAr type of immune cell, known as invariant natural killer t-cell, iNKt, has been found to have a controlling influence on fat. An international team of researchers led by Dr Lydia Lynch at TCD, and involving Prof Donal O’Shea and Prof Cliona O’Farrelly from TCD, has found that with obesity these cells are lost, but they can be restored when weight is lost. it was thought that these iNKt cells were uncommon in humans, but the researchers discovered that they are plentiful in fat, and that they have a role in regulating body weight. the decrease in iNKt had been noted initially during studies of patients attending St Vincent’s Obesity Clinic. These patients with low levels of iNKt had a higher risk from heart attacks and type 2 diabetes than lean individuals. However, if they had lost weight following a surgical intervention to restrict the gut, (bariatric surgery), iNKT increased back to normal levels.

Support for these findings came from animal studies in which mice were put on a high-fat diet. With weight gain, the iNKT cells were lost, but when put back on a normal diet, weight was lost and the iNKT cells returned.

To get more details, the same tests were carried out on different strains of mice, one a normal control, and two deficient in iNKT. Given the high-fat diet, all the mice gained weight, but the iNKtdeficient ones grew 30 per cent fatter than the controls, and they developed the mouse-equivalent of diabetes 2 in six weeks. in a follow-up study, iNKt cells were harvested from the normal mice and injected into mice that were iNKT deficient. remarkably, the diabetes 2 in these fat mice was reversed, yet while continuing to eat a high-fat diet they lost about ten per cent of their weight.

Finally, the researchers administered a lipid known as alphagalactosylceramide, aGc, to mice with a diminished pool of iNKT cells. This lipid is known to activate iNKT cells, and it was found that a small dose of aGc resulted in a dramatic improvement, reducing weight and reversing diabetes 2.

Patenting genes

ACCOrDiNg to a ruling, made by Australia’s Federal Court, naturally occurring genes can be patented. in a controversial case, Justice John Nicholas decided that the act of removing a gene is artificial, and therefore a patent can be applied to it. The case arose out of a patent filed by Myriad genetics. The company was developing a diagnostic test for cancer, and the ruling means that Myriad genetics now holds an exclusive right on diagnostic tests based on detection of a naturally occurring gene.

Fighting infections

CHeWiNg of betal leaves is widespread in india and countries in south east Asia and the use of this stimulant goes back thousands of years. The plant, Piper betle, is a creeper, extensively grown in West bengal as an economic crop.

Debmalya barh from the institute of integrative Omics and Applied biotechnology in West bengal, with a team of international researchers, have found that one of the compounds in the leaves, piperdarine, acts as a powerful antibiotic against a number of pathogens including those causing tuberculosis and hemorrhagic diarrhoea. reporting their findings in Integrative Biology and Plos One, the researchers claim that piperdarine is more powerful than common antibiotics, such as Chloramphenicol, Penicillin and Ampicillin. the article in Plos One is available from http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052773

Marine Institute Foras na Mara

Ireland's National Agency for Marine Research and Innovation

Our Ocean

A Shared Resource

www.marine.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 7

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End for Herschel

UPFRONT

The eSA’s herschel space observatory, with its 3.5 metre wide mirror, has run out of liquid helium coolant, so its cameras and spectrometers are about to close down. The space observatory was launched in May 2009 and over three years it has captured data across a wide range of wavelengths, from far-infrared to submillimetre, enabling astronomers to probe deep into the Universe. The observatory was positioned 1.5 million km from earth. From this point earth and Sun always remained in the same position, and the telescope had a clear uninterrupted view into deep space.

The liquid nitrogen was needed to keep instruments chilled to near absolute zero. At launch the observatory had a 2,300 litre supply of liquid nitrogen, but over time this is lost, and the supply is now almost exhausted. eSA report that herschel has performed better than expected, and scientists will be working on the accumulated data for years to come.

While no one is sure when exactly the liquid nitrogen will run out, herschel is likely to be “parked” in an orbit around the Sun some time in May this year.

Seaweeds

GReen plants and reddish seaweeds diverged from each other about 1,500 million years ago. The way in which the red seaweeds carry out photosynthesis has been adopted by most of the phytoplankton, such as diatoms and dinoflagellates, so many species have sided with this branch. Yet, as a group of scientists led by the Station Biologique de Roscoff in Brittany, point out, compared to green plants, not that much is known about the red seaweeds.

The group focused on Chondrus crispus, commonly known as Irish Moss, or Carrageenan. This species is common along the rocky Atlantic shores, and boiled with milk and sugar it makes a popular blancmange. Carrageenan is also used widely in the food industry, and has an official E number, E407.

The group found that the genome of red seaweeds is quite different from those of green plants. The genes are more compact, and some genes which occur in one group do not appear in the other. It is thought that symbiotic relationships with protozoa enabled the red seaweeds to acquire new genes, but it is also thought that genes were lost. Toni Gabaldón, from the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Spain, said that the red seaweeds seem to have gone trough an evolutionary bottleneck, causing them to lose genes.

eSA herschel space observatory image of Andromeda (M31) using both PACS and SPIRe instruments to observe at infrared wavelengths of 70 mm (blue), 100 um (green) and 160 mm and 250 mm combined (red). The image spans approximately 1 x 3 degrees.

Andromeda is a spiral galaxy 2.5 million light years away from earth, and is thought to include 10 to the power of 12 stars, twice as many as are in the Milky Way. In another 3.75 billion years it is possible that the Andromeda Galaxy and Milky Way will collide and merge.

Credits: eSA/herschel/PACS & SPIRe Consortium, O. Krause, hSC, h. Linz

Mob rule

nOT long after the scientifically ill-informed ruling from Europe’s highest court on stem cells that created such problems for researchers, the Italian health minister, Renato Balduzzi, has given approval for dubious stem cell treatments. There is no evidence to show that the treatments being offered by the Stamina Foundation for a range of illnesses actually work, and one stem cell researcher from the University of Milan, elena Cattaneo, has been quoted in Nature as remarking that “it is alchemy.” however, when pro-Stamina protesters took to the streets of Rome, the health minister decided that political popularity comes before evidence based science. not alone did the dubious procedures get approval, but the publicity, backed by showbiz personalities, is said to have boosted demand for treatment.

The decision has angered stem cell researchers because it plays into the hands of unscrupulous operators who offer false hopes to people desperately seeking a cure for themselves or their children.

The decision to approve procedures that had previously been declared a danger to public health by a prosecutor in Turin, Raffaele Guariniello, highlights the lack of scientifically-informed guidelines on stem cell research and treatment in Italy.

Ireland also has no clear guidelines on stem cell research.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 8

www.sciencespin.com

UPFRONT

Blast from the past

As matter began to form after the Big Bang light was released and as the Universe expanded the wavelengths of this light was stretched out. Astronomers can now detect this stretched out light as microwave radiation. The European space Agency’s Planck space telescope has been recording this radiation and mapping out its distribution. Data collected over a year and a half of observations has now been combined into an image that shows some of the oldest light was created just 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

Cloning success

OnE of the biggest problems with cloning has been that the clones do not have perfect health. Researchers at the RIKEn Centre for Biology in Kobe have discovered that this problem can be solved by eliminating genetic changes that normally occur from generation to generation. Until quite recently it was thought that genes passed on without much or any change, but now it is known that they can, in effect, be tagged so that their expression becomes modified.

These are termed epigenetic

The small fluctuations correspond to regions where matter began to condense and star formation began. scientists are excited by this charting of ancient light because it reveals a great deal about what the early Universe was like. The picture that emerged from this mapping reveals that some of our assumptions about the early Universe were incorrect. The distribution of radiation turns out to be uneven rather than much the same in all directions with a broad band of older (colder) radiation stretching across from one side to the other. Earlier observations had hinted that such asymmetry might exist, but this

more comprehensive mapping has shown that it is a major feature, showing that the Universe is not as uniform as previously thought.

The Planck observations have also made scientists revise some of their estimate on the make up of the Universe and its age. The age has been pushed back by about 50 million years, making the Universe 13.82 billion years old.

There appears to be slightly more matter than previously thought, and less of the mysterious “dark energy� that is thought to be causing the Universe to be drawn out at an ever accelerating rate.

changes, and they have a big influence on how animals, including outselves, take shape.

In a cloning experiment with mice the Japanese researchers lead by Dr

Teruhiko Wakayama, used an inhibitor, trichostatin, to prevent the epigenetic changes occurring. The cloned mice were not alone healthy, but they could in turn be cloned to produce another healthy generation of clones. After repeating the cloning procedure 25 times, the 581 mice remained healthy, they had a normal lifespan of two years and they remained fertile, giving rise to healthy offspring.

In contrast to this, repeated cloning of mammals up to this had always resulted in an accumulation of abnormalities.

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DNA

, that stringy stuff in our cells, contains four important chemicals: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). These are the nucleobases, the molecules that encode the information for life. They are also willing absorbers of ultraviolet (UV) light, and because of this sunlight can be a major nuisance for our skin.

Absorption is the process where energy from light (a photon) is taken in by a molecule, causing an electron to jump into an ‘excited state’. Excited states are energetic and unstable, and when they occur within a DNA nucleobase, they can initiate the damaging chemical reactions that result in sunburn and skin cancer.

It has been known for many years that UV light attacks DNA, but until just over a decade ago the excited states of DNA were elusive, because they were too short-lived for any lab instrument to record. However, with advances in femtosecond lasers (that produce flashes of light lasting about 10-15 seconds), we can now study these excited states in great detail.

The ability to study very fast processes in DNA is a welcome development, as the behaviour of the excited state in those first few picoseconds (10-12 seconds) after absorption decides much of what eventually happens to our skin cells.

