Large Hadron Collider or large cappuccino?
Suzie creates her own big bang!
Remember physics at school? Static electricity, magnets, voltages, waves… the list goes on. It’s possible that apart from making your hair stand on end you never used it again, consigning it to the `vaguely curious but not useful’ pile. In fact, some of the most impressive machines ever built are based on exactly these principles.
Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider need to be designed before they can be turned into magnets, big pieces of metal, huge long wires and world-record amounts of cryogenic liquids. Someone needs to tell them where to put all the magnets, how strong they need to be and how it will all work – and that’s where someone like me comes in, an accelerator physicist.
OK, I admit that I didn’t design the LHC as I was in nappies at the time – the world’s largest machine wasn’t made overnight. But I design other, smaller accelerators. For my PhD I’ve been designing one for cancer treatment using charged particles. On the list of cool jobs I never thought I’d have, this one has got to be pretty high up the list.
Next week, I hope to be submitting my PhD thesis. This week, while it’s going through a final edit, I’ve taken some time out to come to the British Science Festival in Birmingham with a group of young scientists from the University of Oxford. We’re here presenting a science show for schools called `Accelerate!’ – let me explain how it works.
The whole experience is interactive, thanks to audience volunteers who help us through our `recipe’ to make a particle accelerator. The recipe has just five ingredients: particles, energy, control, collision and detection. The show really gets going with the first explosion, accompanied by a few screams from unsuspecting pupils as we light a balloon filled with hydrogen gas. Of course, scientists use a high voltage to rip apart Hydrogen gas – leaving protons to use in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. It’s not just for show.
For more information look here http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/forms/festival/events/showevent2.asp?EventID=141
Hope to you see you on Saturday.
Suzie Sheehy
Some concepts aren’t easy to get across with a demonstration, like the concept of accelerating particles using an electromagnetic wave. For this idea we created the undisputed favourite demo of the show, involving the entire audience. It’s called the “beach ball wave”. Our beach balls are scale model protons 1.5 m in diameter, about a thousand million million times larger than a real proton. The audience is transformed into an electromagnetic wave, which accelerates the particles across the room. After this we’re into the realms of particle collisions, Einstein’s famous equation and giant digital camera-like detectors taking forty million pictures a second. Still following me?
If you don’t know your Large Hadron Collider from your large cappuccino, don’t worry – there’s still a chance to find out on Saturday, when I’ll be presenting the 2010 Lord Kelvin Physical Sciences Award Lecture, called the “Big Bang Dilemma”. After exploring a bit about how accelerators work and what they are used for, the event will culminate in the audience attempting to solve the Big Bang Dilemma, by voting for the research that they think deserves to be funded.
Notes:
The ‘Accelerate!’ program is supported by a Small Award for Public Engagement from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC.
Suzie Sheehy is currently completing her DPhil in the John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science at the Univeristy of Oxford. After finishing her DPhil she will be taking up a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowship for three years as the Commission’s 2010 Brunel Fellow, which will be hosted at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.
Neuroscience of music
Jessica Grahn
Dr Jessica Grahn is this year’s Charles Darwin Award Lecturer. Here she tells us about her particular area of research – the neuroscience of music.
About Two decades ago, using music as a tool to study the brain was uncommon, but nowadays, ‘neuroscience of music’ is a rapidly developing field. In the past, the only way to learn about how the brain worked was to wait for someone to have an accident or disease that caused brain damage. If they had difficulty with particular behaviours, that area of the brain could be assumed to be important for that ability. Nowadays, however, we can measure brain activity in healthy people, and distinguish those who claim to be tone-deaf from elite professional musicians, or compare babies, open-eared and waiting to learn about their musical culture, to adults who have well-formed musical preferences.
The influence of music on our brains starts early—you may have seen even very young babies moving to music. But beyond observing their behaviour, it can be difficult to learn about how the very young experience music and what their musical capacities are. To illustrate, if a scientist wants to test your musical ability, he or she can ask you to tap out a rhythm, or press a button when two melodies are the same, or indicate when you recognize a familiar song. Babies can do none of these things, so how can we learn about their musical world? One approach is to use neuroscience—babies’ brains can respond for them, without the need for instructions, pressing buttons, or even speaking. For example, a recent study used electrodes to record the brain activity of newborns only one to two days old while they listened to different musical rhythms. Even at this early age, the babies’ brain responses changed when the rhythm changed, indicating they were sensitive to some of the ‘rules’ that music follows. In fact, we know from further research that babies are in some ways more sensitive to rhythm than adults, because they can sense differences in very complex rhythms, of the sort found in non-Western cultures. However, this ability diminishes after only one year if they listen to music with mostly simple rhythms (such as those usually experienced in Western music).
