I, Science - Issue 9 (Summer 2008)

I,science The Imperial College science magazine

www.iscienceonline.co.uk

Issue 9 • Summer 2008

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I,science Issue 9 • Summer 2008

From the Editor

Editor-in-chief Edward Wawrzynczak

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HY SHOULD Imperial College have its own science magazine? To be honest, it’s not a question that we in the I,science team stop to think about that often.

Imperial is a science-based institution after all and a science magazine just goes with the territory. And there are good reasons that it should be so.

Managing editor Tom Roberts News and Events Manisha Lalloo Gursharan Randhawa Features Brett Cherry Monica Rene Tim Sands Simon Shears Interviews Nira Datta Katrina Pavelin Tamsin Osborne Opinions Sarah Day Ciaran Ellis Reviews David Stacey Andrew Turley Images Mair Shepherd Graphics Agnes Becker Design Julia Bracewell Sarah Furnell Web Flora Graham

The recent announcement that Lord Winston has been appointed to a newly created post as Professor of Science and Society at Imperial sends a strong message about the need for our scientists to keep the public engaged with their work. The public funds much of university science and has a right to know how its money is being spent. In Lord Winston’s words: “It is vital for scientists to be able to talk about our research.” It’s good to talk, as they say, but words on the page matter too.

Sponsored events such as the Science Challenge may be high-profile PR gimmicks but they also serve to advertise the need for effective science communication. As Daniel Burrows, chair of the Science Challenge committee put it: “... the communication is empty without the science, but the science is useless without good communication.” Good communication of science, technology and medicine is what we are all about at I,science.

In this issue, we consider how nanotechnology pieces together the building blocks of matter, look at fundamental research relevant to asthma and lung disease, and survey recent advances from Imperial and elsewhere. But – and it’s an important but – we also delve into what happens when science goes out of the lab and into the real world. We have Arctic expeditions, ecotown planning, sports technology, science festivals, art exhibitions, and our regular reviews of popular science writing and films. And, for a bit of light relief, visit our very own Laugh Lab. As ever, my thanks go to all the contributors who have given freely of their time, expertise and imagination.

Imperial College is lucky to be one of only a handful of UK universities with an established science magazine which appears regularly. As I come to the end of an enjoyable year’s stint as your Editor, and prepare to hand over to my successor, I can only hope that I,science continues to draw on the many talents of the College and goes from strength to strength in the future.

Edward Wawrzynczak

I,science is your student science magazine. We welcome your comments, suggestions and contributions. If you’d like to write for I,science, please contact us at i.science@imperial.ac.uk.

I,science is produced and published in association with Felix, the student newspaper of Imperial College

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One of the striking rock sculptures in an exhibition Light & Stone by Emily Young, reviewed on page 23.

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I,science

Issue 9 • Summer 2008

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Features

21 | As a matter of fact ...

10 | Take a Nice Deep Breath

Regulars

Why exercise is vital to keeping us in good health.

12 | Summer Holiday (with a difference) The Cape Farewell expedition visits the Arctic.

14 | Green light for green towns?

Do the Government’s plans for eco-towns stack up?

16 | Faster than the Human Eye Imaging technology Hawk-Eye makes the right calls.

20 | Anything will be possible in the nanofuture Setting the basic building blocks of matter to work.

Interviews 18 | Coughs and sneezes are bad for wheezes Professor Sebastian Johnston is trying to figure out why the common cold virus makes asthma worse.

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We talk to Dr Tim Boon of the Science Museum about a new exhibition of science films.

04 | News and Events At Imperial ... On your bike – The Fat Controller.

And elsewhere ... Seeing science in 3-D – Attack of the Cy-bugs – In Skin Deep.

Events: Baggy Trousers? – Hoaxer Comes To Town – Deep Throat.

Science on a Saturday? – Cambridge Science Festival.

22 | Opinions Why ethical shopping is not as easy as it seems.

Biofuels are the enemy and not our friends.

23 | Reviews Sculptures in rock.

Designs based on the atomic structure of crystals.

Popular science books: climate change, black holes, and your ‘inner fish’..

Cheat’s guide to science writing.

Botanical art.

31 | Fun Laugh Lab – jokes and cartoons.

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NEWS & EVENTS OPINIONS INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS FEATURES

What’s been happening at Imperial ...

TB or not TB SCIENTISTS HAVE DEVELOPED a new blood test that could be used to rule out TB in patients with 99% accuracy within a mere 48 hours, rather than the weeks it currently takes, when used alongside traditional tuberculin skin testing.

“Our new test could revolutionise the way we manage people with suspected TB.” Professor Ajit Lalvani.

Wet, wet, wet

In good shape

A NEW WAY to explain the process of wetting, which includes fluctuations in the drop of liquid between the solid surface it sits on and the air above it, has been validated and offers potential benefits to chemical industries and new nanotechnologies.

A MATHEMATICIAN HAS solved a 140-year-old problem in the SchwarzChristoffel formula for conformal mapping, the process where information is translated from a complex shape to a simpler circular one for easier analysis; for example, in neuroimaging or aeronautics.

“Previous descriptions have all ignored or misrepresented these interactions …

The new formulation appears to explain all these outstanding problems in a very elegant manner.”

“This formula is an essential piece of mathematical kit which is used the world over. Now, with my additions to it, it can be used in far more complex scenarios than before.”

Professor Andrew Parry.

Taking the piss

Professor Darren Crowdy.

A TEAM STUDYING the metabolites found in urine suggest their work may help to understand the interactions between genes, lifestyle and environment, and how they determine diseases.

“Metabolic profiling can tell us how specific aspects of a person’s diet and how much they drink are contributing to their risks for certain diseases, things which we can’t investigate by looking at a person’s DNA.” Professor Jeremy Nicholson.

Plant checkout A PLANT DNA ‘barcode’ has been identified which may be used to distinguish between plant species, leading to new ways to catalogue plants in species-rich rainforests and identify plant ingredients in herbal medicines.

Crashing plates IMPERIAL RESEARCHERS HAVE provided the first direct evidence of how and when tectonic plates move and collide, potentially enabling better earthquake risk assessment.

“We’d like to see this idea of reading plants’ genetic barcodes translated into a portable device which can quickly and easily analyse any plant sample’s DNA, allowing almost instantaneous identification.”

“This process has been predicted by models before, but no one has been able to link these predictions with observations, as we now do for plate motions.”

Dr Vincent Savolainen.

Dr Saskia Goes.

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On your bike ...

BOY RACERS CAN now go even faster thanks to a PhD student at Imperial who has helped to design a new low-drag lowmass motorcycle. Working with Ecosse Spirit Motorcycle Technologies, Amrit Sharma has used computer modelling to test the aerodynamic drag of a new motorcycle, the Ecosse Spirit 1 (ES1).

Sharma’s calculations have earned him the Gold medal for automotive design in this year’s Young European Arena of Research Awards.

Designed by Formula 1 engineers, the new motorbike allows the rider to adopt a completely different position when racing down the road compared with a conventional bike. This reduces the drag caused by the upper body and feet, which otherwise interrupt an aerodynamically efficient tear-drop shape.

As demand for low-emission vehicles rises, the ES1 represents a step forward in fuel efficiency. Tests showed that its novel design reduces drag by approximately 50%, allowing good performance even with a small engine. Sharma’s models also suggested that the speed of the new Ecosse bike was increased by 30% in comparison to other vehicles in its class.

A working prototype of the ES1 should be in production by December 2008.

Although he has never owned or ridden a motorcycle before, Sharma says he may now be tempted to give it a try.

Manisha Lalloo

The Fat Controller ‘IT’S IN THE GENES’ may be a conceivable explanation for being obese according to a study published in Nature Genetics this May. Scientists from Imperial College London, University of Michigan, USA and the Pasteur Institute in France have identified a DNA sequence linked to expanding waistlines and a risk of developing type II diabetes. The discovery may result in improved ways to treat obesity.

“Until now, we have understood remarkably little about the genetic component of common problems linked with obesity, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” said senior author of the paper, Professor Jaspal Kooner of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London.

Scientists believe the critical DNA sequence controls the activity of a nearby gene called MC4R. This gene regulates energy levels in the body by influencing how much we eat and how much energy we burn or save. The control sequence is

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found in about half of the UK population and is more common in Indian Asians than Europeans. This could provide a genetic explanation for the high incidence of obesity and insulin resistance, which may lead to type II diabetes, in individuals of Indian Asian descent.

An improved understanding of the genetic link to obesity could help scientists identify individuals whose genetic inheritance makes them

susceptible to its associated disorders. But for those of you trying to get into shape this summer, there is no quick fix just yet: scientists cannot change an individual’s genetic makeup.

“But we can focus on preventative measures, including life-style factors such as diet and exercise, and identifying new drug targets to help reduce the burden of disease,” added Professor Kooner.

Gursharan Randhawa

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REVIEWS FEATURES

... and elsewhere!

Seeing science in 3-D HOLOGRAPHY IS MOVING beyond static images on credit cards and displays in museums to holographic 3-D images that update automatically in the blink of any eye. This new method of storing and projecting holograms exploits the properties of a new holographic film based on a photorefractive polymer that allows images to be recorded and written similarly to the way that data are burned onto a CD or DVD. The photorefractive polymer film was developed by researchers at University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences (OSC) in Tucson and engineers from Nitto Denko Technical Corporation of Oceanside, California. The polymer comprises a complex composite of

Attack of the Cy-bugs

In Skin Deep THAT OLD CAUTIONARY tale of tattoos causing infections is being turned on its head. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg have been experimenting with highspeed tattooist’s needles to deliver DNA vaccines.

In their studies on mice, Dr. Martin Mueller and his team found that three doses of vaccine administered this way produced sixteen times the number of antibodies compared to traditional injections. The tissue damage caused by the tattooing procedure may explain the

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copolymers that acts as a photosensitiser and absorbs light, and a plasticiser that provides strength and flexibility.

These components, along with other photosensitive materials, are melted together between two small electrodes.

The images are then observed and erased using a reading laser.

New applications for holograms include 3-D display devices for medical imaging and ‘smart holograms’, including sensors used for complex tasks such as measuring water in aviation fuel. So far, researchers have created multi-viewable dynamic holographic images of a car, a human skull and even an ethane molecule.

Students could soon be saying goodbye to boring, flat Power Point presentations and seeing science the way it is meant to be seen – in glorious 3-D. Brett Cherry

SCIENTISTS AT CORNELL University have successfully created hybrid insects whose muscles can be controlled by implanted electronics. The goal is to control the flight of these microsystemcontrolled insects, making human control over nature ever more plausible. Such life forms have a variety of applications, ranging from crime investigation to military and homeland security.

The insect cyborgs are the latest achievement of the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency and have recently been showcased at the MicroElectro-Mechanical Systems international conference in Tucson. The researchers, led by Dr. Amit Lal, implanted electronic circuit probes into tobacco hornworms during their early pupal stage. These were then allowed to develop and mature into long-lived moths, whose muscular movement could be manipulated with the

implanted electronic network.

