Monthly Archives: October 2010

Is there more oxygen in a park than in a city centre?

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So this morning on Hallam FM I called in to answer a question that the presenter had asked, part of a “find-out-friday” sort of feature. It was kinda of like the I’m a Scientist event I took part in back in June, except with an adult.

The question was, “Is there less oxygen in Fargate than in clumber park?” Not being a climate scientist, or with any REAL knowledge in air quality monitoring, I thought I’d ruminate on the question and give it a go trying to answer.

First off, my answer was “No – this wouldn’t be the case in Sheffield, though there have been instances in very densely populated cities that are very busy with people, traffic, and not with many green spaces, where lower than average oxygen levels have been measured”. So what’s the reasoning behind the difference in Sheffield and somewhere like, say, Mexico city?

First off, some background to this question: Michelle Mustard rightly thought that trees produce oxygen and so if there’s lots of them, surely there would be more oxygen in a place where there’s more trees, and less oxygen in a place where there aren’t as many trees. Trees produce oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis – the way that they make energy to grow and live – and use carbon dioxide, sunlight and water.

So how comes my answer was no? Well, oxygen is a gas, and gases move about so given that there isn’t anything to hold the oxygen where it is, like a big, air-tight bubble, or biodome, it will just dilute away in to the atmosphere – I liken this to the atmosphere being a massive tank of water, and in one place you drop some green food colouring (this is the oxygen from trees) – but the green colour won’t stay in one place, it’ll mix in with the masses of water and get diluted away, so you won’t be able to see any difference in colour at one part to the next.

What has lead to there being less oxygen recorded in the middle of big cities? Well that’s just it – they’re big. There comes a point when the population density is so high, there’s so many people breathing out carbon dioxide and breathing in oxygen, and there being so many cars that use up some oxygen when burning fossil fuels too that it can make a significant impact. Carbon dioxide actually displaces oxygen, it pushes it out of the way, so on hot sunny days where trees are pumping out oxygen, but in a city with tall buildings and when the air is very still and stagnant, there can be a measurable difference. There are almost 9 million people living in Mexico city though, not to mention it sits in a valley surrounded by mountains and volcanoes in addition to generally weak wind patterns, it’s reknownded for it’s pollution, coming from over 50,000 industries and an estimated 4 million cars operating in the area. Whereas within the city limits of Sheffield there are only about 550,000 inhabitants – plus lets face it, Fargate and the surrounding area isn’t exactly the busiest and most congested city centres in the UK by a long-shot (I was just driving in London city yesterday, so I can personally vouch for this, even if I can’t give you exact numbers just now to prove it).

But the levels of oxygen shouldn’t be your biggest concern. The air around us is on average, made up of 21% oxygen (78% nitrogen, 0.1%argon and 0.03% carbon dioxide) – but in the history of our planet, intrepid scientists have been able to show that the levels of the different gases in air have changed. They do this in a sort of Jurrasic Park manner by drilling in to lumps of amber with pockets of air trapped in them and seeing how much of the gases make up that air. From this they’ve worked out that the levels of oxygen in air have varied quite a lot over hundred of millions of years, back to around 100 million years ago when air was made up by about 35% of oxygen.

Where has it gone then??? Well, some believe that it has to do with industrialisation, but others think it has something to do with a massive forest fire that happened about 10 million years ago. They can see in the levels of charcoal that they find that forest fires became more common as the levels of oxygen increased (oxygen is needed for fires to burn).

Given that we only use about a quarter of the oxygen we breath I’m not sure we need to worry too much – people like the Tibetans have adapted to living at high altitudes where there is less oxygen because the air isn’t as dense, so if the levels steadily decrease we may be able to adapt. I’ve seen a figure of 7% being the lowest we could tolerate.

So oxygen crisis? What oxygen crisis! Yes we have to be vigilant to the amounts of pollution we pump out, that is obvious, but when thinking specifically about the levels of oxygen, it shouldn’t be too much of a worry.

Sheffield, depsite a bad rep from the industrial revolution, has actually got really good clean air standards for a city – not to mention is one of the greenest cities is Europe. With 4 trees per person and an award-winning air quality and monitoring team we can feel happy and healthy. If you’re vaguely interested they actually host a website where you can check on the air quality from over a hundred different monitoring sites. We shouldn’t be complacent, if only for the health and comfort of our fellow city-dwellers.