Music is also being used by neuroscientists and neurologists to rehabilitate disabilities that result from stroke or disease. For example, music therapy can help individuals who have lost language abilities after having a stroke. Research suggests that when the language part of the brain has been damaged, sometimes brain areas that process music can be recruited to take over. The effects of music can also be seen on patients with Parkinson’s disease. Hearing a steady rhythm can improve walking speed, and tango lessons have been shown to improve balance more than the standard physical therapy. Although we don’t fully understand why this happens, some of my own research shows that musical rhythms activate the same brain areas that are responsible for initiating and controlling movement. It may be that the brain’s motor areas are directly involved in our experience of music.
There is still a lot that we don’t know about how music affects our brains, but it is an exciting time to be a scientist in this area, and music will be sure to teach us about how our brains work for decades to come.
If you want to find out more why not come along to Jessica’s Award Lecture ‘Hit me with your rhythm schtick’ on Wednesday 15 September at 12 noon. Click here to buy a ticket http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/forms/festival/events/showevent2.asp?EventID=143
ZOMBIE-LAND: THE FUTURE OF CONSUMPTION?
Nick Lee
Earlier this week, through a bizarre set of unplanned coincidences, I found myself sitting around a dining table eating toasted scones with the European director of the world’s biggest ‘neuromarketing’ consultancy. As our conversation evolved to take in the various work he did, and its overlap with my own, I was struck by just how far apart the views of academics and practitioners were, and at the same time how different both of our understandings of ‘neuromarketing’ were from its portrayal in the popular media, and also from some of the ridiculous pseudo-scientific claims made by those more interested in money making and self-publicity than real understanding.
While in the past I have been pretty skeptical of the sorts of things ‘neuromarketing’ consultants get up to, I was refreshed to hear my companion talk about how his firm viewed the application of neuroscientific research methods to marketing problems to be simply a new and more accurate way of getting to the heart of issues which marketers have been interested in for at least a century. In other words – do marketing campaigns work the way they are expected to? For years market researchers have tried to tap this information by simply asking you, the consumer. But, of course, the very act of thinking about what you feel may change those feelings. Incorporating neuroscientific methods into this research helps to uncover more accurate answers, and in many ways we as consumers should welcome this. After all, it should lead to better products being marketed in better ways.
But therein lies the rub. We don’t seem to like the idea that companies might be able to ‘get better’ at marketing their products. For some reason, we fear ultimately that we will become easily controllable by marketers, like consumer zombies – that there is a magic ‘buy button’ in our brains which can simply be pushed to make us purchase. However, nothing can ‘force’ you to purchase. Companies are interested in making products that WE want to buy. Of course, the fact that we seem to want to buy a number of things which are not very good for us or the world around us is an unfortunate situation, but is this the company’s fault? It’s certainly an issue worth thinking about – in fact, sometimes I wonder if the loud complaints about the potential of neuromarketing are yet another way for us to absolve ourselves of responsibility for our own actions – just like that hoary old chestnut ‘subliminal advertising’. Google it if you don’t know what I mean!
At this year’s Festival, I will be delivering the Joseph Lister Award Lecture on ‘Neuromarketing’, taking in these basic issues. At the same time, I’ll try to illustrate in a simple way how neuroscientists currently believe the brain works, and how this relates to public fears about neuromarketing – illustrating what it can and can not do. Personally, I’m all for understanding a little bit more about why and how I make decisions, but this doesn’t mean that I think such knowledge will make me a zombie. When I bought those new trainers last week, it really was my own decision. Even though the ad was just so cool….
Nick Lee
Nick presents his Award Lecture ‘Fact and fiction about neuromarketing from 12 .00 – 13.00 on Tuesday 14 September. For more information click here http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/forms/festival/events/showevent2.asp?EventID=24
All aboard the Leader-ship
The media is reporting it as the fastest selling book of all time and you couldn’t have missed all the hoo-ha yesterday as former Prime Minister and Labour Leader Tony Blair published his memoires, just as Labour party supporters are to receive ballot papers to vote for the Party’s next Leader.
The psychology of Leadership is a fascinating area – particularly when it comes to politicians. It seems that in his book A Journey Tony Blair doesn’t hold back on his feelings for his successor Gordon Brown. Back at our Festival in Norwich in 2006 we announced research into body language and politicians which the UK media went to town on. Check out this piece on the BBC Politicians can not lie. According to the psychologists reporting at the Festival the Primeminister was unable to mask his true feelings for his then Chancellor as it was all there in his body language.
