Science Spin 60

ISSUE

60

September October 2013

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SCIENCE

SPIN

IRELAND’S SCIENCE NATURE AND DISCOVERY MAGAZINE

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Examining education Can teachers pass the test?

A HEAD FOR ROCKS

Careering into science and engineering

1 9 6 5 - 2 0 1 4

interested in Technology, Science or Maths? aged between 12 & 19 on 31st October 2013? why not enter the BT Young Scientist & Technology exhibition 2014?

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Are you involved in teaching or education? Follow our series on education over the coming issues. Your informed and considered opinions are always welcome.

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The northern coast of Hook Head, Co Clare Publisher Science Spin Ltd 5 Serpentine Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. www.sciencespin.com Email: tom@sciencespin.com Editor Tom Kennedy tom@sciencespin.com Editorial support Con O’Rourke Production support Marie-Claire Cleary marieclaire@sciencespin.com Contributing editor Seán Duke sean@sciencespin.com Business Manager Alan Doherty alan@sciencespin.com Design and Production Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo Picture research Source Photographic Archive Printing Turner Group, Longford

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Upfront

2

On the track of elusive particles Margaret Franklin reports on what Higgs had to say about the particle 8 Education — one fit for all?

Seán Duke writes that education cannot be treated like an industrial product

12

The sound of silence Jeff Harte reports that we have to live with noise

14

The safety engineer Seán Duke talks to a young engineer about his work

15

A head for rocks Anthea Lacchia explains why so many geologists want to visit Loop Head

17

Brain conference Marie Catherine Mousseau

20

In a sinister bind Tom Kennedy writes about the weed that gardeners love to hate

23

Weird and wonderful animals Sive Finlay introduces us to a really big parrot

25

Laois, Offaly and the Irish landscape Tom Kennedy reviews two books on the wonders of the Irish landscape

26

Young scientists Gaining more from the Sun and mind control

29

Dr How’s science wows Exploring forensics

31

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UPFRONT This dormouse from Co Kildare was photographed by Hugh Clark

New mice

Although common in the uK the dormouse never became established in Ireland but that may be about to change. these attractive little mammals, which may have come in with fodder, have been sighted in County Kildare, and zoologists from NuI galway would like to know if they are here to stay and if they are spreading. Dr Colin lawton from the Mammal Ecology group at NuI galway said it is possible that they have been here for a while, but could have gone unnoticed.

Apart from being small, the dormouse is nocturnal and it spends a lot of time asleep. the dormice nest in hedgerows and feed on fruit, nuts, flowers or insects. During winter they hibernate and this helps to keep them out of sight.

About the same size as an ordinary mouse, the dormouse has a distinctive furry tail and big black eyes.

If you spot one of these animals the Mammal Ecology group would like to know. the phone number of 086 0660208 and the email is: dormouseireland@gmail.com

Opening doors

oNE of the advantages in reprogramming adult cells to become induced pluripotent stem cells is that the risk of immune rejection is eliminated.

Since Shinya Yamanaka discovered a way to push adult cells back into an embryonic state in 2006, his approach has been adopted by researchers around the world. however, in a paper published in Cell Stem Cell, researchers from the Salk Institute claim that it is now possible to achieve better results by controlling the genes responsible for differentiation.

Yamanaka’s technique was to introduce four different genes that had the effect of inducing pluripotency. however, this approach was only successful to a limited degree and there was a risk that cells would become cancerous.

At the Salk Institute, Izpisua Belmonte and his team decided to take a different approach, targeting the genes that are associated with differentiation into a particular cell type. up to then, reported the researchers, the usual approach was based on imposing an embryonic-like state on mature cells. Because it was impossible to know if these cells were

in fact pluripotent until they were seen to act as such, the researchers began to suspect that function might be more important than form. Rather than attempt pushing back development by inserting four extra genes, they concluded that controlling the expression of ‘linear specifier’ genes could be a better approach. the group then went on to discover more than seven such genes, and in a good analogy, they compared this to opening and closing of doors.

By balancing how these doors were opened and closed, the researchers found that it is possible to get a great deal of control over what direction a cells is going to go in development. As Emmanual Nivet, one of the researchers at Salk stated “pluripotency is like a room with all doors open, in which differentiation is accomplished by closing doors, and inversely, reprogramming to pluripotency is accomplished by opening doors.”

Apart from giving wider options, this approach solves one of the major problems in developing stem cell therapies. the four genes that were used to reprogramme cells had been implicated in the development of cancer.

Boost for pharm sector

FolloWINg the announcement that 17 companies are to collaborate through the Synthesis and Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre at the university of limerick, Pizer is to invest $130 in three of its Irish manufacturing plants. Most of the investment is going into facilities at grange Castle and the balance of $30 is to go into Ringaskiddy.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 2

Zoo Museum at TCD VISItoRS to tCD’s Zoological Museum can go on a guided tour around some of the world’s most exotic beasts. the 250 year old collection with more than 25,000 specimens is open to the public and for €15 a family can follow a guided tour. highlights include the beautiful 19th century glass models, the giant Irish Deer, and an insect that can lift 850 times its own weight. the museum is located in the Zoology Building, close to the lincoln Place gate and is open on weekdays from 10am to 4pm. For more details and booking, contact 01 8961366 or email

mlinnie@tcd.ie

Maintaining the reserves

WhEN bone-marrow stem cells are being formed some are kept in reserve, waiting to be drawn on if the need arises. Dr ling li, from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, has reported in Nature that during development of egg or sperm cells, a small sub-set of genes receives a tag, or imprint, that effectively puts further development on hold. So, while most cells go on to proliferate, some are held back, but ready to become active.

In an earlier study, Dr Aparna Venkatraman, who now works on stem research at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, found that in mice if the genetic imprinting was removed a fresh wave of activated stem cells progressed through the different maturation stages.

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Lakes below the ice

UPFRONT

Deep below the ice in Antarctica are about 400 fresh water lakes. eSA’s CryoSat has been able to detect these lakes through their thick covering of ice, and recently it was found that three cubic kilometres of water had suddenly drained from a large crater.

Fresh-water lakes, lying under the are of great interest to scientists but drilling down through the ice in such harsh conditions would be an enormous challenge.

However, remote radar sensing has enabled scientists to chart these lakes and record some activities. In this particular case it was found that the crater had drained between 2007 and 2008 and the volume of water released was equal to about one tenth of the melting that occurs under Antarctica each year. Since then the water has been returning, but at a much slower rate. Over decades the lake is likely to refill.

Another great lake, Lake Vostok, is under almost four kilometres of ice, in 2012 Russian scientists succeeded in drilling down to water that is thought to have been isolated for between 15 and 25 million years.

The possible existence of such lakes was suggested by a Russian scientist, peter Kropotkin, in the late 19th century. Kropotkin reasoned that the enormous pressure of ice would increase the temperature causing the ice below to melt.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 3

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UPFRONT

Shape makers

Our skin and lining of most organs consist of tightly packed box-like epithelial cells. Scientists have been trying to discover how these cells become organised into layers and clusters, and a great deal of this work has been done with one of the most popular insects with researchers, the fruit fly, Drosophilia.

Instead of focusing on fruit flies, Matt Gibson, a medical research investigator at the Stowers Institute in the uS has turned his attention to a sea anemone, Nematostella vectenis. The reason for this, he reported, is that an animal that is further back in evolution could provide a clearer picture on how epithelial cells began to organise themselves. Over the course of evolution some of the genetic clues that would show how

these processes began may have been lost. However, the sea anemones are so ancient in evolutionary terms that they do not even show bilateral symmetry.

In other words, sea anemones have just started to get themselves into shape.

As Matt Gibson explained, Nematostella’s body is “just a bag of epithelium.” The anemones use tenticles to draw food into their mouth, so growing a set of these is the first thing they have to do. At first it was thought that tentacles would be formed by epithelial cells dividing, but as the researcher found, this is not the case.

Although proliferation is observed to be the norm in other animals, the tentacles of the anemone are formed by stretching out of the cells.

This particular approach. in which cells are stretched out is not unique,

but it occurs over and over throughout evolution. referred to as a placodes, these stretched-out epithelial cells give rise to eyes and wings in flies, and they are involved in formation of teeth in vertebrates. As Matt Gibson pointed out, this shows that formation of placodes is a strategy that goes back into the early days of evolution.

Gibson’s contention that the anemone would provide a better model for researchers than the fruit fly was reinforced by the discovery in 2007 that the genetic control in Nematostella is more similar to humans. One reason for this is that over the course of evolution fruit flies might have discarded genetic instructions that managed to persist in other lines that led to the vertebrates.

The dark circles on the map show the matching populations of Ireland and the Pyrnees.

Pyrénées connections LAnd snails in Ireland are similar to those in a restricted area of the Eastern Pyrenees, yet the same species of Cepaea nemoralis, is genetically different in Britain. In a paper published in Plos One, Grindon A J davison from the university of nottingham, makes the point that the close match with the mainland European species suggests that the snails must have been brought by human settlers. It is highly unlikely that the snails could

have reached Ireland otherwise, and the fact that the match does not occur in Britain supports the view that they were brought by humans, and that these early settlers came directly to Ireland. As davison states in his paper, a past extinction of the lineage cannot be ruled out, “but there is a more than 8,000 year continuous record of Cepaea fossils in Ireland.”

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 4

The snails were a source of food in the Pyrénées so early settlers may have brought to Ireland deliberately.

Archaeological evidence from Pyrénéan caves shows that humans were collecting, and perhaps “farming” these snails before the development of agriculture.

Marine Institute bursary students inspire bright future for marine sector Aoife Gath reports on a bursary programme that enables undergraduates to gain valuable hands-on experience.

T

he Bursary programme at the Marine Institute provides 3rd level students with the skills and experience to further develop their careers within the marine sector over an eight-week work placement. Twenty-six students from diverse fields of studies gained work experience in a variety of jobs including fish and shellfish assessments and surveys, media and communications, sampling salmon and commercial fisheries in ports, assessments of maritime economics and oceanographic buoy development.

Recently, the students seized the opportunity to showcase their talent and skills highlighting their experiences with the Marine Institute at the annual Bursar Seminar day.

Mr. Joe Silke, Marine Environment and Food Safety Manager at the Marine Institute, spoke about the quality of the bursars work during their placements and the confidence Ireland can have in the future of the marine industry. “The students have continued to demonstrate their understanding, and the overall context of the programmes within which they have worked. It is encouraging to see that we have a new cohort of highly motivated and engaged marine scientists coming through the third level system that will ensure Ireland retains its high reputation in marine science and technology into the coming decades”.

The value of the Marine Institute Bursary Programme, historically is significant to the marine science sector explained Ms. Helen McCormick, Senior Laboratory Analyst at the Marine Institute. “The bursary programme has

been ongoing since the 1960s and it gives students an opportunity to gain valuable experience within their chosen subject field. Previous bursars have gained various positions within the Marine Institute at all grades up to and including Director level.” ”The Bursary Seminar Day is used to give students a chance to practice their presentations skills and provide information on their bursary to their peers. The standard of the presentations this year was extremely high and showed that during the short period of the student bursaries, they fully understood their subject matter and were able to communicate this to the audience,” she added.

The Bursary programme is highly recognised and is aimed at undergraduates who have completed two years’ study in a relevant discipline. This year bursars came from a total of twelve different third level institutes across Ireland and the UK including NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, University of Ulster, Queen’s University Belfast, GalwayMayo Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Tralee, University of Plymouth, Sligo Institute of Technology, Anglia Ruskin University, Dundalk Institute of Technology, University College Cork and Carlow Institute of Technology.

www.marine.ie

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UPFRONT

s the Power from

Diverging pathways

A prOpOSAL to send energy harvesting kites aloft has won an innovation research award in Switzerland. Three institutes in Switzerland have been collaborating on developing a kite, known as Twing, that can bring a line up to 300 metres, 200 metres more than ground based installations. Having reached this height, the line can be reeled back in, ready to rise again. The movement of the rising line can be converted into electrical energy and the developers claim that the kite system could be commercially viable.

To see the kite in action, here’s a link to a video.

Commentary is in German, so a good chance to brush up on your linguistic skills. http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/3/137347/---/l=2

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AbOuT five million and a half years ago the Mediterranean dried out. As a result, salty sediments, known as the Messian evaporites formed. Later, when the sea returned, these salt saturated waters remained, trapped because of their high density.

Some forms of plankton were able to live in these supersalty conditions and because the sediments are not continuous, they are like islands, and different populations have emerged. researchers are interested in how these ciliate plankton species might have diverged and a team of collaborators from the university of Kaiserlautern, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and the Italian Institute of Costal Marine Environment have been studying these populations, all of which originally came from the same stock.

Reporting their findings in BioMed Central, the researchers said that while ciliate plankton communities at the interface between ordinary brine and the more saturated body below are similar, the communities inhabiting the deeper levels had become different, and these differences were not the same in each island.