Thomas Easton, a professor of science and author of Sparrowhawk – an engaging novel about such insect cyborgs – suggests an amusing way in which the technology could identify individuals from a crime scene. He describes how moths are particularly sensitive to sex attractants. If traces of these chemicals could be transferred onto money, stolen cash along with the bank robbers would be traceable using the moth-based-hybrid to follow the scent. If that isn’t a scene for the next Bond movie, I don’t know what is!

Even more impressively, the sex attractant receptor on the moth antennae could potentially be replaced with receptors for explosives or drugs via genetic engineering. Readers beware: science fiction is becoming a reality.

Laura Starr

better immune response.

DNA vaccines represent the next generation of vaccination, which does not rely on introducing whole pathogenic organisms, or portions of them, into the body.

Instead, small fragments of DNA are used to stimulate an immune response.

This should be of particular benefit to patients whose immune systems may already be weak. Currently, however, the only licensed DNA vaccines on the market are for veterinary use.

But before images of heavily tattooed mice start scampering through your head, no ink was used in these experiments.

Sarah Furnell

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Deep Throat BEATBOXING AND SCIENCE may not seem a likely pair but in April the Dana Centre bridged the gap by hosting a ‘Beatbox Laboratory’ as part of the 2008 International Beatboxing Convention.

Set up in the style of a gig, we were introduced to our beatboxing performers for the night – most looked more like your stereotypical scientist than cool beatboxer. However, all apprehensions were soon put to rest by Shlomo, a renowned artist who amazed the packed audience with his vocal drum kit.

But the night was not just about beatboxing. Throughout the evening ‘Sciencebox’ videos highlighted the science behind the sound.

Professor David Howard explained how our voices are made up of a ‘buzzer’ and a ‘tube’ and that an array of sounds can be made simply by changing the pitch of the first and the shape of the second.

The best video of the night showed a nasal endoscopy on beatboxer MCLD. The clip showed a camera being inserted into his throat via his nose. Once he started beatboxing, we were given a true insider’s view of the art form.

Baggy Trousers?

IF YOUR ATTENTION is drawn to an event by its outlandish title then the obscure sounding ‘Geometry of Asian Trousers’, a Maths-Art seminar at the London Knowledge Lab, would certainly have succeeded in pressing all of your buttons. It turned out to be a fascinating subject thanks, not least, to the engaging style of the speaker, Penelope Woolfit.

The night began with an observation that seems obvious but perhaps had never occurred to the audience before: a pair of trousers is actually a rather complicated thing to make – trousers must function standing, sitting, walking, and bending over, while the body they cover is changing its shape drastically.

In various traditional trouser designs, Asian tailors have devised ingenious ways to get around this difficulty by using clever geometry both to minimise the number of measurements needed and to waste absolutely no fabric.

The presenter posed each design as a puzzle for the audience, who were also called upon to model the beautiful examples she had made. These ranged from a simple salwar to the extravagantly voluminous gharara, which resembles a

deflated parachute when laid out flat.

Perhaps not many maths classes past primary school involve paper, scissors and sticky tape, but these were introduced for the more complex designs. They proved essential for illuminating the slightly bewildering but wonderful origami that goes into making the skin-tight churidar without wasting so much as an inch of fabric. This hands-on approach allowed the audience to truly appreciate just how elegant each construction was in both the sartorial and geometrical senses.

The audience at the London Knowledge Lab, befitting the inter-disciplinary nature of the venue, was a mixed bunch – I was asked if I was involved in fashion or mathematics. However, all seemed equally absorbed by the puzzles and thrilled when the deceptively simple solutions were revealed.

This talk was a model of how to make such an esoteric subject really entertaining and while I will keep relying on clothes shops for my trousers, after this talk, I have a new-found respect for my strides.

Tim Sands

Hoaxer Comes To Town

The message of the night was that we can all potentially be beatboxers and, to my horror, this was put to the test in group-beatboxing lessons. This proved to be great fun, once we overcame the initial embarrassment.

One brave man even showcased his newfound talent on stage whilst having his heart rate measured to check how stressed he was.

The fusion of beatboxing with science was a hit and the evening buzzed with energy from start to finish. As for my beatboxing skills – I’m not throwing away the drum kit just yet.

Manisha Lalloo

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“WHAT IS SCIENCE and why should we care?” asked Alan Sokal at this year’s Sense About Science lecture, held at University College, London.

For Sokal, science provides an evidence-based world-view that goes beyond what is traditionally seen as ‘science’. With an audience full of scientists, he focused his talk on his four enemies of scientific inquiry.

First up were the extreme social constructivists, the group Sokal targeted and attempted to undermine in 1996 with his infamous hoax. He submitted a ridiculous paper claiming that quantum gravity was a social construct and had it readily accepted for publication.

The constructivist assertion of science as “a mere social construction, on a par with religion or myths” was challenged and ridiculed by Sokal, who also took some credit for a recent moderation of its most extreme elements.

Next came the advocates of

pseudoscience. They use what he termed a “garbage in, garbage out” approach, enabling the sloppiest studies to provide the strongest evidence in support of subjects such as homeopathy.

Third on Sokal’s hit list was religion, especially the teachings of creationism.

He sees “faith as a lazy acceptance of bad reasons” and maintains that its claims are not based on evidence.

But the real thrust of Sokal’s lecture, encompassing his final adversaries, called for the best available evidence to be used when making policy decisions. In his opinion, politicians and spin-doctors actively commit fraud if they choose not to use this evidence.

Sokal was preaching to the converted, however, and left us wondering what we could do, either individually or collectively, to ensure that policy-makers adopt an evidence-based approach.

Simon Shears

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REVIEWS FEATURES

Science on a Saturday?

What did Katrina Pavelin make of the University of Cambridge Science Festival? see such a fun display for the kids to engage with.

Another wonderful display comprised a series of stalls that demonstrated the myriad uses of plants and fungi in our everyday lives, such as for food and clothing materials. It is appalling that plant science at school is presented in such a boring way – the curriculum should learn from displays like this, which provide children with stimulating and inspiring experiences from the world of plants and fungi. then joined the children’s lecture, ‘The Science of Doctor Who’. This was undoubtedly the most enjoyable event of the day. The lecturer was Dr. Paul Parsons, author of The Science of Doctor Who and an avid fan of the show, which has now been running for 45 years.

Parsons’ delightfully engaging talk explored how the Daleks are comparable to genetically modified tomatoes, why the Ice Warriors would be well adapted to life on Mars, and how ten million billion kilograms of hypothetical exotic matter, with its amazing anti-pressure properties, may eventually allow us to create wormholes for time travel!

His ingenious method of capturing the young audience’s attention? Periodically throwing sweets and Easter eggs to kids who correctly answered his questions. Sadly for me, the main lecture theatre was soon full. But the Festival did provide another lecture theatre with a projection screen for extra visitors, so I could still savour the atmosphere.

After the lecture, I hurried to the Doctor Who exhibition in the Pitt Building. I queued in the cold for 45 minutes, paid to enter, and was left rather disappointed. Aside from some replica models from the series and the man who makes the clay

Families having a fun day out at the Festival

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ITHIN MINUTES of arriving at ‘Science on Saturday’, the big day at the Cambridge Science Festival 2008, I had found Carol Vorderman, Clockwork Droids and a small robot dishing out free sweets to funky music. It was a

promising start!

At about 10 o’clock on March 15th, I joined the few huddled people prepared to brave the stinging cold of the morning and await the grand opening. At last, the Vice-Chancellor of the Festival introduced a surprisingly glamorous Ms Vorderman, who swished on stage with an envious amount of energy for a Saturday morning.

It was great to see that she really got into character for the kids, screaming manically when several aliens from Doctor Who, including the Clockwork Droids, were set upon her.

Across the courtyard, I found a little robot blasting out music and proffering sweets. After fuelling up on sugar, I ventured into the jungle of the plant marquee. Inside the tent, I found myself surrounded by tropical orchids and information boards describing rainforest plants and their biology. There was also a beehive visible through a glass case, with a beekeeper explaining the role of his cute little pollinators, assisted by two people in giant bee costumes. Being a real fan of botany, I was amazed to

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A Dalek in the Doctor Who exhibition

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TV celeb Carol Vorderman attending the University of Cambridge Science Festival (she’s second from the left) models for the alien masks, the ‘exhibition’ was mostly selling merchandise.

The time I spent queuing also meant that I missed the opportunity to see the animatronic polar bear next door.

Although it is fantastic that so many people seem to be fascinated by science, it meant long queues for most buildings.

Apparently, the Festival usually spans two weekends but this year, because of the early Easter, most of the events were squeezed into just one.

The children’s lecture ‘The Science of Doctor Who’ ... was undoubtedly the most enjoyable event of the day.

After more queuing and a lunchtime baguette, which I had the foresight to buy before the grand opening, I attended Professor Lorraine Tyler’s intriguing lecture on ageing brains.

To her surprise, the ages of audience members spanned several generations. Actually this spread is quite understandable, given that the effects of ageing will affect everyone at some point.

Tyler’s key message was that the secret to maintaining your cognitive faculties is to think positively about ageing. There is research supporting this advice, although it does not apply to pathological ageing.

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Adjacent to the lecture theatre, there was a room with posters detailing the interesting research of the department of psychology and a screen showing 3-D images of the brain with viewing glasses provided.

I spent the last part of the day in the physiology lab, which had twelve large displays on human and animal development. This section sported an array of excellent helpers who were research students at Cambridge. The students explained the concepts behind the displays and encouraged visitors to explore the props. It was a fantastic opportunity for these young scientists to explain their work to a lay audience and to reinforce their own passion for biology.

Some of the exhibits were slightly controversial – one included a live chick embryo with the upper shell of its egg cracked open, so that it was possible to see its heart beating under a microscope. Thankfully none of the visitors seemed to object, and the educational booklet given to each visitor did explain why animals are vital for studying development.

So the only real disappointment was the Doctor Who exhibition, which really should have been called a merchandise exhibition to avoid confusion. Overall, if you could tolerate the queues, it was a brilliant day out – I just wish I could have experienced it as a child!

For details of next year’s Festival visit www.cambridgescience.org.

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Take a Nice Deep Breath:

Aerobic Capacity is Good for You! Brett Cherry visits the National Heart and Lung Institute where Dr. Chris Stevenson and his team are investigating the link between oxygen metabolism and smoking-related lung disease.

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MOKERS KNOW that whenever they go to buy a pack of their favorite brand, they will find ‘CIGARETTES KILL’ printed in big bold letters on the front of the box. The link between smoking cigarettes and diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is well known but there is still much to discover about how different factors affect the susceptibility of individual smokers to these diseases.

COPD is a disease whose sufferers have obstructive bronchitis and/or emphysema, both of which reduce air-flow to the lungs. These changes accelerate the rate at which lung function declines with age, leading to disability and premature death. Smokers are especially at risk of COPD, but not all smokers get bronchitis or emphysema, or any variant thereof. According to Chris Stevenson, about 25% of all smokers develop COPD, but this estimate could be low as cases of COPD can still be missed.

It is not exactly clear how many smokers are susceptible to COPD or other diseases induced by smoking because there are many biological complexities involved and smoking does not necessarily lead to disease or premature death for all smokers. The causal factors

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underlying disease in smokers are also complex because cigarette smoke contains a plethora of carcinogenic chemicals. “There’s over 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke,” said Stevenson. His research group is currently investigating

rats were mated with other rats with the same high aerobic trait over several generations. Similarly, Low Capacity Runner (LCR) rats were mated with their own kind. After seventeen generations of this breeding protocol, the HCR rat

The link between smoking cigarettes and diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is well known but there is still much to discover. whether the body’s ability to metabolise oxygen is one of the determining factors for developing smoking-related disease.