Although this can sometimes result in the adverse health effects mentioned above, our DNA is actually quite resilent to UV light and can even be regarded as its own sunscreen.

This self-defence mechanism is most vividly expressed in the behaviour of the individual nucleobases, and represents the first achievement of femtosecond laser studies of DNA. Despite having different chemical structures, the nucleobases all react similarly to the absorption of UV light; they deactivate, fast. Within one picosecond (10-12 seconds) of absorption, the nucleobase excited states have lost most of their ability to cause damage. Computer

Fixing DNA a flash Páraic Keane writes that the first few trillionths of a second makes a big difference in how sunlight affects our DNA simulations show that this is achieved by a process of molecular gymnastics.

The nucleobases, which are usually flat, distort their shape and release the excess energy through vibrations of the chemical bonds, which persist for about ten picoseconds after the excited state has been swiched off. In effect, the high energy UV light is rapidly dispersed through a series of lower energy processes, which can be described simply as ‘heat’, but is more technically known as ‘ultrafast internal conversion’.

No bonds are broken, and the very rapid quenching of the excited state minimises the chance of any harmful reactions happening.

However, if the chemical structure of a nucleobase is altered slightly, the deactivation can slow considerably, and the potential for chemical reactivity increases. It appears, therefore, that the nucleobases are optimised to survive UV radiation. This survival feature may partly explain why A, T, G and C became building blocks of life. Nowadays, we can be thankful that atmospheric oxygen and the ozone layer removes most of the dangerous UV rays (UVC and most UVB) before they reach us, but this protection may not have been present billions of years ago when the chemistry of primordial life was evolving. As a result, a high tolerance for UV light was likely to have been a prerequisite for biological success.

The ultrafast deactivation of the excited nucleobases is a neat example of natural selection on the molecular scale, but cannot completely explain the interactions of UV with DNA. In double-stranded DNA the nucleobases are all joined up by a sugar/phosphate backbone, they are base-paired with their complement in another strand through hydrogen bonds (A with T, G with C), and they stack on top of other

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 10

nucleobases within their own strand.

All these features are significant, as the behaviour of excited states is very sensitive to chemical structure.

In fact, having other nucleobases so close together is where much of the trouble starts. When two thymine nucleobases appear next to each other in a sequence, UV light can cause them to fuse together to form a dimer, which inhibits further replication of the strand.

Although relatively common, these TT dimers are well repaired by enzymes in the cell that recognise and remove the damaged sequences. By contrast, cytosine dimers (CC) are rarer, but are much more dangerous because they are poorly repaired. One reason is that they rapidly transform to uracil (the nucleobase that replaces thymine in RNA), which is complementary to A rather than G. If the damaged strande is copied, CC becomes TT, and a potentially cancerous mutation occurs.

In general, UV damage to DNA is concentrated at the ‘pyrimidines’ (T and C) rather than the larger ‘purines’ (A and G). This is mainly due to the structural features of pyrimidines versus purines, but ultrafast laser experiments have thrown up some other intriguing coincidences. When the sugar/phosphate molecules are attached to T or C (but not A or G), about 15 per cent of the UV energy diverts through another excited state, which retains the energy up to 100 times longer than the nucleobase alone. These are known in spectroscopy parlance as ‘dark’ states, a rather apt name when neither the reasons nor consequences of their formation are understood. It is possible that they are involved in the formation of dimers, although some experiments suggest that these dimers are formed too rapidly for dark states to matter. Alternatively, they could be involved in the other photo-

reactions that C or T undergo, or they could even have no role at all.

While we are still ‘in the dark’ about dark states, their presence represents one of the important considerations in DNA’s relationship with UV: the amount of time the energetic excited states remain active. The longevity of the excited states is also influenced by the other structural features of DNA, namely base-stacking and base-pairing. Basestacking and base-pairing are bonding forces that hold the double helix together, and they can also be regarded as avenues for communication between nucleobases. This provides the means to either dissipate the energy of UV light on the one hand, or to spread the effects of damage on the other.

Given the complexity of DNA, the roles of base-stacking and basepairing are less well understood than the fast deactivation that occurs in single nucleobases. When the nucleobases are stacked, the excited states get longerlived, although this is quite sensitive to the type of nucleobases in each strand.

There is evidence that these excited states result in the transfer of an electron from one nucleobase to another. The loss of an electron from a molecule is termed oxidation, and the promotion of anti-oxidants in our diet suggests that oxidation in our DNA is something to be avoided. Fortunately, it appears that any electron transfer that occurs after UVB exposure is efficiently reversed within about 100 picoseconds. Nevertheless, these electron transfer processes could have more subtle effects, such as making certain parts of the DNA strand more sensitive to damage than others.

Some debate also surrounds the importance of base-pairing. Computer calculations have suggested that the base-pair provides a route to rapidly deactivate the excited state. This has since been challenged by experiment, and some evidence suggests that the base-pair does not transfer energy from one strand to the next. This would have implications for the integrity of DNA, as it might prevent both strands from being damaged, thereby leaving an intact ‘copy’ of the damaged strand.

It should also be noted that basepairing does not always follow the

Before the fad of becoming browned off caught on people like Claude Monet’s lady with a parasol preferred to stay in the shade.

‘Watson-Crick’ protocol where A goes with T and G with C. Some nucleobases can base-pair with other identical bases, giving rise to other structures apart from the famous double-helix. For example, DNA rich in either C or G can form exotic four-stranded shapes called the i-motif and G-quadruplex, respectively.

These structures have attracted attention in recent years due to their connection with telomeric DNA, the sequences in the chromosome that control cell death, and the cell ‘immortality’ associated with cancer. Both the i- motif and G-quadruplex form long-lived excited states after UV excitation, more so than in normal double-stranded DNA. Furthermore, these structures can absorb light at slighly longer wavelengths, where the effectiveness of atmospheric ozone decreases. Further study is needed to investigate how significant this is biologically, or whether damage to these rarer structures is relatively tolerable.

Much remains to be learnt about the very fast but very important processes can occur in our DNA immediately after UV exposure. Despite the perceived and much lamented lack of sunshine in Ireland, Irish scientists from UCD (Dr Susan Quinn) and TCD (Prof John Kelly) have contributed significantly to this ‘exciting’ area of study. This is due

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to a long-running collaboration with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in the UK, which is home to an advanced laser set-up known as ULTRA. On ULTRA, a UV laser is shone on a piece of DNA to form the excited state, and a second infrared laser is used to examine how the bonds are altered thereafter.

Any chemical changes that occur after excitation, or the movement of energy through the molecule, can then be tracked over very short timescales. Since these processes are so quick, the light from the laser pulse needs to be very short, because it is crucial to observe the DNA after the UV light has switched off.

Consequently, this is one of those areas of science that is driven as much by technological progress as it is by theory or experiment.

Most of the studies to date have taken a ‘bottom up’ approach, by looking at very short sequences, or sequences containing only one or two types of nucleobase.

The greater challenge is to study, and more importantly, to understand, the complicated DNA sequences that exist in our cells. Of course, the eventual effects of UV light also depends on the slower biological processes in the cell, such as repair mechanisms, and the way damaged sequences are replicated. This is where the physicists and chemists step back, and the biologists and medical scientists take over. UV light is also important to biology in many other ways, besides the direct absorption by DNA. For example, a certain amount of UVB is necessary for the sythesis of Vitamin D, and the impact of lower energy UVA cannot be dismissed. UVA is not absorbed

by DNA, but it is not blocked by the ozone layer either, so is up to 100 times more abundant than UVB. Its indirect effects on DNA, and consequently our wellbeing, are a serious cause for concern as well. In the meantime, it is probably prudent not to push our bodies’ hardwon defence mechanisms too far. Leave the experiments for the lab, and learn to love the shade!

Dr Paraic Keane is involved in research on photochemistry and has an MSc in Science Communications from DCU.

Irish students to represent Ireland at the European CanSat competition Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, Glanmire, was announced as the winning team at the final of the National CanSat competition at the Lifetime Science Lab in Cork on the 16th March.

The students took on the challenge to create a CanSat – a simulation of a real satellite which fits into the volume of a soft drinks can. The CanSat includes all the major elements found in a satellite, such as power, sensors and a communication system. Students from seven schools have worked for a number of months designing, building and testing their CanSats in the lead up to the final at the Lifetime Lab in Cork.

The winning team CaPSat made up of nine students from Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, will now go onto compete at the European CanSat final in The Netherlands in April, where their CanSat will be launched to an altitude of approximately 1km by a rocket. The travelling team will be sponsored on their journey by Cork Electronics Industry Association (CEIA), ESERO Ireland (European Space Education Resource Office),

Summer workshop for teachers

Secondary school teachers have been invited to participate in a summer workshop organised by the European Space Agency, ESA. The workshop will be held at ESA’s centre in Noordwijk in The Netherlands from 20th to 23rd August 2013.

During the workshops teachers will be presented with engaging

co-funded by the European Space Agency and Discover Science & Engineering, Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) education and outreach programme.

Ann Fitzpatrick, ESERO Ireland Manager, said “The purpose of the CanSat competition is to open up the possibilities of space and exploration to secondary school students. In December 2012 we saw Enbio sign a €500,000 contract with the European Space Agency to better protect satellites in space. This is just one example of an Irish company that is thriving in the space sector, and it highlights the space related opportunities that are available for students and graduates. ESERO Ireland’s ambition, with the assistance of the European Space Agency, is to foster the skills that are required for this industry at an early age and the CanSat competition provides a practical experience of a real space project for second level students. Working in partnership with CEIA we plan to expand the National CanSat competitions across Ireland with support from industry and third level institutions the final in Cork is a great step towards realising this goal.” and novel ways to show the relevance of science, technology, engineering and maths to space.