Dr Thorsten Stoeck, who led the project, said that these differences provide an opportunity for scientists to see alternative courses of evolution in similar, but separated habitats. Each of four communities had solved the challenge of adapting to lack of oxygen and hypersalinity in slightly different ways.

Electron microscope view of a salt tolerant ciliate plankton from the Mediterranean.

Snow line

As distance from a star increases temperature drops, and astronomers using the Alacama Large Millimetre/ submillimetre Array (ALMA) high in the mountains of Chile, have detected what are known as the “snow lines” around TW Hydra. This is a distant Sun-like star in a developing planetary system 175 light years away from Earth.

Moving out from the star, water is the first to freeze, then carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide. Each of these freezing regions is referred to as the “snow line”, and astronomers think that these different varieties of “snow” provide the glue that binds grains of matter together. Without that binding, grains would break up with each collision, so the snow lines are likely to play an important role in the formation of planets and comets.

Furthermore, as the astronomers report in Science Express, freezing would allow carbon monoxide to form methanol, one of the building blocks in complex organic chemicals.

Pharmaceutical centre

The Synthesis and Solid State pharmaceutical Centre (SSpC) at the university of Limerick has received a €30 million injection from the government and this is to be backed by a €10 million investment from industry. The SSpC provides r&D support for the pharmaceutical industries based in Ireland and it is expected to act as a magnet attracting inward investment.

The centre involves collaboration between 17 companies and eight academic institutions. The SSpC is one of seven large centres in Ireland dedicated to specific areas of research.

Moving Earth

For an amazing and largely self-explanatory fly-through view of how the rift Valley region in Africa is moving up and down, visit this European Space Agency link: http://spaceinvideos.esa.int/Videos/2013/08/rift_ Valley_dynamics

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 6

Every day we encounter XTRA-Ordinary processes that are behind the ordinary! From the water that comes out of our taps, to the grass that grows in our fields, to our body’s ability to run and play sports – there are XTRA-Ordinary processes happening all around us. Science Week 2013 is calling on you to come and explore the XTRA-Ordinary too!

The objective of Science Week each year is to promote the relevance of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in our everyday lives and to demonstrate their importance to the future of Irish society and to the economy.

This year we want to show everyone in Ireland that there are scientific processes behind everything around us, most of which are taken for granted every day. Exploring the XTRA-Ordinary is calling on everyone around Ireland to stop, take note and explore the processes that are happening around us every day.

Co-ordinated by Science Foundation Ireland, Science Week 2013 runs from 10 to 17 November 2013 and is a collaboration of events run by colleges, schools, libraries, teachers, community groups, researchers and students throughout Ireland.

“Science Week 2013: Exploring the XTRA-Ordinary” is calling on the nation to join in the fun of exploring the XTRA-Ordinary at an event near you! Check out www. scienceweek.ie for information and ideas on how to get involved, register events and access posters, classroom activities and more.

To be added to the Science Week newsletter please send an email to ScienceWeek@sfi.ie and we will keep you up-to-date with all the latest Science Week news!

On the track Of elusive particles Earlier this year Peter Higgs was in Maynooth where, as Margaret Franklin reports, he outlined how the existence of an elusive fundamental particle could explain why our Universe has mass

L

ast May, a packed audience in the John Hume building at NUI Maynooth, was treated to a fascinating explanation of some of the greatest discoveries of modern physics and the current theories being used to interpret them. This was an outreach event of the Irish Quantum Foundations Conference 2013.

The guest of honour, Peter Higgs, is Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh. Back in the 1960s, Higgs proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass. He predicted the existence of a fundamental particle, which later became known as the Higgs boson. On July 4th last year, scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced the discovery of a particle fitting the description of the Higgs boson. This caused great excitement among the physics community and attracted much media attention at the time.

The first speaker at the Maynooth event was Alan Walker, honorary fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Edinburgh University. Since he retired in 2009, Alan has been engaged in public outreach activities and services to education in Scotland, for which he has been awarded an MBE. To pave the way for Professor Higgs, Dr. Walker gave a brief historical account of the discoveries, made over the centuries, which have

helped scientists to understand the fundamental nature of matter and the forces that govern our universe.

Alan began with the concept, first suggested in ancient Greece two millennia ago, that everything is made up of atoms. It was originally believed that atoms are indivisible fundamental particles, but the discovery of the electron

by J.J. Thomson in the 1890s and the atomic nucleus by Rutherford about a decade later, showed that this is not the case. In the 1930s the neutron was discovered and later it was found that protons and neutrons are made up of particles called quarks.

Turning then to the four forces of nature (gravity, the electromagnetic force and the ‘strong and ‘weak’ nuclear forces) the audience was reminded that gravity, being the weakest of the forces, does not play a significant role in particle physics. However, in what we would perceive as the everyday world, gravity is obviously important. Also, because it is all pervasive, gravity is of primary importance on a cosmic scale.

These four forces are intimately connected to the existence of subatomic particles, and just as atoms are not like hard little marbles, the term ‘particle’ can be a bit misleading. These particles have wave-like properties, and our understanding of this goes back to the great Scottish physicist,

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 8

James Clerk Maxwell, who, in 1862 laid the foundations for the theory of electromagnetism, summarised in his famous equations.

This theory led to the conclusion that light is an electromagnetic wave.

Being a transverse wave, light can be polarized in one of two possible mutually perpendicular directions, which are perpendicular to the direction of propagation. The photon is the particle associated with the electromagnetic field and it has no mass. Just as light can be polarized in one of two directions, the photon can exist in one of only two spin states; in other words, it has two degrees of freedom. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics is consistent with this.

Dr. Walker then told the audience that the Strong Nuclear Force is the force that binds together the neutrons and protons in the nuclei of atoms and it also holds the quarks together in these nucleons, which are known as hadrons. The strong interactions are explained by the theory known as Quantum Chromodynamics.

According to this theory, the strong force between quarks is carried by massless particles known as ’gluons’.

Regarding the ‘weak’ nuclear interaction, Dr. Walker remarked that this is of great importance to us, as it is responsible for the formation of helium from hydrogen in the sun, by fusion.

The weak force is also responsible for radioactive decay. The weak force carriers are known as the W+, W- and Z bosons.

These have masses 90 times greater than the mass of a proton.

Following Alan Walker’s presentation, Peter Higgs came to the podium. He explained that the strong force wasn’t understood until the discovery of quarks. The weak force presented greater theoretical difficulties. Professor Higgs said that quantum particles, such as electrons, are governed by something called the ‘exclusion principle’, which prevents them from getting close together. (He referred to them as ‘unsociable’ particles). Bosons, on the other hand are ‘sociable’ and can come into very close proximity. Higgs said that in the 1960s, quantum field theory was being developed in an attempt to explain how particle physics works.

As his contribution to the development of this model, Higgs proposed what became known as the Higgs Mechanism. What was special

about this is that he allowed for the spontaneous breaking of symmetry, so that a photon could have three degrees of freedom rather than two.

This theory required the existence of a massive boson to complete the Standard Model of particle physics. Until last year’s discoveries at CERN, nobody knew what the mass of that particle was.

At this point, the next speaker, Dr. Victoria Martin, took up the story.

She is a physicist who works at the European nuclear research centre at CERN near Geneva. She described some of the experiments in the Large Hadron Collider, a huge underground circular tunnel, 27 kilometres in circumference, where streams of charged particles are made to undergo high-energy collisions.

These include collisions between beams of high-speed protons. When the beams collide, various events may happen.

Collisions occur at an enormous rate, but statistically speaking, only one in 100 billion collisions is likely to result in the formation of a Higgs boson. This

boson is inherently unstable and decays within an incredibly minute fraction of a second, so it is rather hard to find. It can decay to produce two photons, which can be detected by the huge calorimeter at CERN. As the particles strike the calorimeter they deposit energy, and this enables them to be detected.

The boson also has other modes of decay, and it is an enormous task to examine all the data produced from the collider. A huge number of measurements repeated over and over again are needed to confirm the validity of observations, but finally, in July of last year, an announcement was made that scientists at CERN had discovered a particle, with a mass of 125 Gev which was most probably the elusive particle predicted by Higgs in 1964.

Margaret Franklin’s articles about topical issues in science appear regularly in The Westmeath Independent

COLOUR

INK often be anuscripts can a traced back to stery through particular mona by the scribes. the inks used have been an analysis of of substances wide variety freedom of flow, For writing a requirements; basic the Boiled tree found to meet permanency. rooms, high degree of a and , by ink-cap mush clarity mush produced root of the yellow bark, the black ered A owers, powd have been used. blue from cornfl bark even strong coffee flag iris, and winter blackened made from the One was glue. ink or black with milk the twigs mixed from oak galls, of blackthorn of ink was made oak trees. One common type s on insect by d 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 sive difficu exten been more have gum, and was. On an even 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 linseed to make 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 base of other Volcanic granite in the “Basalts and of hot molten of plates: ation ment gener The move is driven by the l plate sinks to crusta the Earth’s crust idden e, the over-r granite (see Figure where they collid to form liquid ely melts it e they releas extrem a depth where plates pull apart the crust it in turn melts 3). Where those the mantle which hot basalt from

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

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

Towerstown, Co Photographs: Tom

The granite 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

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 9

40 years of the Teagasc National Farm Survey

T

he Teagasc National Farm Survey (NFS), which is the longest running research project in Teagasc, was established in 1972 as a statutory requirement of Ireland’s accession to the European Union. The focus is on recording farm income, and over the 40 years since it began, the NFS has collected data from over 1,200 farms annually. The data provide a clear picture of how EU policies have had an impact on Irish farming.

On joining the EU, Ireland came under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), a policy put in place after World War II in order to ensure food security for Europe’s population. The CAP operated a generous price support programme and Irish farmers benefitted from this with average farm income more than tripling from 1972 to 1978. However, this was a time of high inflation and input prices soared, particularly for oil-based products, while the purchasing power of income diminished.

The generous price support programme quickly resulted in a problem of over production and food mountains accumulated. The problems of overproduction were tackled in the 1980s with the introduction of quotas on milk production and limits on quantity of beef and grain that could be sold at guaranteed prices.

The EU policy of offering farmers high prices, encouraging production and then “dumping” products on non-EU markets became increasing controversial

Protected cropping T

o meet the rising demand for fresh salads and fruits producers are relying more on protected structures such as glasshouses and polytunnels. Protected cropping is now the second largest horticultural sector after mushroom production.

On top of the more traditional skills, growers are using technology to maximise production. For example, heat, irrigation and lighting can be controlled, but gains have to be measured against the costs involved. Increased exposure to

in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The EU was forced to reform its “trade distorting” policies and in 1992 Mac Sharry, the then European Commissioner for Agriculture, dismantled the old price support system replacing it with direct payments to farmers. Farm incomes increased following the introduction of direct payments as output prices did not fall as much as expected but farmers were compensated nonetheless. The NFS has charted the growing reliance on farm incomes over the last 20 years, to a position of comprising on average over 100 percent of income on cattle and sheep farms today.

In more recent years the NFS has documented the volatility of farm income. The period from 2006 to 2012 has been particularly volatile. As a result of the ongoing reform to the CAP, there is now less scope for the EU to stabilise internal agricultural prices and as such farmers are more exposed to world price movements. The dairy and cereals sectors especially have experienced a rollercoaster ride over the last five to six years, with a boom in 2007 followed by a disastrous collapse in 2009 and a good year again in 2011.

While there have been ups and downs in farm income over the last 40 years, the overall trend has been upwards.

And when one considers that sector output has increased in value by more than 60 percent over the period and farm numbers have declined by more than one-third, it is evident that major productivity gains have been achieved.

Similar surveys on farm income are carried out throughout EU member states, and the Teagasc NFS is part of a Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) that tracks farm financial performance across Europe.

The book, ‘Forty years of Irish farming since joining the European Union; a journey with the Teagasc National Survey,’ by Thia Hennessy and Anne Kinsella, gives a comprehensive review of the project.

The book is available from the Teagasc publications office.

light can boost growth, but until recently the cost of running High Pressure Sodium Lamps was prohibitive, and besides the heat they emitted meant that they had to be placed 1.5 metres above the crop.

The development of Light Emitting Diodes has helped to solve that particular problem, costing less to run and because they emit less heat they can be placed within the crop. At the recent Teagasc National Protected Crops Conference, Dr Michael Gaffney explained that LEDs can increase a tomato yield by 10 to 15 per cent while lowering energy consumption by about 30 per cent.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 10

Not alone is this a double advantage, but LED lighting can be customised to suit a crop. By adjusting the wavelength, plants receive parts of the spectrum that are most useful for stimulating growth. Dr Gaffney said that spectrum control is now quite advanced, and it is possible to design a light recipe that suits stem elongation, flowering and fruiting. It is even possible to delay crop ripening, which can be of great value to growers who want to spread out a harvest to avoid a glut from oversupply.

