Science Spin 63

ISSUE

63

March April 2014

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Seán Duke talked to Aine Moynagh about her work

Tom Kennedy reports on the hidden field behind the Higgs

Getting it right begins on the farm

Tom Kennedy reports that wood chips are in demand

Chris Coughlan looks to the future

Margaret Franklin writes that crystals fascinate scientists and non-scientists alike

Paddy Gaffkin explains that the saw-like traces in rocks are from long-extinct graptolites

Niami Lavelle explores the wonders of soil

Sive Finlay introduces us to a rare horned toad

Tom Kennedy reports on projects about dung beetles, sand and skin colour

Our panel of scientific experts answer your questions

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UPFRONT

Vitamin rich crops

MIllIoNS of people in developing countries survive on a diet low in vitamin A so their health suffers. In Malawi it has been estimated that 73 per cent of the children have a vitamin A defficiency,

and it is thought that up to half a million children in developing countries go blind each year for the same reason.

To combat this problem, Girum Azmach a PhD student, at NUI Galway’s Plant and AgriBioscience Research Centre have been working in collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture to develop crops that are high in vitamin A and other nutrients.

By screening maize lines, Girum has identified varieties that produce a much higher yield of the precurser for vitamin A. Compared to existing varieties, which have just 2 micrograms per grain of dry maize kernel, the improved variety has 17 micrograms per gram.

Vitamin rich maize has been released for planting in Ghana, liberia, Mali and Serri leone, and breeding programmes are planned for many other countries.

Maize is the staple food for more than one billion people in sub-Saharan Africa and latin America, but, while it is high in energy, it did not provide enough protein or vitamins.

Manufacturing stem cells

An official go-ahead has been given to the production of stem cells at NUI Galway. The Irish Medicines Board has issued a licence permitting the Centre for Cell Manufacturing Ireland to culture stem cells for medicinal use on humans.

For some years, researchers at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI at NUI Galway, have been working on the development of new therapies based on the use of stem cells.

The granting of approval is another step along a path that will eventually lead to new treatments, but before stem cell therapies can be applied they must first be checked for safety by undergoing clinical trials. Approval for production means that potential stem cell therapies can now proceed to these clinical trials.

The first of these trials involves investigating the safety of using mesenchymal stem cells isolated from bone marrow for the treatment of what is known as ischemia, a condition associated with diabetics in which the blood supply to limbs is restricted.

This condition, which is quite common, can make it necessary to amputate limbs.

Embryonic stem cells

PRoDUCING embryonic stem cells is an ethical issue because up to now it has involved destruction of the embryo. In many countries production of embryonic stem cells is banned, but in Sweden culturing is allowed provided the donors of the egg and sperm agree to allow their surplus embryos to be used. The surplus embryos are those left over after in vitro fertilization, and normally these would be discarded.

In January this year, the Karolinska Instituet announced that the procedure no longer has to result in the destruction of the embryo. A team of researchers, led

by Karl Trygvason, found that it is possible to take a single cell from an early stage embryo of just eight cells without causing destruction. According to the researchers, the embryo remains viable, and can be stored for re-insertion into the mother’s uterus.

The researchers report that a similar procedure is already used for detection of genetic abnormalities. This procedure, known as Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis, is used where there is a high risk of parents passing on serious hereditory diseases. If these are not detected, the embryo is allowed develop.

Because of this procedure, the researchers suggest that this is a way around the ethical issues in using embryonic stem cells for research, therapy or production of products such as insulin or dopamine.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 2

Science teachers conference 11th to 13th April 2014

A number of speakers have been lined up for the Irish Science Teachers Annual Conference which takes place at NUI Galway over the weekend 11th to 13th April 2014. Presentation of the industry sponsored excellence in science teaching award will be part of a diversified programme.

Some highlights from the programme Friday 11th April 6.30pm registration at Aula Max followed by opening by Máire Geoghegan Quinn and lecture by Prof Elaine Fox on “Rainy brain, sunny brain.”

Saturday 12th April 9.20 to 10.15am, Prof David Smith on “Amazing molecules, life saving chemistry”.

Keith Gibbs on “The resourceful physicist.”

Biology workshop.

10.15 to 10.45am, Prof David Grayson on “life without chemistry.”

Fergus McAuliffe on The sory in science.”

Physics workshop.

11.45 to 12.30am, Prof Donal o’Shea on “Science teachers and discovery in obesity”.

Dr Mark Foley on “The physics of cancer.”

Chemistry workshop.

2 to 2.45pm Prof Martyn Poliakoff on “From test tube to YouTube.”

3 to 3.45pm Prof Aine Hyland on “What is international best practice in the drafting of syllabi for second-level curricula.”

4 to 4.45pm, the annual business meeting covering an update on the revised leaving Cert Biology and Physics syllabi, and Junior Science.

5 to 5.45pm Prof Jim Al Khalili on “Is life quantum mechanical.”

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UPFRONT

Sleeping in space

Comet chasing

After a long sleep, the comet chasing rosetta space craft is back in action. In January rosetta, at 673 million km from the Sun, was woken up to continue into the final phase of its ten year journey. for the previous 31 months there had been no contact with rosetta, so re-locating the craft, using one of NASA’s 70 metre dishes was a major achievement. the craft was launched on 2nd March 2004 from Kourou in french Guiana, and after four gravity-assisted manoeuvres, it was put into deep hibernation in June 2011.

After receiving the first signal, the control centre at Darmstadt in Germany, proceded to take full control of the craft. One of the concerns was that the two 14 metre long solar arrays might not provide sufficient power, but the control team report that everything is working well. At this distance scientists estimate that sunlight levels are just four per cent of those on earth. rosetta now has to prepare for launching the lander, Philae. this is to touch down on the comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, throwing out two harpoons to secure its position. Nine instruments will then transmit information about the comet’s characteristics, and how these change as it travels closer to the Sun. One of the lander’s instruments will drill 20 cm into the comet’s surface.

During the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 the impacts of cosmic rays were recorded on specially prepared plates designed

by Denis O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies working in collaboration with P Buford Price from the University of California. As cosmic rays struck the plates they left an impression, and the depth of penetration gave an indication of their energy.

On earth, the atmosphere shields us from these high energy particles, made up mostly of protons and atomic nuclei, but in space, where there is no such protection, cosmic rays can be quite harmful. the plates have now been lodged in the Natural History Museum where they join other items in the space collection, including fragments of Moon rock and meteorites.

WItHOUt regular sleep our health suffers. Long-distance travellers are all-too--familiar with jet-lag and this is the result of the body clock becoming confused. Many of our body processes, like sleep, are regulated by this body clock and this is why working nights or irregular hours can be a strain. for people living a regular life on earth this is not a problem, but by going out into space we lose contact with the usual signs that show us the passing of time.

On earth detection of daylight keeps the body clock running to a regular pattern but, on board the International Space Station, astronauts experience 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours. to make up for this lack of stimulation, astronauts keep to a strict routeine. Volker Damann, head of ESA’s space medicine office, explains that ISS astronauts work ten hours maximum followed by eight hours sleep. Meal and relaxation times are also set, but mission requirements and unexpected events can disrupt the pattern.

Medication is sometimes given to help astronauts overcome this problem, and scientists are investigating ways to improve these treatments. Experiments are being made with different colours, and it is thought that blue makes the body more alert. On earth, morning and evening light is reddish, while mid-day sunlight is high in blue.

Keeping the body clock running properly is important, and as Volker Damann remarked, astronauts could make serious mistakes if they are suffering from side-effects, such as hangovers or even hallucinations.

Discover the Cosmos

Lots of educational material, lesson plans and projects on astronomy and high-energy physics available from a portal. http://portal.discoverthecosmos.eu

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UPFRONT

An artist’s impression, and below, a fossilised example of the Bandringa shark.

Migrating sharks

Migration is nothing new, and 310 million years ago the long extinct Bandringa sharks moved down from freshwater swamps to the tropical coastline to breed. Before this pattern of migration from fresh to salt water was discovered, scientists thought that two separate species existed.

Paleontologists, Lauren Sallan from the University of Michigan, and colleagues from the University of Chicago, reached this conclusion after examining all known fossils of

the long-snouted Bandringa shark. not alone was this the first known example of shark migration, but it was also the only known example of migration from fresh to seawater for breeding. the fossils show that adults lived for most of the time in freshwater, and only migrated to sea for breeding. although this form of migration is unknown now, the Bandringa is thought to be a close relative of modern sharks. resembling a present-day sawfsh, the Bandringa had a long spoon-billed snout, and while juveniles were just about 10cm long adults could be up to 3 metres.

Discovered first in 1969, the Bandringa lived in the swamps of what are now the fossil-rich Mazon Creek deposits of northern illinois. at the time, this was adjacent to the coastline of the ancient super-continent, Pangea. as the scientists reported in Vertebrate Paleontology, different preservation processes in marine and freshwater locations had led to the false conclusion that two separate species were involved. in freshwater bones were preserved, while a marine environment was better for preservation of soft tissues. the Bandringa sharks were bottom feeders with downward facing jaws, and to help them detect prey in murky waters they had an array of sensory organs.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 4

CanSat is an exciting project run by ESERO Ireland in partnership with CEIA, DIT and GMIT. It involves students from transition year upwards using a kit provided to build a satellite which will fit into a soda can. The primary mission includes recording temperature and pressure data, analysing and presenting this data to a team of judges. Over 30 teams will participate in regional competitions in Dublin, Cork and Galway. The National final takes place on 22nd March 2014 in Birr Castle Demesne.

Students from Coláiste Éinde in Galway are really enjoying the competition so far. Each team has

been busy working on the primary mission, designing the can and making the parachute. There is a lot more work involved than they had anticipated but it’s really good fun and they are learning new skills like teamwork, electronics and software development.

Scoil Chaitriona (Glasnevin) students initially found understanding the whole concept of the project a challenge, however attending the workshops at DIT was a great help to them. Social media and the availability of information on the internet has helped them to get ideas, technical

information and to see what other students have done in similar projects. They are getting the most enjoyment from working as a team and helping each other out and realising that everyone Padraig Mac Eoin, Chris Hadfield, Taminine Ni Mheachair, Cian Ó Donabháin from Scoil Chairtiona.

has different skills! Among the lessons learned were that setting deadlines and weekly plans work much better than trying to get a lot done at the same time. The students also got some advice from Chris Hadfield on safe retrieval of the CanSat after launch!!!

2014 marks the 10th anniversary of the Awards of Science and Maths Excellence (AoSME) - an award recognition achieved through the completion of five criteria which encourage a whole school approach to the Discover Primary Science and Maths (DPSM) programme over the course of the school year.

The criteria include completing hands-on DPSM activities, visiting a DPSM Discover Centre and attending or holding a science event. The closing date for registration for AoSME is Friday 21st March. By registering their intention to participate before Friday 14th February, however, primary schools all around the country could be in with a chance to win a visit from a member of the Discover Science Excellence Squad. This accomplished panel including nanoscientists and equine scientists, to name but a few, will capture the imagination of primary school pupils during their visits to the lucky schools later this year.

Schools can register on www.primaryscience.ie (L-R) – Children from Gardiner Street Primary School with Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General, Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, Awards of Science and Maths Excellence Ambassador and Sean Sherlock, TD Minister of State for Research and Innovation.

Greenwave is an SFI Discover Programme initiative which encourages primary school students across Ireland to observe and record the arrival of the signs of spring. They can do this by recording details of the weather and common species on the project website www.greenwave.ie. Six indicators of the arrival of Spring have been identified (the bud burst of the horse chestnut, hawthorn and ash trees and the first sightings of frogspawn, primrose and swallow). Schools can register on the website to record sightings and upload photographs of the various common species around the country.

The website www.greenwave.ie also provides information on how to go about making weather observations, including pointers on measuring temperature, how to make and use a rain gauge and how to make an anemometer to measure wind speed. Wall planners are also available by emailing greenwave@sfi.ie.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page

Urbleshanny National School, Scotstown, Co. Monaghan.

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On the way up

Four transition year students from St Nessan’s Community College in Limerick are to launch an experiment into space. The four, Jamie o’Connell, Jonathon roche, Kevin Hanley and Jason Hannon, will investigate how microgravity influences the solidification of reinforced concrete as it orbits Earth for 30 days. The experiment will be on board the orbital Science orb-2 mision as it heads up to the International Space Station next May. Following the spaceflight, the experimental material will be examined and compared to a grounded control.

The project was the winner in a competition organised by Dr Norah Patton from the Irish Centre for Composites research at the university of Limerick and sponsored by Nanoracks, a company providing hardware and services to the International Space Station.