The workshop is open to teachers of STEM subjects but places are limited. Teachers interested in participating should submit a completed online application form by 21st May. There is no charge, but participants must arrange their own travel to The Netherlands.

http://www.esa.int/Education/Teachers_Corner/ESA_Summer_Workshop_for_Teachers_2013

www.discover-science.ie

Big discovery from little flies

Who could have anticipated that looking at fruit flies would produce such significant results? Tom Kennedy reports on how fundamental research led to a major discovery on how the body defends itself against disease.

I

s fundamental science important? High profile scientist Luke O’Neill certainly thinks so and at last year’s European Science Open Forum (ESOF) event in Dublin he stressed that “you cannot underestimate the importance of basic science.”

Luke, based in Trinity College Dublin, has earned an international reputation for his work on immunology, an important field because it helps us to understand how the body can defend itself against all kinds of diseases. Understandably this is also the sort of research that attracts funding because there is always a high probability that results can be turned into commercial products.

Immunology is one of the strengths of Irish science, yet, as Luke observed, this level of performance could never have been planned in advance. All of the current success, he said, can be tracked back to the type of research that most people might dismiss as having little or no practical value. For something like forty years Jules A Hoffmann worked on fruit flies, those little Drosophilia insects that like to congregate around over-ripe fruit. “Hoffmann,” said Luke, “is a real hero to us all,” and the reason for this is that he made a fundamental discovery that sparked off an explosion of interest in how animals defend themselves against invading micro-organisms.

Luke remarked that it was because of this fundamental discovery that he became an immunologist. “My work was inspired by Hoffmann, ” he said.

What was so important about this discovery is that it revealed the existence of a key trigger that sets off the fly’s initial defences against infection. While the discovery that fruit flies have the ability to withstand an assault might not have the impact of prime-time news, the significance became more obvious when it was found

that the same trigger is universal. All the various species in the surrounding animals, including humans, depend on countryside. It fascinated him that insects this trigger, known as Toll, to set off our make up most of the species on the innate immune system. Without it we planet, and it was a natural progression would be overwhelmed by invading for him to study Zoology at Strasbourg bacteria and fungi.

University. For his PhD he worked under In recognition for this enormously Professor Pierre Joly who had a special significant discovery Jules Hoffmann interest in grasshoppers, particularly the was awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine troublesome Locusta migratoria. These are in 2011. Hoffmann shared this award the locusts that swarm into enormous with two other scientists, Bruce clouds, causing starvation A Beutler and Ralph M because they devour Steinman because they had everything in their path. also made closely related Jules Hoffmann was “You cannot discoveries on how the struck by a remark that underestimate his supervising professor immune system actually works. As Hoffmann the importance of made one day. “In all his made clear, when studies,” said Jules, “he basic science.” had never encountered speaking at the ESOF event in Dublin, collaboration an opportunistic microbial between many different infestation in these insects in scientists has always been a spite of the fact that he had not feature of this research, and during his taken any precautions to prevent this.” years of research on fruit flies he often “This was a defining moment in my relied on the genetic, biochemistry or life,” said Jules. He began to look for other expertise of others to fill in the gaps reasons why these insects had such a that would, in effect put the jig-saw of a good defence, painstakingly examining complex chain of reactions together into every step in what was then known one coherent system. about their immune system. It was Jules, who grew up on the border known that engulfing micro-organisms between Luxembourg and France, said in a process known as phagocytosis that his own interest in insects began was involved, but techniques and because of his father, a teacher of biology, analytical equipment at that time were who enjoyed collecting and identifying not as advanced as they are now. Blood from many thousands of blow flies was collected in an unsuccessful attempt to identify components, known as Jules A Hoffmann peptides, that might be involved in and Bruce Beutler alerting the defensive cells to go in for the kill.

Even so, Jules Hoffmann persisted, going from one species of insect to the next, before concentrating on fruit flies. His aim was to identify the peptide trigger that set off the immune reaction and to link this to the genetic code responsible for producing it. Many

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 13

of the hormones that set off reactions are chemical compounds consisting of amino acids in a chain, and these molecules, which are usually quite small, are known as peptides.

Hoffman’s persistence eventually paid off, and a peptide known as Toll, originating in a dorsal region of the insect, was found to be the elusive switch that turned everything on.

Experiments with insects with a mutation for the Toll gene revealed that flies without this trigger were rapidly overwhelmed by invading microbes.

It was then found that Toll is far from unique, and Bruce A Beutler, working in the US, was able to demonstrate that a number of similar Toll triggers exist in mammals. Since then Toll-like triggers have been found to be a universal part of our immune system, a discovery that would probably never have been made without Hoffmann’s dedication to fruit flies.

Immunity has two lines of defence, the first, an innate response, comes into play immediately a micro-organism is recognized as an invader. The innate response attempts to destroy the invaders by mounting a defence, and in evolutionary terms, this is the older system and it is general in that it is non-specific to any particular pathogen.

If the invaders manage to break through the innate barrier, an adaptive system comes into action in which killer cells attack specific targets. What are known as T and B cells seek out particular micro-organisms for destruction in what is literally a fight to the death. Unlike the innate response, the adaptive system ‘learns’ from one attack that another one could be on the way. Second time around, the adaptive immune system is primed and ready to respond quickly, and for this reason we can acquire a high degree of immunity by deliberately introducing disabled versions of common pathogens through vaccination.

How important is immunology?

Apart from the obvious importance to general health, Irish researchers are among the world leaders in this field. Based on the number of times that scientific papers are quoted, Ireland is in the best three top-performing countries, and Science Foundation Ireland has acknowledged that Trinity College Dublin is currently stands out as in the top one per cent worldwide for immunology research.

Other universities such as NUI Maynooth are actively involved in immunology research, and this is a field that attracts substantial funding from private and institutional sources.

Immunology is regarded as one of the key elements in maintaining Ireland’s position as a good place to invest in science. For this reason SFI, in collaboration with industry, is a big supporter of a high-powered Strategic Research Cluster at TCD headed by Professor Kingston Mills.

St Vincent’s Fairview

Hidden away in an area with lots of historical associations, St Vincent’s Hospital in Fairview has an fascinating history. Aidan Collins tells how so many colourful figures, such as the Sham Squire, Grose the antiquarian, and James Joyce all have close connections to St Vincents, and the hospital itself began with a scandal, so shameful that for years the truth was suppressed.

Available, paperback €25 or hardback €35 Postfree from www.sciencespin.com

Albertine Kennedy Publishing

The Exemption

An amazing story of survival through some of the darkest years of Europe’s recent history. Vera Hajnal tells of how invasion soon shattered an idyllic childhood. Growing up in a secure and loving family, going to school and sometimes being allowed help her father, a doctor, Vera’s first shock came when, accompanying her grandmother to the railway station, she was stopped by men wearing armbands who asked: “Are you Jewish?”

Vera describes how she survived the years that followed, and amazingly, her account has no trace of bitterness and throughout it all she never lost faith in the underlying goodness of people. Her own survival, as people were being literally rounded up and shot by paramilitary thugs, was remarkable in that on being contronted on the street she happened to be carrying a piece of paper exempting her father from military service.

Hardback €25 Post free from www.sciencespin.com

Weird and wonderful animals

Sive Finlay introduces us to the Lowland Streaked Tenrec

Above: Lowland Streaked Tenrec, Hemicentetes semispinosus

Members of the tenrec family display a whole host of quirky traits. For example, the common tenrec (Tenrec ecaudatus), an animal which is only around 30 cm and 2kg, holds the record for the largest litter size of any mammal at an astounding 32 babies!

In terms of sheer weirdness, my personal favourite tenrec oddity is the lowland streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes semispinosus). At just 15cm long and weighing 80-150g, these cute, yellow and black-striped critters are unobtrusive inhabitants of tropical rainforest areas in eastern and northern Madagascar.

Their detachable, barbed quills are both a formidable defence to would-be predators and comprise a weird and wonderful means of communication.

In the centre of their backs a special set of quills have been modified into a stridulating organ. Reminiscent of grasshoppers or crickets the stridulating quills are rubbed together to produce high-pitched sound. They are the only mammals to have evolved this strange communication method, a skill which is used to maintain contact within family groups.

Look up David Attenborough’s BBC series on Madagascar to see a wonderful clip of the stridulating tenrecs in action.

In short, although relatively understudied and poorly known outside of specialised circles, tenrecs are an awesome family filled with evolutionary oddities. The ingenious, unique communication found in H. semispinosus is just one trait which more than justifies tenrecs’ inclusion into the annals of “weird and wonderful” animals.

Left: The tailless tenrec, Tenred ecaudatus, or Common Tenrec. Photo: Markus Fink.

Sive Finlay, a Zoology graduate is currently working as a postgraduate scholar with the Macroecology and Macroevolution group at TCD.

enrecs are interesting and fascinating T mammals which, outside of the realms of zoology lectures, remain

unknown to many people. A select group of just 31 species, these Madagascar natives have evolved into incredibly diverse individuals that resemble moles, shrews, hedgehogs and even otters! Their

striking similarities to other species are so strong that early taxonomists didn’t recognise tenrecs as being sister species.

However, molecular studies established tenrecs as a clearly defined mammalian family which is more closely related to elephants and sea manatees than to hedgehogs or shrews!

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 15

THE GENE HUNTER Seán Duke talked to Aoife McLysaght about sharing her passion for science.

IN

World War II a statistician called Abraham Wald was employed to analyse US planes returning from air combat. Metal was scarce, and the idea was to only reinforce the most vulnerable parts of the planes. The parts of returning aircraft that made it home full of bullets must be the toughest parts, Wald reasoned, and so a decision was made not to reinforce these areas, but to use the

scarce metal to strenghten the other parts of the aircraft.

