Interview with a Scientist: Justin, Biologist

12th May 2017Interviewsbiologist, biology, careers, scientist, studentsClare

This week we interviewed Justin, a biologist who has recently started working on a PhD looking into the microbes in woodland soils and how they relate to essential processes such as decomposition. phd

Why is your research important?

There is a lack of current understanding of woodland soils, which are really important and we rely on them a lot so we need to have a strong understanding of them to be able to care for them effectively.

What did you do before starting your PhD?

I had a year out before starting my undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of York. During this year I travelled to America and volunteered at a bat hospital. During my first degree I had a placement year working a Kew Gardens. I helped on the millennium seed bank project which aims to conserve rare seeds from plants that are at risk of extinction.

I stayed at the University of York for my Masters Degree, but also went to Uganda in this year to study the distribution of tropical birds for my masters research. I’ve just started my first year of my PhD.

How did you decide on PhD?

I have always been interested in networks in nature, like food webs, for example. It happened that my PhD supervisor is an expert in this area so it was a great chance for me to learn more about networks.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to study at university?

Do and see as much as you can, take part in lots of different actvities and volunteer. Have a broad range of interests, not only does it look good on a CV or personal statement but it can help you discover what you want to do and it’ll help you make lots of friends once you get to uni.

What was your favourite part of university?

Meeting new people, trying new things. I tried out things like caving and scuba diving while I was at uni – things that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.

Whats the best thing about being a PhD student?

Freedom learn about the things that I find interesting.

What do you plan to do in the future?

Continue to investigate how we can understand complex links between species.

Has university helped you get where you want to be?

Definitely – uni is where I want to be.

interview-justin

#TryThisTuesday: Milky Fireworks

9th May 2017Try This Tuesdaychemistry, colours, experiment, fat, kitchen chemistry, milk, TryThisTuesday, waterClare

For this week’s experiment you will need to raid your fridge and kitchen cupboards to get some milk, food colouring and washing up liquid.

Pour some milk into a dish or bowl, this works better with full fat milk (we’ll tell you why later!). Add small drops of your food colouring wherever you like in the milk.

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Get some washing up liquid on the end of a spoon or cotton bud and gently tap the spots of food colouring with it. 20170509_143248

The food colouring should burst out into colourful stars and wavy shapes. This happens because the washing up liquid molecules have a hydrophobic tail, these means that they don’t like water so try to get away from it by seeking fat molecules. The milk (especially if it is full fat milk) contains lots of fat molecules. So the washing up liquid moves around in the milk seeking out this fat and takes the food colouring along with it, creating these funky patterns.

This is why we use washing up liquid to clean our dishes. The hydrophobic, fat-loving parts cling to grease and fat. The head of the washing up molecules are hydrophilic, meaning they love water. The heads cling to the water and the tails cling to the grease, this pulls the grease and dirt from your plates and washes them away with the water, giving you sparkly clean dishes.

Happy Birthday Sir David Attenborough!

8th May 2017Articlesanimals, biology, david attenborough, ecology, famous scientists, nature, scientists, zoologyClare

Today is Sir David Attenborough’s 91st birthday. To celebrate, we’ve written a poem looking back at his extraordinary life and hoping that someday we can follow in his footsteps.

Born in London in 1926,
He’s since won the hearts of all the Brits.
David didn’t always know all about the wild,
But his interest was sparked as a young child.
In fact, he was very much in the dark,
Until that thrilling day at Bradgate Park
When he discovered his first fossil,
Which led to a future so colossal.

In the 1950s came David’s first TV show, 0e8396605fcd34cdf9f9c8d11c909679
All over the world, the team would go.
The programme was called zoo quest,
And today may have caused a protest
As it saw David catching animals for London zoo
Anteaters, chimps and rare birds too.

David soon stopped taking these creatures
And helped conserve their wonderful features.
He showed us the magical Great Barrier Reef
And little ants that cut up and carry a leaf
To feed it to something big and fungal.
He also took us into the depths of the jungle
To see the great apes and what a thriller,
When he cuddled that huge gorilla!

David searched for a dragon on the isle of Komodo
And uncovered the secrets of the extinct dodo.
He took us to the arctic for polar bears in the snow
And in the dark showed us worms that glow.
And who can forget that time in the cave,
When a bat flew into the face or Sir Dave.

pervianfrog Look at all the species named after you,
A dragonfly, Peruvian frog and echidna too,
There’s also the goblin spider and Namibian lizard,
David Attenborough- a true ecological wizard.
Then there’s Boaty McBoat Face – what a boat,
Now named for you, lets hope it forever floats.