Research is also ongoing to develop light recipes to increase the level of antioxidants in fruit and vegetables.

In a closely related development, fungal diseases can be kept under control

by using ultra violet (UV) light. This approach has been used with success in Denmark for ornamental crops, but as Dr Gaffey explained, strict control is important. A brief 1.5 seconds exposure of UV can eliminate the need for chemical fungicides, but a 2 to 2.5 second exposure would kill the crop.

The level of carbon dioxide is also a factor that can be controlled, and over the past decade rising energy costs have contributed to a reduction of this growth promoting gas. Allowing levels to fall below those on the outside can result in a 20 per cent drop in yield. Keeping vents open can help, but there is a trade off against loss of heat.

Given sufficient light and high levels of carbon dioxide (1,000 ppm as against 370 ppm in the atmosphere) photosynthesis can be increased by 50 per cent, but costs are high. Heat and carbon dioxide creation are the second highest input costs for Irish growers.

To reduce these costs, growers are switching over to combined heat and power units. These CHP plants are efficient because, as the name suggests, they generate power while providing heat. With growers there is the additional advantage that the carbon dioxide emissions from a CHP plant can be fed back into the greenhouse. In Holland, where CHP units are the norm, operators

Birch and Alder Qualified A lder and Birch have been awarded ‘qualified’ status and this comes as good news for the Irish forestry sector.

Alder and birch trees are highly valued in Scandinavian and Baltic countries, and they are native to Ireland. Elaine O’Connor, who is working on the Teagasc Birch and Alder Improvement Programme, pointed out that although birch has considerable potential in Ireland, it had not been placed on the recommended species list for forestry as there were some quality problems that had to be resolved. Birch is highly suitable for pulp, sawlog, veneer and turnery. It is also an excellent fuel wood that is a lot easier to handle than many other species. However, poor performance has been an issue, and attempts to import seed from good quality birch from abroad had not been a success. Over a million birch trees are planted every year in Ireland, and while this is good for biodiversity,

Selection of Irish-grown salad crops

earn extra money by exporting excess power to the grid.

Again, benefits have to be offset against costs, and while a conventional gas boiler might cost €80,000 a CHP plant might cost €1.2 million.

Another strategy coming into play is deliberate stressing of plants to stimulate their own immune response so that they can tolerate the presence of beneficial microbes. In nature, plants have a symbiotic relationship with certain microbes in the soil, but in glasshouses crops are often grown in sterile rockwool or peat. With a bit of mild stress the plants are more tolerant of microbes, including those that are of benefit, and they are less susceptible to disease.

All of these advances in control can increase yield, sometimes dramatically.

Traditionally, growers in Ireland might get 4.5 harvests of lettuce under glass a year, but multilayer systems now in operation in Holland, Denmark and the US, 30 harvests can be produced from the same area.

Adopting efficient technology could enable Irish growers to displace a high level of imports, especially as these often come from drier countries that rely heavily on expensive irrigation.

In 2011 over 28,000 tonnes of tomatoes were imported, and this suggests that Irish growers have considerable room for expansion on the home market if technology can be adopted to lower the cost of production.

the quality and volume of timber is considerably less than produced from similar trees in Finland and Sweden.

As Elaine O’Connor observed, after improvement programmes in other countries, birch has straighter stems, less knots, and timber volume is about 26 per cent higher. To remedy this situation a major research effort was initiated by Teagasc in 1998 to genetically improve the quality of the Irish stock. Initially the aim was to breed strains of downy

and silver birch that would suit Irish forestry conditions, and in 2005 alder was included in the programme. Alder is a popular broadleaf with up to five million being planted each year. Alder is on the recommended species list for forestry and made up 20 per cent of areas planted with broadleaves from 1990 to 2007. The issue to be resolved with alder was to meet high demand with high quality locally adapted seed supply. As a result of this research, carried out by Teagasc in collaboration with the Botany Department of the School of Biology & Environmental Science, UCD and the Environmental Plant Biotechnology Department of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UCC, a downy birch and an alder orchard have been established producing qualified seed, and a silver birch orchard is scheduled to open in two year’s time.

The ‘Qualified’ status is two steps higher in the EU Forest Reproductive Material (FRM) categories than the ‘sourceidentified’ category available up to now.

The initiative has been jointly funded by COFORD and Teagasc.

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

Website: www.teagasc.ie

EDUCATION

Education is not just another one-fit-for-all product Seán Duke writes that quality controls that work well for industry are damaging when applied to education

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here are many problems (or issues if you’d prefer) facing Irish science education but the most important is philosophical. The ideas upon which policy is based are flawed. Most of the problems we have today in education follow on from this.

The education system we have in Ireland today - and it is much the same as that which exists in the USA and the UK – is based on an obsession with the industrial concept of consistency being the hallmark of quality. This has its roots in the 1980s when Governments, such as that of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, wanted to put pressure on poorlyperforming schools and teachers.

The British public, for the most part, initially supported attempts to make underperforming teachers and schools more accountable for their actions. However, the way that the Thatcher Government decided to do this introduced a whole new set of problems that we are still saddled with today.

The problem was that the Thatcher administration began to assess value in education based on ideas imported from corporate culture. The notion of consistency across all schools and teaching departments had it roots in the auto industry.

The British Government back then thought that schools, like the car industry, could be homogenized, so that students could somehow have the same quality of experience no matter where they were in the UK. This was despite the fact that schools are a reflection of the communities they are located in, with all their problems or privileges.

Greater consistency in business is reassuring to customers and helps build brand loyalty and increase sales figures.

However, it cannot be usefully applied to the education system which is populated by human beings with all their flaws and diversity of talents. Despite this obvious truth, the Irish government has for decades now used the same concept of consistency to assess the quality and success of schools and their teachers. In this bizarre world parents have become consumers and schools the providers of education ‘product’.

In recent years, the publication in Ireland of school league tables, which show the percentage of students reaching third level colleges, has helped to embed the notion that schools are providing a product – that being access to third level education and greater career opportunities. Arguably, one of the main reasons that many parents will pay for private schools is that believe that this buys their children a better chance of a university place.

These developments have had a devastating impact on teacher training.

Unlike in times past, trainee teachers in the classroom are assessed by a number of standard listed criteria, as if they were a new car rolling off the assembly line.

There is little room for aspiring teachers to be different, or creative in their approach, even if they are so inclined.

Neither is there much room for teaching inspectors to judge trainee teachers as individuals with their own style – rather

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 12

they are forced into a box-ticking exercise largely akin the role of the quality assurance inspector on the factory floor.

The treating of education as a commodity accelerated in the 1990s in the USA, UK and Ireland. At this point it is clear that this approach has failed. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that these three countries now lag behind many of their peers in the PISA tables. PISA stands for The Programme for International Student Assessment.

This is the gold standard method by which educators judge how 15-yearolds compare across various countries on reading, mathematics and scientific literacy. Ireland has consistently placed in the middle or the bottom half of the table on maths and science compared to its industrialized rivals. It is significant that nations that regularly top the PISA tables in science and maths, such as Finland, South Korea and Japan, have pointedly rejected the attempt to introduce corporate methods into their education systems.

In Ireland, education has slavishly looked to the business world, with teachers buying in materials such as worksheets, and even class plans (surely class plans should be developed by teachers themselves) that are not tailored to their students. In Finland, in contrast, teachers are expected to use their creativity to draw up their own classroom materials, based on their knowledge of their own students. The teacher is given the freedom they require to teach with the materials in their own particular creative way. Furthermore, science teachers in a given school will come together to design a curriculum that they believe is best suited to their students. In Ireland such notions run counter to the industrialization of education.

The teaching materials in Finland, thus, are far more likely to excite the students, and the teacher is more involved in the process of learning. The materials change from year to year, and curricula change too. In Ireland, it is all about results. The system doesn’t really care whether an individual is a brilliantly

creative teacher or not, or whether they are working with children that face particular challenges. Student teachers are assessed on how well they implement systems that have been borrowed from the corporate world. It’s a licence to bore young people with enquiring minds.

These points are particularly true of science education, where student teachers potentially have a great deal of freedom to make the links between science and the ‘real world’ and to convey the excitement of scientific discovery. How does my iPhone work? What is the history of wireless communication? How is a pharmaceutical drug designed? These and other questions are just some examples of how students can engage with science.

They be metre on thelong curriculum, but The SSmight Folia,not a 132 ocean liner the key is by to agenerate torpedoed Germaninterest. submarine off Ram Teachers also be given Head in Corkmust on March 11th 1917.more freedom if the profession is to attract more scientific talent. This freedom of professional action is a major draw as is seen in other countries, where salaries are not particularly high for teachers.

Teachers have a great opportunity for professional satisfaction and students have a better chance of engaging with science.

The dead hand of bureaucracy must be removed from the teacher training process and individual talent allowed to flourish. The Government needs to actively encourage the best scientific coastaltoseabed areas between talent enter teaching, and toNorthern end the Ireland, Scotland and the Republic obsession with trying to impose an of Ireland.” unimaginative curriculum.

It’s a collaborative to the Encouraging more project, talentedakin teachers Tellus Border project another one of to enter the profession would help toGSI’s success many stories.of(see Science Spin 56) resolve these issues.

The idea for the future is to collaborate There must be a sharp focus on with EU projects and create a bathymetric encouraging independent thinking map forstudents, Europe and work among that,this after all, has is the basis commenced with the EMODNET of scientific enquiry. There must beProject, an which funds two additional on acceptance that teachers andspecialists students are the GSI INFOMAR team. individuals that simply cannot be treated about making people like“INFOMAR they are theislatest Toyota cars.

There aware that Ireland doesn’t stop when is no one best way to teach, and no two you get to cliff edge.

There’s teachers orthe students are the same.a whole other world out must there be anda it’s diverse Finally, there realaand true acceptance of the importance of science education in Ireland. There is, and has been, for many years, a situation where decision makers talk up the value of science, and yet they do things that are not in the best interest of science.

There are many examples of this, and the latest came early this year, when the Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn

announced that science cannot be made a compulsory subject in all secondary schools, because that would require that every school have a laboratory. He added that the money was not available to build topographic such labs. area, with mounds, canyons, pockmarks andwould all sorts of features.

How much it cost to fit outOff Donegal, for example, there aremeasure many every school with a lab?

Now, pockmark features on the sea bed: that public investment against the these are gas-generated mounds there negative perception createdand in the minds aremulti-national a few in Dunmanus They of scienceBay andtoo. technology represent a that unique habitat, possible companies have chosena to set up indicator of economic resources and are in Ireland. Some ‘people that matter’ potential geohazards,” explains must be questioning whether allCharise. the Knowing what’s ourthe seabed has not Government talk on about importance only scientific, but alsofuture economic benefits. of science to Ireland’s is simply blather.

ForThe more factinformation, that scienceincluding will not bethe “real” maps of Dublin, Galway and available to secondary level students Ireland, see www.infomar.ie. in some schools in Ireland, because the Government will not invest in building a laboratory for them is scandalous, given all the talk about the strategic importance of science. The time has come to end this double-talk on science and we have to discard the notion that education is just another ‘product’

Seán Duke has a Higher Diploma in Education from UCD, and taught Biology to Leaving Certificate level before enteringIreland’s journalism time.wreck, the Lusitania, torpedoed in 1915 with the bestfull known loss of over 1,000 lives.

Do you have strong opinions on the of IrishMerchant education?

Left, the state SS Manchester lying at 11.3 metres depth in Bay. The vessel was level used toyour transport troops and supplies to If you are a teacher or are actively engaged Dingle in education at any opinions are South Africa during the Boer War. likely to be of interest to readers.

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 SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 13 www.sciencespin.com

A large drive-in anechoic chamber at EMC Technologies, Australia, designed to block out sound and radio frequency radiation.

The sound of silence Jeff Harte reports that we cannot live in silence

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oesn’t the term a deafening silence seem to be a contradiction?

Can a lack of noise actually “drive someone crazy”?

There is a room in Orfield Laboratories complex, in South Minneapolis, which is supposedly so quiet that the longest anyone has ever lasted alone inside it is only 45 minutes.

It is called an anechoic chamber, and there are only a handful of them in the world. These rooms are set on rubber springs, and are encased by an even greater room with walls constructed with reinforced concrete. They also have rather distinctive 3.3-foot thick fiberglass wedge-shaped panels all along the inner walls, floor and ceiling. It is quite an alien spectacle. These pyramids are all geometrically positioned and designed to dissipate as much audio energy as possible. The designers state that it is 99.995 per cent absorbent.

The human ear can sense sound energy anywhere above 0 decibels. For reference, the sound of whispering on the decibel scale registers at 30dB, whilst breathing registers at about 10. The noise levels in the anechoic chamber have been recorded at -12.4dB. That’s literally beyond a perfect silence.

It is said that the American composer John Cage wrote his infamous 4’33”, an experimental orchestral performance where no instrument is played for that time duration, upon visiting the anechoic chamber at Harvard University in 1951.

Going into the chamber he expected total silence, but while in there he heard two sounds.

“And I was so surprised that I went to the engineer in charge … and said, there’s something wrong, there’re two sounds in that room, and he said describe them, and I did, one was high and one was low, and he said, the high one was my nervous system … and the low one was my blood circulating.”

The rooms’ qualities to absorb all sound, and produce no echoes (anechoic), have led them to be used by various companies for testing their washing machines, motorcycles, microphones and other electro-acoustic devices; however the US government and NASA researchers have used it for very different reasons.

The noiselessness of the chambers is used to simulate the complete silence of space for astronaut-hopefuls. The subjects must remain seated if they intend to stay in there for more than a few minutes because as people take their sensory

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 14

cues from their surroundings, the lack of any sound can cause people to lose their balance and fall over. Scientists then monitor and record how these cadets react. It seems easy enough?

But it gets weirder.

In a study conducted in 2009, where 19 healthy volunteers were deprived of sight and sound in one of these chambers, it took only 15 minutes for almost all of them to experience hallucinations, depressed mood, or even an “evil presence”.

This also happens to individuals when left alone in the anechoic chamber, and happens to NASA cadets to see how they handle these visions and mirages.

Professor of Health Neuroscience with the University of Cambridge, Paul Fletcher, at the time told Wired magazine; “It appears that, when confronted by lack of sensory patterns in our environment, we have a natural tendency to superimpose our own patterns.”

These are said to be due to the brain identifying the source of sounds incorrectly, and is called “faulty source monitoring”. When someone perceives a sound to be coming from themselves, they can accidentally identify it as from an outer source and this is what causes the confusion.

The relationship between sensory deprivation and these hallucinations is complex, but over the years a large body of evidence has accumulated suggesting that psychosis-like states, such as those from the effects of hallucinatory drugs and even those related to possible brain disorders such as schizophrenia, are produced when people are placed in these chambers.

It seems silence can be deafening; so much so that it could actually drive someone to insanity.

Jeff Harte has a BSc in Neuroscience from Trinity College Dublin and is currently studying for an MSc in Science Communications at Dublin City University.

CAREER PROFILE

SeĂĄn Duke talked to Emmet Tobin, who uses his engineering knowledge to ensure the safety of medical products.

Supported by

THE SAFETY ENGINEER

P

harmaceutical drugs and medical devices help millions of people worldiwde to live longer, and better lives. It is crucial, however, that existing products remain safe for consumers, despite ongoing changes in the materials or equipment used to produce them. It is also vital that everything possible has been done to ensure the safety of new medical devices and drugs. The front-line in the fight to ensure all these products are safe, time after time, are validation engineers like Emmet Tobin, based at Merck Millipore, in Cork.

The size of the medical device market Education is staggering, with approximately Waterford native Emmet had an 160,000 hip and knee joints replaced with unventful primary school education implanted devices each year in England before attending Mount Sion where he and Wales alone. The prescription drug started to show an aptitude for technical market is massive too, with an estimated subjects. He studied engineering and one sixth of the UK adult population, physics for his Leaving Certificate and or just under 8 million people, taking had an ambition to go into teaching. anti-depressant drugs on a regular However, the points for teacher training basis. Given these figures, from just courses were high, Emmet recalls, so he one country, our nearest neighbour, it is decided to apply for a manufacturing remarkable that industry has managed to produce medical products so safely for so technology course in Waterford Institute of Technology. He was accepted for long. that, and got this Higher Certificate in That they have done so is due in 2001. However, rather than seek work large part to the work of engineers like immediately he decided that he would Emmet that work diligently to ensure apply for another third-level course in that processes and Medical Engineering manufacturing standards comply By the time he graduated, and Medical Bioengineering at the with those of the he was ideally placed University of Bradford world’s leading to find work in the in the UK. regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical or drug The interest such as the US Federal device industry. in medicine and Drug Administration biology had been or the European stimulated by his Medicines Agency. We volunteering work with the Order of all take the safety of medical products for granted, and there is outrage when safety Malta in his youth. He was trained as an early responder to medical emergencies has been breached. This is the context and attended public events such as in which Emmet works. His work is gymkhanas, horse shows and rallies difficult - success is expected, and failure in that capacity. He did his research is unthinkable.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 15

and discovered that the University of Bradford had a long history of achievement in the bioengineering field.

The lecturers were well known, and some had been at the university since the start of hip and knee replacement surgery in the UK several decades before.

He decided this course was for him, and he made the brave decision to move to England to further his education. Emmet had a friend in Bradford, but he recalls that the initial six months were difficult as he tried to settle in, and make some friends. However, the course lived up to expectations: the lecturers were passionate and knowledgeable, and they covered key areas such as biomechanics, biodynamics, tissue engineering, medical ethics, and electronics.

There was an opportunity mid-way through his time at Bradford to come back to Ireland for a summer and work at the National Centre for Biomedical and Engineering Science at Galway. This helped him learn more about biology, and how to grow cells in the laboratory.

In his final year at Bradford he worked on a tissue engineering project focused on growing cells to replace damaged or burned skin tissue. By the time he graduated, he was ideally placed to find work in the pharmaceutical or drug device industry.

CAREER PROFILE

CAREER PROFILE

Supported by

crowd, Emmet said. At Bausch he had the responsible job of ensuring the safety After graduating in 2005, he returned of new products coming onto the market to Waterford where he got his first job and meeting the stringent regulatory working with the manufacuring division requirements of the US Federal Drug of Teva Pharmaceuticals in Ireland.

Administration and the European This operation was involved in the Medicines Board. He became familiar manufacturing of tablets and inhalers. with what it takes to deliver safe and Emmet worked there as a research and effective product onto the market time development engineer for two years. after time. This was a responsible and However, he started to important position. become restless after His first job in It was different to other a few years, as he was Ireland outside of working environments still living at home Cork came next with with his parents, and he had been in, but it was Stryker Orthopaedics was keen to strike out another new, valuable at Carrigtwohill. on his own. Another The products here experience factor in his getting were a long way itchy feet was that he removed from felt that the wheels of the pharmaceutical disposable contact lenses. Instead industry turned very slowly, and it took they produced hip and knee implants a long time to get things done. He was and other medical devices that were getting bored. Then in 2007 his mother designed to last for 15 to 20 years or passed away, and he decided he would more inside the body. Again he worked give up his secure, permanent job and as a validation engineering making go travelling the world. His career was sure that new Stryker products, or the effectively put on pause, and leaving industrial processes in place to develop his job was something of a risk, but he these products, complied with safety was betting that he would still be well regulations. It was a hard-driving culture placed to get job when he returned to at Stryker, with people regularly working Ireland. The travelling brought him to long hours, and pressure to get the job South Korea where he taught English as done. It was different to other working a foreign language. It was hard work, environments he had been in, but it was but he gained very valuable experience another new, valuable experience. working in an Asian country.

Emmet returned to Ireland in 2008, Working day and suddenly the country was in the At Millipore Emmet spends a good deal middle of a huge economic crisis. He of his time on the computer writing found himself out of work for several safety protocols, or plans for how the months, but finally got a new job in his safety of products and processes can be native Waterford with the giant contact continually ensured. He also runs tests of lens manufacturer Bausch and Lomb. various kinds, liases with people on-site The fact that he had been educated in the and off-site as required. These people UK, and had travelled and experienced include other engineers, operators, life abroad helped to ‘put some colour on chemists and vendors, for example. his CV’ and make it stand out from the

Work

Cpl Science, Engineering & Supply Chain is unique in that we have strategic partnerships with the majority of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies in Ireland and globally.

As a result of our reputation for quality, excellence, delivery and understanding of our clients’ needs we are also the first port of call for any new scientific business ventures that are considering setting up in Ireland.

Millipore produces a lot of different products, so Emmet is kept extremely busy with ensuring the safety of existing products and processes, as well as new products. He has been ‘ up the walls’ with work at Millipore since his arrival there, and has no time to get bored. The job is challenging and rewarding, with a great deal of variety, and that’s the way he likes to have things.

Advice

In terms of advising the current crop of school leavers, Emmet says that engineering is an excellent choice for those that are technically minded.

Engineering offers many options to change career path and people can end up doing things that they like that they had never envisioned starting out. For example, Emmet says that he would never have thought that he would have ended up being involved with making hip implants when he started his course at WIT. Engineering offers multiple career choices, and unlike some other careers, people don’t tend to easily get ‘boxed in’ careerwise. It also offers the opportunity to travel, gain experience, and work with many different companies. The only downside, he offers is that the work can be very responsible and serious and there can be a lot of pressure at times to get the job done.

There is also the fact. that bioengineers are highly sought after in Ireland. Emmet says that at any time he has a choice of potential jobs available to him, given his specialised education and the high level of his work experience . If I updated my CV on Monster one day I might get 20 calls about jobs the next day, said Emmet. These days in Ireland, he acknowledges that this is a very privileged position to be in.

Cpl truly appreciates and values finding the “perfect technical match” and we provide candidates and clients with an individualised, quality service, carefully tailored to meet the specific needs of our customers.

CPL Resources plc, 83 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Phone: +353 1 614 6000 Email:info@cpl.ie www.cpl.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 16

A HeAd for rocks

Anthea Lacchia explains why so many geologists are drawn to the Loop Head peninsula in Co. Clare

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ike an index finger pointing out into the wild Atlantic, Loop Head peninsula is a peaceful and fascinating destination, unspoilt by human activity.

Having recently won The Irish Times “Best Place to Holiday in Ireland” award, the area is sure to attract more visitors in the future. But Loop Head has long been known to a particular breed of tourist who tends to venture far too close to the cliff edge: the geologist.

Indeed, put a sedimentology student on Loop Head and the likely reaction you will see is that of an art student in the Sistine Chapel or that of an historian in front of a time-travel machine. The area is increasingly being recognised as a valuable training ground for geologists from the oil and gas industry and has been studied by them since the 1950s. So what’s the main attraction? Why, the Ross Sandstone Formation of course, which is superbly exposed on the peninsula: this is

a succession of deep-water turbidites, the deposits of turbidity currents, gravitydriven mixtures of sediment in water.

It is primarily composed of sandstones, but also contains interbedded shales and slump horizons. It is interpreted as a deep-water fan deposit.

Let’s take a journey through Clare and in time to understand how these rocks came into being. They were deposited in an ancient sedimentary basin variably known as Shannon Basin, Clare Basin and Western Irish Namurian Basin, roughly 320 million years ago, during the Carboniferous, a time when Ireland’s landscape was very different from today. Forget the familiar boggy hills and carved-out glacial valleys: in the beginning of the Carboniferous, warm

The northern coastline of Loop Head.

Photo: A Lacchia. tropical seas inundated Ireland, which lay close to the equator at the time. In these waters, animal life flourished and, over time, calcite precipitated out to form limestone, which is such a dominant component of Ireland’s geology today.

One only has to think of the Burren: the pale limestone terraces that give the area its lunar quality accumulated during the Lower Carboniferous. If you examine them closely, you will see that they bear the scars of past marine life in the form of fossils. On our way to Loop Head, why not take the time to inspect these limestone surfaces? If we take a stroll along the golden sands of Fanore Beach,

The sea stack known as Diarmuid and Grainne’s rock. Photo: A. Lacchia.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page xx

The location and geological structure of the Northern part of Western Irish Namurian Basin.

Chart after Martinsen and Collinson 2002. we will find fossil corals, brachiopods and bivalves, beautifully preserved on wave-polished surfaces.

When we have taken in the karstic landscape and admired its colourful flowers, let us move further south along the Clare coastline, towards Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher: here, the cliff faces are composed of shales, silts and sandstones (siliciclastic sediments). These rocks overlie the limestone pavement. In fact, around the Middle Carboniferous, there was a switch from carbonate to clastic sediment deposition. Sand, silt and clay were fed into the Shannon Basin via large river systems that were draining a source area somewhere to the southwest, west and northwest in the present-day Atlantic Ocean.

As we make our way towards Loop Head, why not stop at Kilkee for

refreshments? Then, as we sit looking at the sun setting in the Atlantic, it is amusing to imagine that when the rocks we are perched on were forming, land Ripples created millions of years ago on sand that once lay flat. At the Bridges of Ross.

Photo: A Lacchia.

Variscan structure on north coast.

Photo: A. Lacchia.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page xx

would have been present where now there is sea. But such is the topsy-turvy history of our planet.

The Shannon Basin itself was just one of a series of interconnected basins within a large continental landmass. The basin is thought to have formed as a result of crustal extension and has an axis roughly parallel to the Shannon Estuary. Inland exposure is poor, but the basin is thought to extend from Co. Clare to Co. Kerry and Co. Cork.