Sheffield smog

p.s. Has anyone seen a bus shelter with a green roof (ie grass and stuff) in Sheffield?

Fun fact: 2 fully grown, mature trees can in one year produce the equivalent amount of oxygen to support a family of 4.

Bacterial enzyme reveals novel mechanism of DNA repair

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Arran-Leigh Roberts

Our DNA comes under attack daily from a variety of things in our environment; cigarette smoke, industrial waste and UV radiation from the sun to name a few. This is in addition to natural damage that occurs in our cells from chemical conditions and errors in DNA replication. All this amounts to that in a given cell, up to 1 million bases of DNA are damaged per day. Fortunately, our cells contain a number of molecular repair mechanisms which deal with this damage by restoring the correct DNA sequence.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Pittsburgh have now uncovered a new mechanism by which DNA is repaired when it has undergone damage by a process called alkylation. Alkylation is a common type of DNA damage which is caused by certain industrial toxins, some components of cigarette smoke and even some chemotherapy drugs. These alkylating agents transfer methyl or other alkyl groups onto guanine bases in the DNA – where they do not belong. This causes an alteration in the shape of the DNA molecule itself and stops replication occurring successfully, especially if the damage occurs within a gene-containing region.

Whilst humans only have one enzyme to repair different types of alkylation, namely a glycosylase called AAG, bacteria have several of these, with each targeting specific types of damage. Whilst studying bacterial glycosylases, the researchers discovered the enzyme AlkD, which functions in a novel manner. The enzyme essentially causes the base pair damaged by alkylation to rotate out of the DNA helix. Once outside the helix, it is able to spontaneously detach and AlkD helps to accelerate this process.

Although this research highlights the function of just a single bacterial enzyme, it provides invaluable insight into the process by which enzymes may recognise and deal with DNA damage. This has been previously impossible to pin down with the help of the human enzyme, AAG.

This finding may be particularly relevant to the production of new chemotherapy drugs for cancer treatment. These drugs specifically aim to cause lethal alkylation of the DNA contained in tumour cells. The trouble with current chemotherapy drugs is that they can potentially cause harmful mutations in the DNA of healthy cells. It is hoped that by better understanding the mechanisms of DNA repair, novel chemotherapy drugs can be produced that are able to target their toxic effects to tumour cells only.

My response to Dr Terence Kealey

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This blog post was going to be a report on how the Science is Vital protest outside the treasury went on Saturday – it went very well. In preparation to write it, I went out and bought all the papers to see if and how the event was covered; as I flicked through the large flimsey pages of the Sunday Times I was disheartened to find the editors had decided that their learned readers were not interested in the plight of British science – they would however love to know Simon Cowell’s next career move and that that charming Prince Charles is worried about “Manchines”1 – and so there was no mention of the rally.

What I did find in the Sunday Times made me so angry that I decided I would write a post rebutting the preposterous statements of Dr Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham2, instead. In a segment the newspaper calls “Think Tank” – which in itself is amusing since real think tanks are almost invariably better described as lobby groups – the man who recently said that female students were a perk of the job tells us how cutting the government funding for science will actually result in better science (I’d link to the article but then I’d be encouraging you to give Rupert Murdoch money to read his drivel, which is something I wouldn’t want to do). Here’s my reply.

He begins by praising UK science for all that it has achieved on a shoestring of a budget (my words not his): twice as many Nobel prizes as France and ten more than Germany, but then goes on to state that, happily, there is plenty of room to further shorten the length of our shoestrings.

First he says we should stop giving businesses money for research. I wasn’t aware we did that so I can’t comment on whether it’s a good idea or not. But it seems it might be. Though I would also point out that this is a two-way street and that universities do very well out of industrial collaborations.

He then suggests raising tuition fees, allowing universities to free up money to fund research; in this he’s not alone. Apparently at the moment universities are using their own reserves to top up the miserly funds given to them by the government to educate students, so by making the students pay instead the treasury wouldn’t have to give the universities money for research because the universities would have their own spare cash. The flaw in this plan is that the treasury wants to make quick savings, but students can’t afford to pay £7,000 upfront so the treasury has to loan it to them, meaning all this little plan achieves is diverting money from one recipient to another. The treasury makes no savings.