Dr Aoife McLysaght, geneticist at TCD, understands Walsh’s logic and applies it to her own gene hunting efforts. Dr McLysaght is identifying genes that are most sensitive to being hit with ‘bullets’ - which in genetic terms means being hit with random gene mutations.

This is important because it is known that

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in certain sensitive genes – right across all living species – having too many copies of a particular gene, or too few, can result in a disease.

School

Dubliner Aoife attended her local national school before attending St Andrew’s College, on Booterstown Avenue. She recalled that although there wasn’t too much science taught in primary school, she was very interested and engaged by such science as was on offer. In particular, Aoife remembers presenting a science project with her best friend in sixth class, which involved explaining aspects of the weather to other pupils and teachers.

“I had fun little demonstrations, to do with the power of wind and air,” Aoife recalled. “We had a plastic bag with a book on top of it. We got the opening of the bag and blew into it and showed that it would lift the book. We also had a glass milk bottle, with a balloon on top that was not inflated. We placed the bottle into a jug of really hot water, and the air would expand and inflate the balloon.

I remember having loads of fun doing that,” she said.

Her interest in science was strongly established by the time she attended St Andrew‘s. She remembers that she was always engaged with science, and actively listened to the teachers, so that information went in, making life much easier when it came to passing the exams.

When the Leaving Certificate rolled around Aoife chose to do Biology and Chemistry, but not Physics. She believes that was a mistake in hindsight as she always enjoyed physics.

Instead she chose to study geography, because it was regarded as a science subject by the universities. This was a mistake, she says now, because while she enjoyed physical geography - such as explanations of why earthquakes occur — she did not at all like social geography, which for her involved too much memorising of lots of very dull information. Her experience has told her in the years since that people will succeed at what they enjoy. That was proven when her geography result proved her worst Leaving Certificate result.

At St. Andrew’s, she was inspired by the efforts of a great teacher, Dr Nick Frewin, a PhD holder, who taught her science and biology. “He was just really good,” recalled Aoife. “He spent a lot of time clearly explaining things, had well planned lessons, and there was a lot in it beyond the course. He was well liked enough for people to write him

letters when he was retiring. When I did genetics, there was a class of 12 people, and three of those have been his [Dr Frewin] students, and the year behind me we had another one,” said Aoife.

The role of the teacher is crucial, says Aoife, and she cited the example of the many people that say they can’t do maths. “The number of people who think they can’t do maths is too high — there are a lot of people that have been put off maths. They stop trying because they think they can’t do maths. The students underestimate their own abilities.

Students should be allowed have a bit of fun with maths. Games and puzzles for example,” said Aoife.

Recently, Aoife received a prestigious European Research Council grant — which are only given to the top tier of scientists in Europe — to try and identify disease-causing genes. The aim she said is identify those genes that are vulnerable to changes in quantity.

This might involved a reduction in the copies of genes, or too many copies.

There is a certain amount of variation in the number of copies of genes between people, and it’s common. However, in some people certain variations in gene quantities increase disease vulnerability.

This is an evolutionary approach to genetics, explained Aoife. The goal is to see which genes have tolerated changes in amount — high or low — over evolutionary time and which have not. The identification of those genes that have proven intolerant to change over evolution can provide a key to which genes are linked to disease today, the reasoning goes. “There is variation in [gene] copies, because mutations happen,” explained Aoife. “DNA is a chemical that copies itself in cell division, and this is an easy mistake that happens a lot.”

Once the sensitive genes that have been linked to disease have been clearly identified, then it becomes possible to develop better and more precise ways to diagnose disease. Following on from that, if there are improved methods to diagnose disease at an earlier stage, then

Aoife McLysaght talking to a packed house as one of the TedX events at the Bord Gáis Theatre in Dublin.

Photograph, TCD Science Gallery. it should become possible for medical scientists to develop better disease treatments and therapies.

Communicator

Aoife is also one of the best scientistcommunicators in Ireland, and is regularly invited to speak in schools and at public lectures about her work and its implications for society. She believes that it is important that some scientists communicate with the public, but she also acknowledges that although she enjoys this activity, not every scientist will feel the same.

“It is important that some of us do it, and there is support for that. I mean that it is recognised as a valid part of the job. A valid activity, that it is respected.

Sometimes people might think it is a trivial activity. I don’t think that. I see science as part of our culture, we should all have access to that. A lot of people love music, but don’t have the intention of being a musician. It’s the same with science — people should have access to it,” she said.

SCIENCE SPIN

For Aoife, science is about the ability to learn, to deduce, to understand something, even when it is not visible to the naked eye. It involves being able to think long-term, beyond our own lives.

Science is exciting, interesting, dynamic, but it is a big mistake to try and push it onto people. It is also a mistake, she believes, for the Irish government, or any government to get too closely involved in deciding how funding for science should be spent. It would be better to fund the best people than to fund certain areas, she said.

She has some advice for young people that might be considering science as a career. “When I was young, I didn’t know you could be a scientist, I didn’t know any scientists. I didn’t know what I would end up being if I studied science.

My mum said to me, do what you enjoy the job will follow. It’s very optimistic, but I kind of subscribe to that,” she said.

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SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 17

What is Friction?

Frction is the force that acts on two objects that rub off each other.

Dynamic friction is the force that Static friction acts on an object is the force that as it moves over holds something a surface. still and prevents it from sliding.

Dr. How's

Science Wows! ...exploring Friction!

The coefficient of friction (CF) is a measurement of the amount of interaction between two surfaces.

The CF is the ration of the friction to the weight of the The CF is object. always a value Skis on snow between zero have a low CF and one.

Metal value of about 0.15 moving over metal has a CF of 0.74

When an object slows down it loses energy - this energy is convered into heat or sound.

Friction

When you rub your hands together friction causes heat and your hands feel warm.

When you pull hard on the brakes of your bicycle it is friction that stops the bike.

Sometimes we hear a screech when we pull the breaks - some of the energy lost due to friction is converted to sound!

Friction works on an object in the There are three types of friction: opposite direction to which the object 1. DRY or SLIDING friction... is moving! where two solid objects rub off each other 2. FLUID friction... friction formed when an object moves through a liquid or a gas 3. ROLLING friction... friction produced between a rolling object (like a wheel) and a surface

Factors that influence friction include: the roughness of the surfaces, the weight of the object and surface area

Friction

Experiments you can try

Lift a jar of rice with a pencil!

Fill the jar with the dry rice and insert the pencil (point side down).

You will need...

Raise the pencil slowly up towards the top of an empty plastic the jar but do not remove it completely. jar, Now slowly push the pencil back into the jar a pencil, again and repeat several times. a bag of dry You should feel it getting harder to push the rice pencil down.

If the level of rice in the jar drops then top it up with more rice. After a few goes you should find that when you try to lift the pencil up out of the jar, the whole jar lifts!

So what is happening?

Each time you push down the pencil the rice in the jar is compressed. When this is done repeatedly the grains of rice are squashed tightly together and cannot move. This increases the friction between the rice and the pencil until eventually the pencil can lift the jar of rice.

Experiments you can try

Junior science by Dr. Naomi Lavelle

Lets learn more!

Friction works on a moving object to slow it down or stop it.

Make a hovercraft!

You will need.. Glue a bottle top over the whole in the a balloon, an old CD and leave it until the glue has dried.

CD, Make sure that the drinking bottle top a drinking bottle top, is closed. and glue Inflate a balloon and pinch the neck of

it while you place it over the bottle top.

Place the CD on a smooth surface and open the bottle top.

Give the CD a little push and see what happens!

So what is happening?

The air from the balloon gets released and forms a cushion of air under the surface of the CD. This allows the CD to travel across the surface with a lot less friction - just like a real hovercraft!

Friction can often be a help to us... if there was no friction between our shoes and the surface beneath us then we would not be able to stay on our feet.

It is friction between our food and the fork or spoon that allows us lift the food to our mouth.

Brakes in cars use friction to allow us to control the speed of the car.

Some musicians use friction to make music. Violin players rub rosin on their bow to help it stick better to the strings.

Sometimes friction works against us... such as slowing down an object that we want to move faster or wearing down the moving parts of a machine.

To prevent friction we might use an oil to lubricate moving parts to reduce wear and tear.

We also use small balls called “ball bearings� within machines and other moving parts. The ball bearings move more easily on a surface reducing friction.

If we reduce the surface area of an object we can rduce the friction acting on that object - this is how ice skates work!

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

Fractal Ireland How long is Ireland’s coast? Stefan Hutzler explains why the answers to this question vary so wildly.

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ou are contemplating taking a holiday.

How about a canoe trip around the island of Ireland, keeping as close to the shore as you can? How long will it take at an average of, say, 20 kilometres a day?

A quick Google search gives the length of the coast line as 1448km (CIA - The World Factbook), 3171km (Ordnance Survey Ireland) and 5631km (http:// www.goireland.com/about-ireland. htm). So the trip might take nearly all of summer (72 days) or indeed, you might barely be able complete it within a year without canoeing in the winter (282 days)!

How can it be that these numbers differ so wildly? The answer is that an estimate of the length of the coastline depends on the map that you use, in particular on the fine scale at which it gives up reproducing “the wriggles of the real coastline. Such an object is called a fractal.” How then are we to describe it? And how does the work of a group of second year Theoretical Physics students at Trinity College Dublin [1] help to realistically plan a canoe trip?

This kind of problem lay largely unrecognised, except in the minds of deep-thinking mathematicians, until in the 1960s and 70s the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot brought the topic into the scientific mainstream [2, 3]. Helped by the huge advances in computer graphics, fractals had an enormous popular impact from the 1980s onwards.