At this year’s Festival we’ll be all aboard the Leader-ship once again but this time looking at research into what it takes to make a good Leader, what are the secrets and what do we, the public, look for in a Leader. New research from psychologists at the Universities of Exeter and St Andrews looks set to challenge traditional models of Leadership. To illustrate this new psychology of Leadership we’ll be looking into recent history and analysing the media portrayal of Tony Blair in the run-up to the 1997 general election which brought about a landslide Labour victory. We’ll be taking a glimpse at some of the ensuing Blair/Bush/Brown behaviour and then coming bang up-to-date with how we can apply this new psychology to all those in the current Labour Leadership race. I’ve pretty much made up my mind who gets my vote but I wonder if this new research will make me question my decision.
The Labour Leader hopefuls
All candidates have different reasons for running, however is each one actually trying to persuade us of the same thing? Is it more about us than them?
For a dip into the new psychology of Leadership join us on Tuesday 14 September from 10.00 till 12.00 . To buy tickets click here.
Sue Hordijenko
To cut a long story short I lost my mind
If you get the reference in the title of my post – then you either do a lot of pub quizzes and are a bit of a music buff or, like me, you grew up in the 8Os. ” To cut a long story short“ was the first (and IMO finest) single released by the recently reformed New Romantic oufit Spandau Ballet. The Spandaus are clearly making the most of the huge 8Os revival that’s all around us: clothes, music, hair, the Soda Stream, the government(!!)…
Anyway, to cut a long story short, this year’s online mass participation activity from the British Science Association has a retro feel and is all about the mind, and how not to lose it. Our nod to the age of New Romantics is - Neuromantics. (The title has already caused a fair amount of chat on Bad Science). Check out the website and take part. Neuromantics contains two brain teaser activities. One is a study on working memory, the ability to remember and manually process information, called ‘the Memory Game’ which is trying to establish if there is a link between your working memory and your outlook on life. The second activity takes you into the ‘Adlab’ where we will be investigating what it is about a particular advert that appeals to you – are you more influenced by celebrity, scientific argument or looks? Adlab wants to find out more about how we interpret different types of information and whether or not this can lead to behaviour change – as well as how the process may work.
We’re hoping to announce the results of Neuromantics at this year’s British Science Festival in Birmingham from 14 – 19 September.
Sue Hordijenko, Festival Director
The final – hair raising – best of the fest
The final x-change at the British Science Festival had it all; the big names and the exquisitely unusual. As the September sunlight waned it cast its orange glow on the evening skies over Guildford and the last few events at the Festival closed their doors to the applause of satisfied science enthusiasts. An unusual calm settled around; everywhere except, Chancellors Bar, where a buzz was growing. Today’s guest blogger Henry Lau tells us more.
The first guest on at the x-change was Robert Winston. During the build up he caused the barmaid to run out screaming to tell all her co-workers when she served him a coffee. With our host Sue Nelson he raised the issue of unrestricted access to the consideration of fertility treatment, which is currently not happening in the health system.
The moustached man was followed by chemist Lorelly Wilson. She was promoting simple science experiments that can be done at home to encourage children to get involved with science. She demonstrated a few experiments that she uses in her show while firing banter at a front row of particularly lively University of Surrey physicists.
Craig Underwood took us into orbit with his tale of the first UK satellite UoSAT-OSCAR 9 which he helped build for amateur radio. The satellite features the voice synthesiser chip off an educational toy so school children could tune into the talking clock coming from space. He even did an impression of the robot sounding voice.
Phil Nathan was on next, leading an experiment in trying to find the area of the body with the most pain receptors. The aforementioned physicists must have regretted their liveliness when one of them was chosen to have hairs pulled from his head, chest, foot and nose.
The writer Bill Bryson appeared at ease on stage despite this being his first Festival. Talking about the magic that science carries, he mentioned the need to have science classes in schools that cater for those children who will not go follow a career in science.
The final guest Jim Al-Khalili closed the last x-change with a riotous outgassing about Sue Nelson’s blatant discrimination against him in her perfect science communicator equation that features in her blog http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8240096.stm Sporting neither facial hair nor a large quiff, he demanded the equation be changed to include chest hair – he then demonstrated to the audience that he had a clear advantage over the competition.
The x-change team would like to thank all the guests that appeared at the event and our wonderful host Sue Nelson.