The basin fill succession begins with the deep water Clare Shales. These are overlain by the turbidite sequences of the Ross Sandstone Formation, in turn overlain by the muddier Gull Island Formation, which grades up into the shallow marine and continental deposits of the Central Clare Group. So the basin fill has an overall shallowing-upward trend.

Certain aspects of its history, however, have not yet been fully resolved, leading to lively, and often quite fierce, discussion among geologists. So Loop Head is sure to attract this breed of migrant tourist for a long time and its local economy and tourism will undoubtedly benefit.

At dusk, we finally reach the peninsula, where we can stay in one of the friendly guesthouses close to the village of Cross. Tomorrow we will finally explore the peninsula itself and the deep-water sandstones that make up its geology. One word of caution: the cliffs on Loop Head are generally very steep and the sandstone surfaces are extremely slippery when wet. Hiking boots are essential.

So lace them up and let’s start at Bridges of Ross, a well-known locality on the north coast, which takes its name from the spectacular sandstone sea arches, formed after erosion of the core of pre-existing folds. Although two arches were once present there, only one remains. If you make your way along the path past the arch, you will soon see a prominent mud-rich slump unit called the Ross Slump. If you follow the slump and walk to the tip of the headland that borders Ross Bay, you will see a black shale unit about four metres-thick, forming a gully. Look closely and you’re sure to find beautiful 3-D fossil shells on the shale: these are goniatites, extinct relatives of squid and cuttlefish. These marine animals are preserved at several levels throughout the Ross Sandstone Formation and are used in detailed correlation between outcrops and also between outcrops and cores (several research boreholes have been drilled behind these outcrops). In the Shannon

Basin and elsewhere in north-west Europe, goniatites and bivalves have long been known from widespread, black shales, but they can sometimes also be recovered from siltstone and sandstone horizons. When examined under a microscope, the detailed shell ornament of these animals is truly marvellous and allows species description.

Another essential stop is the tip of Loop Head: here, after a guided tour of the lighthouse, we can take our pick of hiking trails around the headland, famous for its seabird colonies, not leaving out the seastack known as Diarmuid and Grainne’s rock (it is worth asking the locals to recount the legend and history behind it).

The sandstone beds, with occasional goniatite-bearing shales, are clearly visible in cliff-section here and we are lucky enough to meet a group of geologists intent on sketching one of the sections. After a few pleasantries about the weather, some of the geologists explain that the reason why these rocky exposures are so interesting is because they allow us to glimpse rocks that are usually buried deep under the oceans and to do so from the comfort of dry land.

The Ross Sandstone, as a deep-water sequence, is a very useful analogue for oil and gas bearing sequences found elsewhere in the world. Thus, industry geologists flock to this rugged coastline not to look for any natural resources on-site, but because the rocks are a study area, a training ground for prospecting elsewhere on the planet.

If there was a geological Grand Tour, Loop Head would surely be one of the destinations.

A fossil goniatite, related to modern squids and cuttlefish, Phillipsoceras circumplicatile, from south coast, west of Dunmore Head. Photo: A. Lacchia.

Black-backed Gulls keeping watch at Kilcredaun.

Colonies of seabirds are resident on the cliffs.

Photo: A. Lacchia.

To find out more‌ Haughton, P. 2009. Super Sedimentological Exposures: The Ross Formation on Loop Head, SW County Clare, Ireland. International Association of Sedimentologists Newsletter 224.

Sea Arch at Bridges of Ross. Photo: G. Mc Crossan.

Goniatite-bearing black shale, Cloghaunsavaun, north coast.

Photo: A. Lacchia.

Anthea Lacchia is a postgraduate researcher at the Department of Geology, Trinity College Dublin.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 19

MRI scan of brain by Peter Jezzard, FMRIB Centre, University of Oxford. From The Sensational Brain.

The brain challenge Marie-Catherine Mousseau reports that a change in focus from symptoms to the underlying causes would help meet the enormous challenges of treating a variety of brain disorders

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s the 1990-1999 Decade of the Brain unfolded, new neuroimaging techniques generated an explosion of research into the brain, with applications in many clinical areas including neuropsychology, neurology and psychiatry, to name but a few.

However, the ever growing prevalence of brain diseases makes us wonder whether the findings of such research are actually translated into practical use for society.

Brain disorders span more than 200 conditions, from neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, right across the spectrum to acquired brain injury and mental health. More than 700,000 Irish people currently live with a brain disorder and one in three Europeans (165 million people) is likely to be affected by them in their lifetime, with an estimated cost to the European economy of €798 billion every year.

In spite of this huge burden, there are few effective treatments and developing new treatments for brain disorders takes longer and costs more than for other diseases. “The fall in the European neuroscience investment has been dramatic. The investment trend in neuroscience is very worrying, given that the world is living considerably longer and ageing means they develop more brain diseases,” said Mary Baker, president of the European Brain Council, who was one of the speakers at the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) Stakeholder Forum 2013, recently held in Brussels.

Also speaking at the IMI forum was Prof Richard Frackowiak, Head of Service of Neurology, CHUV University Hospital, Switzerland, who commented: “Pharma industry put a lot of money into stroke and dementia, but they hit a brick wall… they pulled out from these areas.”

So what is going wrong?

According to Prof Frackowiak, the answer lies in one sentence: “Thinking needs to move from a descriptive diagnostic to a mechanistic diagnostic.” In the rest of his talk he went on to explain what this means and how to achieve it.

“25 to 30 per cent of Alzheimer’s cases are not diagnosed accurately,” he said. Elaborating on the example of Alzheimer’s disease, he continued: “We are very good at describing the pathology at any time point but have little idea about the mechanism. What is the role of the abnormal proteins amyloid? Are they that abnormal? What is the role of genes?

What abnormalities are causes and which effects?” He also indicated that some people have these abnormalities in the brain characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease (what he called carriers), but don’t develop the clinical symptoms – how do they manage to compensate?

According to Prof Frackowiak, clinical neuroscience is at a tipping point. “Syndromic” diagnostic (i.e. diagnostic based on a group of symptoms) has reached its limit; what we need now is mechanistic/causal diagnostic. “When we find the cause, we find the cure!” he added enthusiastically, referring to the example of HIV. However, he also reckoned that achieving a mechanistic diagnostic, as he called it, is anything but simple. “Nature is more complex than we think,” he said. “And the brain being the most complex organ of all, understanding underlying causes for brain diseases is extremely difficult.”

Many methods, much data, no holistic concept

In the face of such complexity, neuroscience is up against a major challenge: the divide between different scales of approach – that is the lack of a holistic concept of the brain.

“Neuroscience is very modern. It came into being during our lifetimes,” Prof Frackowiak noted. “So if we say we have 30-35 years of real modern neuroscience; that represents three million papers published. But the real problem is that all this information is very fragmented and atheoretic [i.e. lacking a theoretical basis]”, he continued. “There are so many ways in which we can look at bits of the brain at various scales – sub-cellular, cellular,

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tissue resolution, and whole brain scale. And we have no idea about defining the relationship between the different scales of brain organisation”.

Well, he added, that’s not entirely true… There are some ideas – what he called rules. For instance, the Hodgkin–Huxley model which in 1952 described the flux of ions responsible for the generation of action potentials (electrical impulses which transmit neuronal messages); there are also structural rules about the organisation of neurons in columns, or the different types of neurons involved and their distribution. Models are also being created such as in the Blue Brain Project conducted in rats which tests responses in vitro and in vivo and ensure they are identical.

But what would be extremely useful is “the ability to put together these rules that define the relationships between different levels of organisation and make predictions,” Prof Frackowiak noted. “That’s what we are trying to do, going from the lowest to the highest level, and trying to understand the connection between the different elements – i.e. genetic code, protein expression, ionic channels, network production, coming up to the macro organisation and finally emerging to higher brain functions (cognition, emotion, etc.).”

“So the aim now is to integrate theoretical concepts coming from animal studies, human images, and neuroscience research including molecular approaches… to try to federate and integrate the data that exist, bridge the different scales of organisation, so that we can develop a theory of the brain,” Prof Frackowiak summarised.

“The question is: how can we do this in something as complex as the brain?”

Modern information technology

According to Prof Frackowiak, the answer lies in three words: “modern computer technology.” “The explosive development of modern technology has been underused in biology,” he pointed

out. Physics has been very good at using supercomputing capabilities to analyse huge amount of data (e.g. the hundreds of millions of collisions taking place each second in particle accelerators); but now biology needs to go down that road too.

This is starting with new approaches making use of modern information technology being developed. These include attempts to represent the brain disease space as a function of genetic associations – a “human neurodiseasome,” as Prof Frackowiak put it. We are also better at diagnosis using neuroimaging, he continued, referring to the sophisticated software now available to analyse and classify brain images. For instance computerbased image classification can be used to assess Alzheimer’srelated changes.

The Human Brain Project is another example of the use of new computing technologies, where brain data coming from labs all over the world are pooled together and integrated in an attempt to simulate the human brain.

More generally, multi-scale and integrative supercomputing should be used as “an intelligent tool for managing and mining massive data,” Prof Frackowiak insisted. He thinks that this is where the future of neuroscience lies. The clever use of information technology will enable a “multi-level view of the brain,” leading to a better understanding of the “causal chain of events from genes to cognition,” And accordingly, this is also where the future of medicine lies. Early diagnosis, preventive medicine, personalised medicine, all would be rendered possible by, as he put it, the development of “unique biological signatures of disease” (biomarkers) and the move “from symptom-based to biologically based classifications.”

The presentations of some of the IMI projects that followed illustrated his point, demonstrating how collaborative research involving the pooling and analysis of large amount of data could significantly improve early diagnosis and drug development for conditions such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and autism.

Innovative Medicines Initiative The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a public-private partnership in healthcare, where pharmaceutical companies and academics are collaborating in research projects with the ultimate goal of accelerating the development of safer and more effective treatments for patients. IMI is born from the collaboration between the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry: The European Union contributes €1

IMI PROJECTS Autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects around one in a hundred children, but still has no effective drug treatments. The EUAIMS (European Autism Interventions — A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications) project brings together teams of researchers from universities and industry, led by Roche and King’s College London, to find out more about the causes of ASD, develop new tests for the condition and identify potential drugs.

One of EU-AIMS’s promising results suggests that it might be possible to reverse some of the brain changes in autism. The neuroligin-3 gene has been linked with inherited cases of autism.

Mice that are missing the neuroligin-3 gene have overactive glutamate receptors, which causes problems with learning and brain development. Indeed, glutamate regulates the development and elimination of neurons and synapses, and therefore, while essential, can also be highly toxic. When the mice are triggered

billion to the IMI research programme, which is matched by contributions worth at least another €1 billion from the member companies of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). The IMI currently supports 40 projects. More info at www.imi.europa.eu

to produce normal levels of neuroligin-3, the glutamate receptor activity returned to healthy levels, and more significantly, the autism-like changes in the mouse brains returned to normal.

Professor Declan G Murphy, Professor of Translational Neurodevelopment, Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences, King’s College London, and the Academic Lead for the project, commented: “We have used mouse models to identify new drug targets, providing new mechanisms for the disease that we didn’t know a year ago.

It’s early days yet but if we can find the same abnormalities in humans, and can reverse them in the same way that we have reversed them in mice, we could slow the development of the disease and make it more manageable, or even prevent it completely. We have also demonstrated proof of concept that abnormal brain activity in adults with autism can be reversed by modulating brain serotonin. We now want to see if we can translate those findings to the clinic.”

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Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia affects around 24 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation. However, few truly game-changing medications have reached the market in the last few years. NEWMEDS brings together seven academic research institutions, nine major pharmaceutical companies and three small and medium-sized enterprises into one consortium.

All of their data have been pooled to create the largest known database of studies on schizophrenia, including information on over 23,000 patients from 67 studies in over 25 countries. This new database will help overcome three major bottlenecks in the discovery of targeted treatments for schizophrenia: (1) Develop more accurate animal models to guide drug discovery.

The NEWMEDS team uses brain imaging and behavioural tests to bridge the gap between animal studies and human clinical trials.

(2) Revise clinical trial methodologies that have remained unchanged for many years. NEWMEDS has found that clinical trials comparing active treatment with placebo, which usually take 6 weeks, could be shortened by a week of two.

(3) Create tools and tests that can show early signs of efficacy in studies in healthy volunteers. The project is hunting for biomarkers* that could be used to signpost early signs of efficacy in new drugs tested in healthy volunteers, or to match patients with the most effective drugs. Project Coordinator Tine Bryan Stensbøl, Divisional Director, Discovery Pharmacology Research at H. Lundbeck, explained that schizophrenia is not a single entity, and only certain patients respond to certain medications.

“Different groups of patients should be treated in different ways, and the NEWMEDS project could give us the tools to find new drugs and test them in the patients most likely to respond.”

