Author: Alethea Sara Mountford

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Archive Justin Byrne

United in Science

By Justin Byrne

Currently the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences is assimilating what was my school – the School of Biology. Changes will come with the new super school, but hopefully along with increased opportunities for collaboration. It may seem perfectly natural to bring together related schools into a single body, but each discipline uses different equipment, jargon, methods, analyses, and philosophical approaches. Reconciling these differences presents a challenge and I wonder whether it is something that is either possible or desirable. Concerns of this nature are central to the philosophy of science, relating to the concept of the unity of science, and have their roots in the very beginnings of western thought. Now seems like the perfect time to explore unification as a concept and perceived scientific ideal.

“Knowledge also is surely one, but each part of it that commands a certain field is marked off and given a special name proper to itself.” – Plato, Sophist, 257c.

Even before Plato expressed this, the idea of a unified theory of knowledge was discussed and revered. This ideal was passed on by great thinkers, such as Wilhem Dilthey, who first introduced distinctions between the natural and social sciences, building himself upon work by Kant. It is in this way (container unity) that we now tend to approach natural science as a unified concept, separate to social and cultural studies and distinct from pseudoscience and religion. However the age and tenacity of these ideas does not guarantee their validity. Indeed, certain pluralistic views of science would argue against this “one”-ness, rejecting the view of science as a collection of related disciplines that together strive towards a single, correct understanding of nature. This kind of unification of disciplines within science is referred to as connective unity. Pluralists might argue that the differences between certain disciplines in thought, vision, or method, are sometimes irreconcilable. As such, they must be viewed and treated as separate projects, perhaps with similar themes.

All of this is to say that, when bringing the schools together, difficulties of integration should be expected. How we view the concept of unity in science will affect how we attempt to solve potential problems. One scientist (whether they know it or not) may be a reductionist, perhaps believing in a pyramid of knowledge built up from the foundation of physics and mathematics, with each subsequent level reducible to concepts of the previous. When disagreements arise between fields they might be inclined to side with the more fundamental or “hard” science. Reductionism attempts to unify disciplines along lineages, where more fundamental disciplines underlie the principles of the others, but this is not without criticism.

Within the scientific community there is broad acceptance of the unity of science. It underlies scientific principles of hypothesis formation, falsifiability (as an improvement over verifiability), and empirical evidence. However its critics have described it as overly dogmatic, restrictive, and ultimately unrealistic in describing the chaotic history of how theories have emerged and reached acceptance. Scientists work on a variety of tasks that go beyond basic empirical methods, such as collaboration with artists and media outlets, discussions with other scientists, and interdisciplinary work outside of the natural sciences. A narrow definition of science that ignores the way modern science is conducted is not useful, and may mean that the separation between the natural sciences and other disciplines is exaggerated.

Whether the sciences are distinct or not, we still need to resolve differences within our new school. I am predisposed to a live and let live attitude. Believers in the concept of emergence in science might argue that in increasingly complex subjects, new concepts, tools, rules and principles form that are irreducible, and cannot be deduced from more “fundamental” studies. Due to my own interest in complex systems and dynamic networks, I must admit that I am personally inclined to this view. As the research areas within the new school touch upon social, economic, biological, and political research, this incredible complexity may require a more sophisticated approach.

Finally, Otto Neurath once imagined science as an old boat at sea, undergoing constant repair without a stable foundation. The workers constantly reconstruct it with the best available components, reusing some and discarding others. In doing so he was rejecting the primacy of physics as the foundation of science, instead arguing for a united effort, allied for practical reasons. Cooperative, separate efforts, all attempting to produce good predictions and enable control of the natural world requires the sharing of tools and ideas. Unity in science was a tool for cooperation in his post-war landscape with cultural, political, and economic ramifications. Though I am inclined to disagree with those who would unify natural sciences by reducing its many principles to expressions of physics and chemistry, I find this kind of unity compelling. As we move forward and shape our new school Neurath’s views on the unity of science are perhaps the most important; how can we work together to produce a more peaceful, cooperative and prosperous future.

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Archive Justin Byrne

What does a healthy community look like?

By Justin Byrne

My PhD focuses on the use of ecological networks (like food webs) to study biological communities, so I spend a lot of time thinking about what a “healthy” community might look like. Perhaps spending too much time thinking about one topic leads you to try and apply that thinking to everything else. Let me give you an example.

To study the microbial communities I will focus on, I have had to educate myself on a developing field in biology that may offer an alternative way to identify species: DNA barcodes. This method allows us to identify organisms based upon a small snippet of their DNA that is unique (more or less) to that species. Specifically, I will be working with large numbers of species, mixing all their DNA together and extracting all the “barcodes” at once. Using the wonders of new DNA sequencing technology, I will then be able to read all of these short DNA sequences and produce a list of everything present. This complicated process is called “DNA metabarcoding”.

If that all sounds complicated, that’s how I felt too. Especially for an ecologist who spent the last year looking at birds and running computer models. While learning about this, I have been surprised by the number of researchers at Newcastle who are using DNA barcoding. Some have been using these methods to look at historical trends in species DNA (a field called paleoecology) to verify archaeological farming records. Others, myself included, have been investigating questions of conservation and ecology. Across the university, researchers are being pulled together due to common interests and are discussing collaborative efforts. This is all an essential part of the academic process, perhaps these links between researchers are an indicator of community health?

My research will look at characterising the fungi and bacteria present in various woodland soils. I’d like to add to our understanding of ancient woodland soil communities. As the project involves fieldwork with woodland soil, lab work with DNA and computer analysis of large amounts of data, it helps to be part of a broad research community that can offer guidance on multiple issues. Both community health research and healthy research communities are important at Newcastle, which is a good sign. What’s not a good sign is that I seem to have taken to simplifying every aspect of my life to network representations of real things. Send help, preferably in the form of Eigen vectors that transform me out of this state.

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Archive Philippa Rickard

The Natural Health Service

By Philippa Rickard

Urban experiences dominate our lives, with 90% of us in the UK living in cities (1). Meanwhile, the gap between us and nature widens (2). Unsurprisingly, the perception of being disconnected from each other, ourselves and our environment has resulted in poor mental and physical health (3).

Nature is filled with stimuli that involuntarily and discretely grab our attention, which provides restoration from mental tiredness (4,5). Urban environments are less restorative, because they are filled with stimuli that dramatically grab and require additional attention, like hazards such as moving vehicles (4). Think about how different it feels strolling along a countryside path to negotiating a busy street.

The benefits of a view of nature from a window have long been known and have been seen to help recovering surgery patients (6), but why is this? It can be explained from an evolutionary perspective (7), the Biophilic (attraction to nature) hypothesis (8). Due to our evolution in natural environments (7) we have an affinity with nature, not with built settings (9). We respond positively to places that would have been favourable for the survival of our ancestors (10). This positive emotion is not only an indicator of good mental health, it actually produces it (11).

For many of us our only contact with nature is through urban green spaces, such as parks (12). These spaces provide benefits such as longer life expectancy and a decreased risk of mental illness (6,13). Exercise in the presence of nature, or green exercise, is unsurprisingly more beneficial than exercise in built settings (11). Green exercise has been shown to improve self-esteem and mood (indicators of mental health and protectors against long-term physical health threats) (14). GPs have even been recommended to consider green exercise as a treatment option for anyone suffering mental distress (15).

Interacting with nature is a therapy that is readily available to us, has no unpleasant side effects and can improve our mental and physical wellbeing at zero cost4. Looking out over nature from your window or spending 5-minutes in your local park can make your day better, increase your confidence and lift your mood. Nature provides an important health service, use it.

References

  1. Dallimer, M., Irvine, K. N., Skinner, A. M. J., Davies, Z. G., Rouquette, J. R., Maltby, L. L., Warren, P. H., Armsworth, P. R., and Gaston, K. J. (2012) Biodiversity and the Feel-Good Factor: Understanding Associations between Self-Reported Human Well-being and Species Richness, BioScience, 62:1, 47–55.

  2. James R. Miller, J. R. (2005) Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 20:8, 430 – 434.

  3. Nurse, J., Basher, D., Bone, A. and Bird, W. (2010) An ecological approach to promoting population mental health and well-being − A response to the challenge of climate change, Perspectives in Public Health, 130:1, 27 – 33.

  4. Berman, M.G., Jonides, J., Kaplan, S., (2008) The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature, Psychological Science, 19:12, 1207 – 1212.

  5. Roe, J. and Aspinall, P. (2011) The restorative benefits of walking in urban and rural settings in adults with good and poor mental health, Health & Place, 17,103 – 113.

  6. Ulrich, R. S. (1984) View through a window may influence recovery from surgery, Science, 224, 420 – 421.

  7. van den Berg, A. E., Maas, J., Verheij, R. A. and Groenewegen, P. P. (2010) Green space as a buffer between stressful life events and health, Social Science and Medicine, 70, 1203 – 1210.

  8. O’Brien, L. and Murray, R. (2007) Forest School and its impacts on young children: Case studies in Britain, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 6, 249 – 265.

  9. Ulrich, R. S. (1993) Biophilia, biophobia and natural landscapes. In: Kellert, S. R. and Wilson, E. O. (eds.) The Biophilia hypothesis, 75 – 137. Washington DC: Island Press.

  10. Kellert, S. R., and Wilson, E. O. (1993) The biophilia hypothesis, Washington DC: Island Press.

  11. Roe, J. and Aspinall, P. (2011) The restorative benefits of walking in urban and rural settings in adults with good and poor mental health, Health & Place, 17, 103 – 113.

  12. Dallimer, M., Irvine, K. N., Skinner, A. M. J., Davies, Z. G., Rouquette, J. R., Maltby, L. L., Warren, P. H., Armsworth, P. R., and Gaston, K. J. (2012) Biodiversity and the Feel-Good Factor: Understanding Associations between Self-Reported Human Well-being and Species Richness, BioScience, 62:1, 47–55.

  13. Wipfli, B., Landers, D., Nagoshi, C. and Ringenbach, S. (2011) An examination of serotonin and psychological variables in the relationship between exercise and mental health, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 21, 474 – 481.

  14. Wells, N. M., Evans, G. W., (2003) Nearby nature: a buffer of life stress among rural children, Environment and Behavior 35, 311–330.

  15. Mind (2007) Ecotherapy The green agenda for mental health, Mind week Report.

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Archive Riona McArdle

Beautiful brains: Pint of Science

By Riona McArdle

This year I was invited to give a talk for the Beautiful Brains session of Pint of Science in Durham. What did I gain from this experience? Quite a bit actually.

Firstly, it gave me an opportunity to present my research (gait analysis in dementia) to an audience who were interested in science and the brain generally, but were not specialised researchers or even scientists! This meant that I had to adapt my language so that they could grasp difficult concepts that may be totally foreign to them. That in itself is a learning experience! Like Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. It also meant I got direct feedback from the audience, which allowed me to assess how people outside of my research bubble viewed my research – do they think it is worthwhile? Luckily, I had quite a positive experience with this!

Secondly, the type of questions one receives at POS are a little different to questions you might be asked at a conference in your specialist field. They can be simple, but they can also address the bigger picture – something you might forget about when you are so wrapped up in your rabbit hole of scientific expertise. This means you have got to think outside the box which is always beneficial in science!

Lastly, POS is in general a lovely experience. It’s relaxed, its informative, its an opportunity to showcase your passion for your research and science. In my case, the organisers were fabulous and so enthusiastic. The audience thoroughly engaged, the other speakers gave fascinating overviews of their research. So if you are a researcher, I urge you to take part in POS; either as an audience member or a speaker. You won’t regret it!

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Archive Emma Kampouraki

How genes run and ruin our lives: Pint of Science

By Emma Kampouraki

Obesity, dwarfism and intellectual disability. Can you guess what they have in common? I couldn’t either before the 17th May when “pint of science” brought all three topics in one evening and explained “how genes run and ruin our lives”. Three local scientists, mainly PhD students, gave three wonderful presentations explaining the interaction between genetics and environment in the context of various diseases. Diseases we still struggle to fight in the 21st century.

Obesity, a modern pandemic, is the result of multiple factors such as exercise, quality of mitochondria, DNA mutations in mitochondria, nuclear DNA mutations and diet. Various myths around obesity and weight loss were refuted, starting from calorie-restricted diets that stress the cells and end up in the accumulation of fat instead of weight loss. Mitochondria are the energy-producing organelles of our cells. We inherit our mother’s mitochondria and therefore any mutations she carries are very likely to be passed on to the offspring. This is the idea behind three-parent babies, so that mitochondrial dysfunctions, such as the ones causing obesity, are not passed on to the next generations. Another factor is the problematic communication between nuclear and mitochondrial DNA that collaborate for the production of energy. Finally, exercise is important to maintain energy balance but is not enough to compensate for the genetic predisposition that obese people might have.

The second talk was related to people with deformities, such as hip dysplasia and osteoarthritis caused by dwarfism. The latter is a very rare disease and it‘s hard to study in humans therefore scientists use mice. Two mutations are responsible for funny-shaped proteins, stressed cells and skeletal abnormalities, however the main observation is their difference in autophagy activity. Autophagy is the mechanism for controlled cell death when the cells cannot get rid of defective proteins. This study is ongoing at the moment, but it helped us gain some insight in mechanisms that are involved in many physiological functions and when disrupted they have detrimental effects on development.

At the end, the almost exclusively female audience really enjoyed the talk titled “Should we mate with old men?”. In this talk, we explored the importance of age of both men and women in reproduction. The prevalence of Down syndrome increases exponentially when the mother is older than 45-50 years old. However, paternal age is also a risk factor for intellectual disability, with men passing one more mutation for every year older (i.e. 40 mutations at the age of 40). Freezing sperm is popular in the media nowadays, but we are not there yet. It is unknown why the consequence of mating with old men is intellectual disability, but it is possibly because brain function depends on numerous genes therefore there is a higher chance that it will be affected.

As you may have realised already, “pint of science” is an annual celebration of scientific development, with scientists organising informative sessions that aim to give the public a better understanding of the human body and resolve its mysteries with evidence. Join us next year to find more about the wonderful world of science!

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Archive

Swapping pipettes for placards

Usually, we don’t think of scientists as being overtly political people. By its very nature science is not partisan, because it’s about evaluating all the available evidence before making a decision. On the other side of the coin, it’s important for politicians and policy makers to pay attention to scientific development as they’ve got to make decisions about issues ranging from healthcare to agriculture to transport. During the EU referendum campaign Michael Gove said that the public “have had enough of experts” – but have they?

When Donald Trump was elected the President of the United States last year, it’s safe to say that not everyone was overjoyed to hear the news. The fact that in 2012 Trump had asserted on Twitter that climate change was a Chinese hoax “in order to make U.S. manufacture non-competitive” was one reason why many scientists were sceptical of his suitability to the role of a leader with global superpower. So far this scepticism seems to have been justified given that almost immediately after Trump took office, the section of the White House website called “Climate change” under the Obama administration was removed and replaced with “America first energy plan”. In March the President signed the Energy Independence executive order to reverse Obama’s Clean Power Plan that aimed to reduce carbon emissions.

The suggestion for a March for Science originated on Reddit, where it was proposed that Trump’s “war on science” needed to be publicly opposed with a protest in Washington, D.C.. This idea developed into a global movement, with marches and rallies in Washington as well as other sister satellite marches. It was decided that the marches would take place on 22nd April 2017 to coincide with Earth Day, and be celebratory of science and evidence-based decision making, rather than party political.

So, in over 600 cities across the world, scientists swapped their pipettes for placards and took to the streets. In the UK, thousands of scientists from academia and industry and their supporters joined in with marches. A prominent theme was fears over the negative impact Brexit could have on science in Britain, including loss of research funding and no longer having so many talented scientists from overseas coming to work in the UK. Following the marches, the campaign has said “the march is over, and the movement has begun”. So that the public can understand the issues prompting the marches, they need to be able to engage with science. In order to facilitate this, scientists are encouraged to connect with the wider community, explaining their research and listening to what the public have to say in return.

The people that marched did so to show the world that in the era of “fake news”, facts do need to be recognised and understood. One of the core values of the March for Science movement is that “science serves the interests of all humans, not just those in power” – maybe it is time to listen to the experts.

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Archive Philippa Rickard

Quench your thirst for science.

By Philippa Rickard

Like a pint? Like science? Pint of Science is for you! Exactly what it says on the, erm, pint glass. Quench your thirst and hear about current science it from its source: 3 days, 4 pubs, 12 exciting topics and 24 local scientists. No prior knowledge required, just a willingness to be inspired to think… and to maybe sink a drink or two.

Over the 15th, 16th and 17th May you can explore the four themes hosted this year at four local watering holes: Our Body at The Old George Inn, Atoms to Galaxies at The Tyne Bar, Beautiful Minds at The Percy Arms and Our Society at The Town Wall.

See where you fit into how our brains work and when they go wrong, how the media treats female politicians, the paradox of technological globalisation and personal isolation, battling invisible killers, how physics affects us (there will be fire!), the future of Newcastle in industry, science and art… and much more, including live experiments, puzzles and quizzes.

Get involved with this exciting and fast growing international festival, hosted simultaneously in 100 cities across 12 countries. Last year was a sell-out in Newcastle, get your tickets quick: https://pintofscience.co.uk/events/newcastle

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Alice Milne Archive

Bluesci takeover

By Alice Milne

{react} is run with a great deal of passion but not a lot of expertise.

The publishing industry is a wilderness. For example, did you know can reproduce someone’s twitter comment but may not be able to use the image in the tweet, or that you need bleed margins and to print pages in multiples of four? That’s before you even try to organise a committee meeting. Herding post-grads is like herding overly-educated cats.

It turns out {react} is not alone. I had the delight last week of talking to members of BlueSci, Cambridge University’s science magazine. We discovered that despite being 229 miles away (if the crow flies along the A1), we had fought many of the same battles. They invited {react} to become part of a nationwide, university science magazine network, to provide a platform to share expertise, ideas and opportunities.

Today we will begin by sharing an article.

Data in this modern electronic, social, web-based sphere is big, really big – writers from Cambridge tell us more about big data and its implications in our BlueSci takeover.
 http://reactmagteam.wixsite.com/reactmag/take-over-articles

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Archive Philippa Rickard

Academic anxiety – you’re not alone.

By Philippa Rickard

Eureka moments typically come during the most mundane activities. Washing the dishes, cutting the grass, showering, driving. It was during one long motorway stretch that I realised surprised: “The intellectual challenge is less than I anticipated, but the psychological challenge is so much more”. I was talking about my PhD, and my post-grad peer in the passenger seat nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

The PhD experience, for me, is a perpetual swing from feeling like a dog with a ball to a cat in a bath, great accomplishment to existential angst and back again. I have lost count of the number of times that I have burst into tears in front of my supervisors; because of malfunctioning machines, workload bottlenecks, exhaustion, even just ideas for further experiments. They tell me that it’s not the be-all-and-end-all, and they’re right, it’s not. There are so many bigger things happening in the world: wars, famine, disease, poverty, climate change. In the bigger picture, at this moment, what I’m doing, what I’m stressed about doesn’t actually matter. What I am suffering is, by popular definition, very much a ‘first world problem’. While this is a well-meaning truth, and provides some much needed perspective, ultimately it undermines my anxiety and in turn intensifies the isolation.

The University bubble is very insular, and research is a bubble within that bubble. The stage of your studies doesn’t matter or whether you are dealing with exams, coursework or general university life; stress, loneliness, anxiety and unworthiness are commonplace. You are not alone. The fact that these feelings are somewhat routine in academia is not OK (and that is another story all together), but there are ways to help yourself.

  1. Talk about it. To anyone inside or outside of your university life. You are not a failure for feeling unable to cope, and you certainly aren’t letting anyone down by admitting it. You will be surprised by how many of your peers feel the same.

  2. Plan your time each day. Especially important is to plan free time. Free time is not a luxury. If you struggle to find it, write it in your diary and stick to it.

  3. Break down your to-do list, and each task, into manageable chunks. Group things into how soon they need to be done and how critical it is that they actually get done.

  4. Assign different tasks to different times of day, according to your own cycles of focus and productivity.

  5. Find your own work locations, be it a quiet office, a noisy café or at home.

  6. Sleep properly.

  7. Eat properly.

  8. Take holidays.

  9. Spend time with the important people in your life.

  10. Do what works for you and do not compare yourself to others.

Often I feel as if I am leading a double life. I keep my ‘work’ life very much separate to my ‘home’ life. Being a PhD student is not my whole identity. Actually, it doesn’t even come close to being half of my identity. I struggle the most when I have to make sacrifices in my home life to make room for academia. To mitigate this I have learned to plan my time, down to the hour, weeks in advance. First, I plan in my time dedicated to what I enjoy, which for me is my chosen sport. Second, in goes digital or face-to-face time with friends and family (who I have normally been neglecting). Then, dead last, in goes my work time in line with deadlines and other commitments. This is by no means a perfect process, curve balls get thrown that you can’t control, and dealing with those is something I’m still learning.

That is the point of all this though. Learning. Nothing is perfect, no one knows everything, and learning is a perpetual process. There is more to life than academic credit, learn to be kind to yourself.

If you are experiencing any difficulties please contact the Just Ask team [http://www.ncl.ac.uk/justask/], Nightline [https://www.nusu.co.uk/support/nightlinenightbus/], Student Wellbeing [http://www.ncl.ac.uk/students/wellbeing/support/resources/sources.htm] or the Samaritans [http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/contact-us].