Henry Lau
Space, lies and the libel case
Olivia
Olivia Isaacs is today’s guest blogger. Kick starting the penultimate evening of the x-change was particle physicist, Frank Close. Shamelessly promoting his new book ‘Antimatter’ in the form of a fetching t-shirt, he briefly guided us through the ins and outs of the matter. Talk fell to the inaccuracy of Dan Brown’s novel, ‘Angels & Demons’. Few people in the audience admitted to having read the book and fewer still the film that came out of it. His slot ended with the question “So how did you make publishing history writing a book about nothing?”
Bringing us back down to earth (quite literally) with plant medicine was Dulcie Mulholland. Her recent work included studying plant species in Africa and Madagascar, as well as a plant used by a Zulu tribe, to induce labour contractions. Concluding, she reported that there are still many rainforest species yet to be looked at. Dulcie and her Botanist sidekick still have plenty to keep them busy.
From good, honest plants to dishonest people, saw criminal lawyers Emily Finch and Stefan Fafinski take to the stage to discuss the results of our online survey ‘Honesty Lab’ looking at public perceptions of honesty. The answer to the question on everyone’s mind, “How do you know if the people taking the survey are telling the truth?” was, they don’t but they hope that people will be honest…hmm…
Moving on from the dishonest public to the journalists who just love to use (mostly) made up equations, Simon Singh told us why this really bugs him. He believes when non-science journalists and their PR agencies approach a mathematician or a scientist asking them to make up equations it’s giving the wrong impression about science. He warns that some equations are supported by serious scientific evidence, so the public needs to use logic. Ultimately, Simon advises any budding science journalists to watch out for our English libel laws.
The final speaker of the night took us back into the atmosphere and space. Scientist John Zarnecki talked about Titan, Saturn’s only satellite that has its own atmosphere, with liquid methane for water and ice for rocks. His latest plan (the Titan Explorer) is to work with NASA to sling a probe up to Titan in the hope it lands in one of its seas, to allow more investigation of the satellite.
Finally, it was judgement day for the ‘perspectives’ students and the winner, with a poster in the form of a large Heinz Beans label, describing the stereotype of Dementia, was Gemma Webster.
Another night of nudity and cling film at the x-change
Nerys
As host Sue Nelson puts it, if the British Science Festival were a pub crawl, the x-change would be concentrated jello shots. Tuesday’s event saw five of the best speakers condensed into one hour and fifteen minutes. Our guest blogger today is Nerys Shah.
First up was Antarctic Meteorologist, Dr Tamsin Gray who brought her friend Bob the penguin on his summer hols in Guildford. She ran a workshop for children to design Antarctic bases and the kids came up with monster truck wheels to keep it out of snow and buildings that are also boats! Tamsin also taught us how cold it needs to be for your tongue to stick to a metal pole and that hard cheeses like cheddar do not defrost well.
Next was Dr Alex Murphy, an expert in dark matter. Alex told us that dark matter particles haven’t been found yet because detectors are not sensitive enough, but with technological advances being made, we should have the tools to detect dark matter within the next 2-5 years. Expect big headlines when that happens (or embarrassed theorists if it doesn’t!)
Dr Ted Nield discussed C P Snow’s two cultures – scientific and literary minds. The audience got involved debating if this is still relevant and complaining that the literary types do not embrace science. Ted pointed out that the arts exist to be appealing and entertaining; science does not and he ended on an interesting statistic: in the UK more people are members of badminton clubs than have a science degree! Ted’s message? Scientists: get out more.
Palaeontologist Dr Maria McNamara told us about her unusual approach – she doesn’t look for fossils, she makes them. Maria watches birds decay in the lab and found that her birds (unlike fossils) were not losing their wings – a mat of bacteria and fungi were forming around the bodies. Maria demonstrated this with a volunteer from the audience – Susanna Fleming – and a roll of cling film. When wrapped up Maria asked Susanna how easy it would be for her wings to fall off, “rather difficult” was the reply…
We discovered that Sue has met our final speaker, Professor John Lucas, before but has only seen him naked – they go to the same swimming pool! John moved swiftly on with the arms race between agriculture and pests. An audience member suggested that disposing of one pest would leave the niche open for another. John agreed that this was certainly possible and a reason the arms race continues.
In addition to our speakers, we again had lively two-minute segments from four ‘perspectives’ students on pesticides, marine viruses, Humber estuary management and designing lasers.
Join us tonight from 6.15 for more ‘jello shots’ of science. The best of the festival will be at Chancellors Bar.
Butts, books and bees at the x-change
Cat
The x-change is a regular Festival slot hosted by journalist and broadcaster Sue Nelson which allows you to catch up with some of the speakers from the day’s Festival programme over a drink or a bite to eat in the bar.
