BlueSci Issue 10 - Michaelmas 2007

Issue 10 Michaelmas 2007 www.bluesci.org

Extremes of Pain • Ruby Hunting • Science BloggingThe Matangini Project • The Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor

in association withCambridge’s Science Magazine produced by

Mining the MoonAn unexpected fuel source

The Large Hadron ColliderEurope’s £5 billion experiment

Sea MonstersIn the wake of the giant squid

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Editorial ..............................................................................................................................Focus ...................................................................................................................................Book Reviews ...................................................................................................................A Day in the Life of .........................................................................................................Away from the Bench .....................................................................................................Initiatives ............................................................................................................................History ...............................................................................................................................Arts and Reviews .............................................................................................................In Brief ................................................................................................................................On the Cover ...................................................................................................................Dr Hypothesis ..................................................................................................................

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Issue 10

contentsSqueaky CleanGillian Brodie investigates what has gone wrong with our immune system..............................

In the Wake of the Giant SquidJames Bullock explores the underwater world of sea monsters.............................................................

Mining the MoonMichaela Freeland explores a far-reaching project to replace fossil fuels...................................

Stem Cells and CancerBrynn Kvinlaug reveals the role of stem cells in cancer..................................................................................

Extremes of PainAlexandra Lopes explores the science behind feeling pain............................................................

How Green is Your Lab?Dr Joanna Baxter finds out what fellow scientists can do to keep Cambridge green...........

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BlueSci Film Team is offering ideal opportunities for people interested in producing, filming and directing science-related films and podcasts. No experience is necessary and training will be provided.

Get involved as a project editor or as a general memberto work on short film projects, news interviews for theBlueSci website and podcasts, from conception to filmingand post-production with industry standard software.

You will be free to take on as much or as little as your freetime and enthusiasm allow, but whatever you do put in is guaranteed to be enjoyable and worthwhile.

Whether filming or podcasting are your hobby, or you areconsidering a career in the media, BlueSci is highly respected in the science media industry for its quality output and has alumni working presently at Nature and New Scientist magazines and the BBC, among many other outlets.

For further information on how to get involved contact: Head of BlueSci Film, Chloe Stockford ([email protected])

From The Editor

From The Managing Editor

Welcome to the new issue of BlueSci! Manythanks to everybody in the CUSP team fortheir hard work that made this issue possible,and to Varsity for its continued support.

As Cambridge’s leading popular sciencemagazine run by students and postdocs,BlueSci brings to you the latest cutting-edgescientific research. Central to BlueSci’s rai-son d’etre is the democratization of accessto scientific inquiry via transparent andinteractive reporting. Our Film Team trav-elled to CERN—the world’s largest parti-cle physics laboratory—to find out whysmashing protons moving at 99.9% thespeed of light, in a 27 kilometre-wideunderground tunnel, may help us under-stand the beginning of our Universe. Wehope you will join us and become involvedin debating and communicating sciencewithin Cambridge and beyond.

This Michaelmas, BlueSci’s past membersand other professionals working in sciencemedia will offer weekly workshops in pop-ular science writing, photography, filming,podcasting, online publishing, web devel-opment and careers in media. If you’d liketo take advantage of these training oppor-tunities or to become part of BlueSci, be itwith writing, illustrating, graphics, or pro-duction please do not hesitate to get intouch with us at [email protected].

To check out our CERN movie and forother complimentary material to the print-ed edition of BlueSci, as well as weeklynews, podcasts and videos of high-impactCambridge science events don’t forget tovisit www.bluesci.org. Please do let us knowwhat you think.

Lorina [email protected]

Issue 10: Michaelmas 2007

Published by Varsity Publications Ltd

Editor: Terry John EvansManaging Editor: Lorina Naci

Production Manager: Lara MossPictures Editor: Kelly Neaves

Submissions Editor: Maya TzurPublicity Officer: Collette Johnson

In Brief Team:Beth Ashbridge, Subhajyoti De,

Thomas Kluyver, Michelle Percharde,Book Review Editors:

Margaret Olszewski,Tom WaltersFocus Editor:Tristan FarrowFocus Team:

Amy Chesterton, Michaela Freeland,Alexandra Lopes, Chloe Stockford

Features Editors:Chris Adriaanse, Beth Ashbridge,

Peter Basile, Miriam Ferrer, Michaela Freeland,Lara Moss, Michelle Percharde A Day in the Life of... Editor:

Chloe StockfordAway from the Bench Editor:

Matthew YipInitiatives Editor:

Lara MossHistory Editor:Jonathan Zwart

Arts and Reviews Editor:Mico Tatalovic

Dr Hypothesis:Mike Kenning, Rob Young

Second Editors:Tamara Evans Braun, Amy Chesterton,

Kevin Dingwell, Juliette Gray,Alexandra Lopes, Matthew Yip

Copy Editors:Peter Davenport, Lara Moss, Lorina Naci

Production Team:Jon Heras, Lara Moss, Kelly Neaves

Pictures Team:Sonia Aguera, Jon Heras, Kelly Neaves,

Adam Moughton,Tom Walters, Richard Ward,Catherine Williams, Sanne de Wit

CUSP Chairman:Steven Ortega

ISSN 1748–6920

Varsity Publications LtdOld Examination Hall

Free School LaneCambridge, CB2 3RFTel: 01223 337575www.varsity.co.uk

[email protected]

luesci 03www.bluesci.org

Welcome to the tenth issue of BlueSci!Within the following pages, you will find

a host of entertaining and informative arti-cles; our editorial aim has been to includea wide range of scientific topics, and tomake them comprehensible to all.

Our agenda includes more serious issues,too. The ARTS AND REVIEWS article dis-cusses the dissemination of knowledge viablogs. Whilst publishing scientific materialthat has not been peer reviewed remainscontroversial, it is gaining in popularity. Forexample, Nature Precedings was recentlyestablished by Nature Publishing Group asan online forum for presenting preliminaryfindings and opinion.

This theme is extended in A DAY IN THELIFE OF... where the Chief ScientificAdvisor to HM Government discussesjournalistic and editorial responsibility. In aclimate where we are so frequentlyexposed to scare-mongering and scandal, itcan be difficult to know what to believe—

but Professor King’s message is clear:“Science can inform!”

Whilst Professor King gives a run-downof what the big issues facing the world are(in relation to climate change, he has sug-gested that as many as three billion liveshang on 3ºC), our HISTORY article trains itslens on the other side of the stratosphere,and tells the story of Cambridge’s role inelucidate the structure of the cosmos.

Our FOCUS article takes us from theincomprehensibly vast to the vanishinglysmall: it tells how £5 billion is being spenton a single experiment to explode sub-atomic particles—an experiment that mayexplain phenomena such as gravity andmass. The tale is extraordinary, highly read-able, and clear detail is provided for the afi-cionados in the text boxes. Go on—take adip into the world of particle physics!

Terry John [email protected]

BlueSci is published by Varsity Publications Ltd and printed byWarners (Midlands) plc. All copyright is the exclusive property ofVarsity Publications Ltd. No part of this publication may be repro-duced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or

by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Next Issue: 18 January 2008Submissions Deadline: 30 October 2007

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Deep underground, beneath the bor-der between France and Switzerland,thousands of physicists and engineersare busy putting the finishing touchesto a machine so complex and so largethat you could fit London Under-ground’s Circle Line into it, tunnel andtrain. Housed at CERN, the Europeanparticle accelerator facility, it is calledthe Large Hadron Collider (LHC), andis the most powerful particle accelera-tor ever built. Seven times more pow-erful than anything that has gonebefore, it will accelerate protons—par-ticles that together with neutronscompose atomic nuclei—very close tothe speed of light before smashingthem together. Using a sledgehammerto crack a nut doesn’t quite do justiceto the violence of the collisions.

The energies are so large that scientistshope to re-create conditions present inthe Big Bang, which exploded our Uni-verse into existence about 14 billion yearsago. And the aim? Why, no less than tosolve some of the deepest mysteries manever pondered: where do mass and gravi-ty come from? Are there more than threedimensions of space? Is most of our Uni-verse made up of a different kind of mat-ter that is invisible?

The LHC is due to be switched onnext year, but it will take months, if notyears, before physicists learn to drive themachine and tune it to full power.Yet, thetiming of the inauguration couldn’t bebetter. Europe celebrated its GoldenJubilee this year, and what present otherthan the LHC could better celebratewhat co-operation can achieve?

“The LHC is an enterprise that showsEuropean collaboration at its best,” saysSir Martin Rees, Master of Trinity Col-lege, Cambridge, and President of theRoyal Society.“It will ensure that Europeretains a world lead in particle physics forat least the next decade.”

With a price tag of £5 billion (half thebuilding cost of the Channel Tunnel), theLHC is a birthday present on a scale thatwould have made pharaohs blush. But thecollaborative nature of the project coststhe UK a more modest £70 million eachyear. Still, it is no wonder that many inthe scientific community are nervous atthe prospect that the machine may well

fail to make any radical discoveries, or,woe betide, that the veteran of US parti-cle physics, the Fermilab Tevatron particleaccelerator in Chicago, might get therefirst, following an upgrade to whip a finaldrop of power out of the old workhorse.The race is now on.

“Particle physics is a science that’shighly capital intensive,” argues Rees,“and the best strategy to make progress isto put most of the money into one hugeinstrument.When the history of sciencein these decades is written, then thedeeper understanding of fundamentalparticles will be one of the most impor-tant chapters—by any criterion ofimportance and interest it will be morethan two percent of the story.We in theUK are spending rather less than twopercent of our public budget for our par-ticipation in the LHC, and I think that’sentirely appropriate.”

But a high price tag naturally attractshigh expectations.Yet the basic fact aboutscience remains: research can often be atbest an informed shot in the dark. Thelast missing piece of evidence in the Stan-dard Model—the theory that classifies

particles into a neat botanical garden ofthe building blocks of the Universe—isthe Higgs boson. Theorists predict thatthe mysterious particle gives mass toother particles, including us, by produc-ing a treacle-like field through which it ishard to move. But some particles, likephotons, don’t feel that field, whichwould explain why nothing can travelfaster than light.

Until the LHC manages to detect theHiggs, the particle will remain a conven-ient postulate to get around a mathemati-cal problem in the Standard Model, butwithout it, the Model unravels. Findingthe Higgs is the benchmark by which theLHC will be judged, and to which theentire project was pegged and ‘sold’ topolicy makers. Perversely, should the exis-tence of the Higgs particle be contradict-ed by findings made at CERN, many

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You could be forgiven for thinking that what follows is an extract from a science fiction novel. Modern physics now has a well-established tradition

of befogging the intuition of the tidiest minds, so readers are urged to leave behind their workaday common sense at the end of this paragraph. Alice

in Wonderland may seem rather dull as you read through the next few pages.

When Science Caught up with Fiction

Scientists hope to re-create conditions

of the Big Bang

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Our Focus team explores the Large Hadron Collider, one of the world’s largest scientific experiments

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would relish the prospect of re-writing orrefining a theory that was thought com-plete, much like Newton’s laws ofmechanics were eventually overtaken byEinstein’s theory of relativity.

The LHC is actually the collectivename given to four principle particledetectors threaded together by a 27 kilo-metre-long ring tunnel. The protons areaccelerated by thousands of supercon-ducting magnets along the tunnel in twobeams rotating in opposite directions andare brought together inside the detectorsto produce head-on collisions.The beamsthemselves are pumped through a pipeno wider than a 20 pence coin, but at fullpower, each beam bristles with as muchenergy as a 200,000 tonne supertankersteaming at 20 miles per hour.

Inhabitants of nearby Geneva can bereassured that if some of the particles

don’t make the bends, the hard Alpinebedrock will obligingly offer itself up forinstantaneous vaporisation. But buildingunderground wasn’t only a safety meas-ure—in a hilly region, it is the onlyplace that might offer a flat locationsheltered from vibrations. Brian Cox, akey worker on the ATLAS detector whorecently starred in the BBC’s Horizonprogramme about the LHC, likes toretell the happy anecdote of the myste-rious vibrations in the tunnel. Engineerswere puzzled for months on end by tinyperiodic vibrations, until that is, theyrealised by consulting the French railwaytimetable that the periodicity of themystery corresponded exactly to thepassage of a TGV train nearby. One can-not help but feel sympathy for poorUK-based physicists who would standno chance of solving that one.

In the jargon, each proton in the beamhas an energy of seven teraelectronvolts(TeV).That’s equivalent to the energy ofa mosquito in flight. An underwhelmingstatistic maybe, but not when you consid-er that all the energy is concentrated intoa volume astronomically small comparedto the gargantuan mosquito. So whentwo protons collide head-on 14 TeV ofenergy will be released into a vanishinglysmall volume.

With the odds of that collision being 1in 10 billion, producing them at all isquite an art.The particles are so small thatit would be next to impossible to engi-neer the knocking together of two indi-vidual protons. But brute force offers away around this: inject into each beamliterally trillions of protons travelling in20 centimetre-long bunches with 120billion protons each and crossing every25 nanoseconds, and your odds are dra-matically improved. In the best-case sce-nario, physicists expect up to 35 collisionseach second.

The largest detector at the LHC,ATLAS, sits in a vast cavern that couldhouse London’s St Paul’s Cathedral. Itssmaller brother, the Compact MuonSolenoid (CMS), contains more iron thanthe Eiffel Tower and weighs 12,500tonnes—more than 30 jumbo jets—inorder to produce the huge magnetic fieldneeded to bend the flight path of parti-cles whizzing through it at high speed.

Particle detectors are essentially giantdigital cameras that take snapshots ofcollision products as they fly apart.Theyhave an onion layer-like structure, whereeach layer specialises in the detection ofa different particle species. Particlephysicists are science’s answer to bushtrackers, spending their time identifyingthe unique footprints left behind by dif-ferent particles.

“Both ATLAS and CMS are general pur-pose detectors, but they adopt a very dif-ferent design to tackle the same problem[of finding the Higgs],” says Geoff Hall,who leads the CMS team of ImperialCollege London. “Unlike CMS, whichhas a traditional cylindrical shape, themagnetic field created by ATLAS is theshape of a toroid—a doughnut.” Hall’steam plays a major role in developinghigh-speed electronics for the core of the

CMS. “A big challenge was to make surethat it could withstand a very hostileradiation environment not found any-where on earth except in the centre ofnuclear reactors.”