Disinfectants not working

MICroBIoLoGIST, Dr Mary Corcoran, tested three different disinfectants on established films of Salmonella and found that they simply did not work. The main reason for the failure to kill off the Salmonella is that it had formed what is known as a biofilm. On their own, microorganisms are open to attack, but within a few days many, such as Salmonella, form a biofilm, similar to plaque on teeth, and collectively they are much more difficult to dislodge.

Dr Corcoran, reporting her findings in the Journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, said that three of the strongest disinfectants, sodium hypochlorite (bleach), sodium hydroxide, and benzalkonium chloride, failed to kill off seven day old biofilms of Salmonella, even after soaking them with disinfectant for an hour and a half.

These findings show that once Salmonella has become established in food processing areas, normal cleaning is not going to eliminate the risk of spreading outbreaks of food-poisoning. Biofilms can form on glass, stainless steel, glazed tiles, concrete and plastic, and over time the biofilms grow.

As Dr Corcoran concluded, conventional cleaning is not going to solve that problem, and food producers need to find an effective method for killing biofilms

UPFRONT

Jason Hannan, Jamie O’Connell, Kevin Hanley and Jonathan Roche. Photo: Sean Curtin.

Environmental guidelines

BEForE any major development is undertaken an Environmental Impact Statement has to be prepared. The EIS alerts planners to any possible problems that might arise so that these issues can be addressed before development proceeds.

The specialists who draw up the EIS often come from different fields, so it is important for them to communicate clearly and effectively in a common format. As Catherine Buckley, lead author of Guidelines for the preparation of soils, geology and hydrology chapters in Environmental Impact Statements, commented, experts need to talk the same language.

The guidelines, published by the Institute of Geologists in Ireland, will help experts to take a standard approach in preparing EIS reports, not just in Ireland but across Europe.

Patrick Roycroft

Fom left Tiernan Byrne,11,; David Brennan,12,; Eoin Geoghegan,11; and Adam Healy,12,; from Scoil Uí Riada, Kilcock, Co Kildare with their spelling ap project “Learnicles” Photo: Naoise Culhane.

PrImAry school pupils from 4th, 5th and 6th classes nationwide competed in Intel’s Mini Scientist competion. Winners in local events were at the TCD Science Gallery to participate in the finals. Fifteen projects were presented and the top award went to a team from Scoil ui ruada, Kilcock, County Kildare. Tiernan Byrne, David Brennan, Eoin Geoghegan and Adam Healy had developed a spelling ap for students.

The runner up awards went to Náisiúnta an Bhaile Nua, Newtown, Co Meath and Cratloe National School, Co Clare.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 6

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UPFRONT

SciFest 2014

ENTrIES are coming in for this year’s SciFest and projects will be going on show over the coming months at 14 Institutes of Technology around the county. Last year more than 5,000 students took part in SciFest, and the national winner, Paul Clarke also went on to win the top award at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. Next May, both Paul, and the runner up, Conor Foy, will be representing Ireland at Intel’s ISEF event in Los Angles During the year SciFest will be at the following venues: 28th March Dublin IT 4th April Cork IT 30th April Waterford IT 30th April Athlone IT 1st May LIT Tipperary 1st May Carlow IT 2nd May Limerick IT

7th May Blanchardstown IT 7th May Dundalk IT 8th May Tralee 9th May Letterkenny IT 13th May Tallaght IT 14th May Sligo IT 15th May GMIT

More details from

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Learning about cells at NUI Galway’s School of Natural Sciences.

Cell explorers

StudentS and staff at NUI Galway have volunteered to share their knowledge of cell biology with the public through an outreach programme. Under the banner, Cell Explorers, a team of over 70 volunteers from the School of Natural Sciences have been running workshops on DNA extraction and examination of cells under the microscope. The Cell Explorer team has been to 16 schools in County Galway, and the volunteers took part in the Galway Science and Technology Festival last November where visitors saw how the trillions of cells in our body work together to make us grow, function and live. http://www.facebook.com/cellexplorers

Cutting drug costs

Wetlands

rIvErS, lakes and wetlands support a great diversity of wildlife, and to help school students explore this environment the Environmental Protection Agency has produced downloadable teaching resources. The Biodiversity in our Wetlands resources materials, in Irish and in English, can be downloaded from the EPA website www.epa.ie/researchandeducation

Marine Institute Foras na Mara

BArGAIN hunting shoppers often know that the plain-pack is as good as the higher-priced branded product. Often the products are made in the same factory with the same ingredients, and the only difference is in price.

Much the same applies to drugs, and brand names command the highest prices while a generic could be just as effective. One of the reasons why this is so is that manufacturers are under pressure to recover development costs before drug patents expire. Once the patent has lapsed, other manufacturers are free to produce the same drug as a lower cost generic.

For many years public health services have argued that enormous savings could be made if doctors choose to prescribe generics, and last June, legislation was introduced to provide generic substituion and comparitive pricing in Ireland. In Ireland, the annual cost of the state-funded drug scheme was about €2 million, the highest per capita in Europe.

Suzanne Dunne, a PhD student at the University of Limerick’s Medical School, has been investigating the reaction to this move towards generics. Her findings indicate that many patients do not understand what generics are, but most would be happy to follow their GP’s guidance in choosing what drugs to use.

Confidence is an issue, and according to Suzanne’s report, almost a quarter of those who were asked, thought that generics were inferior, and a quarter also responded that they would prefer the original if offered a choice.

Our Ocean - A Shared Resource Ár n-Aigéan - Acmhainn Comhroinnte Ireland’s National Agency for Marine Research and Innovation An Ghníomhaireacht Náisiúnta um Thaighde Mara agus Nuálaíochta

www.marine.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 7

CAREER PROFILE

CAREER PROFILE

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The Laboratory Lover

The practical side of chemistry appealed to Aine Aine with the ruins of Pompeii behind her on a company trip with Rottapharm,.

Seán Duke talked to Aine Moyna about how she enjoys applying her knowledge of analytical science and chemistry

A

h, the laboratory; the whiff of sulphur, the coloured fluids, the white coats and odd-looking instruments. Things to test, calibrate, analyse and measure. Aine Moyna loved labs from the day she first walked into one.

She remembers the day: it was her first chemistry class in St Louis Secondary School in Monaghan. “We were growing crystals from copper sulphate,” recalls Aine. Straight away, the teenager realised that she wanted to work in a lab and not end up in an office staring at a computer all day.

There had been no ‘tradition’ of science in the family. Her father is a hotel manager, and her mum a housewife. However, two of her four

siblings also went into technical fields, with one sister also a scientist, and a brother an ordnance surveyor. The other siblings work as a musician and a carpenter.

Her subject choices for the Leaving Certificate reflected her interest in science, with Aine choosing Chemistry, Biology, Home Economics and Maths (honours), as well as English and German. She did well enough to get offered a place in the general science course at Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT), where many of her friends from school also headed.

The interest in Chemistry and lab work that Aine developed at school, strengthened when she started at LYIT. “I loved sitting down and working

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 8

out calculations,” says Aine. “There is something about the feeling of getting something working.” The practical aspect of chemistry appealed to her.

“For me, I learn so much about looking at an instrument and how it works as opposed to seeing a diagram in a book and learning it that way. It was just so much easier to get into the lab and physically look at it.”

People go into science for all kinds of reasons. They might love animals, want to improve the environment, are fascinated by the stars in the skies, curious out how things work, or, like Aine, because they adore lab work.

A true laboratory lover is the type that when they are studying science at third-level they spend most of their time in the lab doing practical work, rather than in the library reading the recommended books, and scientific journals. This was exactly the type of student that Aine was, when at LYIT. At LYIT, she started in first year, along with about 100 other students, in general science stream. This was very useful, says Aine, because it gave her time to figure out what area of science she wanted to work in. It became clear to her that she was interested in analytical science and chemistry.

She completed a certificate after two years of study, did a third year to get a diploma and then a fourth, which yielded an honours science degree. It meant she had three graduations at LYIT, Aine laughs, and three big days out. The last was in 2004, and then it was time to figure out her next move.

Newry

However, she was in no rush to get a ‘science job’. She had been working in Dunnes Stores in Monaghan since she was 16, a job that had helped sustain

her all through her leaving certificate and third level studies, so she had an income, and was living at home. About nine months after graduation, she recalls, she applied for, and got, a job with Norbrook Laboratories, Newry.

The job was in QC, or quality control, which is an area in Ireland that provides plenty of jobs and career opportunities for science graduates.

Most science graduates these days end up in QC, said Aine, working in the pharma industry, testing tablets and products before they are released.

The Norbrook job was a step in the right direction for Aine, but all the travelling was tough: two hours commuting each day. There was also the issue of being paid in Sterling and living in the Republic. Wages are lower in the north, and the cost of living is higher in the south, Aine explained.

At Norbrook she quickly learned the difference between lab science as an undergraduate and in the workplace.

“In college if something doesn’t work, then, ah it’s fine, you can write that into the conclusions, it didn’t work, but you can’t do that in work,” comments Aine. “You have to find out why it didn’t work and everything has to be documented – the documentation is very strictly controlled in quality control and it has to be,” she added.

After a few months, Aine was keen to try and get a job back in the south and in this, she was helped by recruitment company, CPL. They helped to place her in a company called Helsinn Birex Pharmaceuticals, in Mulhuddart. She decided to take it, and moved away from Monaghan to live in Dublin.

The move to Dublin was difficult at first, but after a while, she settled down. Again, the job was involved in QC, working to ensure the safety of all Helsinn products by running through well-established safety protocols. It was good work experience, but, it was very similar to the work she had been

doing with Norbrook, and she began to think of applying to do a PhD.

Doctorate

It was 2007, and the economy was still going well, so she thought it might be a good time to apply for a doctorate, and up her skills. She applied, and was accepted, to do a PhD at Dublin City University. Aine was delighted, but she found it difficult at first to re-adjust again to studying and college.

The PhD was far more difficult than working, Aine says, because to a large extent with a PhD ‘you are on your own’ and your days are unstructured.

In Helsinn, the days were highly structured, the testing protocols were well established and it was very clear what was expected of you at all times.

Aine got a scholarship to do a PhD, which sustained her while living in Dublin, so finances were not a huge issue. The real challenge was to find the resolve to work independently towards finding something totally new.

Her PhD was in the area of analytical chemistry, and specifically to try and find new ways to separate liquids with varying properties. After four years of hard work, the effort was successful and she produced a new way of separating liquids that formed the basis for a viable commercial product.

She finished her PhD in just under four years. At the end of it, Aine recalls, she had developed a new, improved technology to separate out liquids from each other based on differences in their position in the periodic table (and the atomic arrangements), the size of the molecule and other properties.

This technology was built into a ‘chromatography column’.

Chromatography can tell is what’s in a product. “If you had a bottle and look on the side of it and it says it contains bi-carbonates and nitrates and a load of other things; it gives

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.

you a value as well. That’s all done by chromatography,” says Aine.

She finished the PhD in 2011. She didn’t consider trying for an academic career as a realistic option as she saw post-doctoral students struggling to get funding, and even when they secured it, they often had to renew it every three months. She was looking for more structure and focus in her life.

Promotion

Again helped by CPL, she quickly secured a job in the pharmaceutical industry with Rottapharm; one of Italy’s largest pharma companies.

Like Helsinn, one of her previous companies, they are based in Dublin.

The company produces glucosamine which is used to maintain cartilage in joints. They also produce nutraceuticals, which are products that are not strictly drugs in the usual sense, but more natural dietary supplements.

She joined Rottapharm initially on a short-term contract towards the end of her PhD as her funding ran out as a QC analyst, like she had been in two previous companies. However, she found she really liked the work, and an opportunity came up to gain a promotion to work as a project analyst.

The project analyst job involved designing all the testing protocols that would be followed by the Rottapharm QC analysts. It is a more challenging role, said Aine, with more research time, and less structure.

This all appeals to her, but it is also a responsible job with absolutely no room for error.

“At the minute, the pharmaceutical industry is going so well in Ireland - with other sectors suffering it is probably a good career to consider at the minute,” said Aine. “I have never seen anyone struggling to get a QC job.”

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 63 Page 9

SmaShing

dISCovErIES Why was it so important to confirm the existence of a particle we cannot see? As the Higgs hunter, Eilam Gross remarked, the question is not new, and more than a century ago was asked about the electron. Tom Kennedy reports on Eilam’s recent lecture at the rdS where he explained how an even more elusive particle has brought us one step further in understand how everything around us came into existence.

T

o the dismay of doting aunts and concerned parents, little children break up expensive toys just to see how they work. Scientists do the same, but on a grander scale, and that’s how they have made some great discoveries. The biggest smash ups of all now occur at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva where scientists began sending protons on a collision course with each other in 2010.

The aim in generating these high energy collisions is to recreate the sort of conditions that are believed to have existed immediately after the Big Bang.