His next idea, should these two marvellous ideas not placate George, is for the research councils to shut their own units, ones that are separate from universities and therefore, Terence argues, less productive due to a lack of competition for resources. Whilst this idea does avoid some of the pitfalls of cutting university funding it does make some unreasonable assumptions about the value of these institutions and slightly contradicts his previous assertion that freeing up money within universities would help research. Research institutes are very desirable places to work due to their greater resources, this attracts the brightest scientists making them incredibly productive. Take the MRC laboratories in Cambridge for example, where monoclonal antibodies were developed; this brilliant discovery created a tool used by molecular biology laboratories across the world and is also the basis of a new generation of drugs, it’s therefore not surprising that the institute is exceedingly wealthy as a result. These units are not independent from the rest of the UKs research centres, they still have to prove their worth to keep funding and to keep the talented scientists that could easily be poached by ambitious institutes abroad – not all leading scientists want to be shackled by the teaching responsibilities associated with jobs in universities. They are valuable and not to be lost.

He then invokes the laughable but oh so loved Tory myth that when you withdrawal public funding for something the private sector steps in to save the day. He cites IVF which was developed with private money. IVF, I think, is something that has obvious financial benefits and so it would be easy to see why someone keen on making millions would fund such a thing, unfortunately this generosity quickly vanishes when the business man can’t see where the profits are going to come from. And incidentally, the MRC didn’t fund IVF research on ethical grounds. Cuts would result in huge swathes of culturally valuable blue-skies research losing out, meaning that the next graphene would more than likely be found abroad.

You can’t rely on charities like Cancer Research to step into the breach either. Does Dr Kealey think that they’ve been quietly hiding money away, not funding research just because the government give us the bare minimum to function? Of course not, together the charities currently channel over a billion pounds into UK research, I don’t think they are going to find it easy to raise that higher in these straightened times.

He then made me decorate my coffee table with a mouthful of tea: “government funding of research seems to have no economic benefit”, he claims. He cites a 2003 OECD paper for this, well here are a few more recent reports that you may have missed Terence: a 2009 one from OECD, some BIS SET statistics and something the guys at Brunel put together. So no need to use out-of-date reports now is there? How you can claim that no economic gains are made from funding that has resulted in medical breakthroughs, nanotechnology and the internet I have no idea!

I gave up on my cup of tea as the author then decided to use Japan as an example of the futility of governments funding science, thus proving his utter ignorance for the subject on which he was writing. He notes that many of Japan’s Nobel prizes have come after their economy faltered – there are two glaring problems with this. Firstly, Nobel prizes are often awarded many years after the research was carried out – Ernst Ruska only won his physics prize in 1986, half a century after he was involved in the development of the electron microscope. Secondly, Japan leads the world in it’s commitment to science dedicating almost 4% of it’s GDP, this compares to our government’s paltry effort which is just above 0.5%. Along with many other nations including Germany and America, Japan has long recognised the importance of investing in R&D to get out of economic slumps.

Contrary to Dr Terence Kealey’s malformed thesis, British science does not contain excess fat that can be trimmed; it is already a lean mean beast, running on a budget that makes other countries scratch their heads when they see the myriad awards for the quality of our research. There is not a chance that the £6bn we currently invest can be matched by charities and industry, no-one will step into the void. This is particularly true for the more avant garde research that holds no immediate financial returns but nevertheless enriches our lives and creates eureka moments. We should be following other technology based economies and increasing, not decreasing, our investment, the country’s future depends on it.

 

 

1 Prince Charles has written in a new book that he is very concerned about new technology which enables us the link human brains with computers, he believes that the next generation is going to “lose the experience of existence”.

2 The UK’s only privately funded university

Goldilocks planet suggests life may be abundant in our galaxy

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Steve Sadler

A team of American planet hunters announced the discovery last week of an Earth-like planet in orbit around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581. The planet has got the astrobiology community excited because it fulfils several criteria thought necessary for a world to be hospitable to extraterrestrial life.

Weighing in at just 3.1 earth masses, the planet, unimaginatively named Gl581g, is the third lightest planet discovered orbiting a star other than our Sun. It is outdone only by one of its five sister planets, Gl581e, which orbits so close to their parent star that any atmosphere it might once have had has now boiled off into space, and a tiny irradiated rock in orbit around the pulsar PSR 1257+12.