Another detector, dubbed ALICE, willperform perhaps the more bizarre exper-

Equinox Graphics and Kelly Neaves

Particle physicists are science's answer

to bush trackers

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science fiction novel. Modern physics now has a well-established tradition

e behind their workaday common sense at the end of this paragraph. Alice

w pages.

ght up with Fictioner, one of the world’s largest scientific experiments

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iment at CERN, according to Mark Lan-caster from University College London,who is helping to develop the ‘Grid’—aworldwide network of interconnectedcomputers that will crunch through thedeluge of data from the LHC.“ALICE willstudy quark-gluon plasmas,” explainsLancaster. “That’s the primordial particlesoup present in the early Universe thatcoalesced into bigger particles and thebuilding blocks of galaxies.”

The choice to smash protons togetheris only second-best, because in the worldof elementary particle physics, protonsare akin to flying rubbish bins. Whenthey collide, particle physicists must siftpainstakingly through untold amounts of

debris to find the particles that matter,such as the Higgs. Life would be so mucheasier if only they could collide simpleparticles such as electrons instead. Unlikeprotons, electrons are fundamental parti-cles with a simple internal structure.Thatmakes the collisions much easier tostudy. Ironically, in its previous incarna-tion ten years ago, the tunnel at CERNhoused an electron accelerator, the LEP(Large Electron Positron collider). Butthe Achilles’ Heel of that machine was alaw of physics that requires very light

particles moving in a circle to lose ener-gy by radiation, so-called synchrotronradiation. This by-product of particlephysics is so useful nowadays in cancertherapy, that some hospitals are equippedwith their own mini particle acceleratorsin the basement.

Back to CERN. Worse still, thelighter the particle, the more synchro-tron energy it emits. Given that elec-trons are almost 2000 times lighter thanprotons, mustering the energy neededto circulate them anywhere near as fastas the heavier protons is paradoxicallynext to impossible. Incidentally, plansare already afoot to build an even morepowerful international particle collider,

which, crucially, would accelerate elec-trons in a straight line of 40 kilometresbefore smashing them. The problem ofsynchrotron radiation doesn’t exist instraight lines. But that won’t happenbefore the first results from the LHCgive an idea if spending billions won’tjust feed a black hole.Yet, circular accel-erators do have a big advantage, becauseparticles can be ‘stored’, circulating inthe ring for hours before being collided.

Beyond constraints on the mass andinternal complexity of the particle accel-

erated, that choice is somewhat arbitrary.The key is that mass and energy areinterchangeable. Einstein said this withthe famous equation E = mc2. So all thatmatters is that the particle is givenenough energy to reach the predictedmass range of the massive Higgs boson.

Plans have already been drawn up toupgrade the facility ten years from now toa super-LHC, with denser particle beams.Upgrading the LHC is a cost-effectiveway of extending research, rather thaninvesting more in an uncertain start orbuilding a brand new experiment.

The scale of the LHC caught theattention of the BBC’s Horizon pro-gramme. “We spent four days filming atCERN,” says science film director Jamesvan der Pool, who made a documentaryabout the LHC for Horizon, aired inMay. “I am overusing superlatives here,but the ambition and scope of the proj-ect is extraordinary. It is a truly awesomepiece of engineering.”

But he says, “you cannot help butwonder if this will turn out like thegenome project where you stand at thecusp of major scientific insights, only todiscover that there is still more com-plexity beyond.”

www.cern.ch

An interview with Sir Martin Rees is available online at www.bluesci.org

Tristan Farrow is a PhD student in the Cavendish Laboratory

In the world of elementary particle physics,protons are akin to flying rubbish bins

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View of an open interconnection in the LHC particle accelerator tunnel

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Discovering new, high-energy particlesat the LHC is the job of a total of sixdetectors located at the tunnel’s colli-sion points.

The two largest detectors, ATLAS andCMS, are general purpose detectorswhose principal objective is to find theHiggs boson. The other four detectors,namely LHCc, ALICE, TOTEM and LHCf, aresmaller and highly specialised.

ATLAS and CMS have a stratified struc-ture, with concentric layers around thecentral collision point, each made of a dif-ferent material. Each layer detects andtracks a specific type of particle. A com-plete picture of the physics is obtained bygathering together the informationrecorded by all the layers in the detector.

When protons collide and the by-products fly apart, the newly-createdparticles travel through the various lay-ers of the detector. The paths ofcharged particles are bent by a verystrong magnetic field.The momentum ofeach particle can be measured by thecurvature of its path, whilst the chargecarried by that particle is revealed byfollowing the direction that the particletakes. The magnet size dictates thedetector size, and explains why thedetectors attain their gigantic propor-tions. ATLAS is eight times the volume ofCMS due to its novel toroidal magnet,which is much larger than the tradition-al cylindrical magnet of CMS.

Particles firstly penetrate the SiliconTracker which follows charged particlessuch as muons, electrons and hadrons.Precision is vital in order to identify theexact origin point of each species.Calorimeters absorb particles into theirhighly dense metal and calculate theenergy by observing the resultant ‘parti-cle shower’. An electromagnet calorime-ter absorbs charged particles and pho-tons, whereas the hadron calorimeterabsorbs particles such as protons, neu-trons, pions and kaons. The outermostlayer of the detector is a Muon Spec-trometer which identifies and measureshighly penetrating muons, which areessentially heavy electrons. Since neutri-nos cannot be measured by detectors,their presence is deduced by adding upthe total momentum in the collision. It is

crucial therefore, that all non-neutrinoparticles are detected accurately.

If the Higgs boson is produced itwould instantly decay into, and bedetected as, the production of twophotons. However, this is likely to occuronly 1% of the time, which is why so

many collisions are needed. The cre-ation of microscopic black holes isanother real possibility. But those wouldevaporate before they had the chanceto swallow CERN!

Amy Chesterton

DetectionExperimentsat the LHC

Top: Layout of ATLAS detector, a proposed experiment at the LHC.Bottom: Central view of the ATLAS detector with its eight toroids around the calorimeter.

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A simulation of Higgs boson detection as expected to be produced in the CMS experiment(adapted from a CERN Press & Media image)

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Imagine a world where there is nosuch concept as mass. All buildingblocks of matter would be similar tothe photon—the particle that carrieselectromagnetic force and travels atthe speed of light.

This could be our world if it were notfor the existence of a very peculiar parti-cle, the Higgs boson. This hypothesisedparticle is expected, according to theStandard Model, to give mass to all otherparticles, including those that make upour bodies, by interacting with them

through the so-called Higgs field. Mass isthought to result from the effect of eachparticle being slowed down by thisomnipresent field, as a sphere would beslowed down when falling throughhoney. Until now, the existence of thisparticle has only been postulated—thehope of seeing it lies in the highly ener-getic proton collisions that will occur

inside the LHC. Here, energy released bysmashing particles into one another is lit-erally transmuted into matter, or moreprecisely, into new particles.According toEinstein’s famous equation, E = mc2, themore massive the particle, the more ener-getic a collision needs to be in order toproduce it.To date, no particle acceleratorhas been able to create enough energy toreach the predicted mass range of theHiggs. Physicists are now holding theirbreath for a sign of this enigmatic boson.

Interestingly, the Higgs boson predictedby the Standard Model could have a myr-iad different properties, and different find-ings could support alternative theoriesthat are more successful in unifying theseveral forces of nature: electromagnetic,weak and strong forces, and gravity.Incompatibilities between quantummechanics (which describes interactionsat the microscopic scale) and the theory ofgeneral relativity (which characterizes thegravitational interactions that becomeimportant on the scale of planets andgalaxies) can only be alleviated if newconcepts and particles are considered. Inthe theory of supersymmetry, whichbrings us a step closer to the ‘Theory ofEverything’, each elementary particlewould have a heavier superpartner and theHiggs boson would be no exception.Thus

if signs of a particle corresponding to asupersymmetric Higgs are found, evenmore exciting possibilities open up, offer-ing proofs and explanations for the elusivedark matter, whose invisible presence cancurrently only be deduced from its gravi-tational effects on visible matter.

Our conception of the world will bedefied in many ways by this new-gen-eration accelerator. More daring theo-ries have raised the possibility that ourUniverse is trapped in a three-dimen-sional ‘membrane’ embedded in ahigher dimensional space—whichcould explain the apparent weakness ofgravitational force.We may be unawareof such additional dimensions due tothe fact that electromagnetic forces donot permeate them, but gravitons, theparticles that carry gravity, might beable to cross into them and escape toextra-dimensional space. Unexpectedenergy levels resulting from the colli-sion of specific particles at the LHCmay be a hint that gravitons are beingproduced and ‘lost’ to other dimen-sions. So we may well be on the brinkof discovering that the 3D world weperceive is only a small bubble in a 10-dimensional Universe!

Alexandra Lopes

The Elusive Higgs Boson

Our conception of the world will be defied

in many ways

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A representation of all the fundamental particles believed to exist (adapted from a figure produced by CERN Press & Media)

The BlueSci Film Team, led by theHead of Film, Chloe Stockford, hadtaken it upon themselves to producesomething special.

The ambitious project was as follows:to fly out to CERN, Geneva, and inter-view some of the biggest names in par-ticle physics.The intention was to makeCERN accessible to the masses. Afterall, what are the governments of theworld spending billions of taxpayers’money on? No, it’s not some doomsdaydevice as the media would love to por-tray.The Team were going out to dispelthe pop-science rumours and shed lighton what was actually important—theHiggs and its effects, black holes, darkmatter, and the immense scale of inter-national collaboration in finding theanswers to the most fundamental ques-tions posed by physics today.The projectwas born.

After months of meticulous planning,question writing, storyboarding andhours spent exchanging emails withCERN—incidentally, the birth place of

the internet—the group finally flew outto Geneva on 1 August. None of thiswould have been possible without thegenerous funding from the Institute ofPhysics, or the immensely appreciatedhelp from all the people the team metat CERN.

On location for four days, the grouphardly spent a moment apart. They hadaccess to all areas at CERN, filming the 8storey-high detectors located 100 metresbelow the Earth’s surface, as well as themore modestly sized physicists, who hadbig personalities nonetheless.

The Team came away with some amaz-ing footage, and some answers to ques-tions which play on the minds of many,not just the scientists.

The Film Team’s efforts are still beingcarefully stitched together. Music andsound will be provided by JonathonHill, a Cambridge music student.Graphics are being created by JonHeras, a former BlueSci pictures editorand founder of Equinox Graphics(www.e-nox.net). You will be able to

catch the 15 minute documentary at theBlueSci launch or on the BlueSci websitefrom the middle of October.

www.bluesci.org

Vincent Carta

From left to right: Vincent Carta, BenjaminCollie, Kelly Neaves, Amy Chesterton, AdamMoughton, Chloe Stockford

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Dark matter is the mysterious, unde-tected ‘missing mass’ which makes upnearly 23% of the Universe. As thename suggests, it cannot be observeddirectly, but astronomers find situationsin which the gravitational forces aremuch greater than should be caused bythe visible matter present. For example,most galaxies rotate much faster thanwould be expected from the numberand mass of the stars they contain; andlight from distant objects is distortedand amplified by hidden ‘gravitational

lenses’ of dark matter in its path. Cur-rently, cosmologists believe there isnearly five times more dark matter thannormal matter in our Universe.

A promising potential explanation fordark matter is the theory of supersym-metry, which could be confirmed whenthe LHC is switched on. One of thecharacteristics of every elementary par-ticle is its spin, which measures its angu-lar momentum. Supersymmetry pro-poses that each particle is related to

another—its so-called ‘superpartner’—which has a related value of spin.

The theory of supersymmetry conve-niently explains several significantomissions within the current StandardModel—solving the so-called ‘hierachyproblem’ related to the anomalousmass of the Higgs boson, and correct-ly predicting the relative strengths ofthe electrostatic, strong and weaknuclear forces. It also appears thatstring theory, the current favouriteroute towards a Theory of Everything,actually requires supersymmetry inorder to be consistent.

However, none of the superpartners forany known particles have yet been dis-covered. It is hoped that at the extreme-ly high energies reached by the LHC,these superparticles (or ‘sparticles’) willbe created and detected. It is these par-ticles that are thought to make up darkmatter. Since every particle has a super-partner, incorporating supersymmetryinto the Standard Model means dou-bling the number of particles thought toexist. Consequently, theories of super-symmetry are highly complex, becauseso many interactions between differentcombinations of particles can occur.

Michaela Freeland

Supersymmetry

Three-dimensional distribution of dark matter in the Universe

From Print to PodcastBlueSci’s Film Team travel to Geneva to produce a documentary on the Large Hadron Collider

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Elevate yourself

31 October 2007The Institute of Physics, London

free entry

[email protected]/careers

IOP Institute of Physics

Book

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This book is a new, abridged version ofthe findings and conclusions of theCopenhagen Consensus, a project set up

by Bjørn Lomborg, in which leadingeconomists met to prioritise goals forglobal development and welfare.The fullreport of the 2004 meeting, GlobalCrises, Global Solutions, weighs in at 700pages. How to spend $50 billion to Makethe World a Better Place, on the otherhand, is a mere 200 pages, and aims, inthe words of its publishers, to provide a“serious yet accessible springboard fordebate and discussion.”

The goal of the 2004 conference wasto produce a ranked list of the order inwhich the greatest challenges facing theworld should be solved, given an extra$50 billion, and this book is a collec-tion of essays by the participants. Theydeal with climate change, disease, con-flict, education, corruption, malnutri-tion, migration, sanitation and trade. Itis certainly a wide-reaching remit, andthe book aims to provide a short sum-mary of the arguments made and theresponses to them.

This is a book about economics andsocial sciences, and it is written by econ-omists. I initially tried to read the bookas a scientist, but rapidly became exasper-ated by apparently sweeping, unrefer-enced statements. However, this isn’t

really what this book is about—as a sum-mary of a larger work, it’s about gettinga feel for the problems facing the world,and gaining a better practical under-standing of the steps we need to take tosolve them.

The first chapter,‘Meeting the challengeof global warming’, deals with the eco-nomic impact of climate change. Theproblem, we learn, is that huge investmentsare required now to bring about changes inthe future, and these changes may notbecome apparent for decades or even cen-turies to come. The main debate in thechapter centres on how to value thesefuture benefits against short-term costs.

All in all, the book provides an insightinto the economics of human progressand development. It also puts into per-spective the major issues facing theglobal population today. You may notagree with everything you read, butyou’ll almost certainly emerge with achanged view of what’s really importantfor the world.

Tom Walters is a PhD student in the Department of Physiology,

Development and Neuroscience

Book reviews

Edited by Bjørn Lomborg(Cambridge University Press,2006, £9.99)

Human memory can be described asfleeting, unpredictable and unreliable.Why is it that we can remember ahumiliating event in minute detail butoften fail to retell past joyous encounterswith equal vivacity? Why can weremember where we were during amoment of national importance butcan’t seem to remember the word on thetip of our tongue? In his titillatingexamination of autobiographical memo-ry, Douwe Draaisma, professor ofHistory of Psychology at the Universityof Groningen in the Netherlands,attempts to answer these questions andasks many others in his book on memo-ry and our past.

Draaisma begins with the first recordedmemory research: the memory experi-ments devised independently by Englishscientist Sir Francis Galton and Germanphilosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus in thelate nineteenth century.These two men,on opposite sides of the science and artsspectrum, identified memory as a dou-ble-edged phenomenon. On the onehand our memory is subject to statisticalanalysis, but on the other it is riddledwith inherent unquantifiable characteris-tics. This tension underlies much ofDraaisma’s investigations.

From this platform, Draaisma launchesthe reader into a chronologically organ-ized look at memory. Some memories,Draaisma suggests, are kept vivid becausethey often include life-time firsts, like a

first kiss or first day at school.As we moveinto old age, our memories lose vibrancybecause our lives settle into a monotony.A lack of new experiences alters our per-ception of memory, leading many tothink that life speeds up as we get oldersimply because there are fewer landmarksto signpost its passing.

Whilst this forms the crux ofDraaisma’s argument, along the way hetakes us on a fascinating journeythrough the labyrinthine paths that ourmemory can take, including déjà vu,savant syndrome, and traumatic memory.In effect, he offers a glimpse into allaspects of memory and supports hisassertions with a variety of data, rangingfrom quantitative analysis to personalrecollection and photographs.

The only shortfall of Draaisma’s well-researched book is that it is at times anerratic read. By rapidly hopping fromone memory-related phenomenon tothe next he steers away from the book’smain premise and fails to draw linksback to his argument. However, theseminor digressions add rich layers toDraaisma’s work and stimulate thereader to wander into the mysteriousneurological workings of memory.

It is not surprising that Draaisma’sbook was shortlisted for the AventisPrize for Science Books in 2005. Itsapproach, that of a historian of science,situates memory within a historical con-text, as well as an experimental one, and

draws from medicine, politics and sociol-ogy. His writing is further enhanced bythe inclusion of pleasant and insightfulliterary references, making the book anengaging read for the scientist and non-scientist alike.

Margaret Olszewski is a PhD student inthe Department of History and

Philosophy of Science

Written by Douwe Draaisma(Cambridge University Press,2004, £19.99)

Many important scientific discoveriesbegin with simple observations. Anotable increase in the number of hay-fever sufferers, particularly over thelast 30 years, is one observation thatset Professor Strachan thinking.

Working at the London School ofHygiene and Tropical Medicine, ProfessorStrachan described a peculiar correlationbetween the increased occurence of thisallergy and decreased household sizes inthe UK. Seemingly inscrutably related,hay-fever was nicknamed the ‘post indus-trial revolution epidemic’.

Prior to the industrial revolution, asizeable portion of the population diedfrom diseases spread owing to crampedliving conditions. Typhoid and smallpoxwere rife, as was cholera from contami-nated water supplies and open sewers.Post-industrial Britain, however, wit-nessed the rise of considerably cleanercities and a subsequent decline in thetransmission of diseases. This coincidedwith rapid medical advances and virtualeradication of many debilitating diseases.

Scientific discoveries were graduallyeliminating the threat of human infectionby micro-organisms.

Further research revealed that this phe-nomenon extended far beyond hay-feverand British households; an interestingpattern emerged between developing anddeveloped countries: westernised popula-tions appeared to have distinctly higher

incidences of autoimmune and allergicconditions in general. This phenomenonwas dubbed the ‘hygiene hypothesis’. Butwhy would a pathogen-free environmentproduce such outcomes?

The immune system relies on interac-tions between hundreds of immune cellsand molecules, all with specific roles.These dynamic interactions have been

greatly influenced by the surroundingenvironment in which they matured, aswith every living system or organism.Micro-organisms have been a constantpresence throughout the immune sys-tem’s evolution, and consequently theyhave played a prominent role in shapingour defence network.With the advent ofantibiotics and vaccinations these

pathogens are being flushed from ournatural environmental pool.

Allergies occur when a misguidedassault is mounted against a foreign sub-stance, whether that be pollen or peanuts.The immune system’s T cells can inap-propriately recognise these innocent sub-stances as harmful, and react to protecttheir host. Armies of immune cellsrespond to these false alarms, sometimesresulting in symptoms similar to thoseseen during genuine infections when thebody is defending itself against a trulydangerous organism.

Allergies can often be managed, main-ly through avoidance of the offendingsubstance. In certain cases however,severe allergic reactions may produceanaphylactic shock, which can prove fatalthrough collapse of the heart and lungs.Individuals can inherit allergic tenden-cies from their parents but, with the cur-rent high rate of allergic conditions, it isspeculated that environmental factorsmay be more important than genetics intoday’s climate.

Autoimmunity, on the other hand, aris-es when the immune system fails in oneof its most critical roles: to discriminateeffectively between foreign agents andthe body’s own tissues.The manifestationsof such an error can be deadly serious.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is amongst themost common autoimmune diseases inthe UK. The inability to store ingestedglucose through lack of insulin produc-tion would prove fatal if it were not keptunder constant control with medication.Multiple sclerosis (MS) is anotherautoimmune disease, where brain andspinal cord function are lost through an

A false-coloured scanning electron micrograph of pollen


Gillian Brodie investigates what has gone wrong with our immune system

Scientific discoveries are gradually eliminating the threat of human infection

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onslaught of immune attack on the pro-tective fatty layer that surrounds nerves,the myelin sheath. In the case of MS,inflammation is thought to cause a leakin the blood-brain barrier, allowing Tcells to enter the central nervous system,a privileged site of the body that neverusually comes into contact with immunecells. Acquainting themselves with acompletely unknown tissue, the T cellsinitiate an attack as if it were presentedwith invading micro-organisms. Layers ofmyelin are able to reform leading toperiods of relapse and remission, butrepeated attacks result in the build up ofscar-like plaques around damagednerves.The patient becomes progressive-ly more disabled, and is eventually unableto co-ordinate even simple tasks.

The massive modern-day increase innew cases of immune-related diseasessuch as hay-fever and T1D providesstrong evidence that environmental fac-tors are at play. Before the discovery ofinsulin in the 1920s,T1D was a rare anddeadly condition.Worryingly, during thelast 10 years, its prevalence has doubled inunder-five-year-olds, and it is nowincreasing in the UK by around 3.5%every year, a rate that cannot possibly beaccounted for by natural genetic change.So have our immune systems becomerestless owing to a lack of challenges fromenvironmental stimuli? Fortunately, cur-rent research gives cause for hope.

T cells follow one of two main develop-mental pathways.Those belonging to indi-viduals prone to autoimmune disease arethought to migrate down a path in whichinflammatory factors cause cells tobecome aggressive. These cells may thenattack susceptible tissues. Professor AnneCooke and her group at the University ofCambridge’s Department of Pathology arestudying the immune-modulating effectsof the parasite Schistosomiasis mansoni, aflatworm prevalent in Africa, Asia and

South America. She has shown that duringparasitic worm infections, the immuneresponse can be skewed away from thisaggressive course, and instead favour a pathwhereby less destructive cell types form.Parasites can also influence the formationof regulatory cells. These recognise dan-gerous T cells with the potential to reactagainst host tissues, and curb their actionbefore any damage occurs.

This bewildering protective action ofpathogens is mirrored in many differenttypes of micro-organism, including thatof Salmonella typhimurium. Mice infectedwith this bacterium have long-lastingprotection against T1D development dueto a small number of protective immunecells generated during the infection.These cells have the ability to survivelong after the pathogen has been cleared,and continue to protect the host.

Another study, carried out in SouthAmerica, monitored the progression of agroup of MS patients over a two-yearperiod. On entering the study, bloodtests revealed elevated levels of a popula-tion of cells involved in the innateimmune response called eosinophils, anindicator of a parasitic infection. Furthertests revealed a number of the patientswere indeed playing host to differentspecies of worm. As the parasites werenot causing serious health problems, notreatment was administered to eliminatethem. By the end of the study, infectedpatients showed remarkably fewer relaps-es of MS and their brain scans appearedfar healthier with fewer areas of scarring.Could this offer new hope for treating

extremely serious and debilitating casesof autoimmunity?

Conventional wisdom tells us thatinfections of any sort—bacterial, viral,parasitic, fungal—are to be avoided at allcosts. It may prove fortunate thereforethat the work being carried out at theUniversity of Cambridge has demon-strated that in order to experience pro-tection, an individual may not need to be

infected with a whole, live organism: asoluble extract of the schistosome wormor egg can also protect against T1Ddevelopment in mice if administeredbefore onset of the disease. This couldprove to be a promising new therapywhen future advances can accuratelyidentify susceptible individuals. ProfessorCooke believes that “we could identifydevelopmental pathways that if tweakedor changed, might be able to get theimmune system into a state that is moreregulatory,” to help prevent allergic andautoimmune conditions.

As privileged as we may be to live in alargely disease-free environment, many ofus now face attack from our own defencesystem. Given that we are beleaguered byso few pathogens today in evolutionaryterms,microbial by-products may need tobe used to retrain our immune system.Reintroducing some of our natural histo-ry may help to discipline our over-enthu-siastic immune system—a lesson to belearned from our neighbours in thedeveloping world.

Gillian Brodie is a graduate student in theDepartment of Pathology


Micro-organisms have been a constant presence throughout evolution

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With our deep seas teeming with aseemingly endless array of fascinatingcreatures, no animal captures theimagination quite like the giant squid.A sea monster straight out of seafar-ing legend, it has become the inspira-tion for countless works of fiction,from the early Norse tales of theKraken to Jules Verne’s TwentyThousand Leagues Under the Sea andthe film Pirates of the Caribbean.Neither is it ever far from the scien-tific and even global headlines when-ever new discoveries are announcedregarding this enigmatic animal.

The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is agenuinely massive cephalopod belong-ing to the Architeuthidae family, whichsimply translates as ‘arch-squid’. Thelargest specimens are estimated to be anenormous 13 metres from caudal fin totentacle tip, with the mantle whichmakes up the bulk of the squid reachinglengths of up to two-and-a-half metres.That’s a total length of more than seventimes the height of an average man andputs the giant squid amongst the largestliving organisms on Earth. Althoughclaims of 20-metre-plus squid are wide-ly discredited (with accusations of ‘ten-tacle stretching’), there are still manywho believe there are even largercephalopods hiding deep in the oceans.

Squid-like sea monsters have beenwritten about since Norse sailors firstencountered them in the thirteenth cen-tury. Architeuthis, however, was not scien-tifically classified until 1857 when theDanish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup suc-ceeded in bringing it to the attention ofhis contemporaries, who were studyingspecimens that had been causing interestby intermittently washing up on beach-es around the globe. At first, his work

was based on local legends and sketchyevidence, with samples dating back as faras the 1700s. But as the number of sight-ings of dead animals increased, the scep-tical scientific community graduallybegan to accept the giant squid as morethan just a tall story for sailors. Yale’sProfessor Addison E.Verrill added credi-

bility to Stennstrup’s research in 1873when he identified two beached‘Kraken’ as Architeuthis.

Also in 1873, a group of frightenedNewfoundland fishermen killed “a seamonster” and took it to their local priest,who displayed it draped over his bathtub.This was the first complete giant squidspecimen available to science.Two myste-rious mass strandings followed during thelate nineteenth century, which left anumber of giant squid beached off thecoast of Newfoundland, Canada, andaround the New Zealand shoreline. Stillno explanation has been accepted as tothe reason for these, and to date there hasbeen no repeat of this strange occur-rence. Nevertheless, as a result, manygiant squid specimens were made avail-able for scientific study.

So what has changed since then and,Johnny Depp aside, how does Architeuthisfit into the public consciousness andtwenty-first century science? InSeptember 2005, headlines were madearound the world when two Japaneseresearchers, Tsunemi Kubodera andKyoichi Mori, finally succeeded in pho-tographing the living cephalopod in itsnatural habitat, 900 metres below thesurface. The photos showed a mass oftentacles emerging from the black depthsand vigorously attacking a line baited


James Bullock explores the underwater world of sea monsters

Squid-like seamonsters have

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In the Wake of the Giant Squid

with smaller squid. It was so active that,having been snared, it took the squidfour hours to struggle free, leavingbehind a five-and-a-half-metre-longtentacle for the scientists to study. Thisunexpected sample allowed Kubodera toconfirm the identity of the specimenthrough DNA sequencing and morpho-logical analysis of the paired suckers,which are unique to giant squid, andhelped to put its total length at aroundeight metres.The key outcome from thisstudy was the wider acceptance of theidea that the squid is an active andaggressive predator, snaring its prey withits powerful feeding tentacles, rather thana passive drifting scavenger.