We don’t know what sparked off the Big Bang, but it was followed by a cascade of reactions that finally resulted in the formation of matter and our Universe.

The first few milliseconds appear to have been critical, as extremely high

energy particles began to form, and unless a better method turns up, ramping up the energy of these collisions in CERN’s 27 km long collider is the best way we have to get some idea of what these short-lived particles were like.

The discoveries made at CERN are, not to put it mildly, awesome. These discoveries tell us a great deal about how we came to be here, and that’s why the long sought after Higgs particle became widely known as the “God Particle.”

But what is the Higgs Particle, and why is it so important?

Professor Eilam Gross was at the RDS last November where he explained how fortune had favoured him in his quest to come up with answers to these questions.

At CERN, Prof Gross was involved in co-ordinating the activities of about 600

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 10

Simulation of a two proton collision producing a Higgs boson which quickly decays into four muons. The track of the muons is shown in yellow. Image: CERN. The inner detector, a massive structure designed to capture extremely short-lived results of high-energy collisions. scientists in trying to confirm that the Higgs Particle actually exists. In theory it was thought to exist, but because it is so elusive, a million million high-energy collisions had to be recorded before scientists could be confident that their theoretical predictions were in fact correct.

One of the challenges, said Gross, is that these particles are so short-lived. In the case of the Tau particle, which Gross had been working on previously, it exists for just one third of a million millionth of a second. For such a short lived particle, he said, “I spent three years of my life working on this.”

It can be hard to imagine time-scales of this order, but there is also a problem in understanding what a particle is. As Gross explained, something like the Higgs Particle is a bit like a wave progressing over the sea. Unless there is an input of energy, the sea would remain flat, but when there is a disturbance, a wave forms and it carries that energy along In much the same way, a field extends throughout the Universe, and it remains undetected by us until a disturbance results in the formation of a particle.

These are unfamiliar concepts, he said, and physicists spend a lot of time trying to explain them in terms that are familiar to everyone.

Detection of a particle, can in turn, tell us something about the hidden field, and in another analogy, Gross said we could think of a field as made of honey. As a body moves through this viscous fluid it experiences drag, and much the same applies to sub-atomic particles as they move through a field.

“Particles acquire mass by interacting with the field,” said Gross, and the more they interact, the heavier they become.

Furthermore, not all particles experience the same amount of “drag”, and while electrons are 2000 times ligher than protons, photons have no discernable mass so they whizz along at the speed of light. As Gross remarked, there are not that many particles. “I counted about 17” he said, but how they interact with each other is important.

All of this helps to explain why atoms exist in their present form. If atoms were bigger, said Gross, the balance between electrons and the nucleus would not allow for chemical reactions because the electric forces between them would be too weak. If atoms were smaller, there would be competition between electric forces and the nuclear force and no valencies could be formed. As Gross commented “atoms are just the right size for us to live, so the size of the atom is responsible for our existence.”

Scientists were fairly confident that this is how the assorted zoo of particles fitted together, but as Gross observed, it was all a bit like working out a child’s puzzle when one of the bits is missing.

The existence of mass remained a mystery, and this is why discovering the Higgs Particle was such a breakthrough.

It brought scientists that much closer to understanding why we have mass.

Detecting the Higgs

What we see in the world around, said Gross, is not real. What we see is an impression, created by the brain.

When we say that we take pictures of the Higgs, he said, this is equally true, but instead of an eye and a retina, there is a giant detector that, in effect, sees photons, electrons, quarks and other particles. Not alone is this much bigger than an eye, it is also much more sensitive.

Instead of a brain, the information is processed by computer to give images showing how high-energy transient particles decay into other particles. For instance, a Higgs might split into two photons, or decay into four electrons.

Building the ATLAS detector was an amazing achievement involving many people using superconducting materials, and as Gross observed, the resources required for this massive project are far removed from the glass tube used by Thompson in discovering the electron.

The ATLAS detector used in recording the Higgs has three layers, the inner one recording the tracks made by particles as they fly apart, the next layer measures the energy of impact, and the outside detects

Eilam Gross accepted that there was always a chance that theories, no matter how convincing, could turn out to be wrong. Photo: Weizmann Atlas Group.

“The concept of field is important rather than the existence of a particle.” Said Gross. “A field is something that exists everywhere. I use the example of the sea.

A field is like the sea because it is everywhere. Suddenly there is a wave. It travels to the shore. When a wave goes to the shore, does it take water with it? The answer is no. Otherwise there would be no water left in the sea. So, what does it take? It takes energy to the shore. A particle is like a disturbance in a field, like a wave. The disturbance goes from one point to another. This is called propagation. Particles are just disturbances in the field.”

muons which can penetrate deep into the Earth.

There are several million collisions a second, and Gross said that one in 10,000 might merit further study. Computers filter this down to 400, and in terms of data, this is the equivalent of filling a CD every second.

Trawling through all of this data is a huge job and only through constant repetition was it found that a slight blip between 125 and 150 gigaelectrovolts, which could represent something 125 times heavier than a hydrogen atom, kept appearing on the record. That indicated that something unusual was happening, said Gross, and that’s when the Higgs hunters started closing in.

“This is not the end of the story,” said Gross. The Higgs particle, although predicted, turns out to be lighter than expected.

Perhaps it exists as a supersymmetric twin, he said, and if that’s the case one might be cancelling

out the other. Nor is that the only mystery.

“We still have no idea of what creates Dark Matter, or why gravity is so weak — compared to other forces it hardly counts for anything at the sub-atomic level.”

The more we discover, the more there is to discover.

Higgs boson decaying into two photons, shown here as yellow cones. Image: CERN

What’s the use?

ThAT’s the sort of question that has probably been asked since someone started knocking sparks out of flint. Without curiosity we would not even have entered the stone age, yet alone be messaging each other over the Internet. Prof Gross said the same questions are often asked about his own work. “What can we do with it?” To Gross, this is a short-sighted question because it fails to take into account just how much we have gained through curiosity driven research.

“In applied science,” he said, “we take what is already known and try to make it better.” With this approach, he said, we would all be going around in chariots and we might have very efficient candles, but without basic science we would not have electricity. When the electron was discovered, he said, the question was posed, why look for something that no one could see? “As we know, a lot of things have followed on from this discovery of the ‘useless’ electron.”

This is not to suggest that we always have to wait around for a long time before basic research starts to produces results that have practical applications. one of the most obvious examples comes from CErN where the focus is on discovery. In 1990 CErN scientists had a problem sharing such enormous volumes of data.

The World Wide Web was developed to solve that problem. As Gross commented, CERN did not gain financially, but almost every business in the world now has a www address.

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

The sensational brain

We hear, we feel, we smell, we see, but how does the brain make sense of all this information, and why do our eyes sometimes deceive us?

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?

Girl brain, boy brain

ERIES

ISBN 0 906002 16 8

OV ISC ER

YS

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

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

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

SCIENCE

SPIN

THE SENSATIONAL BRAIN by VERONICA MILLER

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

Luck

Prof Gross said he had been a Higgs hunter since 1997, and he was among the 600 talented scientists at CErN devoting themselves to that task. He knew it was much worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack, a chance about one in a million million. “It was a crazy small number,” he said, “a bit like trying to pick out a single cell from all the plants in a field,” and he knew that there is always a chance that theories, no matter how convincing, could turn out to be wrong.

Like many scientists, Gross wanted to lead the team, to be the convenor, but try as he would, someone else always managed to snatch the position from his grasp.

“I tried and I tried, and then in 2012 I said it’s not going to happen, it’s not meant to be.” for family and other reasons, he made up his mind to look into Dark Matter instead. Just then, he got a call from CErN — “come and be the Higgs convenor.”

The timing could not have been better, because it was on his watch that the existence of the Higgs Boson was confirmed. As he commented, it was a lesson in life — “if you love somebody you set them free, if they come back to you, it was meant to be.”

THE SENSATIONAL

BRAIN What is it and how it works Dr Veronica Miller

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.

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.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 12 Cerebellum granular cells and white matter from an older man.

Delivering beef quality to the market begins on the farm

By checking on quality before animals are sold, Dr Aidan Moloney is closing the gap between farm and consumers.

W

hat people look for in beef depends on where they are along the supply chain. While the farmer aims to get a good price from the factory, based mainly on the weight and quality of the carcass, the consumer is more concerned about paying for qualities such as tenderness, flavor and appearance.

At Teagasc’s Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, Grange, Dr Aidan Moloney is working to close that gap, for, as he explained, how animals are managed on the farm has a significant impact on both the value and the quality of the end products.

Traditionally, he said, once animals were sold, farmers had little or no incentive to take any further interest in the supply chain, but some years ago, researchers at Teagasc realised that this kind of fragmentation was of no benefit to the industry. Ireland exports about 90 per cent of its beef, and to meet rising expectations, particularly in continental markets, there had to be a better flow of information all along the supply chain.

“All of this has implications on how the farmer handles and feeds their cattle,” said Aidan, so for the industry to remain competitive there has to be joined-upthinking.

Between the farmer and the end consumer, the industry chain has many links and side branches, and Aidan’s work involves co-ordinating the research

Website: www.teagasc.ie

that has a bearing on end quality. This research spans a whole range of issues from breeding to feeding. Genomics has become important, he said, and in another project he is working on uncastrated bull beef production.

Normally in Ireland young bulls are castrated, but as Aidan explained, there are production advantages for the farmer in the alternative, and the beef industry is interested because it could bring more diversity into the product mix.

Within that project, he said, there are specific studies such as how much does it cost to produce an animal, to what happens when it is fed on different diets. This is all part of taking an overall view, he said, and it is equally important to communicate the findings. People working in the industry, he said, can often identify certain characteristics in beef, but they might not know why they occur, so communication has to be a twoway dialogue.

While Aidan takes a leading role in orchestrating all of this, he never envisioned becoming such an expert in beef quality. “I did my PhD in fungal enzymes (at NUI Galway), so I came from a lab background.”

At that time, Teagasc had started to broaden their work on animal production, and as Aidan commented, “someone thought that a knowledge of microbiology would be useful,” so he

was taken on. However, first he had to learn about cattle. Within days of taking up his position, Aidan was shipped off to the Grassland Research Institute in Hurley in England to get up to speed on animal science.

On his return he did some work on rumen digestion, and then spent a year in the US researching deposition of fat from a biochemical point of view, and as it happens, this line of work was timely and relevant to the approach being taken at Teagasc. This approach has been very successful, said Aidan, and it has resulted in a much better capacity to respond to a variety of consumer and market demands. It also means that there is a better understanding now of what’s required on the farm.

Some characteristics such as the potential for growth and weight at a given age are genetically determined. said Aidan. In this context, genomics and other advanced technologies have come into play by helping to identify animals that have particular quality traits. At the same time, how the animal is fed has a big influence on characteristics such as colouring of muscle and fat, and on the make-up of fatty acids. With these, said Aidan, the influence is feeding, rather than breeding.

How animals have been fed, said Aidan, can have a big impact on quality, and for example, cattle fed on pasture, rather than barley or maize, have more yellow in their fat. When Irish beef is being marketed as pasture fed, this becomes a serious issue, and to ensure that this can be guaranteed, Teagasc researchers came up with a quality test.

In pasture fed cattle, said Aidan, the biochemical signature is distinctive, so while cattle might be the same genetically, the make-up of the fat would be different. “If someone had fed an animal on maize and said they had fed it on grass, you could tell right away,” said Aidan.

What’s good for the consumer is also good for the entire industry. Delivering quality means that exporters maintain their position in a highly competitive world.

Aidan is clearly passionate about his work, he enjoys research, but as he remarked, his greatest satisfaction comes from seeing how the results are being applied.

Harvesting energy For a big consumer of energy switching over to biomass will cut costs, but are forest owners ready to meet the rising demand for wood-chip fuel? Tom Kennedy reports that the opening of a new biomass energy plant in County Roscommon is going to have a big impact on the region.

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biomass energy plant, nearing completion in County Roscommon, is going to consume 30,000 tonnes of woodchip fuel annually. The plant, which will generate 15 Mg when fully operational, represents a significant step in acceptance of biomass as a fuel, and it is also good news for forestry owners in the region as it promises to open up a new market form them.

The plant is being constructed to provide energy to Aurivo’s milk processing factory at Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. As Wille Murphy, head of operations at Auriva, explained, about 250 million litres of milk are processed at there each year, all of which is exported in dry form. “We are a water-removal factory,” he said and removing 95 per cent of the raw material requires an enormous amount of energy. “Energy makes up a high proportion of our costs,” said Willie.

“We would use about eight million litres of fuel oil a year, ” he explained, adding that over a period of fifteen years fuel costs have gone up by almost 500 per cent.