So what is a fractal? Consider a smooth object, such as the S-shape shown in Figure 1 (right). An approximation of its perimeter may be determined as follows: overlay the object with square boxes of equal side length; count the

The rugged and indented western coast, infra-red image from the Marine Institute’s National Coastline Survey. number of boxes that contain a bit of the perimeter; multiply this number by the side length of each box and record this product. Repeating this procedure for smaller and smaller square boxes (corresponding to an ever finer grid), shows that the product is roughly constant, independent on the box size, as shown in Figure 1 (below).

The situation is different, however, when this procedure is applied to a coast-line. Using maps from the almighty maps.google.com site and GIMP image manipulation software

Figure 1: The perimeter of an object may be estimated by superimposing a square grid and counting the number of boxes that contain sections of the perimeter. In the case of a smooth object, such as the S-shape shown on the right, the estimated length of the perimeter, i.e. the number of these boxes multiplied by the width of a box, is essentially independent of the box width (computation by D. Whyte, TCD).

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 19

(http://www.gimp.org), the four TCD students superimposed various grids of decreasing box length onto a map of Ireland. This is illustrated in Figure 2 for the coast between Dingle and Skibbereen.

Using Click Counter software (http:// www.murgee.com/) , they then counted the number of boxes which contain bits of the coast.

Again we can estimate the length of the coast by multiplying the number of coastline containing boxes by their width.

The result is shown in Table 1 and Figure 3. Unlike in the example of the smooth S-shape, the length of the coast-line is seen to increase as we decrease the box sizes. The value given by the Ordnance Survey Ireland is reproduced for a box

References

[1] The TCD students carrying out the project were Killian Walshe, Stephen Burke, John Mark Geary and Liam Kelly.

[2] B. Mandelbrot, “How long is the coast of Britain? Statistical self-similarity and fractional dimension”, Science, 156, 636638 (1967).

[3] B. Mandelbrot, Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension, W. H. Freeman (1977).

Stefan Hutzler is Associate Professor at the School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin.

Figure 2: Ireland’s coast-line between Dingle and Skibbereen, superimposed with square grids of box-width 10.8km (left) and 2.7km (right), respectively. Only boxes containing a section of the coast are shown. It is seen that the finer the grid, the more details of the coast become visible.

Box width in kilometres

Number of boxes containing section of coast-line

Estimated total length of coast-line

36 27 18 14.4 10.8 7.2 3.6 2.7 1.8

49 69 112 147 203 363 777 1102 1752

1764 1862 2016 2116 2192 2613 2797 2975 3153

Table 1: Summary of data obtained for the coast-line of the island of Ireland. The estimated length of the coast increases with decreasing width of the boxes making up the grid.

Figure 3: Unlike the case of our smooth S-shape in Figure 1, the estimated length of the Irish coast increases with the accuracy at which it is mapped. This feature of fractal shapes is written in mathematical terms as L(w) ~ w1-D, where L(w) is the box width w dependent length and D is the fractal dimension. Determining D numerically (using a leastsquare fit) from our data of Table 1 as D = 1.20 ± 0.01 enables us to interpolate between measured data points to obtain coast lengths for any grid size (box width).

Estimated length of Irish coast in kilometres

width of 1.8km. But using an even finer grid would eventually result in a linelength of infinity! Coastlines and indeed also rivers, clouds, ferns, etc. [3] are examples of self-similar objects which display structure at all length scales.

Mathematically speaking, the determined length of the circumference is proportional to w1-D, where w is the box width and D is called the fractal dimension D of the object under scrutiny. In the case of our smooth S-shape example of Figure 1 the value of D is one, i.e. the dimension of a line. (Note that this makes L independent of w, as observed in figure 1.) The fractal dimension of the Irish coast-line, however, turns out to be about D = 1.20 ± 0.01, as a numerical analysis of our data shows (see solid line in Figure 3). Since D measures the raggedness of an object, we also expect differences when comparing the relatively smooth east to the “wild west” coast. And indeed the students found D = 1.1 and D = 1.26, respectively.

How do these numbers compare with values for other countries? The SouthAfrican coast-line appears smoothest, with D = 1.05, while Norway with its fjords tops the bill with D=1.52.

Mandelbrot’s value for the West coast of Britain, determined in 1967, was D=1.25 [2].

So what about your canoe trip? In consulting Fig. 3 you might use the length of the canoe as your scale, and get an estimate of more than 12000 kilometres! But that would correspond to unduly meticulous navigation. Let’s say you will stand off the coast enough that you mostly steer straight for about 100 metres at a time: let us use that. Now we get 5667km ... Maybe you should just stay at home and read Mandelbrot’s magnificent Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension (3), opening your eyes to our fractal world?

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 20

Box width in kilometres

All observations are entered into the notebook which serves as a permanent record that can be revisited at any time. Here, Myles has sketched out some features to accompany his notes. waves, so the geological structure now is complex.

After submitting his maps and field notebooks, Myles had started working in an oil exploration company, Providence Resources, and was soon so immersed in the business that he had almost forgotten about his mapping project when news that he had won the Cunningham Award came out of the blue. The company is small enough for Myles to become involved in different aspects of the business. “I have tried my hand at seismic interpretation and I am getting to grips with geomodelling software,” he said. “It is an interesting business to be in and you get lots of opportunities to do really fun geological stuff.”

Geology has always appealed to Myles, ever since he picked up a rock near his home in County Monaghan Tom Kennedy reports that two young award-winning geologists and wondered why there seemed to be something shaped like a spring headed out to south east France to examine how some ancient embedded inside. Years later he found sedimentary basins had been pushed about and deformed as Africa out that this was not a spring, but a drifted north. fossilized crinoid.

At UCD he began studying science, and after remarking that “I really liked In simple terms, said Myles, Africa apping rocks is like a rite of the broad approach,” he added that “I had started to push up against Europe, so passage for young geologists. always gravitated towards modules that the crust began to flex. Where the crust By going out into the field they gain were geology based.” Partly this was went down, sediments poured in, and confidence and return better equipped because he had a strong preference for this did not happen all at once, but in to see the connection between theory field work, and he still has no desire and practice. As Aoife Blowick, to embark on a career that would now studying for her PhD at UCD turn him into a “desk jockey.” observed, geological charts and Myles Watson displaying Aoife’s interest in geology began book illustrations can create the his Cunningham Award with geography and chemistry, both impression that everything is neat mapping project. subjects she enjoyed at school in and tidy, but the reality is not so well Wexford, and like Myles, she was defined. glad to have the opportunity to keep Aoife was one of the two up with chemistry and biology up winners of the Cunningham Award to second year at UCD. That meant presented each year to those who she could hold off on making a final had completed the most outstanding decision in favour of geology, rather geological mapping projects. Like than chemistry which she had been the other winner, Myles Watson, considering. Now, with a good Aoife had chosen to map an area in grounding in both, she can combine the Haute Provence of south-east the two.

France. What makes this area so Like Myles, Aoife spent six or interesting, and at the same time seven weeks tramping around an so challenging to geologists, is that area of about 54 square kilometres. sedimentary basins were formed “I love hiking and trekking,” she millions of years ago while the said, so was in her element, even underlying rocks were being pushed if appearing as an oddity in the and deformed by movement of the landscape. At first the local farmers earth’s crust.

Mapping ancient basins

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Everything that is likely to have significance is noted down, and like Myles, Aoife was not convinced about with no apparent purpose that an electronic pad might be in a hard hat and high-vis jacket. better than pencil and paper. “New However, once the locals knew what technology has its place,” she said, Aoife was doing, they were eager to but with a notebook there is less help, pointing out features that she chance of essential information might have missed, and advising being lost, and it is always possible her how best to get around the more A 450 million to check back on the original difficult terrain. year old Crustacean, complete with fossilized soft parts, has been found in aHerefordshire.

One of the scientists observations.

The basins ride on top of great involved the discovery, Profas David Siveter from the University The one technical advance that thrust, and in Aoife described this of resting Leicester, thatblanket. what made Aoife is really keen on is the camera. like on said a giant As the 5mm long fossil so special is rocky not that it is aispreviously “I take lots of photographs,” she the blanket moved, theun-named species, but that the soft partson have preserved “The so well that eyes and the antennae can said, and these form an important basins topbeen are deformed. be made part of her records. basin itself out. is quite flat,” said Aoife, fossil, east named flata, belongs to the same group Both Aoife and Myles are “but The the edges, andNasunaris west, were as water-fleas and shrimps. Their descendants are common well and truly hooked by geology, mountainy.” today lakes and and geologists often use the fossils as but while Myles is happy to get Everyinfeature had oceans, to be examined, indicators of past climates. involved in the applied side, Aoife and as she commented, “its no good Aoife Blowick is now going to study geologically has chosen to immerse herself in going up to a rock and glancing at Internal image of the fossil showing the soft parts eyes.

Image: laid down by the Nile. more and recent sediments research. “I have started my PhD at it for five seconds.”

Every feature Davidsomething, J. Siveter, Derek Briggs, Derek J. Siveter and Mark D. UCD,” she said, and that involves means so, as E. sheG.said, Sutton. studying the sandy deposits made “you need to think about it.” by the Nile. So, from the ancient basins Most of the rocks that Aoife decision on identification, especially in France, Aoife is going to study the encountered were limestone, but as she as appearances, such as colour, can be Later, one of David’s successors, King Hezekiah, fearing that explained, this is not like the limestone misleading. In cracking open one of these geologically much more recent deposits the Assyrians would take Jerusalem using the same approach, made by a major river. There are lots of we are familiar with from the Irish fine grained limestones, she said, you rerouted the water into the city via a 550 metre long tunnel. It JERUSALEM’s fate was determined by the underlying geology. parallels, she said, and when it comes midlands. There are different types see that it is very hard, and it gives off proved to be a good decision, for in 701 BC, Jerusalem was the At the annual Geological Society of America meeting last to sedimentary deposits, it’s an ongoing of limestone, she said, and what she a characteristic smell. These are the sort only city that the Assyrians failed to take.

October, Michael Bramnik from Illinois University explained story. She is quite excited about this was looking at had grains so small of clues that enable a geologist to work Water still remains a major factor in shaping modern history that underground passageways in the karst limestone enabled study, particularly as a lot of what she that the rock was like solidified mud. out what they are looking at even when in the region, and Michael Bramnik said that when he went in King David to take the city. Water was drawn from the Spring learns from the Nile could be applied Distinguishing between these rocks in outcrops are far apart. There is a lot of search of hydrological maps for other towns and settlements of Gihon, which lay just outside the city walls. David’s soldiers to other river systems, such as those in the field, she said, can be quite difficult, guesswork involved, but as Aoife said, he was often rebuffed with a claim that such maps do not climbed down into the spring and by tunnelling under the South America. so its not always possible to take a snap “it’s educated guesswork.” exist. walls got access to the city. farmers were a bit suspicious of this

hammer-wielding figure wandering www.sciencespin.com

UPFRONT An old water flea

Bedrock of history

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Europe’s role in food security Dr Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute, speaking at the third in Teagasc’s lecture series ‘Grand Challenges for Global Agriculture and Food’.

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lobal hunger and malnutrition remain persistent as nearly 870 million people are currently undernourished and more than two billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. What is more, many current and emerging challenges, such as natural resource constraints, climate change, and a growing, more affluent, and urbanised global population, threaten food and nutrition security further. Dr Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute, speaking at the third in Teagasc’s lecture series, said: “An integrated approach is needed to sustainably improve food and nutrition security for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Europe has a key role to play in advancing this task going forward as well.” In his lecture, Dr Fan made policy recommendations on the role of Europe in achieving the above, including: increasing development assistance to food and nutrition security; expanding investment in agricultural R&D and support technology transfer; reforming domestic agricultural policies and promote open trade; building national capacities in developing countries; and, promoting South-South and North-South learning.

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Next generation sequencing

dvanced DNA sequencing technologies have led to a revolution in almost all fields of biological research. Sequencing of all or part of the genome has had an enormous impact on research relating to human and animal health, food and agriculture. For example, studies within Teagasc have focused on identification of microorganisms within the human gut that contribute to health or disease.

Incorporating beneficial microorganisms into foods can help restore and maintain good digestion in the gut.

Advanced DNA sequencing has a big role to play in this kind of research, and in the coming years this area will become even more critical in producing results.

Teagasc, and the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) recently secured funding to greatly expand the DNA sequencing facilities at Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark. Three additional state-of-the-art sequencing platforms, an Illumina MiSeq, an Ion PGM and an Ion Proton, will greatly expand the number of options open to researchers. A combination of a Teagasc equipment grant and Science Foundation Ireland infrastructure funding has made it possible for this centre to be one of the few around the world to have access to such a full range of sequencing resources.

Teagasc researcher Dr Fiona Crispie.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 24

SNP chips – genomic selection A

paradigm shift in dairy cattle breeding programmes occurred very recently with the direct inclusion of DNA information in the Irish national genetic evaluation of dairy animals.

The inclusion of DNA information, in a process called genomic selection, results in greater accuracy by which genetically elite animals can be identified and thus subsequently used as parents of the next generation. Other uses of DNA information include parentage verification and the screening of animals for known lethal or congenital genetic mutations. A new low-cost genotyping platform, the International Dairy & Beef (IDB) genotyping platform, developed

by Irish scientists in collaboration with US scientists, was released in February 2013. Within three weeks of a hair sample from an animal been taken on-farm, the producer will receive information on the sire of the animal, whether it carries any genetic defects, as well as an accurate estimate of the genetic merit of the animal. This information will influence the producer’s decision on whether or not to retain the animal as a parent of the next generation. As well as contributing valuable information to the producer to make more informed breeding decisions, the information generated it is also a vital component of food traceability.

Taking a hair sample from a calf during filming of the ‘Science Squad’ television series.

Environmental footprint of livestock supply chains W hich country produces the ‘greenest’ milk and meat? How do you measure the carbon footprint of lamb meat? Can we reduce the ‘water footprint’ of beef production around the world? Can dairy production co-exist with biodiversity?

These hot topics of discussion in the food industry are driven by increasing demands in the marketplace for more sustainable products.

But measuring sustainability across complex animal supply chains is not easy. And, in the absence of internationally-agreed rules to guide robust and fair measurement, there is the risk that the debates about how sustainability is measured start to detract from the task of driving real improvement of environmental performance.

The urgent need for coordinated approach based on international best

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The partnership is developing methods for environmental footprinting of livestock farms that apply equally to farms on all continents. practice led the FAO to initiate the Partnership on Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP).

LEAP brings together industry, governments, civil society representatives

and leading experts from around the world to develop science-based, transparent and pragmatic guidance to measure and improve environmental performance of livestock products, for example, beef and lamb meat or poultry (chicken and eggs).

Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are key participants in the LEAP Partnership providing leadership on the Steering Committee, input into technical guidance being developed and through the direct support for a doctoral student to work on developing indicators for nutrient use efficiency in animal production systems. A Walsh Fellow PhD student has been appointed, under the joint supervision of Teagasc, the FAO and Wageningen University and Research.

Follow @RogierSchulte on Twitter for updates.

Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre

he Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) was formed a decade ago with the help of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funding. Since then it has become a vibrant research centre with, over 150 scientists and clinicians from research areas including gastroenterology, microbiology, psychiatry, food science, neuroscience, immunology, biochemistry, gerontology, cardiovascular and paediatrics, among others.

Researchers at the APC investigate the close links between gut microbiota and our general health. While it is generally known that good health depends on having a well balanced gut microbiota, the APC researchers aim to provide a proper scientific basis for selection of beneficial bacteria. These healthpromoting bacteria and their metabolic products can be incorporated into what are known as ‘functional foods’. These are foods that have an extra health benefit.

Beneficial microorganisms can also be used to produce health-promoting pharmabiotics.

APC researchers have been identifying novel substances produced by these microorganisms, known as bioactives. These are of great interest. particularly to the pharmaceutical industries, because they have a lot of potential to develop treatments for a variety of diseases.

Teagasc, Head Office, Oak Park, Carlow. Tel: (059) 917 0200

Website: www.teagasc.ie

Because this type of research covers a wide spectrum between health with nutrition APC works in partnership with the food and pharmaceutical sectors. In particular APC has become a leader in probiotics, a fast-developing field that is of intensive interest to food producers.

The APC researchers at UCC and Teagasc have in fact been ranked number two in the world in probiotic research by the independent international ratings agency Thomson Reuters Science Watch Global Analysis.

A large and well equipped scientific team includes professors Paul Ross and Catherine Stanton as APC Principal Investigators; Dr Paul Cotter leads the Next Generation Sequencing Platform, Dr Mary Rea leads the Culture Curation and Applications Platform and Dr Mark Fenelon is an APC Faculty member. All are based at the Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark.

The APC recently received funding from SFI for a third term.

Teagasc/APC researchers Dr Rebecca Wall and Dr Catherine Stanton.

Marine biodiversity

At sea, animals have a lot more freedom to take on forms that would be impossible to support on land. This colourful deep sea Acorn Worm was photographed by David Shale during the MARECO programme which explored the mid-Atlantic ridge as part of the Census of Marine Life.

Diatoms like this may be microscopically small, but they are abundant and form an important part of the food chain.

A Basking Shark with mouth wide open to feed. Photographed

by Chris Gotschalk. Until early in the last century these sharks were hunted from Achill, Co Mayo.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 26

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This tiny Coccolithophore, Emilania huxleyi has a calcite shell unlike diatoms which encase themselves in silica.

The Atlantic Cod, Gadus morhua, has been put at risk by overfishing. Photograph, Hans-Petter Fjeld.

The Antarctic Krill, Euphausia superba, An image by Prof Uew Kils from the virtual microscope, a fascinating site where details of this animal can be viewed at high magnification. Visit the site at http://www.ecoscope.com

e spend most of our time on land, but 95 per cent of the habitable space on Earth is in the oceans. Life began in the oceans, and diversity is much greater at sea than on land, yet we still know little about the creatures that inhabit most of our planet. As the European Marine Board has pointed out, over 33,000 species have been identified in the seas around Europe, and only 760 of these have been known since the last century.

The European Marine Board is an organisation established in 1995 to represent 34 member organisations including Ireland’s Marine Institute. In a recent scientific briefing the Board stressed how important it is for us all to realise that the greatest genetic diversity is not on land, but in the sea. Biologists divide life into broad categories, known as phyla, and while 13 of these are exclusively marine, just one is on land only.

In an ambitious bid to catalogue the richness of life at sea, a ten-year long global “census of marine life” project was organied. About 2,700 sientists from 500 institutions pooled their resources to create this listing which now, without counting in bacteria, identifies 240,000 species. There are, literally, countless microorganisms, many of which thrive under extreme conditions.

Not alone are there many species, but collectively the smallest organisms make up 90 per cent of the living biomass in the oceans.

Very little is known about these organisms, and the same can be said of most of the larger species.

According to the Marine Board briefing “for most species in European waters hardly anything is known about their life cycle or how they interact with other species or the environment.”

To put it mildly, there are enormous gaps in our knowledge, and to address this the Marine Board has called for greater collaboration between existing marine research stations. There are many such stations around the coasts of Europe, some big, others small, and as the Board’s briefing points out, lots of them have been established for over a century. Acting alone there is only so much they can do, but through the European Marine Board all of these stations can become part of a multi-disciplinary network drawing on each other’s knowledge and sharing resources.