The key to locating Architeuthis was totrack its principal predator, the spermwhale (Physeter macrocephalus). Believeduntil recently (when joined by the sleep-er shark) to be the only animals bigenough to predate the giant squid, spermwhale specimens are regularly recoveredwith undigested chitin squid beaks intheir stomachs. Giant sucker scars on thewhales’ skin suggest that the conflict is notentirely one-sided, and much focus hasbeen placed on these encounters as a basiclocation system for giant squid.

Dr Kubodera explains, “the reasonwhy we thought those large

mesopelagic squids could escape fromtrawl nets and submersibles whenapproached was due to the unusualundulation and strong light they pro-duced. Instead, we applied a compactunderwater camera and video systemwhich caused a minimum disturbanceto the deep-sea environment.” Thisapproach has proved extremely success-ful, as he has obtained images not onlyof Architeuthis, but also of the beautifulTaningia danae octopus-squid, filmedearlier this year exhibiting a stunningbioluminescent hunting behaviour.Besides this, last December, DrKubodera followed up on his break-through images with the first evervideo of a giant squid as it was pulled tothe surface from a depth of 650 metres.

It is often said that the deep ocean isless explored than the surface of theMoon but it is safe to say that there is alot more life in the oceans. Withoutdoubt there are many undiscoveredspecies left at the bottom of our seas andit is very tempting to believe that thereare still more monsters lurking outthere. Dr Kubodera agrees: “Thereshould be a huge biomass of largecephalopods existing in the mesopelag-ic waters, given the feeding habits of thetop marine predators, especially thesperm whales.” Yet, he notes, they arelargely hidden “behind the darkness ofthe deep-sea.”

This was reinforced in 1925 when itwas discovered that Architeuthis was notthe only massive cephalopod inhabitingour oceans.Two strange barbed tentacleswere found in the stomach of a spermwhale. Morphologically different fromthe giant squid due to the presence ofswivelling hooked barbs protrudingfrom the tentacle suckers, this identifieda species previously unknown to sci-ence, the so-called ‘colossal’ squid. Thecolossal squid (Mesonychoteuthishamiltoni) is in fact even larger than theArchiteuthis, at least in terms of weight (itis often misreported as being longer,though its tentacles are usually less pro-nounced). Its football-sized eyes are alsothe biggest of any animal. Very little isknown about the colossal squid and onlya few specimens have ever been record-ed—though in February this year atrawler in the Antarctic Ross Sea pickedup the largest colossal squid, and the firstmale specimen, ever seen. At 10 metreslong and just short of half a tonne, it isnot only the largest squid, but the largestinvertebrate ever recorded.

The rarity of the creatures has meantthat our understanding of deep-seacephalopods is limited. In an interestinghistorical note, the giant squid was pro-posed as an explanation for another oneof the ocean’s mysteries—the ‘StAugustine Monster’. An enormous fivetonne mass of rotting white flesh thatwashed ashore in Florida in 1896, it is themost famous example of what are nowcommonly known as ‘globsters’. It wasbelieved by many observers (including

the attending physician and many subse-quent researchers) to be a stranded“gigantic octopus,” with a predicted ten-tacle span of anything up to 60 meters.However, this idea changed in 1995,when Sidney Pierce and colleagues tooka closer look at a sample that had beenkept for posterity at the SmithsonianInstitute. They used electron microscopyto show that the material was almost purecollagen, claiming that it had neither thenecessary fibre arrangement nor the bio-chemical signature to be of invertebrateorigin. They came to the rather moremundane conclusion that the giantcorpse was in fact the decomposed skinand blubber of a sperm whale, largely dis-missing the idea of the gigantic octopus.Several species of the more modest giantoctopus do however exist and are welldocumented. The biggest confirmedmeasurement belongs to the rare four

metre-long gelatinous octopus, Haliphronatlanticus, as recorded in 2002 by NewZealand biologist Dr Steve O’Shea.

There is undoubtedly more work tobe done before we fully understand thegiant squid. Despite being found inevery ocean of the world, very little isknown about its life cycle and nothing isknown of its social behaviour. Plans arealready in place to attempt to raise squidlarvae in aquariums in the hope ofobserving some of its life cycle. Asresearch continues and commercial fish-ermen begin to trawl at even greaterdepths for healthy fish stocks, bringingmore intact specimens up to the surface,it seems only a matter of time until weknow what else the deep ocean is hidingfrom us. Here be monsters…

James Bullock is a PhD student in theDepartment of Zoology

15luesciwww.bluesci.org

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Giant squid from Logy Bay, Newfoundland,in Reverend Moses Harvey's bathtub,November/December, 1873

The largest squid found was 13m long

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Robotic mining vehicles trawling theMoon's surface; cargo spacecraftdelivering the lode back to Earth; aclean energy source, just 150 tonnesof which could power the world fora year. It is a futuristic vision thatcould be surprisingly close at hand.The super-fuel behind this vision ishelium-3, an isotope containing onefewer neutron than standard helium,and extremely rare on Earth yet tan-talisingly abundant in the widerSolar System.

In spite of the obvious difficulties intransporting the extracted isotope fromelsewhere back to Earth, lunar helium-3is widely regarded as having hugepotential for power generation due tothe vast amounts of energy released byjust small quantities in nuclear fusionreactions.The current annual consump-tion in the USA is over 1100 milliontonnes of coal, whereas a mere 25 tonnesof helium-3 could supply the same elec-tricity demand.

The nucleus of a light element canachieve greater stability by fusing withanother to form a heavier element, pos-sibly with the release of surplus protonsand neutrons.The total mass of the finalproducts is slightly less than that of the

original nuclei—and Einstein’s formulaE = mc2 relates this mass difference tothe energy released in the fusion process.By harnessing this so-called ‘bindingenergy’, many researchers believe that,ultimately, fusion power could provideall our planet’s electricity requirements.However, current facilities, such as theITER facility (meaning “the way” inLatin) in France and the NIF (NationalIgnition Facility) in California, are stillvery much at the experimental stage—even optimistic forecasters acknowledgethat commercial power generation can-not be expected until about 2050.

The current reactors utilise deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion (deuterium beingan isotope of hydrogen, containing oneproton and one neutron), the simplestnuclear fusion process.A helium-3 nucle-us is fused with a deuterium nucleus toproduce an ion of standard helium (heli-um-4, with two protons and two neu-trons) and a free, high-energy proton.

The greater charges on a helium-3 ionmeans that the electrostatic repulsionbetween it and the deuterium nucleus isstronger than in D-T fusion, hence moreenergy (through higher temperatures) isrequired to start the process. It also meansthat the helium-3 reaction proceeds moreslowly. However, the great advantage ofhelium-3 fusion over other reactions isthat electric, rather than magnetic, fieldscan be used to control the process, focus-ing the reacting nuclei into a dense core,and guiding the resulting protons, convert-ing their energy into electricity.The appealof helium-3 fusion is further increased bythe absence of radioactive waste and by-products such as water in the reaction.

Scientists have known the potential ofhelium-3 for some time—the isotope’sexistence was first theorised at theCavendish Laboratories in 1934 bynuclear physicist Mark Oliphant, and itwas first observed by Alvarez and Cornogat the Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory five years later. Only recently,however, has fusion technology maturedto the point of experimental helium-3reactors being developed. A team led byGerald Kulcinski at the University ofWisconsin recently reported to haveachieved helium-3-deuterium fusion at asustained rate of 2.6 million reactions persecond. Whilst still far below the raterequired for a power plant, Kulcinskiargues that this provides a pleasing proofof principle. Eventually, it is estimatedthat energy generation efficiencies of upto 70% may be possible.

But why do we need to go to theMoon to obtain this promising resource?Current stocks of helium-3 on Earth aresimply too small to sustain a power-gen-erating industry. The deposits that existon the Moon (and the trace geologicaldeposits on Earth) were originally pro-duced by fusion reactions in the Sun, anddeposited on the surface by the solarwind. The isotope is then dispersed


Michaela Freeland explores a far-reaching project to replace fossil fuels on a global scale

Mining the Moon is an increasingly

appealing option

Mining the Moon

A futuristic vision could be surprisingly

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throughout the lunar topsoil by mete-orite impacts. Its rarity on Earth is a resultof the solar wind being deflected awayfrom the planet by the Earth’s magneticfield, but geological deposits of helium-3on Earth are difficult to gauge—estimat-ed at just half a tonne within the Earth’scrust—and virtually inaccessible. Smallamounts are released in certain volcanoes,such as those in the Hawaiian islands, butextracting the isotope from these deepdeposits would require more energy thanthe fuel would provide.

The current stocks of helium-3 that wedo have were largely produced as an endproduct of the radioactive decay of tri-tium, a radioisotope of hydrogen contain-ing one proton and two neutrons. Sincetritium is commonly used in nuclear war-heads, much of our helium-3 has beenobtained since the 1950s from thedecommissioning of nuclear weapons inthe US arsenal. Producing helium-3 inthis way, however, would not be econom-ically feasible on an industrial scale due tothe difficulties in producing and storingtritium gas, and the inefficiency of thereaction, with the production of onetonne of helium-3 requiring 18 times thisamount of tritium.

Thus, mining the Moon is an increas-ingly appealing option, and is attractinggrowing attention, including that of theemerging and ambitious space pro-grammes of India and China.The formerIndian President, Dr Kalam, for example,stated that “the moon contains 10 timesmore energy in the form of helium-3than all the fossil fuels on the earth.”Ouyang Ziyuan, Director of the ChineseLunar Exploration Programme, was morespecific: “Each year three space shuttlemissions could bring enough fuel for allhuman beings across the world.”

The first step toward helium-3 extrac-tion taken by the Chinese team was asatellite survey of the Moon’s surface,begun in 2004. The greatest concentra-tions of the isotope should be found inolder regions of the surface, since theyhave been exposed to the solar wind forlonger, and are composed of fine aggregatesand that absorbs the isotope. So too doestitanium dioxide, hence regions with highconcentrations of this chemical are alsopromising. Looking at the lunar surveys,

scientists believe the most viable areas formining would be the maria or ‘seas’ on thefar side of the Moon.The mining processwould involve heating the soil to 700˚C,vaporizing helium-3 so that it could becollected and stored in its gaseous form.Several designs for robotic mining vehicleshave already been developed.

Even if the technological hurdles arebeing tackled, there remain significantlegal obstacles facing the enterprisesseeking to mine the Moon.The currentstate of regulation over the lunar surfaceis widely accepted as being inadequate,in large part because the major relevantagreements, such as the 1967 OuterSpace Treaty, were drawn up in a ColdWar climate, when few countries pos-sessed space programmes. Currently, theMoon (and all of outer space) has aunique legal status as res communis—“Common Heritage for Mankind”—and, as such, activities taking place onthe Moon cannot be subject to controlby a particular body or nation.Therefore, there can be no formal prop-erty rights claimed by individuals, com-panies or indeed countries.Furthermore, the 1979 MoonAgreement makes matters more compli-cated for lunar mining operations,expressly stating that the surface (andsubsurface) “shall [not] become propertyof any State, international…or nationalorganization…or of any natural person.”A system of granting leasehold rights tomining companies has been proposed,but it remains unclear which bodieswould oversee and regulate the system.

As on Earth, there is also the issue ofthe environmental disturbance caused bymining activities. The contaminationand pollution of space is a considerationbeing brought increasingly to the forewith, for example, the retrieval from theMoon of stowaway E. coli bacteria fromthe Apollo 12 mission.The ring of ‘spacejunk’ in Earth orbit, which NASA esti-mates amounts to 5500 tonnes, presentsa disturbing precedent of discarded min-ing operations left strewn across thelunar surface.

In spite of these major legal obstacles,helium-3 enthusiasts continue, quite lit-erally, to aim even higher in their plansfor mining enterprises. Harris HaganSchmidt, a US Senator, geologist andApollo 17 astronaut suggested in a 2003US Government report that helium-3mining would be the best way to financefurther exploration and settlement onthe Moon. Wisconsin’s Kulcinski goesfurther, envisioning the Moon's helium-3 as an inter-planetary trading commod-ity “when the moon becomes an inde-

pendent country.” Perhaps more realisti-cally, lunar mining enterprise could bethe forerunner of larger-scale mining ofthe helium-rich gas giants in the outerSolar System.

Following the resolution of these legaland political issues surrounding the lunarindustry, the pace of technological devel-opments suggests that exploratory miningon the Moon could begin by 2020.Nikolai Sevastyanov, President of Russia’sRKK Energiya—the state-run enterprisewhich developed the Soyuz and Prospectspacecraft and plans to establish lunarmining bases in the next 10-15 years—comments: “Maybe it's science fictionright now, but we need to start moving inthat direction.”

Michaela Freeland is a third year undergraduate studying Mathematics


Helium-3 enthusiasts continue to

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Moon volumes represent the mass of substance required to produce a unit of energy. Forexample, 5.4 g of Helium-3 could produce 1000 kWh of energy.

Have you ever experienced difficultyremoving a dandelion from your gar-den? In an attempt to rid the gardenof its nuisance, the roots are dug out,but even a minute portion remainingcan enable the weed to grow backwith a vengeance. The root cells thatallow this regeneration can be likenedto a specific group of cells within can-cerous tumours, termed cancer stemcells (CSCs). Normal stem cells arevital to the body, serving to providenew populations of cells for growthand repair. CSCs have similar charac-teristics to normal stem cells, but withmutations that give them the danger-ous ability to reform tumours if notremoved from the body.

Stem cells frequently feature in themedia as potential cures for degenerativediseases. As cells with infinite capabilitiesto divide and differentiate into new celltypes, they may eventually be used toregenerate tissues and organs. Whenmutated, however, stem cells also seem toplay a role in cancer, and can develop intoentire tumours if even a few cells arepresent. Cancer stem cells may soonchange how we identify and treat the dis-ease, becoming a new target in the battleto find an effective cancer cure.

Despite improvements to the earlydetection and treatment of cancer, currenttherapies are limited in their ability to curethe disease completely. Common methodsof cancer treatment such as radiotherapy,chemotherapy and surgery all target andreduce the tumour mass as a whole.Thesetreatments are extremely toxic and non-specific, destroying not only the suscepti-ble tumour cells, but also healthy neigh-bouring cells. Despite such toxic treat-ments, complications frequently arise

where tumour cells survive: the tumourreappears. Some current evidence suggeststhat CSCs are at the core of tumour for-mation. Even if nearly all the tumour massis removed, a few remaining CSCs may beall that is necessary for cancer to recur.