From showing us delightful animals on screen,
To being knighted by the Queen.
You’ve travelled the breadth of the Earth,
Now let’s celebrate the day of your birth.
So let’s have a slice of birthday battenberg,
Here’s to you Sir David Attenborough!

#TryThisTuesday: Cork Balancing

3rd May 2017Try This Tuesdaybalance, corks, forks, physics, TryThisTuesdayClare

Today we’re challenging you to balance a cork on its round side, on the very end of your finger, whilst keeping your finger straight. 20161018_163129_resized

Could you manage it?

It’s quite tricky, but here’s a hint: two forks could help you out.

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Have you figured it out yet? Remember the cork must be balanced on your finger not the forks.

The solution is to stick the forks into either side of the cork. You should then be able to easily balance it on the end of your finger.

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There are two reasons this works. Firstly the forks add weight to the object you’re trying to balance. Because the ends of the forks hang below your finger, it lowers the centre of mass so that it sits underneath your finger, increasing the stability.

Secondly, adding the forks extends the object. By making it longer, the centre point is also stretched making it easier to locate so easier to balance the object. This is why tight-rope walkers often have long poles to help them balance.

Image result for tight rope walker

International Girls in ICT Day 2017

27th April 2017Articles, Listiclescomputer science, engineering, famous scientists, maths, science, scientist, STEMb6009997

There is a huge shortfall of ICT professionals worldwide, with many companies looking to increase the number of women working for them. However, many girls don’t even consider a career in ICT. We decided to celebrate some influential women in ICT from the times computers were invented to now.

Ada Lovelace

Ada was an English Mathematician who worked on the ‘Analytical Engine’, one of the first designs for modern computers. She recognised that computers could do a lot more than was previously thought and designed the first algorithm that could be carried out by computers. She is often called the first computer programmer for designing this.

Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray

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Joan was an English cryptanalyst (analysing information systems to breach cryptographic security systems) who is best known for her work as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. She worked on the Enigma project, which cracked the German system of encoding their messages and led to WWII being much shorter and saving thousands of lives. The Enigma project was a very early form of ICT.

Grace Hopper

grace-hopper

Grace was an American Computer Scientist and a United States Navy Rear Admiral. She was the first person to develop a compiler, despite being told by many people that it would never work. A compiler is a programme that changes what you write on a computer into a language that can be understood by the computer. This allows computers to work with words rather than just numbers as was previously done. There is now a yearly Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, giving women in computer science a chance to share their research.

Anita Borg

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Working as a computer scientist she developed ways to analyse high speed memory systems in computers. She founded Systers, a network for women in technology, and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. In 1997, she founded the Institute for Women and Technology (now the Anita Borg Institute), to increase the number of women in technology and their impact on the world.

Marissa Mayer

marissa

She joined Google as employee number 20 and as their first female engineer after studying computer science at university. She oversaw the layout of Google’s home page and became Vice President of search products and user experience. In 2012 she became president and CEO of Yahoo! and led them to buy Tumblr in 2013.

Earth Day 2017

22nd April 2017Articlesbiology, challenge, Earth, earth science, environment, recycle, reuse, science, STEM, sustainabilityb6009997

It’s the planet that we live on and home to 7 billion people as well as billions of plants and animals. But with climate change and other issues such as pollution, we need to do more to look after our home. Earth Day gives the opportunity to come together and work toward a greener future, showing support for the environment.

Why is it important?

Humans are using resources at an alarmingly fast rate, currently using more resources than the Earth can produce. Today humans use 1.5 planets’ worth of resources every year!

Climate change is a huge problem for the future of our planet. It will lead to things like increased sea level and flooding, drought, and a rise in temperature. This will make it more difficult for plants and animals to survive and hence humans. Scientists agree that we can reduce the impacts of climate change, but we need to act as fast as we can.

There are lots of other environmental issues such as deforestation, pollution and ocean acidification that are affecting the environment. These problems can lead to a loss in the number of animal and plant species causing the Earth to have reduced biodiversity (the number of species). Lots of plants and animals are interlinked in food chains, so losing one can have a knock on effect on other species. Biodiversity is vital to our survival, for supporting the ecosystem, finding things like new medicines and for providing humans with lots of raw materials.

How can we help?

