New site!

Hello everyone,
I've moved my blog over to wordpress, it's a bit more organised and a bit more blue. If you go over there you can sign up like normal at the bottom of the page to follow me. Hope you like the new look!

http://geologistatfault.wordpress.com/category/blog/

World's Tiniest Ear

            Last week in the London Student Science section I wrote about the record-breaking world’s longest hug and the Science of Love (shockingly- it's to do with hormones, not exactly breaking news), now we can tell you all about the world’s smallest ears and the scientist who discovered them, using only a loudspeaker, a digital camera and some gold.

            This bizarre sounding collection of equipment was an invention borne out of necessity. When scientists at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich could no longer see what they needed down an optical microscope, they put their ingenuity to the test and came up with a rather home-made looking contraption. This experiment means that when they can’t see what they need to down a microscope, they can hear down it instead.

           

            The world’s smallest ear is actually the product of long and drawn out research, led by Jochen Friedmann. Their work, published this month in Physical Letters, shows how by trapping gold nanoparticles they can use them as tiny 'ears' to hear the movement of objects down to cellular level. 

The common method of using optical tweezers -radiation pressure from a laser- to twist and manipulate nano objects was suggested as a new way of holding the gold nanoparticles in place. The ‘ear’ was only 60 nanometres wide which, to give you an idea, is about the size of a pea if the pea were the size of the Earth. This static ‘ear’, will only move if nudged by movement nearby which means it can be used to measure fluctuations in its environment, fluctuations like an acoustic wave.

Alexander Ohlinger and his colleagues used a two stage process to develop the ‘ear’. “First, we validated the basic principle using a relatively strong sound source” group leader Andrey Lutich explains. “In the second step we were able to detect significantly weaker acoustic excitations.”

The scientists first glued a tiny tungsten needle onto a loudspeaker and used this to agitate the gold particles by sending sound waves towards them. Friedmann could detect the movement of the particle using a darkfield microscope and an ordinary digital camera to show the particle moved parallel to the sound waves propagation.

Next, they trapped one gold nanoparticle in amongst a group of other ‘free’ particles and heated them with a green laser. It was found that these particles emitted tiny vibrations towards their static counterpart which could be used to build a 3D image of the object at nanoscale.

            The unprecendented sensitivity of the world's tiniest ear – it can hear sound a million times quieter than you or I could- means a whole new swath of information will be available to us about cells, bacteria and viruses that we could never have imagined learning just from viewing them down a microscope. In particular we will be able to ‘see’ into areas where light conditions made the use of an optical microscope impossible. However, as the experiment stands, it is only a concept which works in controlled lab environments, and it would need to be significantly refined in order to be used as a medical tool. 

Film Making Challenge

One of the things I am most enjoying about the Imperial MSc so far is learning to do so many new things which just aren't available to you on your standard science degree. I can't speak for everyone but my course seemed to be essay after essay, after problem-based-learning excercise and unless you go outside of your course (probably spending loads on expensive equipment to take courses on film-making or story writing) then you just don't get the chance to be creative and portray your ideas in different ways. This MSc is letting me test the boundaries of my imagination in a way I really hadn't done since nursery (and I probably play with plasticine more now than then!) and this culminated in a 12-hr film making workshop last month.
Under the directorship of an ex-SciCommer we were ordered to bring in sound bites of people discussing their views of science communication, I chose to bring in 10 haiku's. We then had 12 hrs to turn these into a script, hash them into visuals, create the audio and then edit it all together into something pretty wonderful.
The finished product has a 'Making of...' to go with it, but I was so proud of what I made I thought I'd stick it on here straight away. My group's specific bit was the Back to the Future stop-motion-animation with solar system. Enjoy!

Well done to everyone:
Pen, Lucy, Vanna, Lucia, Antonio, Juan, Sophia, Luis, Hana, Ling, Graham, Jen, Gilead, Lorna, Darshani and in particular David and Morag our super organisers.

• 
  

Wolves Predict Climate Change

When we talk about climate change the emphasis is normally on how it will affect us, our children and our great grand-children. However, a research study published in Science, has looked into the effects that climate change will have on our furry friends in the animal kingdom.

A study conducted between Imperial College, The Department of the Interior in the US and several other universities, created a mathematical model based on the known links between population size compared to changing physical traits. These traits, from body size to coat colour already vary season to season and so any fluctuations in the surroundings can have a huge impact. Up until now it was unknown if these links were based on particular environmental changes or if they could result in evolutionary transformations.