CSCs were first identified in patientswith acute myeloid leukaemia, but sincethen they have also been identified in solidtumours in the breast, brain and otherorgans. In the healthy state, each of theseorgans is comprised of the mature, differ-entiated, short-lived cell types characteris-tic of the tissue. The mature cells arereplenished by long-lived stem cells uniqueto the organ. Through a tightly regulatedprocess, each stem cell has the ability eitherto form another stem cell through self-renewal,or to differentiate into the progen-itor cells that give rise to the mature celltypes of that tissue. These daughter pro-genitor cells are more restricted in theirlineage choice and divide frequently.

To date, several factors have been foundto have a role in controlling the self-renewal of haematopoietic stem cells(HSCs)—stem cells of the blood. Thesefactors include specialized proteinsinvolved in gene transcription, as well asmolecular signalling pathways within thecells. In leukaemia, mutation of this tight-ly regulated process occurs and the self-renewal of the stem cell becomes dereg-ulated.This may then lead to its develop-ment into a CSC. However, as most bio-logical pathways and features are the samein normal stem cells and CSCs, it is verydifficult to target CSCs specifically withmedical intervention. The few uniquedifferences that do exist may be the onlymeans of eradicating the CSC popula-tion, while sparing normal and healthystem cells.

Importantly, last year, two groupsdemonstrated that the removal of a pro-tein called the phosphatase and tensinhomologue (PTEN) gave rise to differen-tiation changes of HSCs and the subse-quent development of leukaemia. PTENnormally works in the cell by terminating

the positive growth signals that promotecell proliferation. Inactivation of PTENcould lead to increased growth signallingand transformation into a CSC. Otherresearch has found that CSCs in breasttumours have different types of proteinmolecules on their surface from normalbreast stem cells. Such differencesbetween healthy and cancerous stem cellswill need to be exploited in the develop-ment of new therapies if better prognosesare to be achieved.

Another consequence of the discoveryof CSCs is that the tumour mass is nolonger viewed as a homogeneous entity.Current evidence suggests that a smallgroup of CSCs amongst the other cells ofblood and solid tumours are specificallyresponsible for tumour growth and resist-ance to therapeutic agents. For example,these cells can contain more membraneefflux pumps compared to normal stemcells.These pumps are capable of pumpingchemotherapeutic drugs back out of thecell, making CSCs more resistant to treat-ment. Other mechanisms that CSCs adoptinclude alterations to their cell cycle andactivation of DNA repair mechanisms,protecting them from radiotherapy.

Although no CSC-specific drugs havereached clinical trials, it is only a matter oftime until our understanding of thesedestructive cells improves. Targeting thesecells directly may hold the key to effective-ly treating cancer. Just as the garden weed istackled, to truly eradicate cancer, tumoursmust be pulled out at their roots.

Brynn Kvinlaug is a PhD student at theCambridge Institute for Medical Research

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Brynn Kvinlaug reveals the role of stem cells in cancer

Stem cell self-renewal and differentiation pathways

Evidence suggests that cancer stem cells

are at the core oftumour formation

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Pain signifies discomfort, suffering andeven agony...but not to everyone. Byanalysing individuals who cannot feelpain, researchers have recently foundthat changes to a single gene affectwhether the body is capable of expe-riencing painful sensations. In additionto shedding light on how the bodyperceives pain, these findings may pavethe way towards better forms of anal-gesic medicine.

The word pain conveys a highly sub-jective experience with several dimen-sions.This includes both how pain is eval-uated, for example how strong a painfulsensation will feel, and also the differentemotions that may be evoked frompainful experiences. It is well known thatpain thresholds vary between individuals.Such differences are evident in street per-formers who undertake daring stuntsseemingly unaffected, though most otherpeople would cry out in agony.

It is one thing to bear pain courageous-ly, but remarkably, a few people do notknow what pain is at all.The first scien-tific report of congenital indifference topain goes back to the early twentiethcentury, with the description of a manwho performed as a human pincushionin a circus. Since then, this condition hasbeen well characterized. Typically, suchindividuals have a complete absence ofany feeling of pain, in spite of having thesensation of temperature and pressure.Furthermore, they have no detectableneurological damage.

The biological reason behind this con-dition has been unearthed only recently.In 2006, a genetic analysis was performedin three families from northern Pakistanwho were indifferent to pain. The team,led by C. Geoffrey Woods, a medicalgeneticist at the Cambridge Institute forMedical Research, identified the geneinvolved—SCN9A.This gene was foundto encode the alpha subunit of a voltage-gated sodium channel. Sodium channelsare located in the membrane of excitable

cells, neurons in this case, and underliethe generation of action potentials bytransporting sodium ions into the cellupon stimulation. In the patients who feltno pain, SCN9A was mutated, preventingproper functioning of the channel.

The sodium channel encoded bySCN9A is highly expressed in neuronsthat transmit pain signals, and may there-fore be needed to make the signals thatcarry information about pain to the brain.Furthermore, although it is also expressedin neurons which have functions otherthan pain perception, mutations inSCN9A still seem completely specific topain. It is possible that for other stimuli,different sodium channels may compen-sate for SCN9A, allowing them to be felt.Indeed, although insensitive to pain, thepatients studied were all able to perceivetouch, temperature and pressure.

This study has been extended in arecent report from researchers in Canadato a larger number of families of sevennationalities, reported to be indifferent topainful stimuli such as wounds, dentalabscesses, ulcers and remarkably, to non-anesthetized surgery. According to thisreport, only 30 cases of this condition areknown worldwide. From the two studies,it emerges that inactivating defects inSCN9A have a very similar outcome inindividuals from diverse human popula-tions. Such defects either result in a trun-cated form of the protein being produced,or to a process termed ‘nonsense-mediat-ed decay’, whereby the mutation preventsthe protein from being produced at all.

The central role of SCN9A in pain per-ception mechanisms has become even

more irrefutable by the parallel findingthat other types of defects in the gene havethe opposite effect, resulting in episodicacute pain syndromes.These defects seemto make the channel over-sensitive to painstimuli.The individuals suffering from theassociated disorders feel intense paincaused by everyday activities such as walk-ing, stretching and experiencing cold.

Have we found an on/off switch forpain in SCN9A? If so, this finding willhave an enormous potential for thedevelopment of new analgesic drugs. Notonly could the blockage of this specificsodium channel completely eliminatepain, such a drug may also avoid the side-effects of less specific analgesics. Currentneurodepressive drugs, for example thelocal anesthetic, lidocaine, affect all sodi-um channel proteins and can have dan-gerous effects such as cardiovascular dis-turbances, and can even interfere with thecentral nervous system when adminis-tered in high doses.

As the prospect of a global analgesicrises, new concerns are thrown into theequation. By abolishing the feeling ofpain, physicians will be relieving suffering,yet will also be shutting down the body’salarm sensor.Although otherwise healthy,several patients mutant in SCN9A hadaccidentally harmed themselves as chil-dren due to being unable to feel pain. Sowhilst the discovery of SCN9A signifiespromising developments in pain medi-cine, we should remember that pain isindeed useful, and is likely here to stay.

Alexandra Lopes is a postdoc in theDepartment of Pathology


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Alexandra Lopes explores the science behind feeling pain

A schematic diagram of a voltage-gated sodium channel

Have we found an on/off switch for

pain in SCN9A?

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Science has never been easy on thepurse strings but now it appears thatsometimes it can be bad for the envi-ronment too. In Cambridge we boastleading researchers in environmentalmanagement, climatology, sustainabili-ty and energy efficiency, but are welistening to them and taking enoughresponsibility for our environment?

In a recent study, People & Planet, astudent campaign group, ranked all uni-versities in the UK for good practices byconsidering their environmental policy,carbon emissions, recycling and other ini-tiatives such as ‘green’ travel plans thatencourage cycling and car sharing. TheUniversity of Cambridge was ranked a

respectable eighth, equal with a numberof other institutions including our neigh-bours,Anglia Ruskin University—a con-siderable achievement considering thedifficulties posed by working on a his-toric campus (Oxford came 27th), whichrestricts new constructions and the reju-venation of older facilities. But the

potentially massive environmental cost ofour research is still a cause for concern.

The University’s current practice cer-tainly has many positive points to tacklethese difficulties. Although our carbondioxide emissions for 2005-2006 totallednearly 58,000 tonnes, our electricity cur-rently comes from emission-free hydro-electric generators. We also recycle 230tonnes of paper, 200 tonnes of cardboard,12,000 fluorescent tubes and 2000redundant IT systems. Despite theseextensive measures to reduce our envi-ronmental impact it remains to be seenwhether the message is filtering throughto individual laboratories.

Science is, by its nature, an energy-expensive endeavour. An article in Naturerecently estimated that over a year theaverage fume hood consumes as muchenergy as three households. An ultra-lowtemperature freezer, used across the bio-logical sciences and clinical medicine,costs ten times more to run than itsdomestic counterpart. In many depart-ments, computer simulations also runthrough the night, soothed by gentle air-conditioning to prevent overheating. It iseasy to forget that we have already bur-dened the environment even before westart the day’s experimentation. Pressureto make full use of expensive laboratoryequipment also leads to high energyexpenditure. However, it is possible torun laboratories efficiently. For example,equipment at the Magnetic ResonanceResearch Centre on the West Cambridgesite, runs nearly 365 days a year, but,

according to the University’s EnergyOffice, it is one of the University’s mostenergy efficient buildings.

With the responsibilities and timepressures on our research group leaders,the impetus may have to come fromwithin our labs to change by examplewith a common work ethic. Supportcomes from the University, which hashad a full-time Environment Officersince 1995 who gives advice to staff andstudents about policies on environmentalissues—promoting environmental sus-tainability, conserving and enhancingnatural resources, and preventing envi-ronmental pollution—but without hin-dering the experiments necessary to fur-

ther our research. The advice beginswith common sense measures such asreducing the volume of print-outs andturning off non-essential equipment,computers and lights at the end of theday. Just turning off the monitor butleaving the rest of the computer runningreduces energy expenditure by two-


Dr Joanna Baxter finds out what fellow scientists can do to keep Cambridge green

How Green is Your Lab?

Science is, by its nature, an

energy-expensiveendeavour

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thirds. Moreover, with an estimated35,000 computers in the University,switching every non-essential machineoff at night could save up to 530,000 kWelectricity per week, adding up toapproximately 12,000 tonnes of carbondioxide per year.

Careful consideration of how we useequipment may benefit more than justthe environment.The generally acceptedpractice in molecular biology of coolingpolymerase chain reaction (PCR) prod-ucts to 4°C after thermocycling is asdamaging to the PCR machine as it is tothe environment. Stability of the productsis unaffected by leaving them at 10°C, butthis dramatically reduces the energy con-sumed and extends the working life ofthe machine. In the Cambridge Institutefor Medical Research, half of the labs sur-veyed had already changed to theincreased temperatures—up to roomtemperature in some cases—but manyhad not been aware of the damage doneto the equipment until routine servicinghad brought up the issue.

New scientific facilities are getting inon the green act right from the start.Guidelines from the Environment Officeand the University’s Estate Managementand Building Service also cover the con-struction of new buildings. New projectsmust take into account not only the envi-ronmental costs of the construction mate-rials but also the running and deconstruc-tion costs.The new wing of the MagneticResonance Research Centre, a shiningexample that opened last year, combinesfeatures such as motion-sensitive lightsand external, heat-deflecting blinds in abid to reduce wasted energy.

Even those responsible for purchasingconsumables can consider the environ-mental impact during the decision mak-ing.There may not always be an alterna-tive, but wherever possible, laboratoriescould favour companies with recyclablecomponents, green manufacturing poli-

cies and sensible and returnable packag-ing. Some chemical suppliers, FisherScientific for example, have taken someresponsibility for the incredible amountof waste produced by scientific institu-tions and are reducing the use of non-recyclable materials such as polystyreneand taking back empty bottles and card-board packaging. Several life sciencescompanies, including Promega, NewEngland Biolabs and Sigma, even sendtheir products with return labels for thepackaging. We have a powerful voicewith the companies supplying ourlabs—expenditure for consumables withFisher Scientific in one institute aloneexceeded £35,000 last year. Failure ofthese companies to improve their greenperformance could result in the loss ofvaluable custom. The University rec-ommends suppliers with green creden-tials. For stationary they favour OfficeDepot who have a directory containinggreen alternatives to all kinds of office

items. The Environment Office is alsoworking with them and others to co-ordinate deliveries in an attempt toreduce emissions resulting from themany delivery runs made to the campusevery day.

Careful initial purchase and sensibleuse of equipment are not the only wayswe can make a difference. Since July ofthis year we have become obliged bythe Waste Electrical and ElectronicEquipment (WEEE) directive to dis-pose responsibly of equipment, whetherfunctional or not. This may involveappropriate disposal or passing equip-ment on to another organization.Microscope Services will try to matchyour surplus equipment with thosewho need it. For example, they sendmicroscopes and their spare parts toschools and recently to universities inRomania, where they have very littlemodern equipment. Another potentialsource of energy and financial cost isthe disposal of waste chemicals.Ordering the minimum amount of thechemical required is by far the simplestway to minimise the cost, financiallyand environmentally, of the disposal ofhazardous materials.

Information and guidelines, fromrecycling to waste disposal, are readilyavailable to us through the Estate andManagement Service or through theEnvironmental Co-ordinator of yourdepartment. To keep us updated, theEnvironment Office publishes theGreenlines bulletin several times a year,briefly outlining any changes that maybe relevant to your work situation. If wecan take a little time to incorporate agreener attitude to every facet of ourworking lives and encourage this ethic,slowly we can change our little bit ofthe world.

Dr Joanna Baxter is a postdoc at theCambridge Institute for Medical Research


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A Day in the Life of the Chief Scientific Advisor to HM Government

Chloe Stockford visits Professor Sir David King to discover what being one of the coun-try’s most powerful men in science entails

What does your job as Chief ScientificAdvisor involve?