Gl581g’s low mass makes it highly likely that it is a rocky, Earth-like body rather than a gas giant like Jupiter, Saturn and the majority of other extrasolar planets discovered to date. Whilst the mass is low, it is still high enough to allow the world to retain an atmosphere, which is another prerequisite for habitability. Furthermore, the team put the orbital distance of the new planet at 0.146 AU (where 1 AU is the orbital distance of the Earth around the Sun), which is slap-bang in the middle of the star’s so called ‘habitable zone’, defined as the range of orbital radii within which the moderate temperature allows water to exist in liquid form. As well as this stellar habitable zone, there is also a galactic habitable zone, which places limits on the position of a potentially habitable planet’s parent star in the galaxy. Too near the centre, and any planets that form will be sterilised by the flux of high energy radiation from the galactic centre. Too far away, and there are insufficient heavy elements to form the complex molecules that make up life as we know it, not to mention the rocky planets themselves. Until now, only one planet in the Universe was known to have all these factors ‘just right’ to support life, but this new discovery, if confirmed, would bring that figure up to two.

“Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet,” said Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz who led the team along with Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institute of Washington. “The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common.”

Gl581g was discovered by the radial velocity or ‘RV’ method, which involves searching for the tiny forward-backward wobble of a star’s motion induced by the gravitational attraction of its daughter planets. The wobble manifests itself as a shifting of the dark absorption lines in the star’s spectrum, first to the blue (short wavelength) as the star is pulled towards us, then to the red (long wavelength) end as the star is pulled away. This phenomenon, ubiquitous in astronomy, is called Doppler shifting, and is the process responsible for the change in pitch of an ambulance siren as it speeds first towards and then away from an observer on the pavement. Vogt and Butler’s team studied the spectrum of the star over a period of 11 years, and by plotting the precise radial velocity implied by the star’s Doppler shift against time, they were able to infer the existence of the ‘Super-Earth’ and its five sisters.

The paper is due to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, and is available now as a preprint from arXiv.org, or from: http://www.nsf.gov//news/longurl.cfm?id=206. Gl581g data on the exoplanet encyclopedia: http://exoplanet.eu/planet.php?p1=Gl+581&p2=g.

New coral reef found off the coast of Israel

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Joey Shepherd

 

A crew of marine researchers, headed by Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham from the from the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa in Israel, set sail on September 6.  In the Nautilus, a research ship owned by famed oceanographer Robert Ballard who discovered the wreck of RMS Titanic, the team set out to research the relatively unknown Mediterranean sea floor off the coast of Israel. At the time, Prof. Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, President of the University of Haifa, was quoted as saying “The future is in the sea and this voyage is a first step towards understanding the mystery of a region that is so close to us yet still so far and unknown”. The researchers didn’t know when they embarked on their voyage that what they would find was a ‘magnificent’ deep-sea coral reef, 30-40km off the coast of Tel Aviv and some 700m deep, in an area of scarce sea life – an oasis of life in the deep sea.

Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham, who also captained the vessel, headed the scientific team for the two and a half week long expedition aboard the Nautilus – a ship equipped with the technology needed for sea-floor research, including diving robots which ranged to depths of 1.7km down into the Mediterranean during the expedition. “We did not expect, know, or even imagine that we would come across these reefs and certainly not such large ones. It’s like finding a flourishing oasis in the middle of the desert,” said Dr. Yizhaq Makovsky, who directed the University of Haifa control centre for the project. The reefs are the first deep sea coral reefs to be found off the coast of Israel, and their discovery could, amongst other things, aid researchers in unravelling the effects of global climate changes through history.

The sea-bed samples recovered from the expedition are waiting to be examined in detail, however, and as Dr. Makovsky explained, “Our discovery only demonstrates the potential of the many surprises that await us in the depths of this area. An immediate implication of this discovery is that there is an urgent need to classify the area as a deep-sea reserve, as are other coral reef areas around the world”.

As well as finding the coral reefs the team photographed marine life hundreds of metres below the surface in its natural habitat for the first time. They also encountered two shipwrecks, perhaps solving old mysteries whilst discovering new ones.

Neurological disorders and science funding: a plea.