The genetics of schizophrenia is also key to the project; people whose parents both have schizophrenia have a 50 per cent chance of developing the disease themselves. For people with no family history of schizophrenia, that figure is just one per cent. One of the genetic risk factors is called ‘copy number variations’. The aim is to understand the changes it causes in order to pave the way to the development of new treatments.

Pharma-Cog: The Pharma-Cog project is aimed at developing animal models that more closely mimic Alzheimer’s disease in humans. The hope is that such models will be better at predicting how effective the drug is in humans. The working hypothesis of Pharma-Cog is that no single physiological, functional or biochemical marker is sensitive enough to provide the confidence to progress a drug candidate to later clinical phase studies, but that a collection of biomarkers* is necessary. To achieve this, a multidimensional “MATRIX” approach will be implemented throughout the project, by conducting parallel studies in animals, healthy volunteers and selected patient cohorts using the same therapeutic interventions.

Pharma-Cog Project Coordinator Dr Jill C. Richardson, Director, External Alliances and Development, R&D China at GlaxoSmithKline says: “We believe the application of a multidimensional matrix to detect early disease and its response to novel drugs will reduce attrition in Phase III studies, which will speed up the development of crucially needed new treatments for this devastating disease.”

EMIF-AD: There have been many different studies on Alzheimer’s disease, and there is a huge volume of data available, but little of it is linked together, which makes it hard to use. The aim of EMIF-AD is to connect data from a variety of sources such as patient health records, research cohorts, biobanks, registries, epidemiology studies and biomarker research. The EMIF project has access to around 48 million patient records from 7 different countries, and the EMIF-AD project will benefit from this information. The next step is to work out how to structure, analyse and harmonise the data.

By delving into the EMIF-AD data, researchers hope to find biomarkers* for early onset disease to identify the people who are at risk. The same markers could be used for early diagnosis and treatment, picking the patients who are most likely to benefit.

Alzheimer’s disease

* Biomarkers are specific characteristics of health or disease, which can help drugs move through the clinic and onto the market. They can be used to select the patients who are most likely to respond to certain treatments, or who might experience fewer side effects. By including just these patients in clinical trials, drug studies can be faster, smaller, more efficient and cheaper. Altogether these projects exemplify how finding relevant biomarkers can be facilitated by the use of modern computer technologies enabling the pooling and analyses on large amount of data.

The Human Brain Project — HBP

The Blue Brain Project — BBP

Alzheimer’s disease can be present for 10 to 20 years before the symptoms emerge (known as the prodromal period), but currently it is hard to predict who will develop the disease.

Available drugs do help, but only treat the symptoms and don’t slow the progression of the disease. Many drug candidates have failed, partly because improvements seen in animals don’t necessarily translate into benefits in people.

HBP is a European research project using supercomputers to integrate brain data available all across the world in computer models and simulations of the brain to better understand its functioning. The idea is to detect patterns and organisational principles that only appear when the data are put together, and identify gaps to be filled with new experiments. It is a largescale project offering an opportunity to coordinate the work of around 150 international scientific groups (of which the blue brain project [see below] will be just one) towards a unifying goal – that is lay the technical foundations for a new era of ICT-based human brain research. More info at http://www.humanbrainproject.eu

The Blue Brain Project (BBP) uses a supercomputer supplied by IBM to reconstruct the brain piece by piece based on a biologically realistic model of neurons. As a first step, the project succeeded in simulating a rat cortical column. This neuronal network, the size of a pinhead, recurs repeatedly in the cortex (100,000 columns of about 10,000 neurons each in rats; two million columns, 100,000 neurons each in humans). Such models will be basic building blocks for larger scale models leading to a complete virtual brain.

More info at http://bluebrain.epfl.ch

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

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 22

Getting into a sinister bind Tom Kennedy writes about an anti-clockwise climber

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or a plant that lacks the ability to stand up on its own, the common field bindweed is well able to rise well above its neighbours. Without the upstanding neighbours, be they bushes, nettles, grasses, post or fence, the bindweed would never get off the ground. Putting all its energy into rapid growth, while other plants are investing a lot of their resources into building woody stems is a remarkably successful strategy. Within weeks the slender winding stems have curled all their way up to the top, and even then they send up tendrils which, finding nothing else to hold onto, twist back on themselves. Posts and walls are better at taking on the strain, and about this time of the year the trumpet-like white flowers seem to adorn every chainlink fence.

While most climbing plants turn to the right, the bindweeds are an oddity in that they turn to the left, anticlockwise, as if defying the Sun, and so strong is their sinistral progress that a complete turn can be completed in about two hours.

Turning to the right is more common in nature, and we can probably blame the ancient Romans for perpetuating the idea that a turn to the left is somehow sinister, for the terms sinistral and and dextral are Latin. The notion of the left being sinister already existed well before the Romans came on the scene, and it could well have been because the ancients, facing the Sun, might have attached great significance to its apparent left to right course across the sky.

However, with plants and animals, there is nothing particularly sinister about twirling left, and among gastropod shelled snails, a small minority are sinestrial, and as fossils show, this was probably always the case.

From a plant’s or animal’s point of view, being consistent can be more important than whether to turn left or right, but as a Japanese researcher, Masaki Hoao from Tohoku University, found, survival can depend on choosing sides. Masaki had observed that in a particular type of Satsuma snail, those with a left hand twirl to their shell were unable to mate with the more usual dextrial individuals, yet both forms were common enough. This raised a question as to why the sinestrial trait

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persisted. The answer came in the form of a snail-eating snake. The snake, from the Pareatidae family hunts snails, and while being perfectly adapted to make a sudden lunge into a right-hand shell, it cannot do the same with a sinestrial snail. Thus, changing over from right to left has given the snail an evolutionary advantage.

The common bindweed, Calystegia sepium, belongs to a large and well distributed family, the Convolvolaceae.

Webb’s Irish Flora lists three other species, C soldanella, C silvatica, C pulchra and one pink-flowered sub-species in Ireland, but around the world there are about 2,800 species in the broad family. Most are climbers, and they all have that characteristic trumped-shaped flower made from five fused petals.

In another sense bindweed deserves to be referred to as sinister, for it is a fairly powerful purgative, and whatever about the Irish species, seeds from some of its close relatives, such as blue flowering Morning Glory, Ipomoea indica, are

Flying in for a snack. The five petals are fused into one trumpet shaped flower. capable of literally sending people out of their minds. The alkaloid responsible for this is a compound of lysergic acid, probably best known for its semisynthetic form, LSD. Morning Glory is a popular garden ornamental, but when it was discovered that it produces potentially hallucinogenic seeds, there was a bit of a scare. Not that it could do much to halt its spread, and in Australia, for example, where it clambers over everything just like its Irish relative, it is classed as a noxious weed.

At first it was thought that the lysergic acid was produced by the plant itself, but now it is understood to come from a ergot-like fungus that, more than likely, has taken up symbiotic residence. During the Middle Ages, ergot, Claviceps purpurea, was the fungus that caused St Anthony’s Fire. Bread contaminated by the fungus caused hallucinations, convulsions and often death.

Morning Glory growing by the roadside in the Sunshine Coast of Australia.

In spite of its attractive appearance, it is regarded as an unwelcome invasive weed that makes it harder for Australian natives to survive.

Oddly enough, while the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, according to Dioscorides, included species of bindweed, such as Calystegia sepium, among their medicinal herbs, there is little mention of this plant in Irish folklore, and one possible reason for this is that it might not have arrived until relatively recently. Zoe Devlin, in her excellent listing of Irish plants gives an Irish name, Ialus fáil, and while

my old Dinneen’s Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla dictionary tells me that Iall roughly translates as a loop or piece of binding string, I don’t know if that name has been around for all that long. Bindweed may have been introduced from England, where it was included in a ‘Name of Herbs’ list produced in 1548, but whenever it arrived, the highly invasive would have had no problem taking up residence. The seeds remain viable for decades, and all it takes for bindweed to become firmly established is one tiny fragment of root. Gardeners beware.

Once in, never out.

While most shells twist to the right, the occasional individual turns to the left.

Fossil shells from the Devonian Era show that this has been happening for millions of years.

Weird and wonderful animals

Sive Finlay introduces us to the flightless and nocturnal Kakapo the world’s largest parrot

like depressions into the ground. These bowls, often constructed in front of a rock or cliff face, are effectively used as sonic amplifiers. To attract females, male Kakapos emit loud, low “boom” sounds by inflating their chest like a balloon.

The sound is reflected by their bowls and can sometimes be heard up to 5 km away. After a series of around 20 booms, they produce a high-pitched “ching” sound which females can use to pinpoint the exact location of her chosen mate.

Amazingly, these males can produce mating calls constantly for eight hours every night for 2-3 months!

After mating, females are left to incubate and raise their chicks alone or a generation of movie fans, any (perhaps the exhausted males are in need trip to New Zealand might hope to include encounters with wargs, ents, orcs, of a few throat lozenges?)

Once widespread throughout the hobbits and elves. While talking trees and North and South Islands of New Zealand, fantastical creatures are unfortunately Kakapos are now critically endangered. confined to Middle Earth, New Zealand There are fewer than 150 individuals still boasts an impressive array of weird left, most of which are conserved on and wonderful wildlife. two predator-free islands off the New Kakapos are the world’s largest Zealand mainland. parrot (3-4kg) and only flightless parrot The alarming decline in Kakapo with one of the longest known lifespans numbers is the result of a quirk of their for birds (average of around 95 years). evolutionary history. Kakapos evolved Their scientific name, Strigops habroptila in an environment free from mammal means “owl-like” a reference to their predators – bats are large, flattened faces the only native land encompassed by a ring mammals in New of feathers. Kakapos’ Zealand. Their main owl-like tendencies anti-predator defences Green shows also extend to their are their camouflaged distribution in status as the world’s mottled-green feathers New Zealand since only nocturnal parrot. and their instinct 1840, and paler Kakapos have to just stay still in areas show former some very strange dense vegetation territories. behaviour. Instead of when alarmed or flying to get around threatened. they use their large, These were muscular legs to “jog” excellent strategies through the forest when their predators undergrowth. They consisted only of are also excellent birds which hunted tree climbers and by day. Unfortunately sometimes spread for the Kakapos, out their wings to the techniques were parachute down from not so effective when confronted with high branches. Some of their weirdest mammal predators such as cats, rats, oddities are associated with their ferrets and stoats that accompanied the reproductive behaviour. earliest Maori colonisers. Kakapos’ “sit Kakapos have what is known as a lek still and hope they don’t see me” strategy breeding system; males gather together was no match for the new, fast, scentin a large breeding arena to compete for reliant mammal predators with which the amorous attention of females. Males they were now confronted. Furthermore, set up court by digging their own bowl-

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humans, the most deadly invasive mammal of all, hunted thousands of Kakapos for their meat and feathers to use in ceremonial garments.

Since the 1980s the Kakapo Recovery Team has devoted extensive conservation efforts towards protecting and increasing the dwindling Kakapo population.

Staff and volunteers look after two populations on Codfish and Anchor Islands. With such a small remaining population, each individual is precious and receives every possible aid for its survival. Supplementary feeding of females helps to boost both the frequency and success of reproduction.

Careful and balanced feeding can also help to influence the sex of new offspring, a critical intervention when the population is so low. The conservation team is always looking for interested volunteers. If you are so inclined, you can volunteer to mount a 24-hour guard against predators from your tent beside a Kakapo’s nest, poised to place the precious egg in an incubator to protect it from the cold night air while the mother wanders off for a feed.

Kakapos, and the efforts made to conserve them, have been features of wildlife literature and media for many years. Recently, the cross-species, amorous tendencies of a male Kakapo, Sirocco in Stephen Fry’s Last Chance to See series boosted Kakapos’ fame for BBC and YouTube viewers alike. Let’s hope there will be many more chances to see these weird ground-running, lek-making, boom-producing, wonderful nocturnal parrots for many years to come.

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

Exploring the rocky wonders of Laois and Offaly

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his is an exceptional book. In fact, it is one of the best that has ever been published here on geology or the Irish landscape, and in richness of content this 400 page book deserves to share shelf space with classics like Kane’s Industrial Resources, or Mitchell’s Irish Landscape.

Although the books’s focus is on Laois and Offaly, the author, John Feehan, strays far and wide and what he has to say about these counties often has a bearing on what we find in other areas of Ireland. For example, many of the houses that line the streets of Rathmines, Rathgar and Portobello in Dublin were built with bricks from Athy and Durrow, and anyone who has paused to admire the Guinness Hop Store might be interested to know that brickwork originated in the clay at Graigue, a small community outside Tullamore.

John Feehan makes lots of connections, and that’s one of the reasons why delving into this book is like setting off on a journey of discovery. From the brickfields we can follow a trail back into the ice ages and beyond, and as we learn, what humans got up to, either by way of farming

or industry, was often based on what happened in the geological past.

Blue and grey late glacial clays, up to five metres deep by the River Brosna, provided the raw material for an army of brickmakers. As yellow bricks from the remote and isolated village of Pollagh became popular, there was a boom. By the end of the 19th century there were 14 brickyards in the immediate area, each producing about 5,000 bricks a day, including some extras, known as The midland counties have been a source of iron, coal, peat, building stones, gravel and countless bricks such as these in Mountmellick.

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“dog bricks” to allow for wastage. As John Feehan, who gives a very good account of how the brickmakers worked, explains, the term refers to stray dogs wandering in and spoiling un-fired bricks that had been lain out to dry.

Retreating ice had a big influence in shaping the landscape, often in ways that are not immediately obvious. The author describes how glaciers often acted as temporary dams, leaving a blanket of lake deposits behind when melt-waters drained away. On melting the moving glaciers pushed everything along in their path before dropping mounds of sand and gravel, creating the eskers that are so characteristic of the midlands. Along the top of these ran one of Ireland’s ancient highways, the Sligh Mhór, also known as the Eiscir Riada, the dividing line between two Gaelic kingdoms. Having agreed on this division, Eoghan Mór and Conn of the Hundred Battles apparently had second thoughts, resulting in the Battle of Magh Léana. John Feehan helpfully provides us with a facsimile and a translation of a 13th century manuscript, the Cath Mhuighe Léana, which tells us that there were no clear

winners, but considerable bloodshedof new as a fuel and the development made. Then liquid is pumped in to force in a clash that occurred somewhere technology, it may now be economically apart the layers of rock strata, making it between Tullamore viable to extractand theKilbeggan. gas from the easier to release the gas.

Motorists speeding from Dublin Northwest Carboniferous Basin.

Already, concerns have been expressed to Galway alonggas theisN6 might not Natural composed mainly of about the use of this method of extraction be aware that they methane, CH4.are It istravelling a clean-burning fuel in Ireland and local activists in the alongand theissame set of ridges, but asfriendly more environmentally Sligo/Leitrim region are opposing the the author points out,Itour than coal or oil. canancestors be used both exploration. It is feared that disturbing would been heating much more forhave domestic and aware cooking and the geological strata in this way could of these natural features.

Every for electricity generation.

It rock, would be cause seismic tremors. There are also rise and springfor had significance, and natural beneficial Ireland to develop fears that substances in the fracking Johngas Feehan, has spent yearssource. as anwho indigenous energy fluids could leach into the ground water exploring the midlands, Unfortunately, thereclearly are technical and cause contamination. There is even shares this sense wonder.

Far from problems, asof this gas will not be easy to a mobile cinema travelling through the beingextract. dismissive of the old myths, region, showing a documentary film, John sees them as of themillions Natural gasevidence was formed, made in America, called ‘Gaslands’, sameofsort of curiosity drives years ago, in a that marine environment. which aims to show the risks associated scientists, like himself, to ask lots of of the It arose from the decomposition with hydraulic fracturing. The plot of a questions andofsearch for of answers. remains millions tiny plants and recent episode of CSI dealt with the same We all like stories, but we animals that died andalso sankwant to the sea theme and showed dramatic images of satisfactory bed andexplanations. became trapped in sediments of water from a tap apparently catching John observes that many clayFeehan or sand.

In conventional gas fields, fire and a huge explosion erupting “seem to have immune to in pockets, natural gasgrown may accumulate from a well, because there was so much the wonders oftrapped the wayunder the Earth when it is a dome shaped flammable gas entrained in it. No doubt works,” yet is now a rock. muchVertical layer ofthere impermeable this makes for good TV and cinema greater depththrough of knowledge to drilling the overlying rock will viewing, but it also serves to scare people explore.

Those eskers, example, readily release thefor gas. and make them worried about any were not justLough produced one Gas Field The AlleninNatural attempt to extract natural gas from such uniformly chilly ice age, nor were is an unconventional carboniferous gas unconventional fields. they basin, produced from350 just one iceyears cap. ago. At formed million If it turns out that there is a Careful of thewas Irish eskers thatmapping time, Ireland part of a greater commercially viable gas prospect. has revealed that they represent theand the land mass, see Science Spin 37, in the Northwest of `Ireland, both the flow Lough from four different domes as Pillars of polished stoneand fromthe Cloney are one of the most Allen field was once contiguous companies licencing authorities the ice pushed its way through striking features of the Museum at Trinityto with the Appalachian Basinthe in the USA, would do well to takeBuilding time to explain ancient landscape, limestone College Dublin. where natural leveling gas is being extracted at the public, in precise detail, exactly how karst,present. similar Ittoconsists that exposed now of tight gas sandstone it will be extracted. Modern fracking in thereservoirs, Burren, and causing great which are less porous and fluids consist mainly of water, but they wetlands to form hundreds of permeable than in conventional fields, usually contain certain additives, most of metres aboveitadifficult sea leveltothat wasthe gas. making extract which are substances already in common considerably thanyears, it is today.

However,lower in recent a new method use and should pose no great risk to the has been developed to extract natural gas environment. In any case, it is likely that from tight gas and shale gas reservoirs. the gas reservoirs would be at a much This method uses horizontal drilling, lower level than the water table and combined with hydraulic fracturing, there would be a natural impermeable colloqually known as ‘fracking’. A barrier above the gas field, preventing vertical bore is first drilled to the required contamination of ground water. But the Sandstone flags were quarried in a number of locations, and depth, then several horizontal drills are public need to be reassured about this. the richly patterned crinoidal limestone from Clorhane was in great demand for chimney pieces and ornamental slabs.

We are now living in what appears Additives in use at present in fracking to be an extended interglacial, and fluids in the USA include the following: over the last 2.6 million years there potassium chloride to reduce friction, have been about 80 glacial cycles. hydrochloric acid to remove drilling We know that there were dramatic mud damage, gluteraldehyde to prevent climatic changes, the evidence is there, microorganisms from fouling the but as John Feehan explains, we have fractures and dimethyl formamide (DMF) to look far beyond Offaly and Laois which is an oxygen scavenger, to prevent to find some explanations as to why corrosion of the pipes. These substances the ice advanced. For example, when are all in common use. great lakes in north-eastern America Potassium chloride is a component of drained, cold waters entering the argicultural fertilizers, and is present in Atlantic disrupted the Gulf Stream for our own body fluids, hydrochloric acid 1,200 years, and this caused a return is produced with the gastric juices in the to icy conditions that wiped out the human stomach, glutaralhedyde is used herds of giant Irish deer. in the healthcare industry for sterilization A great strength of this unusually and DMF is used in the pharmaceutical comprehensive book is that the closeindustry. However, to reassure the public, up local view is always presented in Tamboran has recently announced that it a global context, and from drumlins will not use any additives in the fracking in the midlands we are transported water, other than sand, which helps to effortlessly out into the Solar System keep the gas-bearing strata apart after the to learn how the Earth wobbles water has seeped away, thus facilitating around an orbit that contracts and the escape of the natural gas. Without expands with a periodicity of 21,000 the usual additives, the extraction of the years. gas will be more costly, because higher In terms of content, this is just the pressures will have to be used. This is tip of the iceberg, and in many ways a price the company is willing to pay, in this book, bringing us on a grand order to reassure the public. tour from the earliest origins to recent Whatever decisions are made with history is the next best thing to an regard to developing our natural encyclopaedia of geology. resorces, they should be based on sound scientific findings, not on uninformed Review: Tom Kennedy scaremongering. Having said that, there should certainly be a public debate on The geology of Laois and Offaly the issue, because, left to themselves, John Feehan planning authorities don’t always get it Published by Offaly County Council right. in association with Laois County Council and The Geological Survey of Ireland.

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

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

Local and global science viewed through Irish eyes.

www.sciencespin.com SCIENCE SPINSPIN IssueIssue 60 Page 27 16 SCIENCE 48 Page

The Irish landscape

U

ntil the early 19th century it was difficult to get a detailed picture of the Irish landscape. There were maps and charts, often of excellent quality, and romantic views, but in 1824 this lack of overall clarity was swept away as a team of surveyors got to work in recording everything of note at an amazing scale of six inches to a mile. Nothing as ambitious as this had been attempted anywhere else in the world, and as Matthew Jebb, one of the Secrets of the Irish Landscape editors, noted, we owe a great debt to those who went out into the highways and byways to create such a detailed record.

That record, not only encapsulated the form and local lore associated with place names, but it provided the foundation for a succession of in-depth studies, such as the mapping of rocks in the geological survey, and no doubt, almost a century later, the naturalist, Robert Lloyd Praeger, would have made good use of these maps when setting out to record the flora of Ireland.

As Matthew Jebb, Director of the National Botanic Gardens, who contributed two chapters to the book informs us, in Praeger’s time there were almost 450 train stations dotted around the country, and his usual plan every weekend was to stop at one of these before taking a 40 mile circuit before coming back to his day-job at the National Library. Praeger’s book, The way that I went, was another significance advance in spreading awareness that the Irish landscape is special. A few years later, in the 1970s, Frank Mitchell broadened our horizons with his multidisciplinary Irish Landscape.

Since then a great deal has been added to our knowledge, and to

celebrate this growing appreciation of our own surroundings, RTÉ embarked on an ambitious series of television programmes, which, as the title explains, aimed to reveal the secrets hidden away in the Irish landscape.

Creating the series involved consulting an array of experts, and that in turn created an opportunity to pool their contributions into a book. The cross-over between books and television is common enough and for a publisher the “as seen on TV” exposure can make a big difference to sales. At the launch of the book last May, Mike Collins, the publisher, was happy to announce that Secrets of the Irish Landscape had already gone into a second reprinting. For an Irish non-fiction book, that’s quite a rare achievement.

At the same time, Mike Collins, who is publications director of Cork University Press, remarked that producing such a handsome and well-designed book to an extremely tight deadline was quite a strain. No doubt book publishers and television producers could collaborate more, but the two branches of the media are far from being alike. If television is hot and derivative, print is cool and a lot deeper in content, so book publishers usually work at a slower pace. This book is indeed outstanding, highly informative, beautifully produced, but there are a few minor signs that trying to keep up with the frantic pace of television production does create problems. All things considered, this collaboration arranged by Colm Crowley, head of production in RTÉ, Cork, and the publishers has worked very well, but it would have been good to have more

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 28

informative captions on photographs, and what possessed the editors to drop in so many “holiday snaps’ of Derek Mooney wandering about with the television crew?

Colm Crowley, who co-edited the book has to be congratulated for launching this television series, and as he remarked, it is not easy to compete with our neighbours who have considerably more resources.

However, as this series, and the book, show, the talent and expertise to produce high-quality content is certainly available here.

The book has twenty contributors, each giving us a different view of a landscape that, as Matthew Jebb observed, was recreated after ice had obliterated most of what had been on the surface before. Before the end of the last Ice Age there had been a sudden drop in temperature, killing off the Giant Irish Deer, and then an easing off to create the sort of climate that we would like to enjoy today. In his fascinating chapter, Seamus Caulfield, explains how some of Ireland’s earliest inhabitants may had started to lay out the Céide Fields for dairy farming by the Mayo coast as early as 4000 BC. Hard to imagine now what these highly-organised communities were like, for whatever these people left behind is covered by a blanket of peat. As climate changed, becoming colder and damper, the peat, which conservationists are now so keen to protect, advanced.

In another chapter, Michael Monk, who writes about early crops and introduction of stock, suggests that clearing of land may even have accelerated a decline in farming that led to the collapse of Bronze Age society.

Colm Crowly in his introduction mentions that producing the series was an eye opener for him, and likewise this book will certainly remove the mask of familiarity for many readers.

Review: Tom Kennedy Secrets of the Irish landscape, Editors, Matthew Jebb and Colm Crowley.

Atrium, imprint of Cork University Press.

Dr. How's

Science Wows!

What is the Sun? The Sun is a star at the centre of our solar system.

...exploring the Sun!

Junior science by Dr. Naomi Lavelle

Let‛s learn more!

The Sun is the closest star to Earth. the Sun is more than four and a half billion years old.

The Sun is made up mostly of hydrogen (74%) and helium (24%); the other 2% consists of carbon, Image Credit: NASA/SDO (AIA) oxygen, neon ,iron magnesium and sulphur.

How far away is the Sun?

All the planets in our solar system orbit around the Sun.

The exact distance between the Sun and the Earth changes slightly as the earth orbits the Sun.

The Sun makes up 99.8% of the mass of our entire solar system.

The diameter of the Sun is 109 times that of the Earth.

The diameter of the Sun is 1,392,000 kilometres (865,000 miles)

Did you know... the International Space Station (ISS) and other spacecraft use solar panels to generate power?

We could fit one million Earths inside the Sun.

Experiments you can try

Image Credit: NASA

You will need.. a clear, sunny day, a large bowl, tinfoil, blue tac, a cocktail stick and a marshmallow

Solar Science

Make a Solar oven!

Line the inside of the bowl with tinfoil (shiny side facing out). Place a piece of blue tac in the bottom of the bowl.