My responsibility is to the PrimeMinister and the Cabinet for the qualityof science advice across the whole spec-trum of current issues.

What does a typical day involve?Generally I begin at 8am and finish at

10pm. Between 10pm and 8am I preparefor meetings the following day! It’s a bigjob and it’s very busy. My private officeconsists of five people—it has tripled in

size since I started.That’s because, whenI arrived, the definition of science wasvery narrow. I have been broadening thisand demonstrating the wide applicabilityof science.

Have you always had a strong interestin politics?

That was the reason why I left SouthAfrica! It was very difficult to have livedin South Africa in the Apartheid era.There were very few fence sitters. Youwere either for or against. And if you wereagainst, this was difficult in two ways: howdo you live with your conscience without

doing something about it? And if you dosomething about it you get into trouble. Ialso became president of the Association ofUniversity Teachers in 1977; that was alsovery political.

How can the government best use science tomake better policies?

After the tsunami in Indonesia I set upa group at the request of the PrimeMinister to look into what could bedone internationally to prevent suchlarge scale natural catastrophes. As agroup, we called in representatives fromthe United Nations and were told thatnatural disasters like the tsunami happenon a probabilistic basis, and that sciencecan’t predict them. As it happens, seis-mologists had predicted a tsunami off theIndonesian coast. But why didn’t gov-ernments take notice, and why was thereno early warning system in place? Itwould have cost $30 million but it wouldprobably have saved close to 150,000lives. So why wasn’t that done? Becausethe UN emergency team doesn’t under-stand plate tectonics.There is no mecha-nism in place to ensure that decisions aresupported by up-to-date science. Mysuggestion to the Prime Minister was to

form an intergovernmental panel thatcould discuss improving the manage-ment of natural disasters.The next step isgoing to the UN. It takes years to getthese things into place.The whole pointin this is to say, “No you’re wrong!Science can inform!”

But how do you go about communicatingscience to non-specialists?

Never talk down to people.Treat themas they are: intelligent people that don’thave your private terminology. Explaincomplex things without dumbing themdown, but using everyday language.

It seems that communication is a key skillin your job.

That’s definitely true. In terms of news-paper column inches we have doubledthe amount of science topics in thebroadsheets in a two-year period. Mymantra is “Openness, Honesty andTransparency.” This isn’t always easybecause the advice I give to the Cabinetalso ends up in the public domain.

One criticism of science graduates in thiscountry is that we are not well-roundedenough. Do you agree?

I think the way that we specialise afterGCSEs in this country is damaging toeducation.You specialise at a remarkablyyoung age, when it’s difficult to make theright decision. Often children are influ-enced by one good teacher, not necessar-ily by their own abilities.The British edu-cation system is far too narrow—theInternational Baccalaureate is better inthat respect.

Do you think that the media can be irre-sponsible in misinforming the public aboutscientific topics?

There are examples, such as The DailyMail and BBC Radio 4’s TodayProgramme, of the media not alwaysbeing responsible. They ran a campaignthat effectively backed one doctor’s pub-lication that proposed a correlationbetween the taking of the MMR vac-cine and the development of autism inchildren. Our immediate response whenan article like that is published is to fillany information gaps with research. Inthat particular case, this was done usinga Danish study in which 510,000 chil-dren were analysed.Those children whohad received the vaccine had virtuallythe same incidence of autism as thosewho did not, but the newspapers didn’tpublish that; neither did the TodayProgramme. My position is that journal-ists have an enormous responsibility.

You must come under a lot of criticism.How do you deal with it?

It turns out that I am very thickskinned, but it also depends on who thecriticism comes from. If it comes from

David King was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to HM Government in 2001. In this role he has, in particular, raisedthe profile of the dangers of climate change. In addition, he is the director of the Surface Science Research Group at theDepartment of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, where he was formerly Head of Department. He was born inSouth Africa in 1939 and immigrated to the UK during the Apartheid era. In the week of Tony Blair’s departure fromDowning Street, we visited Professor King in his Westminster office.

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people that should be fighting the samebattles as me then I am pretty upset byit. I was, I believe, the most hated figurein the United States after I said thatglobal warming was more of a challengeto us than terrorism. I’m quite proudabout that.

You have held a number of high profilepositions, such as Head of theDepartment of Chemistry, Master ofDowning College, and now as ChiefScientific Advisor to the Government.Which was your favourite?

I became Head of the Department ofChemistry because it was a tremendousopportunity.As I saw it, the department

here in Cambridge deserved to be thevery best in the world, but there werethings that needed to be improved.Helping to raise nearly £50 million torefurbish the place was a big challenge.Being the Master of Downing Collegewas more of an interest—I am a

Cambridge outsider in that I was nevera student here.

What would you say was your greatestachievement?

I’d say it is still to come. But the mostimportant thing I’ve done to date ispushing climate change issues forward.

On a different note, do you think that the£5 billion experiment at CERN is worththe investment?

By the middle of this century therewill be 9 billion people on the planet,and we will be running out of freshwater. So what about using the biggestbrains on the planet to look at desalina-

tion more effectively? We need to feedthe expanding population who alsoaspire to our standard of living. But themoney we are putting into these issuescompared to experiments at CERN areminiscule. So I would like to see ananalysis of priorities in front of an inter-

national forum in which that can takeplace…but I am working on that!

Are you sad to see Tony Blair stepping down?I have had a tremendous six years work-

ing with Tony Blair. The feedback I’vehad, whilst working on Foot and Mouthdisease, obesity or preparing for a possibleH5N1 pandemic, has been exceptionallygood. I think we’ve made a good workingteam. In terms of global leadership on cli-mate change and on African develop-ment, which have been my two priorities,I couldn’t have asked for more. WhenBlair put both of those issues at the top ofthe G8 agenda when we were presidentsin 2005, I was delighted.

So Tony Blair has been good for science?Do you think Gordon Brown will live up tothese standards?

Tony Blair has been good for scienceand has taken great care to listen towhat the science advice has been. But Iam very much looking forward toGordon Brown coming in. I’m certainthat he will continue to raise the profileof science.

Lastly, what’s next for you?My next career move? I am going to

keep up my research in Cambridge.That’sall I’ll say for now!

Chloe Stockford is a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry

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This morning I was woken at six bythe thudding growl of a helicopterpassing twenty metres over my tent—so much more effective than anywimpy alarm clock. After three sum-mer seasons of field work in remoteareas of Greenland, some of them amere stone’s throw from the ice cap,nothing is likely to get my attentionmore quickly than the distinctivewhop of a rotor blade.

Just over two years ago I was midwaythrough my undergraduate degree in theDepartment of Earth Sciences at theUniversity of Cambridge, when I decid-ed that graduating with little but a selec-tion of cashier and babysitting referenceson my CV might not be the best of plans.Within a few weeks, I had secured myselfa position with a small Canadian compa-ny called True North Gems, Inc. Andthat’s how, a couple of months later, Ifound myself sitting in a hotel room inNuuk, the capital of Greenland, with abackpack full of Goretex and no ideawhat I was doing.Three days later I wasdropped off alone on a barren shore witha radio and instructions to “walk betweenthe white rock and the black rock, andlook for rubies.”

As a result of its complex tectonic his-tory, Greenland, like Canada andAustralia, is currently a hotbed of geolog-ical and mining activity. Small companiesare flocking to remote regions to searchfor metals and minerals, which was non-economic 20 years ago.

For two summer seasons I worked forTrue North Gems on their ruby venturein the Fiskenæsset region of southwestGreenland. When I began work on theproject, little was known about the rubydeposits there and the company itself wasjust starting to explore the area. A few

years ago, the majority of the world’smost prized rubies came out of theMogok district in Myanmar (formerlyknown as Burma), an area under martiallaw and rife with corruption and chaos.In 2003, the US imposed a trade embar-go on Burmese rubies, which put intensestrain on the industry to find an alterna-tive source of gemstones. The discoveryof rubies in Greenland has the potentialto impact the coloured gemstone indus-try in much the same way that ‘bloodless’Canadian diamonds have transformed thediamond industry.

Ruby is the red variety of the mineralcorundum; the blue variety is betterknown as sapphire. Corundum is purealuminium oxide and its colour is theresult of trace amounts of ‘contamina-tion’ by chromium, iron, titanium andvanadium. Few people know that, caratfor carat, ruby is far more valuable thandiamond: in fact, the only gem worthmore than ruby is the extremely rareemerald.A fine quality ruby can fetch upto $25,000 per carat (0.2 grams), sowhen I found myself standing on an areaof rock much larger than my collegeroom with a surface thickly studded withrubies, each more than one centimetreacross, I was a little overwhelmed.

My primary tasks for True NorthGems were to prospect for rubydeposits, and to produce detailed geo-logical maps of the most significantoccurrences, in order to identify poten-tial drilling targets for future years. Thedeposits individually can seem decep-tively small on the surface: some excep-tional ones, such as the Aappaluttoqoccurrence, are only two metres wide

and 20 metres long. Finding these in therocky expanse of the Greenland coastcan seem like searching for a needle in ahaystack, but there was method to applyto the madness. Using geological mapsproduced by the Greenland GeologicalSurvey in the 1970s to identify and con-strain our prospecting targets, we used

boats, helicopters and sometimes evenour own legs to scour the region forruby localities.

Being an exploration geologist inGreenland is much like being in theNorth American gold rush of the late1800s: isolated camps of people eatingtinned and wild food and spending long,wet, cold, mosquito-plagued daysdoggedly pursuing the one lucky strikethat could change everything. Younggeologists are in high demand, and thosewilling to camp, fly and hike in the Arcticare finding themselves the subjects of bid-ding wars between employers desperatelyseeking to staff their projects. And I cantell you that there is nothing quite likefinding a half-million dollar gemstonelaying in the mud.

Meghan Ritchie recently graduated from the Department of Earth Sciences

Meghan Ritchie in a remote area of Greenland

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The Quest of the Ruby Hunter

The Kitaa Ruby—the largest ruby everfound in the northern hemisphere

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The Schistosomiasis Research Groupin the Department of Pathology hasstudied the disease, a parasitic infec-tion, since the early 1980s. Theirwork has included extensive fieldresearch within affected communitiesin Kenya and, more recently, in vil-lages on the shores of Lake Albert inNorthern Uganda. Without access tosafe sources of water, the people liv-ing in these areas are at high riskfrom many dangerous diseases, notleast of all, schistosomiasis.

Schistosomiasis is a tropical diseasecaused by one of the five species of par-asitic flatworm of the Schistosoma genus.It is prevalent in Africa, the Caribbean,the Middle East and parts of SouthAmerica and Asia. The disease is carriedby approximately 200 million peopleworldwide, 80% of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. The natural host of the

Schistosoma flatworm is a particularspecies of water snail, and the parasite ismost commonly contracted by wadingor swimming in water infested withthese infected snails.

Parasite larvae emerge from snails daily,and have specialised mechanisms for pen-etrating human skin. Once inside thehuman body, the parasite is passivelytransferred from the blood to the lungsand then to the liver, where the wormfeeds on red blood cells and matures intoits adult form.

Adult worms reside in the mesentericveins that connect the gut with the liver.

Here, they produce eggs, which elicit astrong immune response by the humanhost as they either become trapped in theliver or exit the body through the gutwall. It is this immune response ratherthan the eggs themselves that causes thepathology of the disease.

Symptoms depend on the species ofinfection, and can range from diarrhoeaand fever to, after prolonged infection,liver and intestinal damage or severe cys-titis and ureteritis, the latter of whichcan progress to bladder cancer. Theworms live in the body for four or fiveyears on average, but can persist for aslong as 20 years. Despite having a lowmortality rate, schistosomiasis is a seri-ously debilitating disease.

The drug praziquantel cures schistoso-miasis with a single dose. This drug,however, does not prevent re-infectionby the parasite and so is only a shortterm solution. As for many pathogens,there is a strong need to find a vaccineto prevent the parasite’s life cycle inhumans but, in the meantime, we needto focus on preventing infectionamongst people who are exposed due totheir reliance on contaminated water.Prevention is best achieved either byeliminating the water snails or by pro-viding clean sources of water.

In 2005, Dr Mark Booth, a researcherin the Schistosomiasis Research Group,set up the Matangini Project in responseto his desire to take a more practical andimmediate approach to tackling this dis-ease. The Matangini Project is now asubsidiary programme of the registeredcharity Stand Up for Africa, which iscommitted to eradicating the povertyand suffering of children and young peo-ple in Africa.

When asked by Dr Booth what wouldmost benefit the Matangini School, a pri-mary school in Mtito Andei, Kenya, the

headmaster replied that they would liketo have a borehole so that the childrencould have a source of safe and cleanwater. And so, to provide the communi-ties integral to the research of theCambridge Schistosomiasis ResearchGroup with a permanent and potentiallylife-saving ‘Thank you’, the MatanginiProject was conceived.

The Matangini Project undertakes avariety of fundraising ventures to raisemoney for the boreholes.A collection ofphoto-gifts are available, including calen-dars and mouse mats.All profits from thesale of these gifts go straight to theMatangini Project, as costs are covered bythe regular activities of theSchistosomiasis Research Group. Allauthor royalties from Dr Booth’s uproar-ious book, The Wonderful World of JosephMcCrumble, also fund work in Kenya andUganda. The book is a diary of theeponymous parasitologist who getsexpelled from his local village for acci-dentally poisoning the entire populationof pet rabbits with an experimental drugfor a parasitic disease.

Thanks to the success of theMatangini Project, a borehole with awater pump has recently been con-structed in the playground of theMatangini School. Construction of thenext borehole, in Mbeetwani School,should start soon and hopefully manymore will follow.

www.standupforafrica.org.ukwww.matangini.org.uk

Lara Moss is a PhD student in theDepartment of Pathology

Initiatives

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The Matangini ProjectLara Moss describes a proactive approach to disease prevention

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England, 1940. Five miles outsideCambridge, an RAF forward storagefacility for high explosive and incendi-ary bombs was supporting aircraft sta-tioned across East Anglia. The facilitywas known as Lord’s Bridge AirAmmunition Park, and would be sup-plemented by a mustard gas filling sta-tion four years later. Throughout thecountry, Britain’s bright young thingswere being enlisted to exploit technol-ogy for the war effort. One of them,Martin Ryle, had just finished hisphysics degree at the University ofOxford and was now helping to devel-op radar. This secret weapon wasplagued by interference—interferencethat was identified by the British Armyscientist Stanley Hey in 1942 to beradio emission from the Sun.