There are lots of things we can do to reduce our footprint on the Earth. These are just some things you could try and do:

Shop for locally sourced produce
Eat food that is in season
Eat less meat
Bring your own shopping bags
Use a reusable water bottle rather than bottled water
Don’t drive if there is an alternative
Take holidays closer to home
Recycle
Use energy saving lights
Unplug your electronics when not in use
Plant a tree
Use a reusable coffee cup

#TryThisTuesday: Easter Eggsperiments

11th April 2017Try This Tuesdaybottle, chemistry, easter, eggs, elastic, experiments, momentum, physics, test, Try This Tuesday, vinegarClare

As Easter is coming up we’re treating you to four experiments instead of one this week! And a little video showing Ellie and Clare demonstrating each of them (or at least attempting to!)

1. Hard-boiled Egg Test

Our first eggsperiment requires a hard boiled egg so we’re going to show you how you can test if an egg is hard boiled or not.

Lay a hard-boiled and a normal egg flat on their sides and spin them. Put your finger on the eggs to stop spinning them and then let go. The one that starts spinning again is the raw egg.

This is all due to momentum. When you spin the eggs you spin their insides too. In the hard boiled egg, the insides are fixed to the shell so it behaves as you would expect. In the raw egg the insides continue to spin after you’ve stopped the shell. When you let go, the momentum of the spinning yolk carries the shell and the whole egg starts spinning again.

2. Egg in a Bottle

Now we know which is our hardboiled egg, we need to peel it for next experiment. This one requires a glass bottle, a match and of course, the egg.

If we place the egg on top of the bottle it doesn’t look like it’s going to fit in. But if we light the match and drop it into the bottle then after a second place the egg on top, the egg will squeeze into the bottle.

The match heats up the air in the bottle, causing it to expand slightly. The egg creates a seal so more air cannot enter. As the air cools inside the bottle it decreases the pressure and forces the egg into the bottle.

3. Naked Bouncy Egg

To make a naked bouncy egg you will need an egg, white vinegar and a beaker. Place your egg in the beaker and pour in enough vinegar to cover the egg. Leave you egg here overnight.

The egg shell is made mostly of calcium carbonate, this reacts with the acid in the vinegar and dissolves to leave a naked egg. It also produces carbon dioxide gas, so as your egg is soaking you may see little bubbles of CO2 forming around it.

After a day, carefully remove you egg from the vinegar and wipe away any remaining shell. You should see that it’s now quite rubbery and bouncy as well.

4. Bouncy Elastic Egg Drop

For this final eggsperiement you can use your bouncy naked eggs but we’re cheating a little bit and using rubber eggs. For this you will need to take two rubber eggs and join them together with a piece of elastic or a string of elastic bands.

When you hold your eggs next to one another and let go they both hit the floor at the same time as you might expect. But what do you think will happen if we just hold the top egg and let the other hang below it, which will reach the floor first when we let go?

Gravitational acceleration is the same no matter the weight or mass of an object, but when we add elastic between the eggs, this adds an extra force that speeds up the drop of the higher up egg as the elastic pulls them together.

#TryThisTuesday: Skipping Stones

4th April 2017Try This Tuesdayangles, beach, maths, momentum, physics, rocks, sea, seaside, try this at the beach, TryThisTuesday, velocity, waterClare

During our time as STEM Ambassadors, we’ve visited several beaches together. From Newcastle in Northern Ireland to Clear Water Bay in Hong Kong and even beaches closer to home in Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, we always ended up skipping rocks somewhere!

But how do we do it!? Why don’t the rocks just fall into the water?

The key is to get a nice flat rock and throw it quickly at the right angle. The large surface area allows the stone to bounce off the water’s surface.

You need to throw it fairly hard to give it enough speed to gain momentum before it hits the water. When the rock hits the surface of the water it pushes the water down whilst the water pushes the rock up. If the force pushing the stone up from the water is greater than or balances the weight of the stone then it will bounce on for another skip rather than sinking. This is why it helps to have a nice small stone.

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It is also important to get the right velocity. Velocity is the speed of something in a give direction. So we have the speed covered, now for the direction. Scientists have discovered that the optimal angle at which the stone should hit the water should be around 20 degrees. As you probably won’t be able to measure this on a causal day trip to the beach, just aim to throw the stone sideways rather than up or down.

Hopefully you’ll manage more than my measly two skips. Try beating the world record of 88 skips in a row!

Ten Amazing Facts about the human body!