As on land, biodiversity at sea has to be protected, and in this the Marine Board’s briefing highlights the need for a significant shift in policy. At present just two per cent of the world’s oceans have official protection, and under the EU Habitat Directive nine marine areas are listed, all close to land and none of which are in open water. In contrast to this there are over 200 areas listed on land. As the briefing reminds us, bottom trawling and overfishing provide enough evidence to show that the marine environment is fragile and cannot be taken for granted. www.marineboard.eu

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 27

Tom Kennedy

Giants of the deep

SeafarerS of old often came back telling stories about giant creatures emerging from the depth and wrapping their tentacles around ships. These stories, which undoubtedly grew in the telling, were based on the real-life Giant Squid which can grow to 13 metres, weight 900 kg and lives in depths of down to 1000 metres below the surface.

The fact that the Giant Squid has rarely been observed live adds to the mystery surrounding this strange creature. about a year ago the crew of a Japanese submarine managed to make a video record of the squid at a depth of 630 metres, but scientists still have a lot to learn about this animal.

Dr Louise allcock from the ryan Institute at NUI Galway was among a team of international scientists, led by PhD student, Inger Winkelmann from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, seeking to find out more about the Giant Squid from its genetic code. from this study of 43 squid remains from around the world the scientists have concluded that they are all genetically uniform, so belong to one species.

It is thought that the adults remain in fairly restricted areas, but the young drift with the currents, and on reaching deep water they dive down to begin the next life cycle. as yet, no one knows how long these creatures live or how quickly they grow.

After being attracted by bait this giant squid was captured off Tokyo in 2006.

Photo, Tsunemi Kubodera, Japanese Science Museum.

Right, a 19th century French paddle steamer hauling in a giant squid off Tenerife.

Alive, alive oho ...

VISITorS going out for some fresh air on the way out to the Poolbeg lighthouse in Dublin were presented with a strange sight as thousands of cockles came to the surface. The great stretch of sand between Sandymount and the Half Moon swimming club was traditionally known as the Cockle Banks, but normally these bivalves stay hidden below the sandy surface, opening to filter-feed only when the tide comes in. for some reason the cockles recently failed to cover up, and thousands of them died.

Professor Jim Wilson from TCD’s Zoology Department said that this was an unusual event, but was inclined to rule out pollution, anoxia or a plankton bloom. The most likely explanation, he suggested, is that the cockles were literally frozen out of it. Just before this mass die-back, conditions in this very exposed area were more extreme than usual, and it is highly likely that the cockles were not down deep enough to excape the frost.

Photographs: Marie-Claire Cleary.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 28

BT YOUNG SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION

Gas for the lab If anyone wants to set up a lab, but has no gas supply Sinead Clarke, transition year student at St Mary’s in Ballina, County Mayo has a solution.

Running a modest 13 volts through water with a dash of calcium hydroxide to help

Wood pellets Simple device boost performance

Shauna Dixon, secondary school student at Mount St Michael in Claremorris, discovered a simple way to boost the performance of wood-pellet boilers. Shauna was one of the winners at this year’s BT young Scientist and Technology exhibition for her project showing how filtering out the dust can bring efficiency up by over 15 per cent.

Shauna said that wood pellet boilers have become very popular, but dust from the fuel is creating serious problems. Surprisingly, it is not the dust from combustion that’s the problem.

The dust, she explained, comes with delivery, and she first became interested in this because the boiler that has been heating her home for the past six years needed extra maintenance. “We had to keep servicing it,” she said. Deciding to investigate, Shauna found that the auger, a screw-like device, that feeds pellets down into the boiler, was becoming clogged with dust.

It struck her that removing that buildup of dust would solve a lot of problems, and it also occurred to her that the

the current flow, can produce enough gas to keep a Bunsen burner in action. a conversation about injecting hydrogen into car engines first got Sinead interested in the idea that useful fuel could be generated from water, so she began to investigate the possibilities. It struck her that gas can be a problem for labs. There is a certain amount of risk

attached to having gas on tap, and of course for some labs there might be no supply at all.

So, with the help of her technicallyminded dad, Sinead built a gas generating unit. In this a direct current is fed into stainless steel plates immersed in water within a closed system. The well-made and very professional looking unit, said Sinead, “took forever to make,” and with a 13 volt supply it can generate an impressive half a litre of hydrogen a minute.

The gas, a mix of hydrogen and oxygen, bubbles out through a water filled chamber, and as Sinead explained, this is an essential safety feature because it stops flash-back from ignited gas if the pressure drops. The gas can be used in a modified Bunsen burner and as Sinead explained, the unit is safe to use, and probably safer than a conventional system. “as far as I know,” she said, “there is nothing like it on the market.”

Sinead , who did the project at home, helped by her dad, said she likes science, but tackling a project like this really gets her fired up. “I would really like to do more on this project.”

(TK)

solution was simple. as she explained, Shauna went off to the supermarket and got an ordinary bin. Turning the bin on its side below the hopper, she stuck a shoe box inside to act as a dust collector. as she remarked, there was nothing complicated involved, and anybody with a wood-pellet boiler could rig up a similar home-made filter.

Shauna has a strong practical streak, but she was also very keen to find out a lot more on how and why dust is

such a problem. Wood Pellet boilers have become quite common around Claremorris, and as she discovered, most of her neighbours also had similar problems with dust.

The problem, she found, begins with delivery. Pellets, which come from a supplier in northern Ireland, are fed into the hopper at high pressure, and naturally with all the vibration and mixing involved, a considerable amount of dust is generated.

(TK)

BT YOUNG SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION “Your boiler is set to have a fixed air to pellet ratio,” said Shauna, “and when that is incorrect lots of gases are produced. Those gases are corrosive to metal, and they can be bad for the environment as well.” So, not alone is burning less efficient, but the boiler itself is likely to suffer.

Shauna carried out some tests, comparing performance of her own home boiler to those of a neighbour.

“The average boiler runs at about 75 per cent efficiency,” she said. “The boiler next door was running at 73 per cent efficency without a filter, while ours was running at about 89 per cent efficiency,” This meant that there was an enormous difference of over 15 per cent in performance from the same fuel.

In addition, carbon monoxide emissions were decreased by about 60 per cent.

Another aspect of the problem, she added, is that the dust itself can be a hazard. Fine dust mixed with air can be explosive, and in industry great care has to be taken to avoid electrical sparks in enclosed spaces where dust is likely to occur. If wood pellet boilers were in an industrial setting, said Shauna, these precautions would be in place, and this is another good reason why filtering out the dust is so important with domestic boilers.

Shauna calculated that about 14 per cent of the fuel delivery is lost as dust, and again, Shauna gave this some practical thought. “I put the dust in old milk cartons. In a stove or open fire, they burn perfectly.” That made her wonder if the dust could be recycled, but as she remarked, “to make them into pellets or logs, you could need a powerful

compressor, and you would also need a bonding agent.”

Shauna thought it would be a good idea to patent her idea, but, with some wry amusement, she remarked that filtering out the dust is so easy that everyone can do it. Even so, Shauna is well on her way to becoming quite an expert in this field, and she is certainly not short of ideas.

The future of wood fuel is bright, and Shauna remarked that the obligation to meet energy targets is helping to push up demand. By 2020 forty per cent of Ireland’s energy needs are to come from renewable sources, such as wood. (TK)

Laundered diesel

As Marlena explained, the marked diesel is treated with bentonite, a mineral familiar to many people as an absorbent cat litter. Mixed with sulphuric acid the bentonite draws out the dye, and this becomes the sludge that no one wants.

At least, that’s how the situation is now, but as the young scientists argue, that sludge could us used as fuel, and this is what they set out to do.

On its own, explained, Marlena, the sludge will burn, but not very well.

Mixed with sawdust or cornflower, performance improves, and to show how the students conducted a series of tests. Five grams of the pure sludge was observed to burn for 376 seconds.

Eighty per cent sludge with twenty per cent cornflower burned for 580 seconds, while raising the cornflower percentage to forty percent made the mix burn for 602 seconds. Beyond that, increasing

the percentage of cornflower led to a decrease in burn time.

The same tests were run using sawdust instead of cornflower, but the results were not as good.

The students made mini-briquettes from the mix, and given that the sludge is an environmental hazard, they were pleasantly surprised to learn from the Environmental Protection Agency that burning their briquettes would pose no problem.

As Marlena observed, cornflower is not expensive, and even if it is a cost, it would be a lot cheaper than having to export thousands of litres of hazardous waste.

The students got a helpful response from the EPA, but so far, said Marlena, no word back from the local authorities.

“Maybe they just didn’t want to deal with a bunch of students,” she remarked with a shrug.

(TK)

ThErE is a big price difference between diesel for use on the farm and diesel for use on the road, yet the fuel is almost exactly the same. Farmers do not have to pay a hefty tax, so to prevent road users from tanking up with the cheaper fuel a dye is used, green in the republic and red in Northern Ireland. Not surprisingly, this has led to a black market for “laundered” diesel. When the dye is removed the fuel looks normal enough for unsuspecting motorists to pay the full price.

What they do not see is the by-product of laundering, a dirty sludge that the criminal gangs engaged in this trade simply dump by the roadside. Giant industrial sized containers filled with sludge are a common sight by border county roadsides, and as Marlena Drobniewska, a fourth year student at Balbriggan Community College explained, local authorities are being forced to pay for expensive clean-ups.

Because the sludge is an environmental hazard it has to be collected and exported for treatment and disposal. The cost to Louth County Council alone, where 90 sludge finds were made in 2011, is about €1million a year.

When their science teacher, Tom O’Donoghue, brought up the subject, Marlena and two of her class mates, ross McGrath and Cian holland agreed that looking at what could be done with the sludge would make a great Young Scientist project.

Ross McGrath, Marlena Drobniewska and Cian Holland at the RDS.