Martin Ryle joined the CavendishLaboratory immediately after the War.Here he built up a group of brilliantphysicists in the embryonic field of radioastronomy—a field sparked by Hey’s verydiscovery of the Sun’s radio emission.Similar groups of war-heroes-turned-astronomers also established themselves atthat time at Jodrell Bank near Manchesterand in Sydney,Australia.

Ryle and company initially set up anobservatory at the rifle range just west ofthe University rugby ground on GrangeRoad. Research students lodged atRyle’s house adjacent to the site. Thegroup’s interest widened from the studyof the Sun, and they employed the LongMichelson Interferometer—two radiotelescopes that work together—atGrange Road to compile the FirstCambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources.The catalogue, known colloquially as 1C,was completed in 1950 and detailed 50radio sources. Many of these extragalac-tic radio sources were associated withmassive, energetic galaxies such as

Cygnus A.A second survey (dubbed 2C),undertaken using the 81.5 MHzCambridge Interferometer, was pub-lished in 1955.

The 1C and 2C results were consideredby other radio astronomy groups to becontroversial, because the numbers ofsources of different luminosities impliedthat there were substantially more sourcesin the early Universe than at the presenttime. This could only be explained byassuming a cosmological model in whichthe Universe was expanding from an ini-tial singularity—the Big Bang model.Thelater 3C observations, made with theCambridge Interferometer at 159 MHz,were more widely accepted and con-firmed Ryle’s earlier conclusion that the‘steady state’ model of a static Universe—advocated by Fred Hoyle, Tommy Goldand Hermann Bondi—should be ruledout.The personal tension between Hoyleand Ryle was national news.

The Radio Astronomy Group at theCavendish Laboratory soon outgrew itshome at the rifle range. The MullardRadio Valve Company, a subsidiary ofthe Dutch firm Philips, donated£100,000, allowing the group to acquirea new site at Lord’s Bridge near Barton.This location was ideal because it is pro-tected from terrestrial radio interferenceby hills that create a natural bowl.Nowadays a reflective metal fence

affords extra protection from the M11motorway. Thus, two participants in thewar were united: Ryle (and others) andthe Air Ammunition Park at Lord’sBridge. The Mullard Radio AstronomyObservatory (MRAO) was opened bySir Edward Appleton on 25 July 1957,and its 50th anniversary is being cele-brated this year.

The first telescope at MRAO was the4C Array, a 450-metre long, cylindricalparabolic array.This ship-like instrumentsurveyed the northern hemisphere forradio sources with unprecedented sensi-tivity.The 4C Array exploited the ‘Earth-rotation aperture synthesis’ techniquewhose implementation Ryle pioneered.‘Aperture synthesis’ uses a number of dis-tinct antennas instead of one dish to col-lect signals from outer space. It also usesthe Earth’s rotation to its advantage asthe antennas collect data at a number ofdifferent orientations relative to the

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Cambridge Tuning into the UniverseJonathan Zwart charts the discoveries of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory

The personal tensionbetween Hoyle and Ryle

was national news

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Michaelmas 2007

The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Small Array—the MRAO’s latest telescope

Left: Graham Smith and Martin Ryle building the Long Michelson Interferometer.Right: Antony Hewish with the Interplanetary Scintillation Array.

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object being studied as the Earth spins.This provides a much clearer overall pic-ture and is the only way that much radioastronomy can be done—a dish as wewould conventionally think of onemight need to be five kilometres acrossto produce similar results.

According to the eminent theoreticalastrophysicist Peter Scheuer(1930–2001), the development of aper-ture synthesis “was the story of one

remarkable man, who not only providedthe inspiration and driving force butactually designed most of the bits andpieces, charmed or savaged official per-sons according to their deserts, wieldedshovels and sledgehammers, mendedbreakdowns, and kept the rest of us onour toes.” For his observations andinventions, in particular of the aperturesynthesis technique, Martin Ryle wasawarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in1974.This was the first Nobel Prize everto be awarded for astronomy, which Ryleshared with another MRAO astronomer,Antony Hewish.

Hewish, who had worked on radarwith Ryle during the War, had designedthe Interplanetary Scintillation Array(IPS) to pinpoint radio sources that wereless than one second of an arc across (lessthan 1/3600°). Only such small sourceswould demonstrate the atmospheric‘twinkling’ to which the IPS was sensi-tive. In November 1967, Hewish and hisstudent Jocelyn Bell discovered a radiosource that emitted pulses of radio wavesas regularly as an atomic clock.The puls-es were so regular that the pair namedthe source LGM-1, for Little GreenMen. Terrestrial interference was ruledout, other pulsing sources were identi-fied, and within a few months the pulses

were attributed to spinning neutronstars—dense, collapsed supernova rem-nants with masses similar to that of theSun, but with a diameter of only about10 kilometres.A new class of astronomi-cal object, the pulsar, had been discov-ered in Cambridge, leading Hewish tohis Nobel Prize.

Meanwhile, the development of aper-ture synthesis techniques continued withthe commissioning of the 5-KilometreArray in 1972. This was the first Earth-rotation aperture synthesis telescope inthe world to have a resolution compara-ble to that of an optical telescope. Bynow, radio astronomy was big business,with no expense spared: the array wasbuilt by Marconi and cost £2.1 million(about £22 million in 2007).The controlroom contained a viewing gallery forVIPs to watch the scientists at work.Theeight individual antennas that made upthe telescope were spread out in analmost exactly east-west line, up to fivekilometres apart. Four of them weremounted on railway tracks, after Lord’sBridge railway station and a section ofthe Cambridge-Oxford line wereacquired by MRAO. Being able to movethe antennas made the instrument moreflexible. The contribution of the 5-Kilometre Array and subsequent tele-scopes at MRAO to our understandingof the substructure and physics of radiogalaxies cannot be underestimated.

In the 1980s, John Baldwin led abreakaway group of astronomers inapplying the aperture synthesis tech-nique to an optical telescope. Althoughthis is much harder, because the antennapositions must be known to a fraction ofa much shorter wavelength, it is possibleto obtain resolution as good as that of theHubble Space Telescope from theground. The Cambridge OpticalAperture Synthesis Telescope was thefirst optical interferometer in the world.Many technical challenges have sincebeen solved, permitting optical interfer-ometry to become a more widespreadmethod in the 21st century.

In 1984, Mark Birkinshaw and SteveGull detected another phenomenon for

the first time: they noticed that theamount of cold microwaves—the after-glow of the Big Bang—detected whenlooking in the direction of a cluster ofgalaxies is lower than expected.The expla-nation was that the photons in themicrowaves gain energy en route to theEarth by scattering off gas around thegalaxies. This was named the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect, after its discoverers.

The 5-Kilometre Array was upgradedin bandwidth at this time, and renamedthe Ryle Telescope after his death in1984. In 1993, it was the first instrumentin the world to image a cluster of galax-ies, Abell 2218, using the SZ effect.Once again MRAO astronomers wereleading the way.

The modern Cavendish Astrophysics hasa diverse research programme. TheCambridge surveys to date have complet-ed as many as nine catalogues of radiosources. The Ryle Telescope has recentlybecome part of the ArcminuteMicrokelvin Imager, an SZ survey tele-scope at Lord’s Bridge. Other importantcosmic microwave background observa-tions have been made with the Cosmic

Anisotropy Telescope, also at Lord’sBridge, and the Very Small Array, assem-bled at MRAO and sited in Tenerife.Thegroup is an active participant in the Plancksatellite mission—launching in 2008 andprecisely measuring substructure in thecosmic microwave background—and inthe next-generation radio observatory, theSquare Kilometre Array, to name but a few.Lord’s Bridge will be integral to develop-ing and testing technology for the latter inparticular. And all around stand beautifulhistoric telescopes amongst 300 acres ofhistoric bomb bunkers.

A new Kavli Institute of Cosmology in2009 will be followed by the co-locationof Cavendish Astrophysics with Hoyle’sold group, the Institute of Astronomy.Although neither Hoyle nor Ryle wouldhave approved, the combined clout makesthis a shrewd move for both groups.

The fusion of technology and hardwork has allowed MRAO to make someastonishing discoveries in its 50 years. Butto leave it at that would be to dismiss outof hand the rich tapestry that is its protag-onists, its character, its history and itsbeauty. Many happy returns, MRAO—and here’s to the next fifty.

A podcast of Prof. Malcolm Longair’s lecture,“A Celebration of 50 Years of the Mullard

Radio Astronomy Observatory at Lord’sBridge” is available at www.bluesci.org

Jonathan Zwart is a postdoc at theCavendish Laboratory

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The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array. Four antennas are mounted on the railway.

They named the source

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This was the first ever Nobel Prize to be

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Weblog 1: IntroductionUnless you have not used the internet

in the last four or five years, ‘blogging’ isa term that you cannot easily havemissed. Its popularity has exploded inrecent years, with diverse groups of peo-ple using the forum to write and publishon a bewildering range of topics: poli-tics, fashion, personal thoughts, traveland more. Readers are able—andencouraged—to leave feedback on whatthey find. More recently, an unlikelycrowd has taken to blogging: scientistsare now using the medium to write inan informal style about topics beyondtheir narrow window of expertise, andto discuss ideas that may not conform tothe desired style and content of peer-reviewed journals.Alongside podcasting,this is the latest development in sciencecommunication, and enthusiasts are real-ising that blogs are an excellent mediumfor presenting their work.

Science blogs are defined either bytheir subject or by the experience andposition of the author; that is, whetherthey are written by a practising scientist,

a student, or perhaps a science journalist.Thus, many different kinds of writingare lumped together under this amor-phous title of ‘science blog’; but as theirnumber grows (and there may be around1000 in the English language already)distinctions will arise: science teaching(including classroom) blogs, popular sci-ence, science & politics, ‘life in the lab’,and ‘open lab notebooks’ may allbecome recognised genres.

Weblog 2:The reliability of blogsWe are constantly fed the idea that

internet sources are untrustworthy, andundoubtedly a critical approach is essen-tial to matter published in cyberspace.But what we often forget is that the reli-ability of newspaper or magazine articlescannot be guaranteed; nor can we relyabsolutely on the accuracy of scientificpapers published in peer-reviewed jour-nals. Indeed, a non-negligible number ofpapers are subsequently retracted or arefound to be plagiarised, including sever-al recent high-profile instances, such asthat of the disgraced South Korean sci-entist, Dr Hwang Woo-suk. However, ittypically takes some time for a commu-nity of experts to demonstrate that apublished article is fallacious. Bloggingtrumps traditional media in this respectsince it can speed up post-publicationdiscussion due to the ease of leavingcomments or posting counter-argu-ments. And just as conventional publica-tions exist in a hierarchy of authority,blogs can be assessed for their prove-nance: a reliable blogger will not justexperience a high number of hits on hissite, but may also be ‘blog-rolled’, whereunrelated websites advertise the blog andinclude a link to it. Some red flags areobvious: bad spelling, bad grammar and alack of links to supporting documents.However, most science bloggers are goodwriters, and routinely refer to peer-reviewed literature.

Weblog 3:The future of bloggingScience blogging opens up the subject

to the public in a number of ways. First-ly, it shows scientists to be human, coun-tering the stereotype of mad, analyticaland humourless researchers. It translates‘scientese’ into a language understand-able to a lay audience, and can demon-strate the excitement of science in real-time. Blogs also provide a venue for non-scientists to interact directly with scien-tists on a regular basis.

Secondly, it opens up the publishingprocess. With an increasing number ofopen-access journals, the introductionof online journals that allow commentto be left, and the ability of independentscience bloggers to respond to newlypublished research, the publication of apaper is not the end of a process somuch as the beginning.After months oreven years, seeing the paper in printdoes not mean that the work is over.Rather, an idea has been born and thentakes on a life of its own.This could leadto an improved quality of work: criti-cism can be lodged more readily,demanding more clarification of theresults. Additionally, some laboratoriesare now ‘weblogging’ their less interest-ing or negative results online, thus push-ing otherwise unpublishable—yet use-ful—data into the public domain.

Finally, blogging may foster collabora-tion. There is a misconception that theworld of science is one of cut-throatcompetition and dark secrecy.This mayprovide for good stories in films. Inpractice, however, this might be the casein a couple of prominent areas ofresearch, but for the most part, peopleare eager to share and collaborate. Sci-entists are more likely to be excitedabout each others’ research than threat-ened by it.

With faster and easier communicationprovided by the web, rather than beingafraid of getting scooped, scientists maylink up with others who have similarinterests, to exchange ideas and notes,and possibly to carry out and publishresearch together. This is particularlybeneficial for researchers outside eliteinstitutions in the USA and westernEurope, who cannot rely on local fund-ing and infrastructure.

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Science BloggingMico Tatalovic and Bora Zivkovic explore the future of science communication

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“Some red flags are obvious”

Galileo Galilei was mocked, and not just for his name

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Weblog 4: The first science bloggingconference and anthology

Bora Zivkovic, a Serbian-born PhDstudent from North Carolina University,organized the first science blogging con-ference, held this year. He also writes hisown blog, and has compiled and editedthe first science blog anthology.

The blogging conference was bornout of the desire of a group of sciencebloggers “to meet offline and have abeer!” says Zivkovic. It gathered four

interested groups—science bloggers,working scientists who knew very littleabout blogs, professional science jour-nalists, and science educators.Their goalwas to teach and inform each otherabout what they want from the inter-net, their expectations of each other,their strengths and expertise, and howthey can work together to reach thosegoals. The conference generated many

novel ideas, and its success will be builton by a second one to be held earlynext year.