When he first embarked upon this research for Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Stevenson was interested in how smoking-related lung disease was caused by an imbalance in the oxidant and antioxidant levels in the body. He later discovered that this might not be the only reason why people are susceptible to COPD: “Not only is it the antioxidant protectants, but it’s also the ability to metabolise oxygen that may leave somebody susceptible to many chronic diseases.”

The theory that oxygen metabolism is a predisposing factor was first developed in the United States by Dr. Steven Britton at the University of Michigan. Britton maintains that the build up of oxygen in the atmosphere, which began about 2.5 billion years ago, led to the evolution of multicellular organisms and that to this day “aerobic capacity underlies all complex biological functions and is loosely linked to disease”.

There are other theories that also explain the relationship between cigarette smoke and disease; for example, inhalation of cigarette smoke over long periods of time could result in a persistent autoimmune condition. This means that, even if long-term smokers quit, their lung function could still continue to decline.

Data produced by Stevenson’s group do not support this particular hypothesis but do show a fascinating correlation between aerobic capacity and the onset of COPDlike changes in specially bred strains of rats.

The special strains used in these studies were bred from rats with either a high or a low capacity for running on a treadmill. High Capacity Runner (HCR)

strain metabolised oxygen five times more efficiently than the LCR counterpart.

These experimental rat models were developed by Britton’s research group at the University of Michigan.

Stevenson wanted to study the influence of aerobic capacity on the effects of smoking: ”We brought the rats in from Steve’s group, and we put them into our smoking model system to see if they responded differently to smoke exposure”. They exposed the HCR and LCR rats either to cigarette smoke, or to air for the control animals, for three months.

The results of the experiment showed that the HCR rats – with high aerobic capacity – were far less susceptible to developing COPD-like changes than the LCR group after exposure to the cigarette smoke.

At the end of the three-month period, Stevenson checked the level of inflammation in the lungs of both types of rats. His team found that the level of inflammation was two to three times greater in the rats with low aerobic capacity: “This is very similar to what you see clinically when you compare inflammation in the airways of COPD patients to smokers who don’t develop COPD”.

Prolonged periods of exposure to cigarette smoke of six months or more can cause not only inflammation but also actual physiological changes in these animal models. Rats with high aerobic capacity remained unaffected: “With prolonged exposure what we saw was that the low capacity rats did have some reduction in physiological functions, but with high capacity rats, there was no change”.

Stevenson and his colleagues at Novartis also completed metabolic

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Down at the rodent gym: rats on the treadmill in experiments measuring aerobic capacity analyses of the lungs of LCR rats showing much greater oxidative damage compared to the HCR rats. LCR rats appeared to have an impaired ability to repair damage caused by cigarette smoke inhalation.

Stevenson admits that it is “preliminary work” but believes this data supports his group’s hypothesis that aerobic capacity determines susceptibility to COPD. Recent studies from other leading international groups, such as the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, have also supported this hypothesis.

The idea is that in order to metabolise oxygen to generate the energy you need to support high exercise capacity: “One needs to be able to detoxify the reactive species of oxygen that are formed as byproducts of this process”. Cigarette smoke is a powerful oxidant that damages the lungs regardless of antioxidant protection.

But smokers with high aerobic capacity may be able to produce higher levels of antioxidants, delaying the damaging effects of smoking on physiological function: “Those high aerobic individuals may have greater capacity to increase

Aerobic exercise may be vital to not only resisting disease in smokers and non-smokers alike, but prolonging the survival of the human species.

What makes the rats used in these experiments have high or low aerobic capacity is still unknown since the trait passed on from one group of runners to the next is polygenic; that is, high aerobic capacity is determined by a number of different genes. Also, what leads to the LCR rats being more susceptible to the damaging effects of cigarette smoke is also far from being understood. Stevenson believes that these results, while not yet conclusive, could lead to a new conceptual understanding of how aerobic capacity influences the risk of developing COPD and other chronic diseases.

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their antioxidant protections when they smoke and have greater ability to stop or repair the damage induced by smoking than those with low aerobic capacity”.

Stevenson’s group is still uncertain as to how or why this takes place, but is currently studying clinical samples provided by collaborators at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) in an attempt to understand more about these processes. This lung tissue is obtained from patients after lung transplantation surgery at the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals.

Having access to clinical samples is one

of the reasons why Stevenson was excited to join the Respiratory Pharmacology group at the NHLI and the Centre for Integrative Mammalian Physiology and Pharmacology at Imperial College.

The research using samples from patients is done in parallel to experimental animal models: “That’s really the foundation you need before you can go on to support testing these concepts further in patients”. Stevenson’s group is now examining the expression of aerobic metabolic molecular pathways in lung tissue from both patients with COPD and healthy smokers.

He wants to take this one step further: ”In addition, we want to use pharmacological and molecular tools to modulate the expression of those pathways we think are important and see how that affects the inflammatory response in our animal models, in cells from patients, and eventually in small clinical studies in actual patients”.

New treatments for COPD are one of the primary goals of Stevenson’s group: “It’s still basic research, but that is really our intention, to take the work that we do and translate it into new treatments for these diseases”. In the meantime, aerobic exercise may be vital to not only resisting disease in smokers and non-smokers alike, but prolonging the survival of the human species. It might be a good idea not to skip out on that daily walk, jog or cycling routine, depriving your body of what it requires most of all to maintain itself – oxygen.

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Summer Holiday (with a difference) Alison Brindle describes what happened when the Cape Farewell youth expedition visited a hot-spot of global warming in the Arctic in the summer of 2007.

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AST SUMMER, while most of us were packing our swimwear and sun-lotion and heading south to bake our British bottoms, a group of teenagers, scientists and artists were packing up their thermal underwear and woolly hats and sailing north, to take an up-close look at the effects of climate change. They were heading for Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands about 600 miles south of the North Pole, and they weren’t taking any chances on the weather. It would be cold, snowy, and they would definitely see glaciers. It was going to be a chilly summer holiday!

The teenagers were part of an expedition organised by the group Cape Farewell, whose mission is to combine the creativity of scientists and artists to raise awareness and study the impacts of climate change. Since 2003, Cape Farewell, an independent charity created by artist David Buckland, has taken artists, scientists and media types into the white extremes of the Arctic on five separate expeditions, hoping to inspire and invigorate them. And inspired they certainly seemed to be.

Rachel Whiteread, an artist who participated in the 2005 Cape Farewell expedition, turned Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall into a virtual ‘glacial plain’ when her ‘Embankment’ sculpture filled the hall with 14,000 white plastic boxes. And photographer Nick Cobbing, a 2007 expedition participant, was honoured when his photograph of the expedition ship battling through sea ice was selected last year by US Time Magazine as one of two ‘Pictures of the Year’. Cape Farewell was given a further boost last year when it was awarded a three-year artist’s residency at the Southbank Centre.

It was from their small ‘resident artist’ offices on the banks of the Thames that Cape Farewell launched its first ever youth expedition to the Arctic last summer. The group of twelve high school students from Germany, Canada and the UK was accompanied by nine adults, including Professor Mark Maslin, Director of UCL’s Environment Institute and artist Dan Harvey.

After a series of talks, slideshows and music performances at the

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Royal Festival Hall, the students – all wearing red woolly hats à la The Life Aquatic – were zoomed down the River Thames in bright orange speed boats, Cape Farewell flags flying high, on their way to the Arctic!

In fact, this was just the staged launch, put on so the gathered media could duly record the event. The team actually flew first to Stockholm, then to Olso, onto Tromso, before eventually reaching Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard. Here they boarded the hundred-year old, steel-hulled Dutch schooner Noorderlicht and set sail, team, crew, and bags of equipment all safely huddled together on board. For the next nine days, they journeyed along the coast of Svalbard, experimenting, creating singing, dancing, and recording as they went along.

The islands of Svalbard are of particular importance to discussions of climate change. In the sea between Greenland and Svalbard, warm Gulf Stream water travelling north on the ocean surface mixes with cold dense Arctic water, sinks, and travels back towards the equator. This ‘Atlantic pump’ continually draws warm water northwards to replace the sinking dense water, conveying heat from the equator and resulting in the mild climate we enjoy in the UK. Scientists are worried that if extra freshwater from melting ice-caps, glaciers and rainfall, mixes with the water around Svalbard, warm Gulf Stream water won’t become dense enough to sink, and may effectively shut down the pump. How this will affect the climate is unknown. But scientists from the numerous international research stations in Ny-Alesund, a former coalmining town in northwest Svalbard, are hoping to find out.

At the Ny-Alesund research station, the expedition team met and worked with glaciologist Jack Kohler of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Kohler has been measuring the mass balance of Svalbard’s glaciers – the difference between how much ice and snow a glacier gains and how much it loses through melting and sublimation – to determine whether the glaciers are retreating or growing, and whether climate change is affecting them.

For the students who assisted Kohler, it was an exciting opportunity to do some real world science and to contribute to a significant research project. They also visited the Zeppelin Mountain Research Station, home of the ‘northernmost Webcam of the World’, and the starting point of polar explorer

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FEATURES REVIEWS Roald Amundsen’s first flight over the North Pole (in a Zeppelin!).

The students also undertook individual art and science projects while in the Arctic. These projects grew out of questions that they were required to pose as part of the application process, and were developed in consultation with scientists and artists affiliated with Cape Farewell during the pre-launch period in London.

For example, while in Svalbard, Josef Tkocz from Parkview Community School in Barrow-inFurness measured phytoplankton concentrations at different distances from a glacier’s edge, to see what effect fresh cold glacial water had on phytoplankton growth. Jethro Chrisman, a student from Frome Community College in Somerset and budding guitar enthusiast, recorded two CDs of music as an emotional response to his journey to Svalbard. As a group, the students and their mentors collectively created an ice sculpture and a dance piece.

The expedition was only the beginning for the students, who were chosen from schools committed to participating in the public discourse over climate change once their students returned home. At Frome Community College, Chrisman and science teacher Dr. Keith Brindle (who accompanied the youth expedition and

INTERVIEWS OPINIONS NEWS & EVENTS just happens to be the author’s big brother) are organising a college-wide environment week.

Their involvement with Cape Farewell has played a major role in the school’s decision to employ an environment officer to help reduce the school’s carbon footprint.

The school is also developing an environmental policy that will incorporate plans to generate some of its energy needs on site by renewable means.

Through the Cape Farewell expedition, the twelve students explored a world most of us can only ever read about, seeing polar bears and reindeer, and working with scientists and artists under extreme conditions. At one especially dramatic point in the trip, the front edge of a glacier in the bay directly opposite them broke off with an unforgettable rumble and crash. The import of this event was noted in the students’ poignant and emotional blog entries that day. They were definitely viewing climate change up close!

Despite the cold, the fact that this was their summer holiday wasn’t far from the students’ minds, especially when the whole group donned their swimwear and went for a quick dip in the Arctic Ocean. Not quite the beaches of Benidorm, but certainly a chilledout summer holiday!