Grey wolves have been integral to the study, since their large numbers in Yellowstone National Park mean they, and their environment, can be studied in detail and over long periods of time. The information was collected from both the data chip collars the wolves wear and also by field work. This required the scientists to fly across the park in helicopters, shooting the wolves with tranquilisers in order to weigh and measure them. During ‘good years’ when the population thrived, and ‘bad years’ when it dwindled, it was found that the population was responding to long term changes in their environment, instead of the year-to-year fluctuations predicted.

The study has been conducted on 15 years worth of data but this large amount of information just doesn’t exist for most other animal populations. If this data could be collected we could even predict which animals may be in danger of extinction in the future. Professor Tim Coulson, who led the study said: "We now have a way to predict with unprecedented detail how populations of many different animals will respond to environmental change, including those animals threatened with extinction. However we urgently need more data if we are to understand how the natural world will be affected by continuing climate change.”

Sun's Destiny in Dust Shells

Dust Rings around CW Leonia, Image credit ESA/PACS/MESS & ESO/VLT 

A team of astrophysicists, led by Professor Leen Dacin at K U Leuven, have made an amazing discovery. The research, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, shows dozens of cold dust arcs around a giant star known as CW Leo. Leo, a late-stage red giant star, gives us an insight into how our own Sun may look in 4.5 billion years time.

            Stunning new images showing dust shells emitted at intervals of 500 to 1,700 years have been obtained from the Herschel Space Observatory, launched by ESA in 2009. Professor Decin explained: “Herschel is made to observe cool material, like that found far away from the central star. So, it was not really an accidental discovery.” The researchers deliberately employed PACS, one of two cameras onboard the Herschel Space Observatory, as it was specifically designed to look at the far-infrared light associated with extremely cold objects. This was crucial to the identification of the shells, as their temperatures can reach as low as -248^oC, leaving them beyond the scope of many observatories.

            The laborious process of refining the PACS images proved fruitfull when the team identified the long suspected, non-concentric shells of dust as far as 1arcmin from the stars centre. “Until recently it seemed the surroundings of giant stars were homogenous, but more and more we see that this isn't the case”, Professor Decin enthused: “The new Herschel images confirm that in a stunning way."

            It is assumed that further dust rings existed but may have already collided with and dispersed into the interstellar medium; a mixture of ions, cosmic rays and other matter surrounding the star. Dr Tanya Lim, a collaborator on the paper from the Rutherford Lab in Oxford, revealed: “It is the interactions between the dust and interstellar medium which are interesting because these interactions change the chemistry of the ISM.”

            However, where these shells occur also says something about the history of mass loss for these carbon rich stars. CW Leo is a direct analogy for our own Sun, and research like this could be invaluable for determining how it will react in it’s later stages.

We saw it first!

Tomorrow, CERN are set to make an announcement. A big announcement. Speculation began when the researchers set the topic for their press conference: the status of their search for the Higgs Boson. Supposedly, they have now looked at a much wider range of data than they had by the summer conference, leaving the physics world a-buzz with rumour. If the Higgs has been identified it will be a great triumph for the standard theory of physics, as it is the only missing puzzle piece left in our current understanding of particle physics.

Cogitating over what the announcement might be, my practical group for Imperial's MSc Science Communication decided to produce a short animation, demonstrating exactly what CERN do. If the so-called 'god particle' has been found, this is proof we saw it first!

(Credit: Georgia Bladon, Sam Cavenagh, Heather Cruickshank, Harriet Jarlett, Peter Larkin, Kelly Oakes, Antonio Torrisi and Dharshani Weersekera)

Geologists, the Coolest and Sexiest People Alive.

To many people a 'Geologist' is a bearded figure, dressed in an anorak and talking to a rock. Geologists themselves would love to dispel this myth but since we lick rocks, know Lagerstatten is more than a beer, and think anything under a few million years is 'recent' its not too far from the truth! Below I give you my top five references to Geologists in popular culture. Number 5 is my favourite, although I wish number 1 was true. Vote on your favourite below. (Come on Geologists- don't let the Bad ones win!)

The Good:

1) American Dad- Geologists, the smartest sexiest men alive. (Women too!)

2) Brad Pitt- GEOLOGIST. Not funny but it's Brad Pitt. As a geologist.

The Bad:

3) The Big Bang Theory- Erm...actually it is.

4) Friends- Geologists are the lowest of the dating barrel, shame some other Geologists don't realise this...

The Sadly Truthful:

5) Fresh Meat- actual geology bar games