This report first appeared on the local forestry site www.forestgrowers.com

REVIEW

Replacing a heap of trouble with a mountain of opportunities

O

ne of the main reasons why a great civilization emerged and survived for thousands of years in China is that everyone valued “brown gold”. DavidToews, a veterinarian and author of “The origin of feces” points out that until relatively recent years China had the most intensive and sustainable agricultural system in the world. This was possible because almost all human excreta, 90 per cent, was returned to the soil as fertilizer.

Over in Japan, farmers left buckets out for travellers to make their contribution, and in the seventeenth century, before the city of Edo became Tokyo, boatloads of fresh vegetables were shipped back from the countryside in return for night soil. Excrement became so valuable that traders were able to demand money as well as food, and for apartment dwellers the rent went up if neighbours moved out.

Stealing shit became a crime.

As the author of this informative book, due out in June, tells us, the fact that it is a bit impolite to use the word says a lot about our failure to think about how important shit is to our survival. As he remarks, “there are things we don’t talk about, even if we are sitting on a pile of it,” and with a neat turn of phrase he gives us an important message: “How can we unleash the incredible power of excrement if we don’t know shit?”

He certainly has a point, and my own great-great grandfather would have agreed with it. As in John B Keane’s wonderful play “The Field” two lush meadows here still stand out from the surroundings because he arranged for them to receive the night soil from the nineteenth century Swinford work-house.

I sometimes think, not so much of the stinking cart-loads as they bumped and rattled out over the road, but of how much these poor unfortunates gave back to the land.

No doubt, if I were to head off to the nearest big hospital in Castlebar with the

same idea in mind, I would need a slurry tanker, and my unwelcome arrival would be treated as an emergency. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection Agency would come down on me like the proverbial ton of bricks, and rightly so. Not only would I be filling up my tanker with excessively watered-down excrement, but I would be picking up bugs galore, antibiotics and goodness knows what other powerful drugs.

Dumping that back on the land, bordered by a stream that meanders back into town, would not, alas, be such a good idea.

This kind of situation, the author notes, has come about because we humans have become so good in solving one problem without considering the fact that we are creating another. This is the sort of linear thinking that has earned dam engineers, road builders, intensive farmers and others, such a bad name.

He makes a telling observation, familiar from his own experience as a vet. Farmers make intensive use of antibiotics, such as ivermectin, which as he remarked “is regarded as something of a miracle” because it keeps the bad bugs at bay.

However, one of the problems this creates at the other end of the cow is that the drugs also suppress the dung eaters.

Thus, you might say, the shit is no longer worth shit.

By comparison, an animal in the wild will feed a host of followers. An elephant, we are informed, only digests about 40 per cent of the food it consumes. What comes out is a feast for dung-beetles and other assorted creatures, and from their point of view, it is the elephant’s role to bring down the nutrients from high above so that they can go back to enrich the soil.

Not that the author is preaching to us like an eco-warrior. As a practicing vet he clearly has his feet on the ground, and he well aware of the fact that lots of pathogens and parasites depend on excrement to move from one host to the

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 31

next. Contaminated water is a killer.

About two million people a year die from diarrhoea, most of them children. One particular parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, inhabiting the gut of cats, has given rise to concern because it has managed to spread into some of the remotest parts of the world. This particular parasite can cause pregnant women to miscarry, and the inflammation it causes is suspected of contributing to depression.

The explanation for its spread is simple enough. There are lots of cats, and no one is really bothered about where the smelly contents of the litter tray is dumped.

Before anyone is tempted to grab and strangle the family pet, bear in mind that cats are only a tiny part of the problem.

Strangely enough, while everybody is concerned about the extinction of so many species, the global population of all animals has actually increased. Here’s how the author puts this in perspective: “In 10,000 BCE there were about a million people on the planet. That’s 55 million kilograms of human excrement scattered around the globe in small piles, slowly feeding the grass and fruit trees. In 1800, there were about a billion people on the planet, so about 55 billion kilograms. By 1900, we had a world human population around 1.6 billion, which would have been 88 billion kilograms of human shit.”

We now have more than 7 billion people living on Earth, and not alone has the population shot up, but more and more people are living in densely populated cities. Intensive farming means that more and more animals are being packed into smaller spaces.

“I do not think we need an international scientific study to tell us that there is a whole lot more excrement in the world than ever before in history,” he writes, and as he explains, it is not so difficult to work out what the consequences of simply dumping all or most of this means. In the UK, David estimated that humans discard 135 tons of nitrogen and 58 tons of phosphorus a year. The output from cattle is even greater, 280,000 tons nitrogen, 50,000 tons phosphorus and 100,000 tons nitrogen.

Then come the chicks, hidden away in big sheds, producing 40,000 tons of phosphorus.

Obviously, this is not the smartest way to use our resources, but as the author explains, the aspiration to get “a chicken in every pot” goes back a long way. Even in what we might think of the bad old days, no one was happy to see so many people starve. Intensive farming

was the way to deliver on that promise, and maybe that should give us pause for thought. As the author observes, we should not rely on the technology that gave rise to the problems in the first place to provide us with the solutions. Yet, what we are getting is often just more of the same linear type solutioneering, and I can’t help but wonder why the chosen solution for Dublin’s growing volume of sewage is to pump the treated waste further out into the bay. I understand that recovery of nutrients would have been a much more expensive alternative, but it does seem to suggest that all local authorities are firmly locked into systems that have no future.

Interestingly, the city systems that we have inherited did not begin as sewers at all. It is true that the Victorian engineers made an enormous impact on public health by bringing in clean water and removing sewage, but way back in 600 BC the famous Cloaca Maxima in Rome was designed, not for sewage, but to carry away rainwater. The author informs

us that in most european cities sewers were not sewers at all, and it is only when a rising population made backyard cesspits overflow that permission was granted to allow them to discharge into the public system. That’s only half the story, because it was the availability of piped water that caused so many of the cesspits to overflow.

The author has lots more to say about a subject that whether or not we like it, we do have to learn how to live with it.

Review, Tom Kennedy The origin of feces, David Waltner-Toews.

ECW, June 2013. 220 pages, paperback. £12.99

Open access

HunDReDs of scientific papers reporting on Teagasc research are now available to everyone free online. Teagasc reports that almost 300 papers have been uploaded providing a picture of agricultural research from 2012 onwards.

Traditionally it would only have been possible to read published articles after paying a subscription, and for many journals these charges put the information out of reach to most people.

The Teagasc Open Access repository has been named stór, a direct translation into Irish.

For more information: http://t-stor.teagasc.ie

COLOUR

INK often be anuscripts can a traced back to stery through particular mona by the scribes. the inks used nces have been an analysis of variety of substa wide a m of flow, For writing ements; freedo the basic requir Boiled tree found to meet permanency. rooms, high degree of by ink-cap mush clarity, and a mush produced root of the yellow bark, the black powdered , A owers have been used. blue from cornfl bark even strong coffee flag iris, and winter blackened made from the or glue. One milk black ink was with twigs mixed galls, the of blackthorn made from oak was ink of oak trees. One common type d by insects on pounds of iron round balls forme , ration was five formula for prepa s of gum, 12 gallons of water pound galls. sulphate, five gallon of oak by volume, 12 12 gallons must and measuring h oak galls for s how big the Collecting enoug lt but it just show extensive more have been difficu even an gum, and was. On lampblack and demand for ink dirty was made from although very scale Indian ink became a big, grained soot soot, lampblack, n Europe. The producing fine of south easter printers’ ink. industry in parts make to d linsee 63 was mixed with

M

COLOUR

The quality of medieval inks had to be high for manuscripts such as this to survive.

This is a page from a medical manuscript, the Book of the O’Lees, preserved at the Royal Irish Academy.

of how colours gives a good idea the colour from The colour wheel By subtracting opposite hue. relate to each other. wheel we get the one side of the

saturation, and Colour has hue, three dimensional brightness, and gh harder to modelling, althou ate to more accur visualise, led ication. systems of classif

The science and art of colour explained by Margaret Franklin and Tom Kennedy. A colourful and informative paperback. €15 post free from www.sciencespin.com

cliff above against a granite schist lying up Vegetation covered Wicklow. is Lough Oular, Co ne Granite which

tion is the Mour during initial event. The excep it developed n years old and to the melting only 55 millio , possibly due Atlantic Ocean basalts (see ding Antrim opening of the crust by the ascen ” earlier). of the Earth’s Rocks other Volcanic the base of in and e lts granit “Basa of hot molten plates: The generation movement of the by is driven plate sinks to the Earth’s crust idden crustal over-r the e, (see Figure e where they collid liquid granit it melts to form they release extremely a depth where plates pull apart the crust it in turn melts 3). Where those which e mantl the hot basalt from The granite

rous plants

Carbonife

hibernicus, A. Palaeopteris Co Kilkenny. from Kiltorcan, loachitica, B. Alethopteris Tipperary.

Ballynstick, Co lonchilides, C. Alethopteris colliery, Co from Drumnagh Cork. dendron, Lepido of Root D. Laois.

Towerstown, Co Photographs: Tom

with granite rocks. is well-endowed out from the Figure 15. Ireland northeast stands Mountains is the er — only 55 million years old. of the Mourne significantly young others in being

Kennedy.

67

ROCK AROUND IRELAND

Peadar McArdle guides us around Ireland’s diversified geology.

Paperback €15 postfree from www.sciencespin.com In 1795, the chance discovery of a nugget was immediately followed by a gold rush as

Gold Frenzy SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 32

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

Albertine Kennedy Publishing, Cloonlara, Swinford, County Mayo

Order on line from

sciencespin.com

for post-free delivery Ireland, UK and EU

Smart Futures Smart Futures STEM Factor Competition STEM Factor Competition The The

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