Our guest blogger Cat O’Donovan fills us in on what happened as last nights event.
As you might expect on day one of the x-change it was hectic. Five science graduates sporting the brightest pink t-shirts ever seen were let loose on the Festival, visiting talks and events across the campus. At 6.15pm, in Chancellors Bar it was show time and the day’s build-up culminated in a mixture of nerves, excitement, confusion and curly fries.
Dr Kerry Kirwan caught the crowd’s attention early on by waving chocolate and wine in the air. It transpires he’d used waste fats and alcohol to power his lean, mean, green F3 racing car, and carrots to make the steering wheel. Little did I know that I could use the fibres to fashion car parts. I just thought you could roast them for dinner. How naive.
Next up Dr Nikki Gammans took us through her work, reintroducing a species of bumblebee that had become extinct in the UK. She’s planning to go over to New Zealand at the end of the year (it’s a tough life being a scientist!) where the species still thrives, in order to select and breed a population of queens to bring back with her.
And then… Well… Stuart MacBride. Top crime author. ‘How do you research the science for your books?’ Sue asked. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘Mostly I just make stuff up.’ Interesting. When asked further as to whether he ever checks his science facts, Stuart launched into a story regarding his research into just how much cocaine a character could smuggle inside his body. A gastroenterologist from the audience joined in this discussion. 10 minutes later, half the crowd were in tears laughing, a quarter were appalled and another quarter were really wishing they weren’t in the middle of eating dinner. We never did find out how much you could smuggle – perhaps we’ll have to read the book.
A brisk return to science fact from science fiction came with the final speaker of the evening, Dr Paddy Regan of the University of Surrey. As a leading physicist on exotic nuclei Paddy, (or Professor Polonium) was heavily involved in the UK media coverage of Alexander Litvinenko’s death from Polonium 210 poisoning.
And not to forget the evening’s ‘perspectives’ post graduates (see earlier blog); each with 2 minutes to describe their research. Chicken microbes, solar power spray, gene therapy and computer central heating. How can you top such a brilliant evening of diverse science spiel? Come to the x-change tonight to find out!
The x-change takes place from Monday 7 – Thursday 10 September in the Chancellors Bar at the University of Surrey.
Check out Sue Nelson’s blog on the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8240096.stm
Science @ the shops
perspectives - in action
perspectives is a poster exhibition in which researchers funded by the UK Research Councils present and explore the social implications of their work. Today’s guest bloggers are perspectives participants Joshua Howgego and Becky Broadbent who found
themselves in a packed shopping centre standing between a concertina of brightly illustrated posters, a prototype Mars lander and a giant egg-shaped relaxation pod. They could be nowhere other than the British Science Festival.
We young researchers – finalists in the perspectives poster competition – had journeyed from every corner of Britain to Guildford, the Festival venue, to chat to the public about all things scientific. From climate change to how chemistry might help us fight diabetes, and even fluorescent dyes in fly brains.
Sometimes it’s all too easy for us scientists to remain hunched over our test tubes and computer models, not considering how our research impacts the real world. So for two days we decided to buck this trend and, armed with pink balloons, enthusiasm and of course our posters, we put ourselves and our research firmly under public scrutiny. We were apprehensive at first but we were pleasantly surprised at how receptive the Surrey shoppers were. It was reassuring that so many people seemed to be willing to debate our research with us.
Jean, up for the day from Southampton to go to the theatre, was one of the first to look at the poster on how Chemists are trying to combat diabetes. Jean was anxious to know how the treatment worked and, more importantly, when it would be ready. This was especially meaningful for her as she had developed type 2 diabetes herself a few years ago.
The poster of a blurred image of a moving train attracted swathes of people tired of living close to noisy railway lines. Unpleasant for them but proving that the research is really worthwhile.
Later we were embarrassed to run into a child prodigy who seemed to know almost as much as some of us about RNA. He confidently informed us that he knew all about it after watching a documentary (‘The Cell’ on BBC 4) about creating artificial life.
As well as all this, there was a mysterious room to our left. We weren’t initially sure what was going on in there – harassed looking parents kept emerging from the area looking relieved to be out. It wasn’t long before the yells of excitement had us wondering what was happening. We poked our noses in to see what all the fuss was about and were enthralled by a whole host of delights for the younger audience. The kids could assemble model brains and neurones out of pipe cleaners, see nerve cells in action under a microscope and build dangerous looking machines out of wood to learn about forces and motion.
Three o’clock came and we headed to the pub for a pint, safe in the knowledge that the adults and children of Guildford were all scienced up ready for the coming week of Festival fun.