Zivkovic says about his newly pub-lished book of blogs: “The anthologywas designed to complement the scienceblogging conference, aiming to show-case the quality and diversity of scienceblogging.” The two media are differ-ent—parchment and pixels—so the arti-cles included in the anthology are out oftheir original context: they are stand-alone articles, whereas blogging is real-time communication. The book hasbeen well-received, and nominations forthe second edition are currently beingaccepted. The hope is that more non-bloggers will read it and see that blogsare not just personal diaries, but canserve to communicate high-quality andoften fun reports.

Weblog 5: Where to blog, how toblog, why to blog.

“Go slowly,” advises Zivkovic. “Startreading first.” A logical starting place isSeed Magazine’s scienceblogs.com whichnow has 61 blogs, including some ofthe best to be found. You can expandyour reading list further by followingthe links and blog-rolls outside theSeed Science Blogging universe.“Next,start commenting. Observe the rules of

etiquette. Check the standard of dis-course.Then, if you feel that you have avoice and something original to say,start a blog of your own and tell othersabout it!”

www.scienceblogs.com/clock/

Mico Tatalovic is a PhD student in theDepartment of Zoology

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The anthology showcases the quality

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luesciwww.bluesci.org

A spotted hyena and her two cubs in theNgorogoro Crater,Tanzania

(3,5-DMB). Light of a suitable wave-length can remove the masking agent,re-activating the compound.

To prevent the freed masking chemi-cals from circulating around the body,the drug can be immobilised on a syn-thetic polymer from which the activat-ed drug could escape but the maskingagent could not.

Dr McCoy and colleagues showedthat three common drugs—aspirin,

Scientists at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, have discov-ered the first ever mitochondrial factor to repress expression ofmitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondria are organelles within the cell that function asthe producers of the body’s ATP, its universal energy store.ATPis used throughout the body, powering everything from keepingwarm to movement. A vital question is how mitochondria cantailor their energy output to match the constantly changingneeds of the body.

Discovery of the new protein, MTERF3, is a step towardssolving this problem. MTERF3 is the first mitochondrial pro-tein discovered to specifically repress production of mitochon-drial genes. It has been found to work by binding to mitochon-drial DNA and preventing transcription.Thus, proteins encod-ed by mitochondrial DNA, such as subunits of the mitochon-dria’s own ATP-producing machinery, are downregulated.

By altering the expression of proteins needed for ATP-pro-duction, MTERF3 might help to control how much energy isproduced in the cell, such as reducing ATP synthesis when lessis required. Its discovery may also lead to the development ofnew therapies for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and even ageing,all of which can result from mitochondrial disfunction. MP

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In Brief

This Michaelmas, SciSoc will be holding three special events in addition to its regular weekly talks. On 3 October, we will bewelcoming Bjørn Lomborg, author of the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist, and one of TIME's top 100 global-ly most influential people. We are delighted to have secured the hugely popular Simon Singh for an enthralling talk onCosmology and his new book Big Bang at our ‘Enhanced SciSoc Squash’ on 16 October. And finally, our acclaimed AnnualFounder's Dinner will be held on 3 November, with an address by Nobel Laureat,Tim Hunt. DGFor more details on these and our other events, log on to www.scisoc.com.

SciSoc 2007

Roche, one of the top pharmaceuticals and diagnosticscompanies in the world, recently invited 99 graduate stu-dents from across Europe, including seven from theUniversity of Cambridge, to participate in an exciting one-week cultural workshop named “Roche Continents—Youth! Arts! Science!” in Salzburg.

The workshop overlapped with the famous SalzburgFestival, allowing the students to enjoy fine contemporarymusical performances.The workshop was aimed at stimulat-ing the creative sides of young minds: the students learnedabout arts, culture and innovation, and participated in debates.

“It is really impressive how the young participants from dif-ferent backgrounds can come and work together to presentinnovative ideas and inspire creativity among others.” NiggiIberg, the program director for Roche, commented. The par-ticipants found the program inspiring and refreshing, enablingthem to explore other dimensions of life beyond academiaand to promote networking. Roche’s five-year commitmentto the Continents workshop will encourage other young sci-entists to discover the links between arts and science, innova-tion and technology, academia and industry. SD

www.roche-continents.net

Shining a light on drug design

[email protected]

A team of researchers at Queen’sUniversity,Belfast,may have found a way torelease drugs only where they are needed.

The scientists, led by Dr Colin McCoy,have proposed that a technique of light-based activation of chemical compounds,common in organic synthetic chemistry,can be borrowed by drug designers. Inorganic synthesis, specific functionalgroups of a compound can be blocked bychemicals such as 3,5-dimethoxybenzoin

ibuprofen and ketoprofen—could beinactivated by attaching 3,5-DMB. Themasked drug was then immobilised in asynthetic hydrogel. They found that itwas possible to vary the amount of drugreleased by adjusting the duration ofexposure to light.

The researchers suggested that thetechnology could be used for medicaldevices that are prone to bacterial infec-tion, such as catheters. SD

The spotted hyena, a native of theNgorongoro Crater in Tanzania, is notedfor its social groups or ‘clans’. It has longbeen known that it is predominantly themales of the species that leave the clan tojoin other social groups, behaviour whichminimizes inbreeding.Theories have sug-gested that this is due to competitionwithin a clan between rivalling males, ora shortage of food forcing the males todisperse in favour of a better standard ofliving. However, a study published inNature suggests that the main factor inthis male-dominated dispersion is thepreference of the female.

Female spotted hyenas mate with sev-eral different males in one monthly cycleand may not be able to identify her ownfather. The mate-choice rule states that

the female must avoid males that weremembers of their group when they wereborn, and favour males that immigratedinto their group after their birth. Rearingthe young hyenas occurs over a very longperiod, and is the responsibility of themother alone; it is in her best interests tochoose a mate wisely.

With ten years of detailed demograph-ic data and by observing the behavioursof 426 offspring using microsatellitetechnology, research groups based inBerlin and Sheffield were able to collectdata supporting the female mate-choicemethod in many different clans in theCrater. This is the first study of its kindto assess the reproductive success ofsocial mammals related to male disper-sion decisions. BA

Energy required“Youth! Arts! Science!”

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How many experiments can you do ina day? If you’re a particle physicist, asingle experiment might be hangingon years of preparation and billions ofpounds. But, as Luis M. Fidalgoexplains, getting those yearned-forresults need not be such a time-con-suming pursuit.

Fidalgo, who took the image on thecover of this issue with his colleague DrGraeme Whyte, works in theDepartment of Chemistry where hedevelops miniature devices in which asmany as 1000 reactions can be carriedout—each second.

His microdevices allow reagents to bemixed together in droplets of a tiny vol-ume. The reagents, which are suppliedthrough separate channels only 50micrometres in diameter, are mixed with-in the device. Oil is delivered by otherchannels and separates the reactionstream into droplets (see diagram). Eachdroplet represents a distinct reactionwhose composition can be altered bychanging the flow rate of one of thereagents. But how do you detect whichdroplet has the most product?“Fluorescence,” Fidalgo explains, “makesdetecting products simple.We use special-ly modified reagents that have fluorescentproducts.”The green colour in the cover

image is emitted by a fluorescent dye as itis injected into the device. But detectionis not limited to fluorescence; effortstowards incorporating other analyticaltechniques to microdroplets are beingcarried out both in Cambridge and atImperial College London.

Studies on single molecules and indi-vidual cells are also possible using thesemicroreactors.This is achieved by dilutingthe chemical solution so that each dropletis unlikely to contain more than onemolecule.Whilst this necessarily calls forvast dilution factors, Fidalgo remainsunmoved: “It doesn’t matter that 80% ofthe droplets will have no protein at allwhen you can produce thousands ofdroplets per second,” he explains.

The directed evolution of enzymes isone application of single molecule stud-ies. Enzymes are proteins that catalysereactions. Being proteins, they are poly-mers of subunits called amino acids. Awhole library of enzymes with a diversesubunit composition can be readily syn-thesised, with the aim of creating anenzyme with improved catalytic activity.Each droplet in a microreactor experi-ment of this sort would contain just oneenzyme molecule. It’s a simple matter topick out the best enzymes: any dropletswith increased fluorescence due to thepresence of an improved enzyme are iso-lated. After separating them, the exactsequence of the most catalytic enzymescan be determined, and the changes thatmade them more efficient can beexplained. Eventually, this could help usunderstand how enzymes have beenselected through evolution, and whichones are likely to disappear.

It isn’t all plain sailing, however.Microfluidics, as this technology is called,has problems of its own. Creating the tiny

channels in the microdevices requires theuse of microfabrication techniques takendirectly from computer manufacturing.And that is not the most difficult part.Existing in a macroscopic world of meas-uring cylinders and beakers, trying torelate to a world of microchannels and

microdroplets represents one of the per-manent challenges of this technology.“Water doesn’t behave in the same wayon the micrometre scale,” Fidalgoexplains. “The surface area to volumeratio of these droplets causes the proper-ties of the liquids to change—think of aliquid rising up a capillary tube.”

The mind boggling capacity of themicrodevices (which dwarfs the notion of‘high throughput’) is not the only advan-tage: Fidalgo needs only 200 microlitresof reagents per day. With volumes likethat, a teaspoonful of liquid would keephim occupied for a month.

Microfluidics technology relies on afusion between engineering, chemistryand biology. Most of the interest is cur-rently centred on the biosciences, espe-cially directed evolution and chemicalbiology, but Fidalgo is keen to point outthat “anyone with a need for high-throughput might benefit from themicroreactor technology.” And with aprojected one hundred million reactionstaking place per day, who wouldn’t wantto downsize?

Terry J. Evans is a PhD student in theDepartment of Biochemistry

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Faster, higher, stronger...smaller?Terry Evans meets Luis M. Fidalgo, the scientist behind our cover image

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A microdroplet reaction chamber photographed from above

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Dear Dr Hypothesis,I’m a keen meat-eater, but I’m wor-ried about the global impact of mydiet. How much of a carbon footprintdo I leave?

Ravenous Ron

DR HYPOTHESIS SAYS:Dear Ron, it’s an important questionthat you ask. Quite aside from the ethi-cal questions about eating meat, there isa real environmental impact associatedwith being carnivorous. The carboncosts include the production and trans-portation of feed, the process of calfrearing, and getting the meat from thefarm to the shops. A recent study sug-gested that one kilogram of beef on thetable has the equivalent footprint oftravelling 250 kilometers by car, as aconservative estimate. Cows also pro-duce a large amount of methane (animportant greenhouse gas), but carni-vores like to remind us that the personalgaseous emissions of vegetarians exceedsthat of their meat-eating friends!

DR HYPOTHESIS SAYS:Well, Kristjan, you’ve certainly given mefood for thought! Actually, there are anumber of reasons that act together tocause the ‘post-prandial lull’: it costs ener-gy (an increase in metabolism of 25-50%)to digest the food; and, due to digestion,the hormone CCK is released to tell thebrain that you’re full while simultaneous-ly activating the areas of the braininvolved in sleep. Finally, when you eatlots of carbohydrate the level of trypto-phan (an amino acid) in your bloodincreases, which is converted into sero-tonin in the brain, and this also makes yousleepy. My only advice to you is to avoideating a particularly large meal before thatimportant meeting with your supervisor.

Dear Dr Hypothesis,My friend recently lost a hand in apotting shed-related accident. Whatare the recent advances in bionichands so that he may continue hisgardening in the future?

Friendly Fred

DR HYPOTHESIS SAYS:Dear Fred, your friend is indeed mostfortunate—a Scottish firm has just creat-ed a new bionic hand. It features fullyarticulated joints, as well as myoelectricalsensors, allowing the motors to be con-trolled by thought alone. The artificialjoints allow a dexterity of movementnever seen before, which gives the patientthe ability to grip gently. One soldier fit-ted with the hand commented that hewas now able to hold polystyrene cupsagain—so a pair of gardening shearsshould ‘posie’ no problem!

Dear Dr Hypothesis,I’m a keen climber, and yet I watchwith green envy videos of geckolizards scurrying about on smooth sur-faces. How do they do it?

Agile Annie

DR HYPOTHESIS SAYS:Dear Annie, the effect you’re seeing is theresult of a high degree of adaptation in thegecko. Each of a gecko’s toes is coveredwith millions of tiny hairs called satea,each of which is further split into hun-dreds of bristles called spatulae. As thegecko places a toe on a surface, each of thetiny spatulae forms a bond at the molecu-lar level with the surface, using tiny forcescalled Van der Waals interactions.Althoughweak individually, together, billions ofthese interactions are so strong that allfour feet of a gecko could hold the equiv-alent of 90 lbs. Now that would be a largegecko! These interactions are of greatinterest to nanoscientists, who haverecently come up with a version thatworks underwater, called geckel. Hang onin there, Annie—you may yet get someuse from this technology yet!

Dear Dr Hypothesis,Why do I feel tired after a meal—andwork less efficiently? Why does mysupervisor experience a post-lunchdip? Could it be due to stomach dis-tension, an increased blood supply forthe digestive system compromisingbrain circulation, hypoglycaemia as aresult of over-reacting to the initialrise in blood sugar levels, or perhapsthere are other reasons?

Kipping Kristjan

Dr

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luesci32

Dr HypothesisThink you know better

than Dr Hypothesis?

He challenges you with this puzzle:

How fast could a human run?

Please email him with answers, thebest of which will be printed in thenext edition.

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Please email your queries to [email protected] for your chance to win a £10 book voucher

luesci Michaelmas 2007

Special Introductory Offerto Students and Postdocs

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We believe that what we are doing today will help us becomethe BP we want to be tomorrow. Our business is the exploration,production, refining, marketing, trading and distribution ofenergy; and we have nearly 100,000 people in 100 countriesacross six continents. In this age of growing consumer demandand environmental urgency, we are always looking to find newand better ways of delivering energy to the world – withoutcompromising the planet.

Take up any one of our engineering, science and businessopportunities and you could be helping to find new reserves,create cleaner fuels, expand our capacity and market ourbrands to over 15 million customers every day. Look beyondthe limits.

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BlueSci Issue 10 - Michaelmas 2007