Stick the cocktail stick into the marshmallow and place the other side in the blue tac - so the cocktail stick stands up. Cover the top of the bowl with clingfilm and bring outside. Prop the bowl up so that it faces the Sun. Leave for 20 to 25 minutes, then check the marshmallow.

Nuclear fusion The Sun generates its own light, heat and energy by a process called nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion happens at the core of the Sun where hydrogen atoms get converted to helium atoms under the intense pressure of the Sun‛s gravity.

So what is happening?

The clingfilm lets the sunlight into the bowl while trapping the heat inside. The tinfoil reflects the light and heat around the bowl and onto the marshmallow. As the heat in the bowl increases the marshmallow cooks.

The average distance between the Earth and the Sun is ...

Did you know... it takes light 8 minutes and 19secs to travel from the Sun to the Earth?

149,597,870,700 metres (92,955,887 miles) This distance is called an Astronomical Unit (AU).

Distances in space can be expressed in AUs.

Jupiter is 5.2 AU from the Sun

The magnetic field around the Earth deflects a lot of the energy of solar flares.

When this happens it produces beautiful light shows in the sky the Auroras.

The Sun releases large amounts of gas and plasma in bursts these are called Solar flares!

Image Credit: NASA The surface of the Sun is about 5,500 degrees Celsius (approx.

10,000 degrees Farenheit).

The hottest part of the Sun is the core (centre) with temperatures of about 15 million degrees Celsius.

Did you know...

Solar flares from the Sun can affect satellites orbiting the Earth?

The Sun‛s light and energy are needed for nearly all life on The Sun‛s Earth to energy controls survive. our weather and climate.

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

BT YOUNG SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION

EDUCATION Are you a teacher or involved in education?

50

Celebrating 50 years

For the past fifty years students from all around Ireland have been displaying their scientific talents at the annual BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. Originally launched in 1964 to encourage school students to undertake science projects, the annual exhibition has become a huge success. More than 60,000 young scientists have participated in the exhibition since it began, and for many this sparked off a life-long interest and involvement in science.

Participation in the exhibition has also enabled young scientists to distinguish themselves abroad. Former winners have done exceptionally well in international science competitions. Irish young scientists have gone on to win the European Union Competition for Young Scientists 14 times over the past 24 years.

This year, BT Young Science & Technology winners, Emer Hickey, Sophie HealyThow and Ciara Judge, are heading to Prague in September to compete in the EU competition.

To help celebrate the 50th year past participants are welcome to add their memories to the BT Young Scientist archive.

www.btyoungscientist.com/archive You can also send an on-line birthday card from www.btyoungscientist.com/birthday/

As you are no doubt aware there are some very positive things to be said about education in Ireland, and the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition is an outstanding example of what can be achieved in promoting an interest and handson involvement in science among thousands of students.

Even so, all is not as it should, or could be in Irish education. Two ministers of Education, and various heads of third level colleges have repeatedly called for the scrapping of the points system.

Nothing has happened.

There is confusion between training and education. This has not been sorted out.

There is an assumption that a uniform and restricted curriculum will suit everyone. This is not the case.

Are you looking for a unique way to integrate science and maths in your classroom?

Schools are being encouraged to teach science. They have not been given the resources to do so.

We’re looking forward to what’s coming up next term. If you’ve ever thought about entering the RDS Primary Science Fair, now is the time to start thinking about it.

These are serious issues, and they do not just involve science. History is no longer regarded as ’useful’ so it is off the agenda.

If you’ve been looking for a unique way to integrate science and maths in your classroom, the Fair provides an opportunity for 120 primary schools to showcase their class STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) projects, receive feedback from experts and learn from viewing other projects at a major exhibition, the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

The Fair runs from January 9 to 11, 2014 and is open to 4th, 5th, 6th class and Key Stage 2 classes. The Fair is not a competition, the emphasis is for students to learn how to work scientifically and develop inquiry based skills, by developing a project which seeks to pose and answer a question related to the curriculum.

Some of the questions explored at the 2013 Fair included: • How does carrying a bag affect our back health?

• How can I make my snowman last longer?

• Which brand of battery lasts the longest in a simple circuit?

The call for expressions of interest will open in September 2013. To receive e-mail updates you can contact primarysciencefair@rds.ie call 01 240 7990 or visit www.rds.ie/primarysciencefair SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 30

Just as the positive aspects of education can be highlighted and fostered, reforms are not going to happen until those who are directly involved stand up and present their case.

Science Spin welcomes your considered opinions based on your experience in education. In this issue we take a look at how the concept of quality control that works well in industry is harmful when applied to teaching. In our next issue we will science in primary education. www.sciencespin.com Email: education@sciencespin.com

BT YOUNG SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION

Following the Sun

Lots of rooftops are adorned with solar panels, but they can only work well when facing the sun. Ciarán o’Mara, a transition year student at Castletroy College in Limerick, pointed out that if the panels could keep facing the sun they would produce a lot more energy.

Mind control

WhEn the brain is busy lots of signals are racing through the cells, and this activity can be detected as wave-like impulses by an instrument, known as an electro-encephalo-graph, more commonly referred to simply as an EEG. the more intense Alpha Waves show that the brain is active, and as two secondyear students at Gonzaga College in Dublin, stephen herlihey and Jack Doherty, explained, this ability to detect different levels of brain activity can be used to give people a degree of mind control. For people with severe disabilities or paralysis, picking up signals directly from the brain can give them back some ability for assisted control of limbs or instruments, but as the students pointed out, elaborate high-tech devices can be very expensive, and their aim was to come up with something simple and affordable. stephen and Jack found that it is possible for a device, worn like a pair of earphones, can pick up the brain waves, and these can be transmitted via Bluetooth to a computer. To analyse the pattern created by these waves, stephen and Jack had to develop some software, and as they admitted, that was a challenge. however, they knew what they wanted to achieve and Jack’s uncle was able to help them out with programing.

With their system, a sample is taken from five wave readings, and when these go over a pre-set threshold level, the program activates a device, such as a switch.

Ciarán became interested in how solar panels could become more efficient when he first entered the BT Young Scientist and technology Exhibition two years ago. At the time he thought that the best solution would be for panels to move with the sun, and since then he has developed smart technology that makes this possible.

Basically this is a feedback system in which a drop in output from a moveable solar panel automatically triggers a pair of stepper motors to go into action. these electric motors, as the name suggests, are designed to move into a number of very precise positions. the output is channelled through a micro-control unit, which Ciarán said is also a readily available device. “I got mine from eBay,” he said. the chip in the micro-control unit takes its instructions from a program, which Ciarán had to create. After his dad, who works in the computer sector, gave him the basics, Ciarán was able to make up his own program, and this enables him to set the degree of sensitivity to make the system work most efficiently.

When the voltage drops as the sun moves across the sky, the motors ‘hunt’ until the output comes up to a threshold level. At that level, the system remains ‘happy’ unless a cloud appears.

“It will still work for 30 seconds,” said Ciarán, “and after that it goes into sleep mode.” Ciarán has set the sleep mode to last for 30 minutes, after which the system ‘wakes up’ to try again.

“I also tried a tracking mirror,” said Ciarán, and the idea of this was to keep sunlight directed onto the panel. With this in action power output went up by ten per cent.

With such obvious gains, why don’t solar panels go on the move? “Maybe they would look a bit funny up on the roofs,” commented Ciarán, but scaling up the system could be a challenge.

Ciarán’s system is small in scale, but it is so neat and well made that it could easily become a big hit as a solar mobile device charger.

With training, said the young scientists, users could become better at turning their thoughts into action. For severelydisabled people this could allow them to do some things most of us take for granted, such as flicking on light switches. As the students observed, with such a simple and basic system, it might even be possible to wire up an entire house for mind control.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page 31

What’s inside the box?

Billions of neurons and up to 240 trillion connections

Memories are made of this

Short recall is not much use to us without long term storage

Don’t upset the biological clock

What sets our internal clock and why the graveyard shift may be the death of you COLOUR

The sensational brain

THE SENSATIONAL BRAIN by VERONICA MILLER

Dr Veronica Miller, researcher and writer, lifts the lid on what goes on inside our head

THE SENSATIONAL

BRAIN

INK We hear, we feel, we smell, we see, but how does the brain make sense of all this anuscripts can often be to a information, and why do our eyes sometimes deceive us?

Mtraced backstery through

Getting all emotional

Where do we hide our fears, and why are children, and crocodiles, so emotional?

How to become smarter

If some people can be a bit slow, why are they often better at getting the right answers?

Out of our minds

Madness is hard to define but imaging makes it easier to spot what’s actually going wrong

Getting high

Why do people take drugs, and why are they so addictive?

YS ERIES

ISBN 0 906002 16 8

D

Is there a difference, or does the sex of your brain matter?

OV ISC ER

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

What is it and how it works COLOUR Dr Veronica Miller

Girl brain, boy brain

Albertine Kennedy Publishing Cloonlara, Swinford, Co Mayo. Ireland.

particular mona by the scribes. the inks used have been an analysis of of substances wide variety m of flow, For writing a 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 black the bark, ered A owers, powd have been used. blue from cornfl coffee even strong ened bark flag iris, and the winter black from made One glue. black ink was with milk or the twigs mixed from oak galls, of blackthorn of ink was made oak trees. One common type on s insect d by 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 but it just show lt sive difficu more exten have been gum, and was. On an even 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 linseed to make 63 was mixed with

Published in association with Ireland’s science and discovery magazine Science Spin

SCIENCE

SPINThe science and art of colour explained by Margaret Franklin and

Tom Kennedy. A colourful and informative paperback. €15 post free from www.sciencespin.com

Dr Veronica Miller explains all you ever wanted to know about the brain — what it is and how it works. Lots of facts without the jargon in a fully illustrated book that will appeal to everyone.

Have you ever wondered what’s inside the box? Why do we get so upset by working odd hours, or what are memories actually made of?

Do boys really have different brains from girls, and is there anything we can do to become smarter? The answers are all here and lots more in this entertaining and highly informative book.

cliff above against a granite schist lying up Vegetation covered Wicklow.

Lough Oular, Co te which is Mourne Grani

tion is the 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 e in the base of “Basalts and hot molten granit of plates: ation The gener movement of is driven by the plate sinks to l crusta the Earth’s crust e, the over-ridden granite (see Figure where they collid liquid it melts to form they release extremely a depth where plates pull apart the crust it those melts e in turn 3). Wher the mantle which hot basalt from

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

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

Co stown, Tower Photographs: Tom

Dr Miller, who studied at TCD and UCD before before undertaking brain research in the UK is currently Research Assistant Professor at the Wadsworth Centre in New York.

The Sensational Brain by Dr Veronica Miller Hardback, full colour, 160 pages. €25.00 Available now from www.sciencespin.com, GSI store, Amazon and independent bookshops.

The granite 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 Cerebellum granular cells and white matter from an older man.

In 1795, the chance discovery of a nugget was immediately followed by a gold rush as people were drawn by the prospect of picking up instant wealth from Wicklow’s Goldmine River.

In this 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 hope to be rewarded by the glimmer of gold.

Gold Frenzy

The story of Wicklow’s gold Peadar McArdle

Hardback €20 From Dubray, GSI, and selected bookshops, or buy post free from www.sciencespin.com

Albertine Kennedy Publishing ISBN 0 906002 08 7

Downpatrick Head, Co. Mayo. Limestone, Shale and Siltstone cliff face dropping into the Atlantic Ocean. Photo by Jonathan Moran, Marschacht, Germany. First prize in 2012.

Du Noyer Geological Photography Competition 2013 Entries are invited for the Du Noyer Geological Photography Competition George Victor Du Noyer, who served as a geologist with the Geological Survey of Ireland from 1847 to 1869, was a skilled field artist whose numerous sketches and pictures, with their combination of artistic skill and technical accuracy, were the “field photographs” of their day.

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

Prizes will be awarded in two categories, Irish and Foreign, and a prize fund of €500 applies Entrants may submit a maximum of 4 photographs illustrating any aspect of field geology or scenic landscapes. Previously published photographs are not eligible for entry, and the organisers are not in a position to return entries The competition will be judged by a panel including representatives of the Irish Geological Association, the GSI and external nominees and their decision will be final. Entries will be exhibited and prizes awarded at a GSI Cunningham Awards ceremony in early December 2011.

The competition will be judged by a panel including representatives of the IGA, the GSI and external nominees and their decision will be final. Entries will be exhibited and prizes awarded at Cunningham Awards ceremony in the Dublin offices of GSI on December 13.

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

Entried accepted by e-mail only and sent to: DuNoyerPhotoCompetition@gmail.com You must include a name and postal address, a short description of the geological content, the place and aproximate date.

What are the judges looking for?

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

Closing date for entries: Friday 11th October 2013 The competition is not open to GSI staff

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 60 Page xx