That combination of rising prices and high demand was not good for business, so the company, until recently better known as Connacht Gold, began looking at the options. Willie and the engineers at Aurivo spent two years considering biomass before deciding to go ahead with plans drawn up by HDS Engineering, an Irish company based in Kells, Co Meath.

Willie said that HDS had impressed the Aurivo board by coming up with well thought-out and realistic plans, but this was not the only factor behind the switch over to biomass. As it happens, Ballaghaderreen is surrounded by forestry. One of the largest clusters of forestry in the country occurs within delivery distance of the Aruva plant. As a study of the area revealed, there are 3,276 individual forestry stands in an area of 11,500 hectares, most of which are associated with farmland.

Dr Niall Farrelly, a forestry researcher with Teagasc, said that this cluster had been looked at in some detail and it was found that the potential yield of timber

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 14

was well above the national average.

Niall extimated that forestry thinnings from the surrounding study area could meet a significant part of the demand, and of course the area could be extended.

As he explained, a lot depends on how the thinning is done, and how accessible forests are to the roads. Thinning involves selecting out trees to allow the others to grow on to maturity, and this is part of standard forest management, but until recently thinnings had little, and sometimes even no value. Rising demand for wood fuel has started to change that situation.

Niall said that in some areas around Kilkelly, Frenchpark, and Ballaghaderreen something like 5,000 cubic metres (roughtly equivalent to the same number of tonnes) could be available per hectare from first thinnings.

Apart from the big plant at Ballaghaderreen, Niall said that there now is a significant potential to supply wood fuel to a number of other schemes, such as boilers in hotels and nursing homes, and because supply is close to the points of consumption, considerable savings can be made on transport costs.

While all of these developments are positive, giving farm-forester producers the promise of an income boost, and providing consumers with renewable carbon-neutral fuel, success depends on security and continuity of supply.

Alan Fox, founding director of HDS, in presenting details of his company’s plans at Ballaghaderreen late last year, said that although the use of biomass for generation of energy is not new, it does present some special problems.

“Essentially, we are taking in material that is half-water and half fuel,” he said, and the boilers have been designed to handle up to 70 per cent moisture in exceptional circumstances. However, fuel that is high in moisture is going to command a lower price, so the quality of supply is an important part of the equation as is security of supply. For optimum results, he said, the supplier and the buyer need to work together, and he observed that in spite of all the talk about bioenergy, this has not always been the case. Alan clearly has no time for talk without action, and as Willie Murphy remarked, this willingness to be open, honest and realistic rather than be idealistic, made Aurivo happy to go into a working partnership with HDS. Noel Kennedy Teagasc Forest Development officer for the region, welcomed the decision to go ahead with the energy plant as a vote of confidence, but he sounded a note of caution by stating that no one knows how local forest owners are going to respond. In theory, the supply is there, the demand

is rising, but up to now, farm-foresters have been slow to start working their plantations. Over 3,000 plantations in the area have been assessed and on the surface, their potential productivity appears very high. However, as Noel commented, the elephant in the room “is no one knows what the individual forest owners going to do.”

One of the big problems is that there are so many individual owners and a scattered patchwork of forests. This is an issue that Noel has been concerned with for some time, and his suggestion is that growers work together to get the benefit of harvesting, management and marketing on a larger scale. “Many forest owners,” he said, “are loathe to become involved in management, mainly because of lack of knowledge.” Thinning in smaller plantations can be expensive and inefficient, but by working in clusters, knowledge can be shared giving growers more confidence in deciding what to do with their own resources.

Action at this level, said Noel, is an essential step in completing the cycle.

Failure to act, he suggests, means that local foresters are almost certain to miss out on a rising market. “Our hope,” he said, “is that the bulk of the timber will come from local forests.”

The demand is certainly going to be there, but as Alan Fox pointed out, don’t expect the big buyers to put up with any uncertainty of supply. Although no one talks openly about this, Aurivo managers are not taking the risk on being caught

out by this uncertainty. If local suppliers do not rise to the bait, the company will draw from its own wood chiping plant at Coromona in County Galway. Transport costs might be higher, but woodchip still works out 45 to 50 per cent cheaper than oil per unit of heat.

It is easy to imagine lorry-loads of logs arriving at Aurivo ’s plant, but this is never going to happen. “This is a food plant,” said Alan, so no fuel is to be

prepared on site. Timber will be chipped off-site and delivery into the stand-alone boiler house is so highly automated that no one even lays a hand on timber.

One of the features that makes biomass plant so attractive, apart from being carbon-neutral, and cheaper than oil, is that land benefits from the spreading of wood ash, so nutrients go back into the soil.

FOresTry, said Henry Phillips, an experienced forestry consultant, is a big success story. We have gone from about one per cent cover to eleven per cent, and 40,000 are working in the forestry sector.

The value to the Irish economy has been estimated to be €2.2 billion a year and Ireland is a net exporter of wood panels and sawn wood.

Growth is expected to continue, and Henry said that while supply is expected to double over the next decade from 3.5 million to 7 million cubic metres, demand for wood fuel alone is expected to outstrip supply.

All this increase is going to come from privately owned forestry, and this means that timber is almost certainly going to contribute significantly to farm incomes.

Up to now, explained Henry, the only demand for thinnings was for pallets,

stakes and wood panels, but with the rise in energy demand, this is beginning to change. Traditional markets, with prices set by the sawmills, now have to compete with the demand for chips, pellets and split logs. “The big thing that influences supply is price,” said Henry, and a rising demand for wood fuel could make thinning a lot more attractive, especially to owners of smaller plantations, provided they know how to react.

When Ireland’s forests declined, there was also a big loss of traditional knowhow and because of this, private owners might know a lot about the price of cattle, they might know little or next to nothing about the value of their trees. As Henry explained, most of our current experience has come from large state forests and that knowledge is not always transferrable.

“The private sector,” he said, “is quite

different.” It is also racing ahead of State forestry in planting. There are in the region of 19,000 owners of relatively small forests, and many of these are on farms.

Although small by Coillte standards, these plantations can be 5, 10, 25 or more hectares in size, and collectively they add up to an enormous natural resource.

However, the methods that worked well in large state forests cannot be applied with equal success on forests embedded in farmland. The Ballaghaderreen energy project highlights the fact that there are problems, and whether a solution comes, as Noel Kennedy suggests, through group schemes, or by use of smaller farmfriendly machines, or by a combination of these, there is an urgent need for a change in now local forests are managed.

Innovative engineering

GeNerATING power from wood is nothing new, and as Alan Fox remarked, sawmills in Ireland have been doing this for over 35 years. For this reason, Alan said it should come as no surprise that an Irish company can offer considerable expertise in this field. yet, as he remarked, his company’s standing for such expertise would be a lot higher abroad than it is in Ireland.

This is largely due to the company’s focus on exports. About 80 per cent of everything that comes out of the manufacturing facilities at Kells, Co Meath, ends up abroad.

When Alan founded the company 37 years ago the aim was to displace imports, and as he remarked, “that got us up and running,” but it soon became apparent that the home market would not support further growth. The decision was made to bid for contracts abroad, and since then the company has become well established as an international player, while, as Alan is proud to say, HDs remains 100 per cent Irish.

As evidenced by the negotiations with Aurivo, Alan’s company does not just provide clients with design and build solution. “In undertaking this project”, said Alan, “we talked to the major players, such as Coillte,” and instead of assuming that Aurivo could deal with all the problems, HDs undertook to look after tasks that the client had no previous experience of. In addition to this, the HDs has established short-rotation poplar and willow plantations as part of energy crop r&D , and undoubtedly this also helps engineers to see projects from the client’s point of view. solving the client’s problems is all part of the service, and at Ballaghaderreen allowances were made for fuel that is less than ideal. One of the features, explained Alan, is pre-heating air to 150°C so that the system can tolerate higher moisture content in biomass fuels.

More information for forest growers in the Roscommon Mayo region at

www.forestgrowers.com

ThE FuTurE oF

Computers

Based on current predictions the limits of existing digital computer technology will be reached within the next decade. So what is the possible future computing technology that may overcome these impending limits well into the first half of this century and beyond? More importantly, what implications does future computing technology have for current computer architecture and for the computer programming skills of today? Chris Coughlan takes a look into the future.

I

n today’s digital age the enormous moved from visible light, to ultraviolet, power and ubiquitous spread of to deep ultraviolet (DUV), while new technology is driving the transformation developments use extreme ultraviolet of business and society at an ever(EUV), electron beam and x-ray increasing pace. This rate of change wavelengths. Beyond these, further limits was identified as far back as 1965 when may be achieved through the use of Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel alternative semiconductor materials and observed that the speed and density new techniques in thin film technology. It (number of transistors) of the silicon chip is possible that these new semiconductor doubles, and the price halves, every 12 to devices might exhibit different electronic 18 months. Moore’s Law still holds true properties and new operational today and has become the benchmark characteristics, and this challenge will when predicting the future power and have to be overcome. However, even progress of technology. However, if all these new techniques are the same rate of progress applied successfully, they will leads to the prediction that eventually fall foul to either current semiconductor and prohibitive manufacturing Instead of just computing technologies costs or physical and 1 or 0 bits, will begin to reach their electronic limits such extreme limits within ten as “noise” effects of the qubits are not years. electrons in the transistor, limited to these Today’s semiconductor where the signal cannot technology and electronics two states be distinguished from is, in simple terms, based the noise, “tunneling” on the flow and manipulation or “interference” between of electrons. To achieve this, electrons in adjacent transistors. current semiconductor manufacturers There are also “heat dissipation” use optical photolithography, a process problems as the smaller the size the that etches an image onto a prepared greater the effect of heat. So, despite surface to form the integrated circuit continuous innovations, when chip. The push towards increasing Moore’s Law is applied conventional density and decreasing size of the chip semiconductor technology will reach its is dependent upon the continuous limitations around 2025. At that stage, reduction of the wavelength used in alternative non-semiconductor materials, the photolithographic process. It has new manufacturing processes and new

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 16

computing platforms and architecture will have to be developed to overcome these limits.

There are promising replacements and alternatives, including Optical Computers, DNA Computers and Molecular Computers. Among these, the most radical emerging and exciting field is in Quantum Computing.

Quantum Computers

From... bits to qubits... calculation to teleportation Current research uses the theory of quantum mechanics to develop the technology of quantum computers. The implications could be profound, not only for computing but they also involve, teleportation, parallel universes and even our concept of reality.

According to Prof. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s Media Lab, if current research proves successful then the computer of the future will look nothing like the PC on your desk but more like the cup of coffee beside it. He speculates that, in the distant future, quantum physics may even allow us to use the atmosphere or the oceans as a global computer. By exploiting quantum mechanical interactions, scientists predict that ordinary liquids and new, exotic materials, will be able to behave as computers.

The concept of quantum information and a quantum computer was first suggested in the early 1980s by the Russian Mathematician Yuri Manin and the well known American Nobel Laureate Physicist Richard P. Feynman, while Paul Bhinoff at Argonne National Laboratory was the first to formally apply quantum theory to computers. In 1985 David Deutsch of Oxford University proposed a quantum parallel computer that could model any physical system. His popular book The Fabric of Reality is well worth reading.

Although still in its infancy the theory and development of quantum computers is based on how the fundamental unit of information, the bit, is encoded. In our current digital computer the bit is specified by only being in a single state of one number at a time, either 1 or 0. The immense potential power of a quantum computer lies in the fact that it can be in multiple states at once, both 1 and 0 and all states in between. This is due to the non-intuitive weird world of quantum mechanics, which deals with the physics of sub-atomic particles.

Besides having a mass and a charge, electrons also have angular momentum

or spin. Associated with the spin axis is a magnetic field like that of a bar magnet and analogous to the earth’s magnetic field. The spin can either be from west to east, called “up spin” or the spin can be in the opposite direction, “down spin”.

The spin up and the spin down can represent 0 and 1. Spintronics is the name given to systems that exploit the spin of particles such as electrons and nuclei.

By using the techniques called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) an external magnetic field acts on the magnetic field of the electron causing both fields to line up together, similar to two bar magnets, and in doing so tilts the electron. In quantum-mechanical terms this tilt causes the spin to be either parallel or antiparallel to the external field and each spin can simultaneously be in both up and down states, in effect it can represent both 1 and 0 at the same time. This characteristic, known as “superposition”, enables a quantum computer to perform a multiplicity of operations in parallel.

Therefore, a quantum bit or “qubit”, which is equivalent to a transistor switch in a conventional computer, can be defined by two different states. Two quantum switches can be in four states at the same time representing 00,01,10,11.

While three quantum switches can represent eight states at the same time, 000,001,010,011,100,101,110,111. In comparison an 8-bit digital computer can exist in only one of 256 states at a time while a quantum computer with a register composed of eight qubits can exist in superposition with all 256 states at a time and therefore can work 256 calculations at once or in parallel. In simple terms the exponential computing power of a quantum computer can be summarised as 2 to the “nth power, where n is equal to the number of quantum bits or switches.