3rd April 2017Listiclesbiology, body, brain, factoids, facts, medicine, science, STEMb6009997

You take it everywhere you go, but I bet that there are a few facts about your body that you didn’t know!

1. There is enough DNA in the human body to stretch from the Sun to Pluto and back – 17 times!

There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body, all of them containing about 5cm of of DNA (when uncoiled). DNA is made up of lots of different nucleotide pairs that can decide some of our features such as eye and hair colour.

2. The average human body contains ten times more bacterial cells than human cells.

However bacteria are much smaller so don’t take up that much space. Lots of these bacterial cells are important, such as intestinal bacteria that help keep our immune systems healthy. unravelled-dna

3. Except for identical twins, each person on Earth has a unique smell.

Just how we each have individual finger prints we all have our own smell. This is determined by your genes, and can be used by other animals to identify individuals.

4. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.

The average heart pumps about 70ml of blood out with each beat and a healthy heart beats around 70 times a minute.

5. By the time you go to bed at night you are about 1 cm shorter than when you woke up that morning.

This is because the cartilage between your bones is compressed throughout the day.

6. Nerve impulses to and from the brain can travel as fast as 250 miles per hour.

A nerve impulse is an electrical signal that sends messages to the brain when the nerve is triggered by a stimulus. It is really important that they travel fast, for example, if you burn your finger it’s important that your brain gets the message to stop touching it quickly. nerves

7. There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee.

Humans are not quite the naked apes that we’re made out to be. We have lots of hair, but on most of us it’s not obvious as a majority of the hairs are too fine or light to be seen.

8. The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.

To put that in perspective, the distance around the earth is about 25,000 miles, so your blood vessels could travel more than two times around the Earth if laid out. blood-vessels

9. Babies are always born with blue eyes.

The colour of your eyes depends on the genes you get from your parents, but at birth most babies appear to have blue eyes. The reason behind this is the pigment melanin. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye colour.

10. Every day an adult body produces 300 billion new cells.

Your body not only needs energy to keep your organs up and running but also to constantly repair and build new cells to form the building blocks of your body itself.

STEM on Tour: Hong Kong!

29th March 2017Articlesbusking, hong kong, science, science busking, science communication, science show, STEM, stemontour, street scienceClare

Recently myself and my fellow STEM Graduate Ambassadors, Ellie and Will, were lucky enough travel to Hong Kong to take part in the British Council organised Science Alive Festival at the HK Science Museum. As the festival’s theme this year was This Pale Blue Dot – we also took two Earth Science students, Hannah and Elizabeth.

Will, Elizabeth, Clare, Hannah and Ellie at the Hong Kong Science Museum

To take full advantage of this wonderful opportunity we also reached out to some schools with the help of Anthea, Newcastle’s Hong Kong Recruitment Manager. With 20 STEM workshops booked in, we took to the skies with our bags packed with as much kit as we could carry including a drill, over 20 metres of rope and a dinosaur costume.

16992250_407736942893573_9006364662072727951_o — Hannah and Elizabeth delivering our Thinking Like a Scientist workshop

During the first three days, our time was spread amongst seven schools. We were delighted to see how bright and engaged the children were throughout our workshops, particularly in the primary schools. Each school was extremely welcoming, many of them gave us banners with their school logo on and other gifts. The Vice Principal of one school even took us to a nearby bakery after the visit to treat us to a local delicacy – a warm egg tart.

The weekend snuck up on us and before we knew it we were performing our science show: The Story of Earth, at the Science Alive festival. I was setting Will on fire (don’t worry, it didn’t hurt him although I did actually singe his arm hair at one point) and Ellie was freezing flowers with liquid nitrogen. Meanwhile Hannah and Elizabeth were science busking; entertaining and educating children with science demonstrations.

We also ran training workshops for teachers. We taught primary school teachers how to think outside the box to raise aspirations and teach science in a more interactive and fun way. At the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, we trained the students on good science communication practices, from science busking to written texts. We explained how they could simplify their language to make their research more accessible and easy to understand.

Ellie in her element at the beach on the HKUST campus

During our ten days in Hong Kong we had an absolute blast, educating thousands of children and adults and learning all about their culture and styles of teaching. From bursting a 3-foot confetti-filled balloon to teaching children how to make honeycomb, from visiting the highest bar in the world to seeing 10,000 Buddha statues in one room, it was an unforgettable experience.

We feel honoured to have been given the opportunity to share our activities with another part of the world and hope next year’s team will be able to have a similar adventure.

STEM Newcastle

Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths