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.

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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

Earth was frosted with gold

Like the glaze on a pastry, the Earth, after its inner structure was established, received a final icing of gold to it's crust. The abundance of gold ore make it an easily accessible economic resource. However, this incredibly heavy element, and other iron-loving elements like it, should have sunk 3 000 km deeper, into the Earth's core.

New research, published this month in Nature, lends support to the theory that without a late bombardment of meteorites being stirred in, there would be hardly any siderophile (iron-loving) elements in Earth’s mantle.

Willbold et al, from the Bristol Isotope Group, measured the variations of tungsten in rocks from the Isua Greenstone belt against an average found in modern day mantle. The Isua rocks are unique as they were unaffected by the late bombardment 500 million years ago, but were still formed after the Earth possessed it’s core. In theory, they should have slightly more tungsten compared to rocks that formed whilst the Earth was still accumulating material.

Other theories suggest that, when the Earth collided with large objects, such as the Mars-sized planet now widely accepted to have resulted in our Moon, it caused huge areas of melting. During this melting, iron and other metals seperated out and sank to the core. At the pressure and temperatures found beneath the huge magma ocean, it was thought that siderophiles might lose their affinity to iron and rise up through the mantle. Although, this would not have worked for all of the elements.

Experiments predicted that, to have the current proportion of gold in the crust, we would need 0.5-1% of primitive meteoritic material to have mixed into the mantle. Willbold et al measured tungsten more precisely than ever before, to show that the samples from the Isua Greenstone belt are slightly enriched, compared to average mantle. The magnitude of this small enrichment, 13 parts per million, is exactly that predicted if there had been 0.5-1% of primitive meteoritic material.

Dr Willbold commented that his "work shows that most of the precious metals on which our economies and many key industrial processes are based have been added to our planet by lucky coincidence when the Earth was hit by about 20 billion billion tonnes of asteroidal material.”

It is possible that the late mixing of material by convection occurred only in large patches of crust. Some areas of the Earth's mantle may not have mixed with late accreted material and so would have remained, and in fact still remain, isolated. The late bombardment might have given us more than just ore deposits, it may have given us the mantle dynamics we still see today.

George Stephenson (inventor of the steam locomotive) talks robots

Me and George Stephenson (credit: Elfy Chiang)

In starting my MSc Science Communication at Imperial College I didn't know quite what to expect. And when confronted by essays and critical analysis of articles, I was completely out of my depth. Thankfully, amongst the philosophy of science essays and semiotics there is a large amount of fun!
Our core practical involves making a TV interview and radio clip about a certain aspect of science. Our group got the surprisingly difficult task of explaining Artificial Intelligence.

 This week my core practical group and I (thanks guys!) went out with portable radio equipment to interview the public in the Science Museum. We asked them what they would like robots to be able to do for them ('housework' was the most popular answer) and in the process encountered a strange figure.

Dressed in a top-hat, tails and with mutton-chops to rival Wolverine, he looked like he'd stepped straight out of the 1800's. Turn's out, he had! It was George Stephenson speaking to us from 1840, desperate to share his knowledge of  the first steam locomotive, The Rocket. Listen to what he had to say here:

Much love to the rest of my core practical group who I did this with.