Quantum mechanics tells us that directly measuring the state of a qubit invariably destroys the superposition of states forcing it to become either a 1 or 0 (up spin or down spin). This collapse into a single value does not necessarily give the right answer. However, utilising another aspect of quantum mechanics “entanglement” the collapse can be avoided. By applying an outside force to two atoms or particles, it can cause them to become entangled, and the second atom or particle can take on the properties of the first atom. This “action at a distance” allow scientists to know the value of qubits without actually looking at them, which would otherwise collapse them back to 1s or 0s.

Obtaining the right answer is achieved

by quantum “interference” where all the wrong answers destructively interfere with each other leaving only the right answer. Qubits are very delicate and “decoherence” is a constant threat, which can interfere with quantum computation.

A stray photon or vibration can cause decoherence. Protecting a quantum system from this is extremely difficult and a subfield known as “quantum error correction” has sprung up to deal with the problem. It is based on developing strategies and algorithms to protect a quantum system from decoherence and to repair any damage that occurs.

A number of quantum computer architectures are being explored that would be capable of forming a line of qubits to create a quantum register. One system uses quantum dots, a method to control the position of individual electrons and also forces them to occupy discrete energy levels. The scale is such that 5000 quantum dots could stretch across a grain of sand. Another system uses ions trapped in an electromagnetic field. All ions in the trap have the same charge and repel each other. Although it’s early days yet, scientists using the nuclei of five fluorine atoms have been able to build a primitive quantum logic register that can process up to five qubits.

Radio frequency pulses set up the spins of the individual atoms in each molecule.

The answer was then read by measuring small amounts of energy cast off by the atoms and detected with a NMR. One of the immediate advantages of a quantum computer is in the area of prime number factorisation. This is the foundation for secure data communications and is what makes public-key cryptography possible. For example, it is easy to multiply two prime numbers together (e.g. 7817 x 7333 = 57322061) but there is no easy way to do the calculation in reverse, that is find the two prime numbers which can be multiplied together to equal 57322061.

This difficulty is apparent when one considers that it took eight months using 1600 computers connected by the Internet to factorise a 129-digit number.

In 1994 Peter Shor of Bell Labs developed an algorithm that a quantum computer could use to factorise huge numbers. In 1996 Lov Grover of Bell Labs developed a quantum algorithm for searching vast amounts of information, it became known as the Grover database search algorithm. The development of quantum algorithms is the quantum computer equivalent to software programs for today’s computers. Quantum algorithms are exponentially faster than any possible

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 17

deterministic classical algorithms used in today’s fastest computers.

A group of scientists, led by Isaac Chuang’s at Stanford University, implemented the simplest example of Shor’s quantum-factoring algorithm, they factored the number 15 using only seven qubits. Recently the factorisation of 21 was achieved. With 40 qubits over a trillion values could be worked simultaneously. This type of computing power has major implications for electronic data encryption, privacy and security and thus is becoming a grave concern of Governments and national security agencies as it would be a simple matter to break any code using a quantum computer of this size.

Google is working with the Canadian firm D-Wave, manufacturers of the first commercial quantum computer, while recently researchers have developed a solid state material that maintained the quantum states for 39 minutes at room temperature. This brings the quantum computer another step closer to the desktop.

The Future is Magic!

Computing large factors on a quantum computer has even a larger implication if we are to believe the argument of David Deutsch. He poses the question, “when Shor’s algorithm has factorized a number, using 10 to the power of 500 or so times the computational resources that can be seen at present, where is the number factorized?”. He maintains that there are only 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the entire visible Universe and if this was the extent of physical reality then the Universe would not remotely contain the resources required to factorize such a large number. Deutsch’s answer seems to be in the realm of science fiction. He maintains that a quantum computer is, “a distinctively new way of harnessing nature” and will be, “the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel Universes. A quantum computer would be capable of distributing components of a complex task among vast numbers of parallel universes, and then sharing the results.”

According to David Nolte, author of Mind at Light Speed: A New Kind of Intelligence, “What you gain with quantum computing is the ability to solve problems that are unsolvable otherwise.

You are talking about processing capabilities that exceed human comprehension”.

All this might seem to be fantastic, but the application of quantum physics

holds out even further fantastic promises for the future. Consider the implications of entanglement. A group of scientists at the University of Innsbruck in Austria were the first to publish a paper verifying that “teleportation”, is possible.

Their experiment using entanglement demonstrated that it is possible to transfer the properties of a quantum particle (a photon in this case) to another, even if the two are at opposite ends of the galaxy. In the early days when this was first speculated upon Einstein in disbelief called it “spooky action at a distance”.

The possible early practical use of simple teleportation is that it will become the equivalent of wires in a quantum circuit.

Today, electronic communication, such as the Internet, gives us the ability to transfer digital information. In the future

and in what context, does that leave quantum physics will give us the ability INK sized matter and the human race... equivalent to cellular to transfer quanta products... givingM rise to a Universal automata on a PC screen?

The world has progressed through Quantum Network... yes fiction today, but maybe fact in the future. Consider different ages, agricultural, industrial and now we are in the digital age and at the what Arthur C. Clarke said in Profiles of the Future, “Any sufficiently advanced emerging stage of the Nano Age. After technology is indistinguishable from this the next great age, if not the ultimate age, which will begin to emerge in the magic”.

Even more unbelievable is the latter half of the second millennium will be the quantum age which will implication of the recent reassessment our conceptsFranklin of information

by Stephen Hawking on the nature The science and art of colourrevolutionise explained by Margaret and of black holes. Some scientists are processing, communication, matter Tom Kennedy. A colourful and informative paperback. €15 postand free now speculating about the quantum even... reality itself... welcome to The from www.sciencespin.com Matrix! computing possibilities of black holes, “matter goes in, answers come out”.

Dr. Chris Coughlan, is a Senior Manager Others go even further, speculating that the ultimate quantum computer may at Hewlett-Packard, Galway and an be the Universe itself, where the laws of Adjunct Professor at NUI, Galway. physics are the programs. Where then, COLOUR

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 a m of flow, g writin For ements; freedo the basic requir Boiled tree found to meet permanency. rooms, high degree of by ink-cap mush clarity, and a ced produ mush yellow bark, the black ered root of the A owers, powd used. cornfl been from have blue bark even strong coffee flag iris, and winter blackened made from the glue. One black ink was with milk or mixed the twigs from oak galls, of blackthorn of ink was made oak trees. One type on comm d by insects on pounds of iron round balls forme , ration was five formula for prepa s of gum, 12 gallons of water pound galls. sulphate, five gallon of oak by volume, 12 12 gallons must and measuring h oak galls for s how big the Collecting enoug show just lt but it sive have been difficu even more exten an and On gum, was. 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 rs’ ink. industry in parts to make printe d linsee 63 was mixed with

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

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

tion is the Mour during initial event. The excep it developed n years old and to the melting only 55 millio , possibly due Atlantic Ocean basalts (see ding Antrim opening of the crust by the ascen ” earlier). of the Earth’s Rocks other Volcanic e in the base of granit “Basalts and n of hot molte of plates: The generation by the movement to driven is crustal plate sinks 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 in turn melts 3). Where those mantle which the from hot basalt The granite

s oniferous plant

Carb

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

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

Kennedy.

67

ROCK AROUND IRELAND

Peadar McArdle guides us around Ireland’s diversified geology.

Paperback €15 postfree from www.sciencespin.com In 1795, the chance discovery of a nugget was immediately followed by a gold rush as people were drawn by the prospect of picking up instant wealth from Wicklow’s Goldmine River.

Science Spin 6 issues a year Subscription €30 www.spinstore.eu

Gold Frenzy

The story of Wicklow’s gold Peadar McArdle

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.

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

Albertine Kennedy Publishing ISBN 0 906002 08 7

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 18

When atoms in a solid are arranged in an orderly three-dimensional pattern crystals form. Margaret Franklin writes that the resulting varieties of shape and form, often of great beauty, have a fascination for scientists and non-scientists alike.

S

ince ancient times, it had been observed that particles of common crystalline substances, such as salt and sugar, or minerals like quartz and calcite, have characteristic shapes. Crystals of common salt, sodium chloride, naturally form in the shape of tiny cubes. However, nowadays table salt is usually sold in finely granulated form, so that the shape of the crystals is not always apparent.

Under a magnifying glass, (provided the temperature is below freezing point) snow crystals are found to exist in an amazing variety of forms, each with a hexagonal symmetry. Crystals of copper sulphate (commonly known as bluestone) assume a rhombic shape.

Crystallographers have discovered that the shapes adopted by crystals are due to the spatial arrangement of the atoms, molecules or ions of which the material is composed. The spatial arrangement in turn, is due partly to geometrical considerations, such as the relative shapes and sizes of the atoms, ions, or molecules of which the crystal is composed. Other factors influencing the arrangement include the type of bonding present in the solid.

A crystal is a fragment of solid material, bounded by plane surfaces, referred to as faces, which intersect at definite angles. It is these characteristic angles, different for each substance, that determine the overall shape of the crystals. Some substances can exist in very different crystalline forms, depending on the conditions of temperature and pressure under which the crystals are formed. For example, the element carbon occurs as diamond (which is the hardest substance known) and also as graphite, which is very soft.

Diamond is transparent to light, but has

Above, crystaline ice on car windscreen.

Left, diamond strtucture.

Right, beryl structure.

a high refractive index, which gives it its sparkle. Graphite however, interacts with light in a different manner, and is dark grey in appearance, though it also has a glistening sheen. The difference between the properties of these two allotropes of carbon is due to the different type of bonding that occurs between the atoms of carbon in the two crystalline forms.

While crystals were recognized in ancient times, the systematic scientific study of crystallography dates from as recently as the late eighteenth century. A French cleric, Abbe Hauy (1743-1822) is known as the ‘Father of Crystallography’.

He proposed that the regular shapes of crystals were due to a periodic, repeating, internal structure. He accidentally dropped a piece of calcite and was amazed by the way it shattered into smaller crystals of similar shape. This was what inspired his theory. At that time, however, there were no techniques available to verify his hypothesis. During the 19th century, experimental methods for studying crystals were limited to what could be observed by the naked eye, or with the help of a hand lens or optical microscope.

2014 has been designated The International Year of Crystallography. The year was officially launched at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, on January 20th & 21st.

The overall aim is to highlight the enormous role that crystals play in drug development, chemistry, geology and the material sciences.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 19

Many naturally occurring minerals may be found as very large crystals, since they have formed slowly beneath the earth’s crust. Such crystals allow the measurement of interfacial angles to be made using a simple instrument such as a goniometer. It was discovered that the same mineral, regardless of where it was found, always had the same interfacial angles. This constancy of interfacial angles was formulated as a Law of Crystallography. Crystals of the same material may have a variety of shapes (this is referred to as crystal ‘habit’), but they always possess the same type of symmetry. For example, it has been observed that no snow crystals are exactly the same, yet they always display hexagonal symmetry. This suggests there is a symmetrical arrangement of the atomic or molecular units that make up the crystalline material.

It was not until the discovery of X-rays and the subsequent development of X-ray diffraction, at the start of the 20th century, that the internal structure of crystals could be studied experimentally.

Diffraction is the bending of waves around obstacles. It is a familiar phenomenon in the case of water ripples.

However, it is not easy to observe for light, since the wavelengths of visible light are much shorter than normal-sized objects. This is why we can’t see around corners. For all practical purposes, light travels in straight lines. At the beginning of the 19th century, diffraction of visible light was demonstrated by Thomas Young. His experiments involved passing a beam of light through very narrow slits, in a darkened room, producing a pattern of light and dark bands, known as a diffraction pattern. The reason the phenomenon could be observed was

because the width of the slits and the distance between them was comparable to the wavelengths of visible light. It provided the earliest evidence that light travelled in waves. Following this discovery, diffraction gratings were developed, by etching a series of very closely spaced parallel lines on a glass slide. These gratings found uses in various optical instruments.

X-rays have wavelengths even shorter than those of visible light. It so happens that the spacing between atoms in crystals is of the same order of magnitude as the wavelength of X-rays. Therefore, when a beam of X-rays is passed through a crystal, the crystal acts as a 3-dimensional diffraction grating.

Max von Laue was the first person to use X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of common salt. The X-rays do not give an actual picture of the crystal structure. They produce a complicated diffraction pattern, which needs expert interpretation. Von Laue was able to use the diffraction pattern to pinpoint the positions of the ions in the crystal.

He showed that sodium chloride has a repeating cubic arrangement of sodium and chloride ions, which accounts for the cubic shape of its crystals. For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914. The International year of Crystallography celebrates the centenary of this award. X-ray diffraction was further developed in Britain by father

A natural wonder, the giant crystals of gypsum in the Naica Cave, Mexico. The tiny figure of a visitor, right, gives some idea of scale. and son team, William and Laurence Bragg. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year.

The internal structure of crystals may be described in terms of a ‘lattice’. This is a geometrical concept and is simply an array of points arranged in particular positions in space. A lattice is built up from a repeating unit, known as the ‘unit cell’. The angles and dimensions of the unit cell can be measured by X-ray diffraction and from this the entire lattice can be described. Many two-dimensional patterns, for example on wallpaper or floor tiles, are also based on designs that repeat periodically. For most of the 20th century, crystallographers believed that all crystals were based on a periodic repeating unit cell.

Cubic crystals of pyrite, an iron sulphide, commonly known as “fool’s gold” because of its metallic luster and colour. Photo: Vassil.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 20

X-ray diffraction has proved useful, not only to determine the structure of mineral crystals, but can also be used for large biological molecules. It was instrumental in determining the structure of Vitamin B12 and DNA. X-ray diffraction is not the only method for investigating the internal structure of crystals. It is found that particles, such as neutrons and electrons, can also display wave properties and in fact electron diffraction as well as neutron diffraction have both been used in crystallography. In 1982, Dan Shechtman discovered, using electron diffraction, that not all crystals are made up of regular, repeating units.

The sample he was examining was an alloy of aluminium and manganese. It turned out to have pentagonal symmetry, but the pattern never repeats itself.

Such aperiodic crystals are known as ‘quasicrystals’ and they are now an active field of research, with useful applications in new materials. It took many years before the significance of Shechtman’s findings was recognized. He was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011.

While crystallography has become an important field for scientists, the sheer beauty of crystals will always remain a source of wonder to everyone.

Copper sulphate

Natrolite Vanadinite

Heulandite

Selenite

Garnet Ice crystal

Quartz Fluorite

ASPECTS OF IRISH GEOLOGY EXPLAINED — SIMPLY

Paddy Gaffikin on what we need to know about

GRAPTOLITES The oldest body fossils found in Ireland All creatures great and small.....

The Lord God made them all.

C. F. Alexander (1818-1895)

Tin Ireland are trace fossils occurring in

he oldest fossils found in Ireland, to date,

rocks at Bray, Co. Wicklow. They have the generic name Oldhamia after their discoverer Thomas Oldham over 150 years ago. These fossils are around 550 million years old (very Late Precambrian) and consist of radiating patterns which, although it is conjectural, are considered to have been formed by worm-like creatures burrowing into what was then mud.

Next we have Cambrian microfossils (ones that can only be studied using a microscope), found at various places in Co. Wexford. But the oldest body macrofossils (ones that can be seen unaided) found in Ireland are graptolites, the most ancient of which are around 485 million years old (very Early Ordovician).

commonly turn up in black shale and, to a lesser degree, in limestone and chert. (Chert is chemically the same as flint, and has similar properties to flint, but occurs in limestones, whereas flint is only found in Chalk.)

A simplified sketch of a graptolite fossil called Monograptus.While the graptolite was living, each theca contained a minute creature called a zooid.

Graptolites generally

Graptolites are in the phylum Hemicordata (hemicordates) because they show some affinity with the chordates, that is animals with a backbone or notochord. The name graptolite is an anglicised form of the formal name Graptolithina from the Greek graptos, meaning ‘written’, and lithos, meaning ‘stone’, because some graptolite fossils look like pencil scribbles on rock surfaces. In total, there were six groups of these animals, of which the dendroids and graptoloids are the best known. The dendroids lived between the Middle Cambrian and Early Carboniferous and the graptoloids evolved in the Early Ordovician and became extinct in the Early Devonian. It is the graptoloids that are usually referred to as just ‘graptolites’ and these are the most important group and the only type you are likely to spot in rocks.

The graptoloids are thought to have evolved from the more primitive dendroids. Here we will only deal with the graptoloids or ‘true’ graptolites.

What do fossils of graptolites (graptoloids) look like?

Many look like small hacksaw blades, varying in size from about 1cm to 3cm. Some fossils have one serrated edge, while some have two.The serrations can be seen better if you employ a hand lens. The remains often occur as black/grey carbonised films. But sometimes, they are white. While some graptolite fossils have one ‘branch’ (called a stipe), others have two or more. These fossils

carbon because, due to compression, volatiles such as oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen in the protein vapourised, leaving a thin film mostly composed of carbon. However, graptolite fossils can also appear as white films. These are composed of a phyllosilicate, which is a layered silicate, that occurs, for example, in clays. They form around the organic material in the graptolite fossils when the rock (black shale) containing them undergoes low-grade metamorphism. (That is, metamorphism involving low pressure and/or low temperature.)

The living graptolites

While the graptolite was living, individual zooids lived in ‘tubes’ (called thecae), these appearing as the serrations at the side/s of the ‘branches’. Zooids, because they were composed of soft material, are rarely preserved in fossils. Graptolites only lived in seas, in which they usually floated or swam, some being perhaps attached to sea-weed.

Provided there were no strong currents, after death the graptolites drifted down to become embedded in accumulating sediment on the sea bed. However, if strong currents prevailed, they were so light in weight that they would have been prevented from settling on the sea bed. Shales, because they formed in quiet conditions, can commonly contain graptolite fossils lying flat on bedding planes.

Graptolites were at their numerical zenith during the Ordovician Period eventually becoming extinct in the Early Devonian.

Graptolite fossils (carbonised films) in black shale.

Simplified graph showing the numerical variation of graptolites over geological time.

(Note that the actual distribution is a bit more complex than this.)

Graptolites (white) in black shale.

How do graptolite fossils form?

A graptolite fossil just consists of the skeleton of a colony of minute creatures called zooids. Zooids are similar in some respects to the polyps of corals, though are more anatomically advanced than polyps.

The skeleton was composed of an insoluble protein, probably collagen, that was built up as fusellar tissue. (Fusselar tissue could be described as flaky, banded material, built up in layers – something like a bandage.) After death, this could be converted into a film of

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 22

The usefulness of graptolite fossils Because genera and species of graptolites only lived for a short geological time, they are very useful for dating rocks. If a known genus or species of a graptolite fossil occurs in a rock then, knowing its narrow time span, we can ascertain the age of the rock. The age of the fossil and the age of the rock are the same.

In contrast to graptolite fossils, if we take, for example, the brachiopod Lingula, which evolved in the Cambrian Period and still lives today and has not changed very much over geological time. Hence, its fossils are of little use for dating the rocks in which it is found.

While living, graptolites were well scattered by ocean currents so they have a wide geographical distribution. This enables rocks in one area to be correlated with rocks from a vast distance away.

in colonies with each zooid living in tubular skeleton made of fusellar tissue like that of the graptolites. Today they live on sea floors including parts of the North Sea and North Atlantic.

Places in Ireland where graptolite fossils have been found

Graptolites in some perspective

At Coalpit Bay, Co. Down, graptolite fossils of the genus Monograptus and other genera have been found. The genus Didymograptus has turned up at Conlanstown, Co. Kildare in Ordovician exposures and at Belvoir, Co. Clare, graptolites of Ordovician age occur. Graptolites – for instance the genus Cyrtograptus – have been found in Silurian rocks at Garrangrena, Borrisoleigh, Co. Tipperary and graptolites of the same age have been recorded as occurring at Kilnacreagh, Six Mile Bridge, Co. Clare, for example, the genus Neodiversograptus.

What caused the extinction of the graptolites?

The demise of these animals could have been due to the emergence of the fishes, which thickly populated the seas towards the end of the Silurian Period, and they may have fed on graptolites. But, as with many extinctions in the geological past, a combination of factors probably was involved.

Drawing of Graptolites by George Victor Du Noyer, the 19th century geologist and talented artist.

Are there any creatures like graptolites living today?

Graptolites per se have been extinct for very many millions of years and hemicordates are extremely rare today. But, there is one group of tiny marine animals, called the pterobranchs (pronounced ‘tero-branks’), which show some similarities to graptolites.

Pterobranchs, like the graptolites, are classed as hemichordates and consist of zooids living

Graptolites would have shared the seas with invertebrates like the trilobites, brachiopods, corals, bryozoans, sponges, crinoids, bivalves, nautiloids and gastropods. Life on land was just starting to develop with the emergence of land plants and the appearance of the first terrestrial animals which, according to the fossil record, were millipedes. While the graptolites were living, the vertebrates (fish) had not yet made the transition to land; there was absolutely no sign, for example, of the dinosaurs on land, these were not to appear until many millions of years after the graptolites became extinct. So, keeping these facts in mind, if you are able to collect any graptolite fossils, you should consider them a real treasure!

Paddy Gaffikin is author of Irish Rocks, a beginners guide to the common types of rock that occur around Ireland.

A popular guide to the common types of rocks that occur around Ireland, from the dark basalts of the north, glittering granites, quartzites and grey limestones to the red sandstones of the south. Paddy Gaffkin explains how these rocks came to be there and how to identify them.

Full colour with fold-out cover. 48pp.

€9.00 post free from www.spinstore.eu

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 23

Dr. How's

Science Wows!

What is Soil?

Soil is the outermost part of the Earth‛s surface, where plants grow.

...exploring Water!

Junior science by Dr. Naomi Lavelle

Without soil we could not survive!

The soil Soil acts provides billions as a natural of organisms water filter, with a place cleaning water as The soil to live! it passes is very important through it in the cycling of nutrietnts especially carbon and nitrogen.

Soil is made up of rock material of various sizes (from powdered rock to sand, to pebbles and stones).

Soil also contains minerals, roting plants and animals and living organisms.

How is soil made?

There are a lot of factors that influence how soil is made.

Soil contains all the nutrients required for plants to grow and survive!

The first of these is what type of material the soil is being made from... the type of rock that the soil is made from is called the parent material.

Did you know... that in a tablespoon of good soil there is as many as 50 billion bacteria?

All of these inhabitants help to break down dead plants and animals so that all the nutirents contained within them are returned to the soil.

Soil is made when the parent material (rock) is broken down by the weather (wind, rain, sun, snow) eventually forming fine powder, sand and small rocks.

The decomposition of orgainc matter and the activity of a variety of organisms help to improve the soils nutritional quality.

Make a wormery Experiments you can try

Did you know... there are approximately 3000 species of earthworm in the world?

Other factos that influence how soil is made are... the weather, the topography of the land, what living organisms are around and.... time!

Did you know... it can take up to 1,000 years for just one inch of soil to form?

Soil is not just for growing plants.

It contains billions of other living organisms too... some can be very small like bacteria, fungi and algae and some can be very large like insects and even mammals.

The eartworm plays a vital role is maintaining healty soil and is often called “nature‛s plough”

Plants need soil to grow, not just for the nutrients that the soil provides but also as an achor, a stable place where the plant can place it‛s roots and support it‛s growing structure.

The soil has many other important functions too!

Let‛s learn more!

The soil is like a big recycling plant!

Why is soil so important?

Make your own wormery!

You will need.. Fill a large, see-through container with a large see-through alternative layers of soil and sand. container, sand, soil, Put a layer of leaves on the top. worms, leaves and Add enough water to keep the soil damp. other vegetation, Collect some earthworms from your garden add them to the wormery. card or paper Coverand the outside of your container with

So what is happening?

a large piece of card or paper to block out the light.

The earthworms Put the wormery in a safe place and check on it every daymix the layers of sand and remember to keep adding water to keep the soil moist. soil as they move through the You should soon notice that the different layers of wormery. This helps to soil and sand are getting mixed together. distribute nutrients Remember throughout the soil, to return the making it more worms safely back fertile into the garden once you have finished

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

Weird and wonderful animals

Sive Finlay introduces us to the Emei Moustache Toad, caring fathers but dangerous rivals.

Leptobrachium boringii male at the height of the breeding season. Photo: Cameron M. Hudson, Jinzhong Fu. Sichuan province in China highlighted in red.

Moustaches. Love them or loathe them, they’re not usually considered to be dangerous. Similarly, while possession of a moustache may have been a sign of charitable spirit during the month of November, it doesn’t usually affect your chances of attracting a mate. No such luck for male Emei moustache toads.

In this species of amphibian, males’ reproductive successes are defined by their moustaches.

Named for one of the mountains where they live, Emei moustache toads are an endangered amphibian species found in China. Contrary to their Latin species name, Leptobrachium boringii, the males have far from boring lives. And it’s all to do with love and power struggles (sounds like the plot for a soap opera...)

Most amphibians are relatively placid creatures that tend to limit their disagreements with other individuals to wrestling or posturing – the “hold me back” style of confrontation which usually doesn’t escalate to full-blown fighting. Not so for the moustache toads. This species has strong sexual dimorphism (males grow bigger than females) which is usually an indication of a breeding system where males fight for females’ attention. What’s the obvious weapon of choice for a toad? Why grow your own spiny moustache of course!

Details of the toads’ interesting breeding behaviour were recently published in a paper by Hudson and Fu in the open access (free) journal Plos one. During the February and March breeding season, male toads grow a row of sharp keratinised spines (the same material

which makes up hair, nails and rhino horns) developing up to 16 spines along their top lip. Males leave their forest homes to set up a nest site around a rock within streams of fast-flowing water.

They swim around their rocks for weeks while grunting underwater to try and attract females and simultaneously defending their nest sites from rival males. Toads fight for ownership of nests by driving their spines into the sides and bellies of their opponents. Their forearms also enlarge during the breeding season — perfect auxiliary weapons which they use to hold rival males onto their spines (see video footage on YouTube!). The researchers in this study didn’t record any fatal fights but they did find plenty of males that had suffered nasty puncture wounds. Female toads seem to have a preference for choosing larger males, probably because size is a good indicator of health and fitness. Females choose a nest site to lay their eggs which are then fertilised by the males. Their job over, females return to their forest homes, leaving the fertilised eggs in the charge of the males — so they’re caring fathers as well as brutal fighters.

The really interesting discovery though was that most of the nests which were being guarded by single males showed evidence of multiple paternities.

From an evolutionary perspective, successful reproduction is defined by passing on genes to your own offspring so it doesn’t make much sense to guard and protect a rival male’s progeny. This explains why male lions that take over a pride of females will usually kill the

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 25

young cubs fathered by rival males so that they can then mate with the females to produce their own offspring. So why do the male toads look after a brood which they haven’t fathered? There are a couple of possible explanations.

Firstly, the toads may not know that they have been cuckolded: “sneaker” males might slip under the radar of a resident male’s nest territory and fertilise some of the newly laid eggs. Remember external fertilisation (outside of the body) is a messy and random business — who’s to say what you’ll encounter floating around in the water? Another possibility is that females may prefer to mate with males that are already looking after a nest — it’s a sign of a good father — so it might be advantageous for a male to take over a nest with fertilised eggs, attract a new female, fertilise her eggs and then guard both sets of offspring together.

It would be difficult for the males to distinguish among the broods so the best strategy could be to just guard all the eggs together. But then of course there’s another, more calculating option. If males can distinguish eggs with different paternities it may still be advantageous to protect some eggs which are not their own: having extra eggs in their care may decrease the chance that their own eggs are destroyed by a predator.

The moustached toads’ eccentric and interesting breeding activity is short lived. When the last females leave the streams at the end of March the males stop fighting and lose their spines. They guard their nests until the eggs hatch after which they return to the forests and leave the tadpoles to fend for themselves.

Unfortunately Emei moustache toads are one of the nearly 20 per cent of amphibian species which are considered endangered. They have a restricted distribution in just a few provinces in China and are under constant and increasing threat from habitat loss.

Let’s hope we can preserve and observe these moustachioed oddities for many generations to come.

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

Sunlight falls on the distinctive granite peaks of the Mountains of Mourne in County Down. Photo by Brian McCready. 1st Prize in Ireland section.

Geo imaGes

A selection from the latest DuNoyer competition run by the Geological Survey of Ireland with the Irish Geological Association Belderrig Harbour on the North coast of Co Mayo. A large vein of quartz is in the foreground with Horse Island in the distance. Photo by Malcolm McPherson. 3rd Prize in the Ireland section.

Secondary mineralisation in the weathered and gossan zones of ore deposits would have been a “calling card” for our mining ancestors as far back as the Bronze Age. Nowadays minerals from such weathering are hard to see on the surface but underground, as here at Tankardstown in Co. Waterford, they form an impressive and resplendent “waterfall” Photo by Dr Sharron Schwartz.

Limestone Pavement mountains and Lough Gealáin with view of Mullaghmore in the Burren National Park, Co. Clare.

Photo by Martin Frank. 2rd Prize in the Ireland section.

Carrot ridge, Twelve Bens Co. Galway. The late Precambrian quartzite forms the backbone of many of the summits in Galway. Photo by Martin Critchley.

Abandoned house, North Inniskea Island, Co Mayo. Photo

by Frank Fullard

Evening light illuminates the red sandstone layers at Smerwick Harbour and the distinctive ‘Three Sisters’ headland in County Kerry. Photo by Brian McCready.

Beautiful and strange rock formations sculpted by wind and sand on the high Andean Altiplano in Bolivia. Photo by Ruth McDonagh.

Old mining drift at Glencarbury Barytes Mine, Benbulbin, Co Sligo. Photo by Shane Walsh.

The high 4000m+ plateau between Bolivia and Chile is one of the driest places on Earth. Here wind is the dominant form of erosion resulting in weird rock outcrops such as this which is known locally as the “rock tree” Photo by Dr Sharron Schwartz. Winner of the Foreign category.

The high plateaus of Bolivia are cold and experience very little rainfall. Here a once large inland sea has evaporated to give the salt and potash flats of the Salar de Uyuni. The salt flat covers nearly 11,000 sq km and contains 50% to 70% of the world’s lithium resources. Lithium is an ingredient of lithium-ion batteries and the Salar is of vast economic importance to Bolivia. Photo by Martin Critchley.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 28

Krakatoa eruption. Photo by Dian Adijaya Susanto.

BT YOUNG SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION

Tess Casasin-Sheridan taking a close-up view of sand samples, which she collected with Aoife Doherty from six different locations in County Clare.

Taking a closer look at sand Tess Casasin-sheridan and Aoife Doherty, second year students at Mary Immaculate secondary school in Lisdoonvara like to walk by the sea, and having a selection of beaches close to their home in north Clare adds to their enjoyment. Each beach is different, and it struck Tess and Aoife that while they might be walking across a golden strand in one location, the sand around the next headland might be grey or orange brown.

This got them interested in taking a closer look at the sand and why it varies so much from strand to strand.

They decided to focus on six locations, Bishop’s Quarter, Fanore, spanish Point, White strand Lahinch, and Doolin. sometimes, they said, the name gives a clue to the differences. For example White strand is fairly obvious, and Fanore, Fanóir, translates as ‘golden slope’.

The differences, said Tess and Aoife, are surprisingly big, and as they found, colour and grain size were determined by where the sand came from. Up at Bishop’s Quarter, they said, the sand is grey because it originated from the local limestone, and sand near the Cliffs of Moher is dark because of the shale.

At Fanore they found that the sand contained lots of shelly fragments, and under the microscope they noticed that these often had an orange coating.

Broken fragments revealed that the shelly material inside remained white, so they

concluded that the orange colouring came from iron oxide in the water.

Waves and currents sort the grains, and to find our how sand is distributed, the students took five samples from the lower shore and another five from the upper shore.

Back at school, they examined the samples under the microscope. To get a clearer view of the mineral content, they used dilute hydrochloric acid, and they began comparing the results. At Fanore, they said, 16 per cent is stone or mineral, and rest is organic or carbonate.

At Fanore 70 per cent consists of shelly

fragments, and in contrast to this, 85 per cent of the sand at Bishop’s Quarter is stone.

During the year a geologist, Dr eamon Doyle, visited the school and the students said he gave them some good advice, while telling them that that they had opened up a new line of enquiry.

Although the area is of great interest to geologists, he said, little had previously been done to investigate the makeup and distribution of beach sands.

With the support of their teacher, John simms, Tess and Aoife brought their project to the BT Young scientist and Technology exhibition, and not surprisingly, their findings were of great interest to geologists. The students picked up a special award from the Geological survey of Ireland.

Tess and Aoife were one of the five projects submitted from the Lisdoonvarna school, four of which received awards and the other was highly commended. Much of this success is due to the teacher, John simms, who, for the past 25 years has encouraged his students to enter the competition.

GSI Director, Koen Verbruggen, presenting the prize to Tess Casasin-Sheridan and Aoife Doherty.

The farmer’s little friend When Michael Feely was out on the family farm in County Roscommon he noticed a cow pat that had gone crusty.

“I wondered why it wasn’t decomposing like all the others,” he said. Back at scoil Mhuire, strokestown, the second year student asked his teacher, Miss Geoghegan, why this might happen, and she explained that it could be due to the use of avermectin antibiotics on cattle.

That got Michael curious, so he decided to find out more. As he discovered, failure of dung to break down has become a common problem on farms, especially those where cattle have to be dosed against parasites such as liver fluke and tapeworms.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 29

After dosing, the antibiotics persist for some time. Five or so days later, said Michael, the dung is high in these antibiotics, and because of this, the natural break down cycle is inhibited. In the lead of this break-down is the dung beetle, and as Michael found, the antibiotics can be strong enough to kill the younger ones, while the older insects take a sniff and walk away. In the field, he said “you can see an absence of dips where the dung beetle would normally take away some manure.”

Whether the dung is from sheep, cattle or horses, said Michael, the result is always the same, and if dung does not breakdown it accumulates, rather than allowing nutrients return into the soil.

BT YOUNG SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION

For his project, Michael Feeley came 2nd in the Junior Individual Project section of the biological and ecological sciences.

Michael Feely with some samples comparing grass growth around pats from dosed and undosed cattle.

Right top: one of the many dung eating beetles. With this one, Geotrupes stercorosus, the adult collects dung for its young to feed on.

Photo: National Parks and Wildlife Service.

To show how serious the loss of fertility is, Michael conducted some experiments in which he compared the break-down rates in dung from dosed and non-dosed cattle. Over a period of two months, the break-down rate for non-dosed dung was twice as high. He also found that grass growth was always better around cow pats that had broken down.

Not many farmers are aware of this, he said, but as he found, the problem has been looked at by Teagasc, and he said that Dr John Finn at Johnstown Castle had come to similar conclusions.

Farmers, said Michael, are faced with a dilemma: protect the dung beetle, or dose the cattle to prevent them becoming ill. As he explained, current guidelines on dosing make it difficult to strike a balance. At present the recommendation is that all animals be dosed according to the heaviest in the herd. Because of this, he said, smaller animals could be getting more than they actually need to keep the parasites at bay.

Having become more aware that there are consequences for interrupting the cycle of growth and decay, Michael said he now wants to follow up his investigations by getting more detailed results over a longer period.

The RDS Primary Science Fair What makes our skin so many different colours?

Emma Bracken and Roisín Cullen are in 6th Class at Scoil Bhride in Monasterevin, Co Kildare, and they wondered why some of their friends were naturally pale, while others were much darker. It all depends on our melanin, they explained, and that’s the substance that give us freckles or makes the skin go dark.

To find out how skin colour varied in their school, Emma, Roisín and everyone else in the class worked together on coming up with a classification.

Type 1 was pale, 2 was a bit darker, 3 was olive, 4 was darker, and as they observed, no one at the school was at the other end of the scale, Type 5.

Emma and Roisín brought their results to the RDS Junior Science Fair which ran alongside the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. At their stand, they explained that 50 pupils were Type 2, about 40 were Type 3 and only about 7 or 8 were Type 4. As they observed, this break-down shows how the school population is changing. In the past, they said, most of the pupils would have been Type 1.

Roisín Cullen at the RDS Primary Science Fair

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 30

Ask a scientist

More than 25 experts from a wide range of fields including biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy are ready to answer your questions. If there is something that puzzles you, let the panel know. Email questions, with your name and contact to

question@sciencespin.com

Are humans still evolving?

Two scientists, Sive Finley and Jon Yearsley answer this question with a yes, so humanity in the future may not be exactly the same as us.

Sive Finley explains:

This is a controversial question but I think the answer is yes. Some people, including Sir David Attenborough, think that humans have stopped evolving because we no longer live in a “natural” environment. We don’t need to be fast or strong to run away from predators and advances in healthcare mean that many people can enjoy long and happy lives even if they’re affected by diseases and illnesses that would have been fatal just a few generations ago.

So we’re living longer and we don’t have any significant predators to keep our population numbers down.

But that doesn’t mean that we’re not evolving. Even our modern, “unnatural” environment imposes selection pressures which affect how we evolve. One of the most famous examples that has occurred over the past few thousand years is the evolution of an ability for adults to digest milk. To digest milk we need to produce an enzyme called lactase. Naturally milk is a food for infants so adults lost the

ability to produce the lactase enzyme.

However, when farming practices developed (an example of cultural evolution) people started to exploit milk production from their animals. People who had genetic mutations which allowed them to produce lactase as adults could benefit from the new food source so they grew stronger and tended to produce more offspring which could also digest milk. In pastoral farming societies, the lactase gene spread over hundreds of generations – an example of humans evolving to adapt to their changing environment.