To learn more about the Cape Farewell expeditions visit www.capefarewell.com.

Nick Cobbing’s photographs can be viewed at www. nickcobbing.co.uk.

To follow the 2008 youth expedition, visit www. capefarewellcanada.ca.

Or read Burning ice: art & climate change, by David Buckland.

The northernmost Webcam of the World can be viewed at www.svalbard-images.com/photos/webcam-svalbard003-2-e.php.

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Green light for green towns?

Duncan Morrison weighs up the Government’s plans for new eco-towns for Britain.

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N 2007, Gordon Brown outlined his commitment to building 300,000 homes a year in Britain to meet rising demands for social housing and allow young people to get their feet on the property ladder. These homes must be environmentally conscious if Britain is to meet the target set out in the Climate Change Bill to reduce carbon emissions to 60% of 1990 levels by 2050.

A large proportion of this reduction will be in domestic housing, with the aim to have all homes at low or zero carbon emissions by 2016.

New eco-towns The Government’s proposal to build ten new eco-towns, ranging between 5,000 and 20,000 homes, by 2020 appears to be a logical step to tackle the challenge of energy-efficient housing. Caroline Flint, the current Housing Minister, is soon to announce the shortlist of 12 to 15 sites, selected from over 50 applications, from which the final ten will be chosen. The Minister set out strict criteria for the projects. At the centre, is the importance of separate and distinct identities with good links to towns and the countryside, and a specific focus on carbon neutrality.

The Minister has also green lighted a scheme to allow existing homes to install solar panels, ground source heat pumps and microgeneration technologies without needing planning permission.

Low or Zero Carbon technologies aim to produce zero or low net carbon output over the year for all energy use in the home. At the forefront of these

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are Combined Heat and Power systems, which use gas and steam turbine techniques to generate electricity and heat for homes, photovoltaic panels and wind turbines.

Such projects are essential to mitigate the carbon consumption of homes in Britain, which makes up 27% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. Also, if the UK is to catch up with the rest of Europe, these homes must be implemented strategically and effectively.

The Government’s ambitions for its eco-town proposal have been under scrutiny since its intentions were first expressed ...

Sweden now gets all its energy from nuclear and hydroelectric power, with a referendum introduced to try and phase out the former. Almost all heating derives from geothermal or waste heat.

With plans to be the world’s first oil-free economy, Sweden shows the exemplar qualities the UK must draw on.

The Government appears to be making practical steps in the right direction, with numerous guidelines being published such as the Code for Sustainable Homes and the Planning Policy Statement on Planning and Climate Change, which

implement planning system and building codes to meet reduction guidelines.

The controversy The Government’s ambitions for its eco-town proposals have been under scrutiny since its intentions were first expressed during a parliamentary debate at the end of January this year.

Nationwide protests have been held in response to the initial proposals, with many organisations feeling that the ecotown template is being used by developers to resubmit rejected proposals.

The Wildlife Trusts expressed their concern, stating that the developments make a mockery of the term ecotown. Fiona Mahon, planning officer at the Trust, elaborated on this point suggesting that although “... it is quite straightforward with the technologies that exist to make homes zero carbon, and we obviously support this, in order to be truly environmentally sustainable we have to look at where these towns are going to be built.” She added: “... if they are built in the wrong places they could harm the existing biodiversity value of the sites.”

In a recent press release published

by The Wildlife Trusts, a development at a quarry site in Oxfordshire known as Bunkers Hill was singled out as a particularly pertinent example of bad planning systems. According to Mahon: “... it is a designated wildlife site and is very important to wintering and breeding birds” and that any development here would be “ecologically unfriendly.”

Asking what the Government should

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What ought to be at the forefront of any planning strategy is the need to work around natural habitats so that they flourish.

What should have been done is clear. Local authorities and wildlife organisations should have been consulted from the outset and proper environmental assessments carried out.

There also needs to be an equal focus on the broader environmental picture, not just carbon neutrality. Green spaces, green infrastructure and transport links all need to be sustainable if any of the plans are to be deemed truly ecologically friendly. A pertinent point here is to ensure that the towns do not just become commuter housing. There needs to be a strong focus on creating businesses to ensure that the towns themselves have a sustainable economy. The Wildlife Trusts fear that these factors may be overlooked, especially those that affect the biodiversity of the sites.

Good planning

bullfinch Kent Wildlife Trust

have done in the planning stages of this scheme outlines a feeling that resonates with those protesting throughout the country. “There has been no evidence that the government, in their initial assessment, are having full regard for the environmental and ecological impact; for example, there is no evidence that an environmental impact assessment has been carried out.”

Such an assessment must be performed as part of any development to assess the potential damage to the environment and the measures that will be taken to mitigate such effects. Although this procedure will be carried out once the shortlist of proposals has been chosen, the Trusts feel that if the towns are in the wrong locations to begin with, it may prove difficult to change them in the latter stages of planning.

Important lessons The Environment Trust, based in the east end of London, shows on the local scale how working with the community is at the heart of sustainable living.

Jon Aldenton, the Development Officer outlines the Trust’s view on green living: “We see the environment as the social, economic and physical environment.”

Although they have shown through their green home specifications (designed to reduce the number of air changes in the house) how green technology should work, Aldenton feels that there should also be a sustainable community. The charity has set up a financial institution and provided affordable work spaces in the area to allow small businesses to establish. His view on being green is one that relies on small practical measures, or put more eloquently “... a bit like thrift really!”

Ahead of the governmental consultation to finalise which developments are to be built, it appears that there are still concerns from both environmental organisations and local people. Taking a zero carbon outlook alone is not enough to tackle the anthropogenic pressure Britons are placing on the country. To truly relieve these effects and ensure they are not exacerbated, it is important to look at where new towns are going to be built.

It is clear that eco-town projects are essential to meet housing demands.

What ought to be at the forefront of any planning strategy is the need to work around natural habitats so that they flourish, rather than become fragmented.

An example of good eco-planning and one that was commended by the The Wildlife Trusts is Cambourne in Cambridgeshire. Although not all of the homes are zero carbon, the town exhibits qualities that the Government appears to be overlooking. Cambourne shows how new towns can work around existing biodiversity. It now boasts more natural wildlife than before its construction in 1998. It incorporates wetlands, woodland and meadows into its design. Along with wildlife corridors, there is a reduction in habitat fragmentation, allowing flora and fauna to thrive. The town boasts exciting bird species such as great spotted woodpeckers, bullfinches and skylarks, and over 800 recorded insect species.

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Faster than the H What gets tennis players all hot under their designer co revolutionary technology that gives umpires the last wo

“You cannot be serious!”

John McEnroe Wimbledon, 1981

A

H, TEMPER tantrums! Tennis lovers may tell

themselves that they watched McEnroe for his magical drop volleys, Ivanišević for his incredible serves or Tarango for … well, never mind, but nothing makes an encounter memorable like a row with an umpire. And nothing makes for a good row like a disputed line call.

In the age of television (and the accompanying instant, slowmotion replay) these disputes had taken on an increasingly surreal tinge. We the viewers could sit at home, often in full knowledge that the ball was ‘IN’ or ‘OUT’ of the court, and watch as player and umpire argued, each having seen the ball once – and only once – zipping past them, often at a speed well over 100mph. Surely, in the digital age, some electronic technology could be used to arbitrate?

“I’ve just won the last five f***ing points, don’t do this to me!”

Goran Ivanišević Wimbledon, 2001

Nothing makes for a good row like a disputed line call.

It seems the International Tennis Federation thought so too.

Since 2007, a revolutionary new technology called Hawk-Eye has been available to players who wish to challenge the umpire’s decision. Each player is allowed a maximum of three incorrect challenges per set, after which they lose the right to challenge any decision for the remainder of that set. If the set enters a tiebreak, each player is allowed one further incorrect challenge.

Hawk-Eye is the brainchild of 33-year old Dr Paul Hawkins, a Brit with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, who developed the technology out of a passion for sport (he played Minor Counties cricket for Buckinghamshire). The system was first developed for use in cricket to judge whether a ball hitting a batsman’s leg was headed for the stumps (that is, whether a player was out for ‘leg before wicket’). Its first use on TV was in Channel 4’s BAFTA award-winning coverage of the 2001 Ashes series.

However, the International Cricket Council has not yet officially sanctioned Hawk-Eye for use in decision-making, and so the technology’s greatest impact has been in tennis.

Hawkeye uses ten high-resolution, highspeed digital cameras placed strategically around the court.

Hawk-Eye uses ten high-resolution, high-speed digital cameras placed strategically around the court. Each camera tracks the ball from its own position, locating the centre of the ball in the plane perpendicular to that camera, 55 times every second. The data from all ten cameras are combined to locate

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e Human Eye ... ner collars? Tim Wogan investigates Hawk-Eye, the ast word on those crucial make-or-break decisions.

“You are the most corrupt official in the game.”

Jeff Tarango Wimbledon, 1995 (shortly before Mrs Tarango came onto the court and slapped umpire Mr Bruno Rebeuh)

the 3-D position of the ball at each instant. By linking these data together, the path of the ball through the air is computed and the exact position at which the ball touched the ground interpolated to give an IN or OUT decision.

Several variables complicate matters. The rules of tennis state that if any part of the ball touches any part of the line, the ball is in. Tennis balls, being made of rubber, compress appreciably at the bounce: stop motion photography shows that having 44mm of the ball in contact with the ground is common. Predictably, the harder and higher a ball is hit, the more the underside flattens out. The data the machine records about the passage of the ball through the air are therefore crucial, since a forehand hit at 90mph may be IN, while another forehand hit at 70 mph that first touches the ground in exactly the same place is OUT.

Each player is allowed a maximum of three incorrect challenges per set.

And tennis players will know that how a ball behaves after the bounce depends hugely on how it is struck. A ball hit with topspin (spinning forwards) may jump immediately off the court, while a slice shot (spinning backwards) will often skid for several inches. Finally, the surface has to be considered, since the ball skids much further on grass, for example, than on clay.

Despite all this, testing by the International Tennis Federation has demonstrated that the average error of the technology is just 3.6mm.

Hawk-Eye has received criticism, most publicly from the normally glacial Men’s World No.1 Roger Federer, who treated umpire Carlos Ramos to a rare display of choice AngloSaxon during his five-set win over Rafael Nadal in the final of Wimbledon 2007: a call by the line judge that declared the ball OUT was overruled after Hawk-Eye calculated that it had clipped the edge of the line by just 1mm. Many commentators sided with Federer in asserting that Hawk-Eye had made an error.

Hawk-Eye has received criticism, most publicly from the normally glacial Men’s World No.1 Roger Federer.

But the company remains bullish. Luke Aggas, Tennis Operations Manager, told me: “Out of all trials, the ball was called correctly in terms of IN or OUT. The ball is tracked better to the back edge of the line, so the error is reduced greatly around this definitive threshold.” Oh well, at least Roger has allayed one fear: temper tantrums are here to stay.

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Coughs and sneezes are bad for wheezes Katrina Pavelin meets Imperial’s Professor Sebastian Johnston to discuss his research into the causes of asthma and the exacerbating effects of infection by the common cold virus.

T

RY TO remember your school sports days. Picture the various kids on the racetrack. You might see the few energetic kids racing ahead of the rest. But I am sure you can also envisage the poor soul at the back, coughing, wheezing, gasping for breath and perhaps clutching at the tightness in their chest. Maybe that kid was you. If so, you will doubtless recognise how limited this common stereotype of asthma is.

“We have been able to show in our human studies that the people with asthma have a deficient immune response in the lung and that that is probably why they get lower respiratory infection, whilst in normal healthy people it is restricted to the upper respiratory tract.”

Asthma affects over five million people in Britain alone.

Rhinovirus can infect the lungs of a person who has asthma but not the lungs of a person without the condition.

Home Office figures show that asthma affects over five million people in Britain alone. Although most asthmatics have some control over their symptoms, more than fourteen thousand die from asthma each year. Worse, the prevalence of asthma has rapidly increased in recent decades and there is still no cure available.

Asthma attacks are caused by triggers in the environment that irritate the airways of susceptible people. Bronchial muscles contract, the lining of the airways becomes inflamed, and mucus builds up, making breathing difficult. Scientists traditionally thought that the most common asthma triggers were allergens.

That was until Sebastian Johnston, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute of Imperial College, made an interesting discovery.

“Over the last ten to fifteen years, I have been working pretty much exclusively on acute attacks of asthma and trying to work out what causes them,” Johnston explained.

“When I started that work, it was generally believed that it was exposure to allergens that caused the attacks. Now that is true, in part, but we have shown pretty conclusively that the majority of acute attacks are in fact precipitated by virus infections – as well, often, as allergen exposure. You may need the combination of exposures to actually

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Professor Johnston has found that people with asthma are deficient in several aspects of antiviral immunity.

For instance, most people have a balance

Professor Sebastian Johnston precipitate a crisis, but it is usually the virus infection that acts as the trigger.”

There are many viruses that can cause respiratory illness, but the majority are common cold viruses, known as rhinoviruses. Johnston and colleagues have been studying rhinovirus infections in otherwise healthy humans.

between two types of immune cell called T helper cells: Th1 and Th2. Th1 cells are important for specific antiviral responses, whereas Th2 cells aid the production of a different type of response that causes allergic responses such as inflammation.

People with asthma have a weak Th1 cell response relative to Th2. They are also deficient in interferons, which are small

People with asthma have a deficient immune response in the lung.

“When we give a rhinovirus infection to a healthy volunteer they get a cold and virtually nothing happens in their chest. So it is really an upper respiratory infection with nothing happening in the lungs. In contrast, if we infect exactly the same virus in exactly the same dose, but give it to an asthmatic person, they will develop a mild attack of asthma.”

From this, it is clear that rhinoviruses can infect the lungs of a person who has asthma, but not the lungs of a person without the condition.

proteins that normally interfere with viral replication in the first few days after infection, before specific immunity kicks in. But why do people with asthma have this lower immunity?

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FEATURES REVIEWS “It is certainly my belief that a large part of it is lack of exposure to infectious disease. Exposure to infection teaches our immune systems to differentiate between things we should react to and things that we should not. And things that we should not react to include harmless things like house dust mite proteins, cat proteins, dog proteins, grass pollen proteins etcetera,” suggested Johnston.

“If you do not see infection enough, you do not mature your immune responses enough and, therefore, you do not develop robust immune responses. And that leads you to be more susceptible later in life.”

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contraceptive pill and cause breakthrough bleeding in women, so that program was aborted.”

Professor Johnston explained that there was still a major hurdle for research into rhinovirus-induced asthma to overcome.

“We have been hampered in our research in trying to find treatments for rhinovirus-induced illness by having no small animal models to study. It has been believed since rhinoviruses were discovered that they only infect chimpanzees and man, and nothing smaller. Obviously chimpanzees and man are very difficult to work with, so studies have been extremely difficult.”

Most companies have been reluctant to invest in research into treatments for rhinovirus-induced illness owing to the lack of a small animal model, which is essential for studying the details and effects of infection.

“If you could show that a treatment worked in an animal model, you would feel much happier about spending the many of millions of pounds needed for human trials.”

This idea that a lack of exposure to infection in early life can increase your likelihood of developing asthma is sometimes called the ‘hygiene hypothesis’.

The hypothesis suggests that our stringent cleanliness is partly to blame for the recent rise in asthma cases. Children are less frequently exposed to a variety of infectious agents which are necessary for developing a strong immune system.

Most companies have been reluctant to invest in research into treatments for rhinovirus-induced illness owing to the lack of a small animal model.

But, earlier this year, an international team led by Professor Johnston finally succeeded in creating mouse models of both rhinovirus infection and asthma attacks. There are two types of rhinovirus: major-group rhinoviruses, which are the most common, and the minorgroup rhinoviruses. The minor-group rhinoviruses can infect the cells lining the airways of mice, but the major-group rhinoviruses could not. This is because the major-group viruses can only enter cells that have the human form of the molecular receptor ICAM-1.

In this latest study, Johnston’s team of researchers genetically engineered mice to have a hybrid of mouse-type and human-type ICAM-1 receptor. The mice were then successfully infected with a major-group rhinovirus. The scientists

Johnston’s team are exploring ways to treat asthma in the short-term, focusing on the deficient interferon responses in people with asthma. They are currently working with a company to develop inhaled interferon, to see whether the interferon can be delivered into the lungs of people with asthma and increase their resistance to infection. Antiviral agents are another potential treatment for asthma.

“A number of compounds have been studied that have shown some antiviral activity but none have made it to the market yet. The closest that we have come was a drug that was produced against enteroviruses (meningitis) which are closely related to rhinoviruses. That drug was active against rhinoviruses.

However, it was found to interact with the

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the human symptoms of an asthma attack.

This laboratory study is a very early stage in the research process, and it takes years to develop safe treatments that can be used in humans. Nevertheless, now that a potentially useful model is available, scientists can work towards clinical applications. Treatments for rhinovirus infections will also benefit people with other respiratory conditions, such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema, as well as helping to alleviate the common cold. But will there ever be a cure for rhinovirus-induced asthma attacks?

An international team led by Professor Johnston finally succeeded in creating mouse models of both rhinovirus infection and asthma attacks.

“Well, the cure is a bit of a Holy Grail!

But I believe it is not impossible, actually, as we are understanding more and more about why people do develop allergies and asthma. It seems to me logical that if you can stimulate the immune system in ways that mimic what infection would have done, but without producing the illness that infection produces, you could mature the immune system to develop your innate responses.”

So, is there a real possibility that we will be able to reduce the number of new cases of asthma in the future?

“I believe that, in years to come, we will probably be administering bacterial mimics or viral mimics that stimulate the immune system and make development of asthma and allergy much less likely.”

also created a mouse model of asthma attacks by combining minor-group rhinovirus infection with exposure to the allergen ovalbumin, which is a protein found in egg white. The virus was found to enhance the allergic reaction and inflammation in the airways, mimicking

Although asthma is the most common respiratory condition in the UK, much of the biology behind the condition remains a mystery. Scientists also know little about the mechanisms underlying rhinovirusinduced asthma attacks. There is no cure for asthma, but Professor Johnston hopes that his new mouse models will prove to be invaluable in the ongoing quest for the ‘Holy Grail’ of asthma research.

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Anything will be possible in the nanofuture Kate Oliver takes a look at what nanotechnologies offer us.

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ANO, NANO, nano. Big hype. What is it? Nano refers to the scale – an American billionth of a metre wide (10-9 m) – where you’re dealing with somewhere less than a hundred or so atoms. At this level, what are known as quantum effects become manifest.

You can’t ignore the fact that nature is inherently grainy. Everything gets quantised: length, charge, magnetic flux. But any meaningful system is still made of hundreds of atoms, all interacting with each other, causing feedback that then changes all of these interactions.

What you’re actually trying to deal with is a composite of the clouds of electrons of individual atoms, and the mathematical wave functions describing them, added together. Believe it or not, this makes things slightly easier.

So, a nanoscale system has the properties of a quantum system, writ large across a crowd of atoms, and as the crowd gets larger and larger, they turn into the normal world we know and loathe. But if you keep the number of atoms small enough to get the properties you want, and then connect this arrangement to an amplifier, you can get a system with the properties of the microscopic and the effects of the macroscopic. This is the goal. These devices are called nanostructures, and they are the future.

What can we hope to do with nanotechnology? We have two methods for making things: taking what we have and whittling it down, like a sculptor chipping away all the bits of a block that do not look like a masterpiece, or taking the smallest elements we can handle and building them up into nanomachines. All assembly techniques at the nanoscale fit into one of these categories: ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’, respectively.

Top-down manufacturing is conceptually easier, since it just involves doing what we already know, but at a smaller scale. And atomic sizes are within human capabilities. The cheaper sort of

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Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (STMs), – the kind that they let undergrads play with – are capable of imaging the bumps made by atoms on the surface of materials and of moving atoms around individually using tips made by slicing pointy bits of platinum wire with wire cutters, and hoping to get a point which is one atom wide. Remember that image of ‘IBM’ written in xenon molecules that appeared everywhere?

Less hands-on techniques involve photolithography, patterning materials with light to create photoresists but these are limited by the wavelength of the light used. You can’t get a better resolution than the wavelength of the light, and the typical UV light used has a wavelength of 190nm, or about 500 atoms wide. A way round this is to use near-field lithography, which places the sample so close to the source of light that the light has no chance to spread out. Using this technique it’s hoped that we can get down to 1nm resolution, which – at 2 or 3 atoms wide – is the last outpost of nanotech before we have to work on fully quantum systems (or molecular circuits), both of which look to be Rather Hard Work.

But my money’s on bottomup fabrication as the way to go. It’s a new paradigm for a new tech: building what you want exactly right, with no wastage because you’ve got atomic level control.

The STMs provide a painfully manual way to do this: move a probe over atom; then apply a positive voltage to the probe, attracting the cloud of electrons towards it; and where the negative electron cloud goes, the positively charged nucleus must follow, detaching from the surface. Then, you move the probe and reverse the voltage to deposit the atom where you want it. Other methods involve firing single atoms through a tiny aperture so they land in the molecular arrangement you want, somewhat like the

computer game Puzzle Bobble.

But the best option would be to make use of self-assembly and get the molecules to build themselves into what we need.

This is how carbon nanostructures are made: since the atoms naturally conglomerate into stable forms, we don’t need to micromanage them. By injecting carbon, separated into individual atoms, into a high-pressure tube, they form into structures we find useful, and the structures they form vary with pressure.

So whether you want single-walled nanotubes for conductors, buckyballs to improve light output in your LED, graphene for nanoelectronics, or a big fat diamond, the carbon atoms will do it for you.

More complicated structures can be formed with organic molecules tailored for the purpose. Dr. Paul Rothemund at Caltech has modified strings of DNA with molecular ‘staples’ that bring two points on the string together and bind them – producing molecular scale raster-scan smiley faces, 2nm high. The DNA pictures he makes consist of pixels 20 by 20 atoms square, and self-assemble algorithmically.

He insists there is a practical use for this in fabricating ‘nanobreadboards’ to put nanocircuitry, or even protein assemblages on, but I suspect he is just having fun.

And while we’re talking about devices that build themselves, we hope one day to be able to condense a whole multilayered polymer device, such as an LED, out of solution. Soluble polymers with all kinds of conductive properties and energies could be mixed up in a solution and then, as the solution evaporates off, spontaneously arrange into a layered device. Making LEDs while watching paint dry? Why not? If you’ve got the basic building blocks of matter working together for you, anything is possible.

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As a matter of fact ...

Dr Tim Boon, Chief Curator of the Science Museum, invited Edward Wawrzynczak to watch some old film-clips and hear about their relevance ahead of a new exhibition at the Museum.

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OW THE public views science is vitally important in today’s technocratic society. We take for granted the quality of programmes that serve up science, such as the longrunning Horizon series on BBC. Yet broadcasters are regularly accused of ‘dumbing down’ science in the chase for ratings success. How did this odd situation come about?

A new exhibition at the Science Museum called ‘Films of Fact’ goes back in time to trace the origins and development of science films in Britain.

The exhibition draws on about forty films selected from the extensive archives of the BBC and the British Film Institute.

The curator of the exhibition, Dr Tim Boon, who has a long-standing interest in documentary and educational films about science, believes that the exhibition is “a unique opportunity to lift the lid on this wonderful resource”.

The films of the early 1900s, which predated the birth of cinema itself, started out as a form of entertainment, like a fairground side-show. They were “another wonderful thing you could do with a cine camera” according to Boon. A oneminute film Cheese Mites, shot through a microscope, revealed an unseen world of tiny, revolting creepy crawlies to an amazed public for the first time. Made by amateur naturalists and cinematographic tinkerers, such ‘nature’ films proved very popular.

A second genre comprises ‘technology’ films of the 1920s and 1930s, which were often made by professional film-

TV presenter Raymond Baxter on the set of Tomorrow’s World in 1965.

(Museum of Science and Industry)

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makers on behalf of industrial sponsors. These films represented the emblematic wonders of the age – communications, transport by road, rail, sea and air, steel fabrication, and power generation – as uncontroversial benefits. The Face of Britain, for example, portrayed a vision of clean, rational modernity as the sensible replacement for the dirty, unplanned industrialisation of the past.

The economic depression of the 1930s gave rise to a third kind of film, in which scientists worked with film-makers to promote the significance of science to society. Julian Huxley, one of the most prolific of the popularising scientists, became the public face of scientific documentary when he presented Enough to Eat? The film highlighted the challenge of malnutrition and showed what science could do to solve the problem. The clear message intended was that science had the answers to make a better world.

The advent of television had a major impact. Instead of touring educational films around the many cinemas, schools and village halls the length and breadth of the country, film-makers were now able to reach an audience of millions much more readily. Everyone realised the potential power of TV, not least scientists themselves who tried to “get their foot in the door” and control how science was represented on screen to create a positive public opinion.

The early TV of the 1950s had a culture of experimentation and focused on basic science.

Pioneering programmes, such as Frontiers of Science, were filmed live in the studio and could be highly topical. Boon’s personal favourite is an episode made just one week after the Russians unexpectedly launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit in 1957. He sees the programme as both “highly professional” in its discussion of state-of-the-art science yet “charmingly wonky” in terms of its faulty predictions.

Outside broadcast equipment designed to transmit live sports events at the weekend, which would have otherwise lain idle, was put to use the rest of the week to make breakthrough documentaries from “real places”.

The series Your Life in Their

Pioneer maker of nature films Percy Smith captured in his garden, c.1920.

(Science Museum) Hands went into hospitals, rather like the real-life medical documentaries of today. And Eye on Research ventured into research establishments, interviewing scientists in their laboratories. The tone of these programmes was generally enthusiastic and upbeat.

The exhibition’s main content is a selection of documentary films and programmes from the 1900s to the 1960s. There is also a specially prepared introduction to the exhibition showing relevant film-clips. Computer terminals will allow visitors to explore the films in greater depth. An exciting innovation is the use of new ‘shape-shifted’ media tools, developed jointly by BT and Goldsmith’s College, which respond to viewers’ tastes and effectively let them “wander through the exhibition”.

Why should anyone care about these old films? The exhibition helps us to understand how the medium of film has been used to deliver science messages to the public. Engaging people with science and “showing them what science sees” is an ever more urgent need in this age of threatening climate change. According to Boon: “It is important that we use the most effective media to help us understand what is going on in the world, and what the Government should be doing about it”.

‘Films of Fact’ is showing from 29 May 2008 on The Bridge, over the main shop, close to the entrance to the Museum. Entry is free.

I,science 21 2/6/08 19:48:14

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Green confusion Sarah Day finds that ethical shopping is not as easy as it seems.

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ET ME start with a confession. It’s not something I’ve admitted before, but it’s time to come clean.

Sometimes, when I go shopping, I use plastic bags.

Not all the time - I do own several of those ‘bags for life’ (a name which always sends a slight chill of fear through me), but yes, sometimes, I put things in those really, really bad potentially-responsible-for-destroying-the-ecosystemof-penguins bags.

It’s not like I throw them away when I get home – they’re really useful. You can put shoes in them when you travel, or line a small bin with them, or use them to take a packed lunch to work. OK, I don’t do that last one, but I could.

The point is, all my ethical green instincts tell me this is just wrong, wrong, wrong. And it is. Just like battery farming and

sealing livestock indoors. Here, however, we encounter a big problem, not unrelated to the plastic bag dilemma.

It all comes back to good old global warming. We’ve all heard the shocking (and quite funny) statistic about how cows produce more greenhouse gas than the average car. Actually, to be specific, they produce methane, a gas which has around twenty times the global warming power of carbon dioxide.

And it gets worse. For every kilogram of meat they produce, cows and sheep consume 8 kilograms of grain. Pigs perform slightly better at 4 kilograms, and chickens win by a mile, requiring only 1.6 kilograms. But the fact remains: livestock require a lot of land, which could be used for more climatefriendly purposes. All of which means, as the UN’s food and agriculture organisation has helpfully pointed out, that livestock have a greater impact on global warming than transport.

The solution: put them indoors. There, we could regulate their food intake and harmful output, possibly using such clever techniques as sealed barns with exhaust vents. As an added bonus, they wouldn’t waste so much valuable food energy running around, and we could collect their manure and use it as fuel.

Obviously, whilst such measures would help clear our ‘green’ conscience, our animal rights conscience would suffer a setback.

It all gets quite confusing – we’re supposed to shun batteryfarmed chickens, eggs that aren’t free range, and meat which doesn’t have a picture of a nice smiley farmer and a big green field on the label.

Apparently, 28 million British people now shop with ethics in mind. The trouble is, this clearly isn’t as simple as it might at first appear. Plastic bags may not have a right to respect, but livestock certainly do. To view them simply in terms of their carbon footprint is fraught with ethical problems of its own.

Jon Moorby, of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research at the University of Aberystwyth, sums up the confusion rather nicely: “Your Holstein dairy cow is almost like your Formula One car of the bovine world, and you wouldn’t keep your Formula One car outside under a bit of plastic, would you?” he gleefully, and bafflingly, concludes.

There obviously isn’t a right answer to the question of how we should shop ethically (except, of course, that plastic bags are the spawn of Satan). Just like there isn’t a simple answer to the problem of how to live in a carbon-friendly way when most people need a car and the occasional budget flight to Majorca, and Boris is threatening to get rid of the congestion charge. But maybe it’s pretty naïve of us to expect one.

How the West was won?

Georgia Gale Grant takes a torch to biofuels.

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IOFUELS ARE the new black. Unlike fossil fuels, which come from long dead material, they are fuels derived from recently living biological matter. In theory, any plant matter can be used, but in practice only two types are in common use. Sugar crops, including maize, can be fermented to produce ethanol, which can be used in cars. Other plants are grown because they naturally produce oils that can be reduced to something a bit like diesel. Because it is possible to grow these crops as and when they are needed, the energy is completely renewable.

Yippee! No more wasting of the fossil fuels. Cheering all round. As long as we keep growing the crops, we can keep churning out the energy. All is not roses and tea on the lawn, however. For one thing, ethanol-based power stations can produce only a fraction of the power that a coal power station is able to, so we would need rather a lot of them. Which would cost rather a lot. And so on.

However, what strikes me is that this is the biggest kick in the

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teeth yet for the developing world. Not only have we in the West taken obesity to a new level, we’re now actually burning food.

We could be sending that food out to Africa and riding our bikes to work. They’d be happy, and we’d be less likely to die from a heart attack. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Projected figures show that biofuels will account for 30% of the US maize crop by 2010, which is a pretty dramatic curtailment of food production. It seems we would rather have fuel to burn than food to eat, which is ironic, seeing as we need food for our own special brand of renewable energy – respiration. I can’t wait until we’re all starving to death in our environmentally friendly homes.

Summer 2008

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An Exhibition that Rocked Mair Shepherd sheds light on a unique synthesis of science and sculpture.

Light & Stone, by Emily Young Sacred Space Gallery, Notting Hill  december  to  january 

Chalcedony Head I, 2007 (15cm high)

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RYING TO convey Emily Young’s passion for science is like trying to catch photons of light with your hands.

Her work isn’t trying to combine science and art – it is science and art. You can appreciate the shape and the translucence of her chalcedony pieces, and know it is due to the crystal structure of the quartz molecules, which also causes its hardness. These are aesthetically pleasing objects, but to know that the stone is millions of years old, and that its colour is due to the presence of minerals, creates deeper levels of meaning.

Emily Young’s work initially appears to be about shape and form, but it is also about the Earth and its history, and about light. All the pieces explore how light plays on the surface, and how light penetrates within and sometimes through the stone.

Young looks at the way photons and the raw materials work together to create The Equation of Time, 2006 translucence and a different perspective.

(106cm high) It is about what we see and what we are aware of.

The most intriguing piece is ‘The Equation of Time’, rotating slowly in the centre of the room. I was struck by the size of it, and then by its smooth curves and how the light played upon its surface. Carved from billion-year old golden chalcedony, the piece is a scale model of the shape made by the Earth rotating around the sun over a ten-thousand year period. This precession – or ‘wobble’ – in the Earth’s movement was caused when a planetary body the size of Mars struck the Earth early in the life of the solar system, throwing off a huge plume of dust particles which, over millions of years, formed our Moon. The shape was designed by Danny Hillis as it forms the design of the cam for his ‘Clock of the Long Now’ – a

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ten-thousand year clock he is constructing in the Texas desert. Knowing this, as I gaze on the piece, puts the idea of time into perspective. And it puts our time on Earth into perspective.

Young’s pieces often represent the human form. The many carved heads look as though they could have been excavated from an archaeological dig. She does not always carve every part of the stone, and some of the heads have sections, which reveal the raw beauty of the stone. Other stones have geological faults, veins and splits, which aren’t revealed until the carving starts. Young incorporates these irregularities into her work, exploring ideas of truth and beauty in the human race.

The choice of material is important in Young’s work and is not simply due to aesthetics. Similarly beautiful sculptures could be created from rock that is softer and easier to work. Her pieces will stand the test of time; they will not be weathered or eroded. The chalcedony heads will survive whilst marble disintegrates. If the human race is only to grace the surface of the planet for a short time, geologically speaking, then Emily Young’s work will remain after we are gone. The stones will act as a record of us, as fossil remains did for the dinosaurs.

While the materials talk of the history of the Earth, her carvings point to the future – our future and what we choose to do with it. We are inextricably linked to the Earth and its history, and have a responsibility to it.

Chalcedony Head II, 2007 (15cm high) Photography by Angelo Plantamura.

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AT

REVIEWS FEATURES

MIC DESIGNS

Why not design decorations based on atomic structures? This experiment actually took place over fifty years ago in a unique collaboration between crystallographers and commercial manufacturers. Edward Wawrzynczak ponders whether the outcome was a success.

From Atoms to Patterns Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road until  august 

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RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC analysis of natural minerals, biological molecules and synthetic polymers in the first half of the twentieth century revealed a new world of atomic structures. Inspired by the beauty of nature’s patterns, Dr Helen Megaw, a crystallographer at Birkbeck College, and later the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge, proposed the intriguing shapes revealed by this technology as the basis for decorative design.

A providential lecture on crystallography given to the Society of Industrial Artists triggered the notion of a special design project linked to the 1951 Festival of Britain. The ‘Festival Pattern Group’, a consortium of specialist manufacturers enthusiastic to turn novel atomic designs into products, appointed Megaw as their official scientific consultant.

As the templates for the new designs, Megaw picked the most visually appealing atomic patterns from her own work and from the work of her scientific colleagues. Her crystallographer

Souvenir Book of Crystal Designs (Published by HM Stationery Office for the Council of Industrial Design, 1951)

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friends included some of the country’s most eminent scientists: Sir Lawrence Bragg, a founder of the science of crystallography; Dorothy Hodgkin, who worked out the structure of insulin; and John Kendrew and Max Perutz, who solved the structures of myoglobin and haemoglobin – all eventual Nobel laureates!

The manufacturers duly delivered an eclectic array of crystal designs in multiple forms: wall-papers and wall-tiles, curtains and carpets, seat-upholstery and table-tops, plates and teasets, glasses and cutlery, silk ties and dress fabrics, linens and lace. These were both used and exhibited as part of the Festival exhibitions held on the South Bank and at the Science Museum in South Kensington.

The delicate lightness of the weave affords the patterns an ethereal 3-D quality evoking the quantum uncertainty of the atomic world.

At Megaw’s insistence, a key objective of the project was to make product designs that accurately reflected crystal structures. And, for the most part, the manufacturers’ designs stayed remarkably true to the source materials. These innovative designs are now on show again and, for the first time, are displayed alongside the actual dyeline drawings of the atomic structures that inspired them.

Wedgwood bone china plate based on structure of Beryl (V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

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Upholstery fabrics based on the structure of Haemoglobin (V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London) The exhibition ‘From Atoms to Patterns’ also includes original hand-drawn structures, atomic density and Patterson contour maps, stacks of Perspex plates, and the ball-and-stick skeletons that formed the tangible output of the scientific work. As one would expect from an exhibition staged at the Wellcome Collection, there is also helpful information about the science of crystallography and the scientists behind it.

Although looking at designs out of context can be misleading, the effect of the bolder regular designs is disconcertingly forceful – a bit like the brash decorations of the 1970s, better in the cinema foyer than in the living room. The designs based on balland-stick models also jar to the modern eye – they look garish and brutish, rather like unoriginal abstract paintings.

In contrast, some of the gentler repetitive patterns on fabrics and furnishings are much easier on the eye yet sufficiently interesting to avoid blandness. Lace, in particular, looks like the perfect fabric for intricate patterning – the delicate lightness of

Woven silk tie based on structure of Aluminium Hydroxide (Wellcome Images) the weave affords the patterns an ethereal 3-D quality evoking the quantum uncertainty of the atomic world.

The crystallographers loved the results of the experiment.

The men keenly wore ties decorated with the structures of aluminium hydroxide or insulin and their wives were happily attired in dresses bearing patterns based on the structures of beryl or horse haemoglobin! The manufacturers undertook crystal designs mainly as demonstration projects; while some of their designs generated commercial sales, most did not.

... their wives were happily attired in dresses bearing patterns based on the structures of beryl or horse haemoglobin!

Artificial silk dress fabric based on Horse Methaemoglobin (Wellcome Library, London)

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Was the experiment a success? Certainly, through science, the industrial designers were exposed to a new source of ideas. But the legacy is difficult to assess because this exhibition necessarily focuses on one unusual episode and a single period in design history. Without seeing what came before and what happened in the half-century afterwards, it is difficult to ascribe more than curiosity value to ‘atomic design’.

Ultimately, the aesthetic quality of the various designs seems to bear little or no relation to the scientific veracity of the underlying structures. Designers have always taken from nature and then imposed their own creativity and invention upon it.

One wonders what might have happened had the double helical structure of DNA been revealed just a few years earlier. Visit the exhibition and judge for yourself.

I,science 25 2/6/08 20:31:40

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Cosmic Rays, Clouds and Climate Georgia Gale Grant explores an ingenious yet controversial theory of climate change.

The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of Climate Change

by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder Icon Books/ pages

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HERE HAVE been many alternative theories of climate change presented in the last few years, plenty of which were accompanied by hand-waving and graphs indicating a correlation between the corruption of politics and the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But Nigel Calder, journalist, author and former editor of New Scientist, and Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Danish National Space Centre in Copenhagen, have produced a surprisingly compelling account of the impact of cosmic rays from deep space on changes in global temperature.

Unfortunately, the book initially reads like an extended April Fool’s joke, but if you struggle through, the theory becomes quite profoundly interesting. Svensmark explains that cosmic rays cause secondary reactions in the atmosphere that may be responsible for cloud formation. This area of meteorology is apparently rather less well understood than might be expected.

In April 2006, basic questions such as ‘how wind, rain and snow are produced’, along with the massive ‘how clouds affect our climate’, were still being addressed.

It may seem obvious to say that clouds have a cooling effect, as every Foster’s advertisement tells us, but Svensmark looked at the problem from the other way round: an absence of clouds must have a warming effect as the Sun’s rays can reach the Earth’s surface without check. He then hypothesised that if fewer cosmic rays hit our Earth, then fewer clouds will form, which leads to higher temperatures. Bang! There’s your answer to global warming.

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Cosmic rays, which are the remnants of far-off exploding stars, consist of high-energy charged particles. The Earth is protected from these particles by the so-called ‘solar wind’, the massive magnetic and gravitational effect of the Sun. As far back as the 1890s, there was interest in the Sun’s magnetic field when Walter Maunder wrote about the low density of sunspots – a sign of reduced magnetic activity – in the seventeenth century. It just so happens that this occurred at the same time as the ‘Little Ice Age’, a well-documented cold period of harsh winters, famine due to failed crops, and short, feeble summers during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the Sun’s magnetic activity increased again, fewer cosmic rays reached the Earth, fewer clouds formed, and temperatures began to rise.

Svensmark’s theory met with some distaste and a good deal of hostility. He resorted to employing his son and working from a shed while formulating his ideas properly. But cosmologists gradually took note as the theory began to unify several unexplained phenomena. Svensmark looked at measurements of solar magnetic activity over the last thousand years, calculated by drilling bore-holes in the ice-caps and studying the chemical composition of the samples. He found that at periods of low solar activity, the temperature of the earth cooled, in some cases quite dramatically. A new discipline – ‘cosmoclimatology’ – was born.

The negative aspect of this book is the unfortunate treatment of theories of climate change based on carbon dioxide. Here you find the requisite fist-shaking and attempts to discredit vested interests. Svensmark and Calder also do little to reflect the impact of climate change on human life: “It’s all in the stars” seems to sum up their approach. They give no credence to the idea that although cosmic rays can explain past cycles of temperature, they can’t be used to dismiss the impact of carbon dioxide in the present. This isn’t particularly surprising, however, when you consider the hostile reception Svensmark’s theory first encountered.

Nigel Calder has done a reasonable job of making this particular science readable, and he has brought in the human touches of a good science writer at every opportunity, although the phrase “your author Svensmark” is overused to the point of nausea. It can’t be said that this book shines like a supernova, but the energy within its pages definitely makes it an illuminating read.

Summer 2008

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A welcome diversion into space Flora Graham finds the ideal reading matter for the hallowed space of the nerd’s bathroom.

Death By Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

by Neil deGrasse Tyson W W Norton and Co/ pages

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EIL DEGRASSE Tyson introduces his book by hoping that the reader finds “a welcome diversion from your day’s routine.” It succeeds in delivering a playful collection of short trips into astronomy and physics.

DeGrasse Tyson is a superstar astrophysicist, a TV host on American public television and director of the celebrated Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Time magazine called him “the Carl Sagan of the 21st century” and People magazine named him “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive”. So perhaps it’s no surprise that his latest book, Death by Black Hole, has already made the New

York Times’ best-seller list.

The chapters in Death by Black Hole first appeared as articles in Natural History magazine, and there is no overriding narrative, so each short chapter can be consumed in bite-sized pieces. That, combined with the deGrasse Tyson’s light and easy style, makes it ideal bathroom reading for the nerdy household.

The book is full of fun facts, such as the density of Saturn: “Unlike any other known planet, the average density of Saturn is less than that of water. In other words, a scoop of Saturn would float in your bathtub.” However, the simple writing style sometimes causes the humour to fall flat: “Knowing this, I have always wanted for my bathtub entertainment a rubber Saturn instead of a rubber ducky.”

The book also suffers by not having a European edition – although deGrasse Tyson makes the effort to be international, the use of American measurements throughout may be hard for the British reader to visualise.

In the acknowledgements, deGrasse Tyson recognises his debt to Stephen Jay Gould, who also famously collected his Natural History columns into hugely successful books such as The Panda’s Thumb. It is a difficult comparison for any essayist, and deGrasse Tyson’s book cannot quite bear it. There are just not enough brain-tingling insights for most readers with scientific backgrounds. However, it would be well suited to a younger reader who is not quite ready for Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Personal fishtory (just for the halibut)

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

by Neil Shubin

Edward Wawrzynczak finally catches up with his fishy past...

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HE CATCHY title and funky cover signal that Your Inner Fish: a journey into the 3.5 billion year history of the human body is a bit different from the typical book on palaeontology. Neil Shubin’s claim to fame is the discovery of a unique fossil skeleton known as ‘Tiktaalik’ – a strange name for a strange beast. Tiktaalik is a 375 million year old relic that is intermediate in form between aquatic and land-dwelling animals and represents a critical ‘missing link’ in evolution.

Shubin starts by describing the expeditions that led to his important discovery. He expertly dissects the key anatomical features that made Tiktaalik, literally, a fish out of water. This fish had fins that could do press-ups and so is likely to be the ancestor of amphibians and, ultimately, mammals as well. Our limbs also resemble these famous fossil fins. As the author puts it: “seeing Tiktaalik is seeing our history as a fish”.

The book also explains how the genetic mechanisms underlying limb development are similar in creatures as different as mice and sharks. In succeeding chapters, Shubin covers the formation of the head, the teeth, the visual and olfactory systems, as well as the basic layout of our body plan. We not only have an ‘inner fish’ but parts of us resemble flies and worms too.

In the final chapter, the author shares what he calls the ‘one

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Allen Lane/ pages

true law’ that all of us can agree upon – the biological ‘law of everything’ – that every living thing on the planet had parents. Add to this law the observation that all of us are modified descendants of our parents and we have the logic for tracing features back along our lineage. This sounds amazingly like evolution yet, curiously, the author appears to be unwilling to use the word, preferring to talk about the ‘deep origins of humanity’.

Despite a sometimes-quirky approach, it’s worth persevering to the end of the book where Shubin explains how tracing evolutionary history lets us figure out the way our bodies are put together. Understanding the ancient history of our bodies helps us to make sense of some of the resulting peculiarities, such as hiccups, hernias and haemorrhoids.

The story of Tiktaalik is definitely worth reading, although the interesting tale of discovery gives way to somewhat technical description of cutting-edge science as the book progresses.

Fortunately, there are many illustrations, which are especially helpful when comparing the anatomical structures characteristic of fossils and contemporary animals.

Overall, Your Inner Fish is an enjoyable read and would make an entertaining introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the wonders of developmental biology and genetics.

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The cheat’s guide to science writing Being able to write well about science is a competitive advantage for the scientist argues Edward Wawrzynczak. But anyone planning to put pen to paper should first read the great science writing already out there. Here are some short cuts to finding the best examples.

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CIENCE IS all about measurements and graphs, formulae and algorithms, methods and results, isn’t it? Well, yes and no. While the day-to-day practice of science, and its communication between experts relies on such technical nuts and bolts, scientists also have to explain and debate their work using words.

Unfortunately, the conventions of the research publication make much of the formal literature painful to read.

But the products of science remain obscure unless they are also clearly conveyed to the world at large. The public has an insatiable interest in science and, in an era of high competition for funding and increased public scrutiny, tomorrow’s winners will be those scientists whose work garners public support. So writing about science for a popular audience is important too.

Freed from the shackles of formal reporting, the scientist can speak as a real participant in the science story. He can use the power of words to engage the reader, to bring the doing of science to life, and to impart flavour to scientific concepts.

The scientist can now argue, speculate, imagine and dream about consciousness, or life, or the biosphere. She can express a new point of view, put forward bold new hypotheses, and simultaneously lambast the theories of rivals.

There is no secret about good science writing – it’s out there for all to read.

Good science writing, like any good writing, works when it is entertaining. Writing about science also needs to convey something of the world – a sense of wonder, of truth, of meaning – and not simply restate scientific facts and theories. People like to read stories about scientists, their motivations, challenges, triumphs and failures. They want to understand what is going on in the messy world around them and how science can help them to make sense of their lives.

There is no secret about good science writing – it’s out there for all to read. A taste of the best science writing comes handily assembled in the form of anthologies. It is surprising how even a short extract can convey the unique voice of a great writer. And the advantage is that you don’t have to hunt down and read vast tracts of prose to get a good idea of a writer’s style and whether you like it. The publishers have done the hard work for you.

The latest offering – The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing – focuses on the writings of twentieth century scientists.

Other anthologies have taken a broader sweep. The Faber Book of Science, edited by John Carey, includes classic writings about science and technology from Leonardo da Vinci to the present. Another useful collection is Galileo’s Commandment: An Anthology of Great Science Writing, edited by Edmund Blair Bolles, which goes back as far as the ancient Greek, Herodotus.

Conventional anthologies of science writing tend to focus on famous scientists and philosophers. But scientists are not the

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only people qualified to write well about science. Two series of anthologies produced annually collect the best popular articles about science published in the United States in the previous year. These can reasonably claim to present some of the best contemporary American science writing. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent collection for UK science writing.

The explosion of the World Wide Web means that there is more and more science writing posted on the Internet, although the quality of that writing does vary considerably. A new series of anthologies The Open Laboratory from digital publisher Lulu claims to present the best science writing on blogs. You can find details via the ScienceBlogs website or, if you are sufficiently web savvy, you can try to locate the blogs themselves.

Good science writing, like any good writing, works when it is entertaining.

The more prolific and successful science writers merit complete anthologies to themselves. For those who can’t get enough of Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplin is a collection of essays brought together from a variety of sources. The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould attempts to represent the diversity of Gould’s many writings. The Single Helix brings together articles that Steve Jones wrote for his ‘View from the Lab’ column in the Daily Telegraph.

And finally, armed with your newly found expertise, you can peruse the virtual bookshelves of any online retailer – and even the real shelves of the few remaining bookstores – to find the works of the writers that tickled your fancy. Congratulations!

You are now a fully-fledged connoisseur of science writing. The next stage involves actually writing about science rather than reading about it. But that is a different matter altogether.

Summer 2008

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Modern science writing according to Dawkins The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing edited by Richard Dawkins Oxford University Press/ pages

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HE ANTHOLOGY Modern Science Writing, compiled by biologist and acclaimed author Richard Dawkins, focuses on the writings of twentieth century scientists. The chosen pieces are typically extracts – between a few paragraphs and several pages in length – taken from longer works. These are grouped according to four broad themes: Science’s Subject Matter, Scientists and the

Nature of Science, What Scientists Think, and What Scientists Delight In. Each is introduced by a short commentary from Dawkins.

This collection comprises eighty or so writings by both the famous – Einstein, Feynman and Schrödinger – and the infamous – Crick and Watson. There are extracts from recent writers – Richard Fortey, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jones, Steven Pinker and Oliver Sacks – and from the giants of the past – Haldane, Hardy, Hogben, Hoyle and Huxley. And there are examples of great communicators such as Jacob Bronowski and Carl Sagan. The only women included are Rachel Carson and Helena Cronin.

No anthology can claim to be all-encompassing. Dawkins, for example, tends to favour the so-called ‘hard’ sciences, has an understandable penchant for evolutionary science, and makes some idiosyncratic choices. On the whole, however, Modern Science Writing includes most of the major figures one would hope to find. A notable exception is Dawkins himself who, with appropriate modesty, has chosen not to include any of his own writings in this collection. Those writings can, of course, be found elsewhere with little difficulty.

The best of American nature and science writing The Best American Science Writing 2007 edited by Gina Kolata Harper Perennial/ pages

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 edited by Richard Preston Houghton Mifflin/ pages

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F

OR THE hottest examples of contemporary science writing, the two series The Best American Science Writing and The Best American Science and Nature Writing are published annually each autumn in paperback form. Both feature a selection of the best popular articles that have appeared in prestigious US newspapers and periodicals in the previous year – publications such as The New York Times, Time, Discover, National Geographic and Scientific American, for example.

Every year, a different guest writer chooses the selection. Last year’s distinguished guest editors were Gina Kolata, an awardwinning science writer for the New York Times, and Robert Preston, a top journalist with several best-sellers to his name.

Editors in previous years have included notable writers such as Atul Gawande, Alan Lightman, Dava Sobel, David Quammen, Edward O.Wilson, and Natalie Angier, whose works have also graced the pages of these collections.

The twenty or so articles that make the grade are reproduced in their entirety. They usually cover a broad range of scientific areas including medical topics, technology, sociology and economics. The authors typically include both active scientists and the cream of science journalists and popularisers. As a result, each collection displays the use of various inventive approaches to story-telling and many different styles of writing effectively about science and its consequences.

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NEWS & EVENTS OPINIONS INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS FEATURES

Garden lets its secret out ...

Nira Datta finds a haven of botanical art in the lush setting of London’s Kew Gardens.

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery Kew Gardens Permanent Display

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OR CENTURIES, the largest collection of botanical art in the world has nestled within the closed doors of Kew Gardens. Described as Britain’s most ‘secretive’ art collection, the pieces have been kept exclusive to experts and researchers for hundreds of years. Now, for the first time, this collection is open to public viewing.

More than a million people who visit Kew Gardens every year will be able to enjoy samples from the extensive botanical art collection, which now holds over 200,000 items, at the new Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, situated next to the Marianne North Gallery.

The Gallery is the first to exhibit the botanic paintings from the fifteenth century to the present day. What’s more, these historically significant illustrations provide snapshots of Britain’s colonial past. When the British ruled over places like India, people working for organisations like the East India Company or the Army, paid local artists to paint pictures of the flora and fauna in their local communities. These artworks were then brought back, and used to show off the plants and animals that inhabited such ‘exotic’ places.

A view of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery Walking through Kew’s collection of botanical art, visitors will get to see at first hand some of the only surviving records of the world’s extinct species. With one quarter of the world’s species of flowering plants threatened by extinction in the next fifty years, the Gallery will be appreciated not only for its aesthetics, but also for the unique glimpse of the world’s natural history it offers.

So whether you’re an artist, a natural history buff, or would simply like a stroll through the lush environment of Kew Gardens, Britain’s great ‘secret’ art gallery is finally open in a home for all to enjoy.

LEFT: Pink rhododendron, Sally Keir (Shirley Shirwood Collection) RIGHT: Cleistocactus fieldianus, Christabel King, 1988 (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Collection) The illustrations – neatly displayed behind glass-covered frames – will appeal to both artists and scientists, alike. The works of art also include technical masterpieces, executed by scientists, whose meticulous studies of plants have been appreciated by botanists from all over the world.

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery has an uncluttered ambience, with the paintings displayed on neutral coloured walls. The climate-controlled environment and regulated light levels provide an ideal viewing space for Kew’s rare and sensitive works. The glass windows of the gallery also give a picturesque view of Kew Gardens, creating a tranquil and soothing environment.

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LEFT: Poppy seed head, Brigid Edwards, 1999 (Shirley Sherwood Collection) RIGHT: Pleroma macranthum, Walter Hood Fitch, 1868 (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Collection)

Entry to Kew Gardens costs £12 for students and includes entry to the art galleries.

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FUN FEATURES REVIEWS

INTERVIEWS OPINIONS NEWS & EVENTS

Laugh Lab Calling all would-be comedians... send us your best/worst science jokes.

WHO EV SAID ER SCIE N DON’T TISTS A SEN HAVE HUMOSE OF UR?

E.mail us at i.science@imperial.ac.uk and if your joke makes us laugh it might end up in the next issue.

Sarah Furnell compiles the best (and worst) of your funnies.

Giggles and Groans

Reader’s Jokes

Why is there no aspirin in the jungle?

Because the parrots-eat-’em-all.

What element carries restraints?

Copper.

What do you get when you cross a snake with a physicist?

A Bohr constrictor.

What is the Periodic Table’s favourite band?

Nickelback.

What do you get if you put a tooth in a glass of water?

A one molar solution.

What’s a biologist’s definition of a graph?

An animal with a long neck.

Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?

To get to the other ... er, um ...

What do you call a Tyrannosaurus that’s afraid of its own shadow?

A nervous Rex. How many scientists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Five: one to write the grant proposal, one to do the mathematical modeling, one to type the research paper, one to submit the paper for publishing, and one to hire a student to do the work.

The Heisenberg Defense CER, NO OFFI WHAT KNOW I DON’T AS GOING...

W SPEED I DO KNOW BUT I I AM. WHERE

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aerobic exercise Arctic expedition asthma research atomic design beatboxing black holes botanical art eco-towns ethical shopping Hawk-Eye holography Laugh Lab nanotechnology popular science books rock sculptures science festivals science films science news science writing

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