I think humans are still evolving but it’s hard to see it happen. Evolution is extremely gradual and takes place over time spans that are usually too long for us to observe. Furthermore, our environment and society change so rapidly (think of the societal differences between today and even 50 years ago) that it’s difficult to predict the selective pressures that face our population.

However, there is clearly great variation

How many colours can we see?

Margaret Franklin explains: Colour perception is a very subjective matter and some people are colour blind, so not everyone sees the same colours, even when looking at the same coloured objects.

But in principle, we can see an infinite number of colours. The rainbow is a continuum of wavelengths, where each wavelength corresponds to a different colour. Each colour merges into the next, so we don’t know where one colour ends and the next one starts. For convenience, we divide it up into seven colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet) but this is an artificial division.

There is an infinite range of colours in between these seven.

Margaret Franklin Vice President, Institute of Chemistry in Ireland and author of Colour, what we ee and the science behind sight.

in the human population which, when combined with our dynamic physical and cultural environments, means that there are still plenty of opportunities for natural selection to act on human populations.

Sive Finlay, sfinlay@tcd.ie Macroecology and Macroevolution Research Group, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin Are humans still evolving?

Jon Yearsley explains: The simple answer is yes. The basic ingredients required for evolution to occur are so simple that it would be hard to stop humans from evolving.

Those basic ingredients are that humans continue to have offspring (reproduction) that resemble their parents (heritability) albeit with some room for differences between individuals (variation). And that’s all that is required: reproduction, heritability and variation.

Jon Yearsley Lecturer in Ecological Modelling, University College Dublin

Why does the Moon always face the Earth?

Terry Moseley explains: The Moon has what’s called a Captured Rotation: in other words the rate at which it spins on its axis has been slowed down to the same rate that it orbits around the Earth, so the same side always faces us. However because its orbit is both slightly tilted, and elliptical rather than circular, it actually appears to rock back and forth and up and down a little so that we can see a total of 59% of its surface from Earth, an effect called Libration. The slowing down of its spin is due to the Earth’s gravitational pull, which slightly stretches the Moon along the axis joining the two bodies, just as the Moon causes tides on Earth. Over hundreds of millions of years, the Earth’s extra gravitational pull on that bulge has slowed the Moon’s spin so that the bulge now always points towards Earth, apart from the Libration mentioned above. Many other moons in the solar system have captured rotations.

Terry Moseley is author of Reach for the Stars, is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and has been President of the Irish Astronomical Association on three separate occasions.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 31

Ask a scientist

Is a fox just another sort of dog?

Sive Finley explains: Foxes are not dogs but they are cousins. Foxes and dogs are two different species which have evolved separately for at least 30 million years. They are both members of the “Canidae” or dog-like family of carnivorous mammals. Dogs are domesticated forms of wolves. Over thousands of years humans created different breeds of dogs by selecting particular traits that they wanted in the offspring; some people wanted Great Danes while others were more interested in Chihuahuas! Foxes evolved on a separate line of the Canidae family tree. Dogs and foxes share a common ancestor but they have evolved separately for so long that they can no longer interbreed so they are classed as different species.

Sive Finlay, sfinlay@tcd.ie

Are organic foods more nutritious and tastier?

Con O’Rourke explains: The term ‘organically-grown’ is a misnomer, since the nutrition of our main food crops is an inorganic process. Whether plants are gown in fields, on top of manure heaps, or hydroponically in laboratories, nutrients can only enter plants in their simplest (inorganic/mineral) ionic form. Molecules of organic matter are too complex to be absorbed directly by the root hair membranes and must first be broken down to their inorganic constituents before they can be taken up by plants. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is no convincing or consistent evidence that organic foods are more nutritious or tastier than conventional produce.

All the following criteria would be required to support claims that organic foods are more nutritious or tastier: 1. Randomised, replicated field trials of the same variety, grown both organically and conventionally under otherwise identical conditions, 2. Analysis of the foods for carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fibre, vitamins, minerals, etc., 3. Double-blind taste-panel evaluations, and 4. Publication of the results in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Few organic claims satisfy even one of the above criteria.

Dr Con O’Rourke was head of technical and scientific publications at Teagasc and is author of a nature guide to the Aran Islands.

What is fire?

Fire is an energy-producing chemical reaction between oxygen and a fuel (commonly a hydrocarbon). That makes a fire sound relatively simple, but humans have never managed to perfectly control these fiery chemical reactions despite having co-existed with fire for the entire history of our species.

Think of fire and you will probably think of a flame. And flaming fire is indeed one type of fire. A flame is literally a hot bed of chemical reactions. A candle flame is a nice example.

The flame of a candle is a mixture of combustible gases (fuel) and air. These gases have been vaporised from the liquid wax (hydrocarbon fuel) in the candle’s wick. These gases react with the oxygen in the surrounding air to emit energy (heat and light) that melts and vaporises more candle wax that fuels further reactions. The yellow flame that we associate with the fire comes from glowing hot particles of fine soot that are produced by the chemical reactions. But look carefully at the base of a candle’s flame, where there are few soot particles, and you will see blue light. This blue light comes directly from the atomic transitions that are being powered by the chemical reactions. Electrons that have been energised by the reactions emit light as they move from high atomic energy states to lower energy states. The blue colour is typical for atomic transitions from hydrocarbon fuels.

We now recognise that there are two principle types of fire: flaming fire and smouldering.

When you burn a peat briquet or a charcoal barbecue you are creating a smouldering fire.

In a smouldering fire the chemical reactions are occurring on the surface of a solid fuel.

Oxygen is still combining with the fuel to produce heat, light and new chemical products, but there is no flame. So if your next barbecue has flames and glowing charcoal you now know that you have created two fires in one (flaming and smouldering fire)! In this situation the chemical reactions are occurring both on the surface of the fuel (smouldering) and in the gases vaporised from the fuel (flaming).

Jon Yearsley http://www.ucd.ie/ecomodel jon.yearsley@ucd.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page 32

How can carbon exist in so many different forms?

Margaret Franklin explains: Carbon is capable of using double, as well as single, covalent bonds and each atom can form up to four bonds, simultaneously, with neighbouring atoms. These two facts account for the existence of different physical forms, known as ‘allotropes’ of elemental carbon. Its two best-known allotropes are diamond and graphite.

In diamond, the carbon atoms in the solid are all linked by single covalent bonds. In this case the maximum number of bonds can be formed. Each carbon atom is strongly bonded to each of its four nearest neighbours in a tetrahedral arrangement, which extends throughout the entire solid, making for a very hard material. A single crystal of diamond is really a giant molecule.

In graphite, double bonds as well as single bonds occur, but in this case, each carbon has only three nearest neighbours.

The arrangement is planar, with bond angles of 120 degrees. In the solid, the carbon atoms are arranged in sheets consisting of a network of hexagons.

Within the sheets, there is very strong covalent bonding, which accounts for the high melting point of graphite. The planar sheets are stacked on top of each other to make a three-dimensional crystal, but between the sheets of carbon atoms, there is only a very weak form of bonding, known as the Van der Waals force. This allows the sheets to slide over each other easily when subjected to a gentle shear stress, accounting for the softness of graphite and its lubricating properties.

Sheets of graphite can be peeled apart to form graphene, or they can be rolled into a cylinder to form nanotubes.

Curved surfaces result when pentagons as well as hexagons occur, as in Buckminster Fullerene, which is shaped like a football!

It is not possible to deal with the bonding in carbon in greater detail in a short answer such as this, but if this does not answer the question satisfactorily, please contact me by e-mail for a fuller explanation: mfranklin@eircom.net Margaret Franklin

Is there something you would like ask? Send your question to our panel of experts — question@sciencespin.com

SCIENCE, ENGINEERING and TECHNOLOGY CAREERS Job Title: Medical Writer Location: Dublin French and English speaking medical writers are required for a global pharmaceutical company with a base in Dublin.

Experience in a range of types of medical writing would be a distinct advantage and experience in regulatory writing would be helpful. Successful candidates will have 3+ years’ experience working in medical writing for a pharmaceutical company or consultancy. For more information please contact Kate O’Connell at 01-6146034 or at kate.oconnell@cpl.ie

Job Title: Director Manufacturing Location: Limerick A biopharmaceutical company in the South West is seeking a Head of Biopharmaceutical Operations for their new Drug Substance facility. The successful candidate will have extensive experience in the manufacture of Biopharmaceutical Drug Substance and will have experience leading large scale manufacturing teams. The ideal candidate will have experience manufacturing mammalian cell culture products and have in excess of 10 years’ experience managing all facets of commercial scale production of recombinant proteins facility. For more information please contact Killian Maher at 01-6146008 or at killian.maher@cpl.ie

Job Title: Senior Manager Analytical Technical Services Location: Dublin A biopharmaceutical facility based in Dublin requires a Senior Manager for the Analytical Technical Services Manager to oversee the development and validation of analytical methods for their lab. The successful candidate will have 10 years previous GMP experience at least 5 of which will have been in a managerial capacity. They will also have a thorough knowledge of analytical methods used in the biopharmaceutical industry. For more information please contact Killian Maher at 01-6146008 or at killian.maher@cpl.ie

Job Title: QC Specialist Location: Westmeath A biopharmaceutical facility based in the midlands is seeking a number of QA Specialists to support the quality function in the facility. The successful candidate will have experience working with sterile products, biopharmaceutical products would be an advantage. The role will be responsible for investigations, deviations, CAPAs, documentation and other general QA duties. For more information please contact Killian Maher at 01-6146008 or at killian. maher@cpl.ie

Job Title: QC Supervisor Location: Cork A global pharmaceutical company is seeking a QC Supervisor for their API facility pharmaceutical facility based in Cork requires a quality control supervisor to work in a contract capacity in the quality control laboratory. The successful candidate will have 5 or more years working in a pharmaceutical quality control lab and will have 2 or more years’ experience working in a supervisory capacity. Experience in analytical techniques such as HPLC, Karl Fischer, IR, UV is a requirement. For more information please contact Jenny Hill at 01-6146194 or at jenny.hill@cpl.ie

Job Title: Lab Equipment Specialist Location: Dublin A Lab Equipment Specialist is required for a biopharmaceutical company with a number of facilities in the country. The Lab Equipment Specialist is responsible for the set-up, calibration, qualification and validation of laboratory equipment across the facilities. The role will be based in one of the facilities but will require extensive travel to the other sites. The ideal candidate will have experience working with a range of equipment and will ideally have experience working with biopharmaceutical analytical equipment.

For more information please contact Ciara Murphy at 01-6146121 or at ciara.murphy@cpl.ie

Job Title: QC Analyst Location: Cork A pharmaceutical facility based in Cork requires a quality analyst to work in a contract capacity in the quality control laboratory.

The facility is a large API facility. The successful candidate will have 2-3 years previous GMP experience and a degree in a relevant life sciences subject. Ideally, candidates will have experience in analytical techniques such as HPLC, Karl Fischer, IR, UV and a range of wet chemistry techniques. For more information please contact Jenny Hill at 01-6146194 or at jenny. hill@cpl.ie

Job Title: QA Manager Location: Westmeath A QA Manager is required for a biopharmaceutical facility in the midlands. The manager will be responsible for managing the day to day quality functioning of the facility. The successful candidate will be a qualified QP and will have experience in releasing product. They will also have a number of years’ experience working in a managerial capacity. Ideally the candidate will have experience working the biopharmaceutical industry and will have a thorough understanding of the quality requirements of a filling facility. For more information please contact Aileen Cahill at 01-6146007 or at aileen.cahill@cpl.ie

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63

What is STEM? Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths

Renewable Energy Engineer

You could help protect the environment

Games and App Developer

European app economy is worth over €10 billion and employs 800,000 people

Why study STEM subjects?

Studying subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Biology, Technology and Engineering can lead to working in exciting jobs like...

Sport Science

Improve human health and athlete performance

Create new products for use in the medical field

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Benefits

Irish STEM Industry Facts 80 Jobs

Global opportunities come with STEM qualifications especially if you have language skills

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announced per employed in week in ICT physics-based Jobs

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multinational needed in biopharma, tech companies food and medical devices industry are in Ireland

STEM graduates needed

STEM employers are struggling to fill positions!

So if you’re interested in what STEM has to offer, then visit:

www.SmartFutures.ie Sources: National Skills News Bulletin 2013 CPL Recruitment – Dublin IOP in Ireland Annual Report 2013 http://www.hea.ie/sites/default/files/ict_action_plan.pdf http://www.idaireland.com/business-in-ireland/life-sciences-pharmaceuti/ http://www.steps.ie/students/16-18/faq-s.aspx#How_much_do_engineers_earn_ http://www.digitaltimes.ie/mobile-app/european-app-economy-worth-over-e10-billion/

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 63 Page