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Being a lowly PhD student and thus spending most of my work-time focusing on a very narrow research programme, I actually know embarrassingly little about the wider field in which my work sits.  This is something that to some extent, I accept as inevitable for now, though it is something I very much hope will change over time as I get more chances to meet and talk with people from different areas of research, and maybe in the future be involved with multiple research projects.
At the moment, I have something particular in mind and that is the broad and complex area of neurological disorders and neurodegenerative disease.  Wikipedia returns a terrifyingly long list of these.  Of course, many people are familiar with some of these afflictions and their effects, such as Alzheimer’s disease.  Then there are those which many people have heard of, but common misconceptions abound as to their symptoms and progression, such as schizophrenia, which, contrary to popular belief, is neither classified by nor typically includes ‘multiple personalities.’   
But far fewer people may be familar with Fatal Familial Insomnia, an extremely rare inherited disease in which sufferers literally lose the ability to sleep, along with experiencing hallucinations, panic attacks and dementia.  Death eventually follows, usually within three years of diagnosis, and there is currently no cure.
The problems resulting from neurological disease are however, broader than the direct symptoms the disease may cause.  In Williams’ syndrome, for example, a chromosomal disorder, sufferers show (amongst many other things) extreme sociability.  This is possibly due to the disorder’s effects on the amygdala, a subcortical brain structure important in regulating our fear response.  While this may at first not seem to be problematic, our wariness and mistrust of strangers is an important behavioural tool in helping to ensure our safety, and its disordered function – as in Williams’ syndrome – can put sufferers in real danger.
There is a good reason for my broaching this saddening subject, and that is the government.  With just days to go before the Tory-Lib Dem coalition unveil their plans for making £83billion worth of cuts, there is growing concern that science funding will be disproportionately hit.  Beyond my common sense, I cannot speak for other areas of science and why reducing their funding will be disastrous.  Nor am I going to claim to be an expert about the other effects of these cuts,  such as the oft-cited inevitable ‘brain drain’ that will ensue or the ultimate detriment to the economy that I believe science cuts will cause.
One thing I do know about, though, is a set of nuclei called the basal ganglia.  I’ve mentioned them before in this blog and the Inside TRAK blog.  They sit in the middle of the brain, beneath the cortex.  They’re common to all vertebrates, and while their functions are many and varied, our research group believes their primary role is that of ‘action selection’, or choosing what to do next. We think their other functions enhance or complement their ability to do this.  They rely heavily on a ‘neuromodulator’ called

dopamine.  This is often referred to in the press as a ‘pleasure chemical’ but the reality is that its roles, too, are many and varied, dependent on the brain region in question, and not entirely understood.  We do know, however, that it is required for the basal ganglia to do their job properly.  They are constantly ‘bathed’ in dopamine, which is synthesised in a region called the ‘substantia nigra’ or ‘black substance’, so called because is literally appears black in brain slices.
The degeneration of this area is Parkinson’s disease.  It causes the amount of dopamine supplied to the basal ganglia to diminish, and the effects are profound and debilitating.  An inability to initiate desired movement and tremor are the most commonly known symptoms, but sufferers can also experience depression, hallucinations, anxiety, dementia and obsessive-compulsive behaviours.  Now it just so happens that at least some symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can actually be managed rather well, at least for a few years.  Some interventions, such as Deep Brain Stimulation, can provide really quite radical improvements.  This is fantastic, but our understanding of exactly why this method works is far from complete.  If we can continue to research the mechanisms by which it affects the disease, it may be that this can be applied to far more disorders.  It has already been shown to improve chronic pain and even depression in some cases.
However, the picture is not always so clear.  The basal ganglia are also implicated in schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome and many others.  The awful and incurable Huntington’s disease also primarily affects the basal ganglia.  Many of these conditions are not nearly so well understood, nor is their treatment always so effective.  Subsequently, quality of life for sufferers falls drastically; levels of depression and even suicide can be very high.  Our level of understanding about these afflictions, and our ability to prevent or treat them is hugely dependent on the money that is invested into their research. That research is vital if we are to continue making progress like this from the lab in which I work towards improving the treatment, prognosis and quality of life for sufferers, and the prevention of such disease in high-risk groups.  If we don’t research these diseases, we can’t understand them, and if we can’t understand them, we can’t help.  I think this is hugely important work, and I hope that you will agree with me.  If so, it’s not too late to do a little something about it. Please go to the Science Is Vital website, and sign the petition against cuts to science funding. If you can, email your MP about it, too, and ask them to sign EDM 767.  Please spread the word and help UK science continue its vital research.

Science is Vital

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This weekend myself and a few Brainwavers are heading down to London to protest against the looming cuts to science funding. For a country that already spends less, in terms of GDP, than almost all of it’s technological rivals we really can’t afford to cut funding further. In the words of Sir Patrick Moore, “if we cut funds for science we’ll be shooting ourselves in the foot”. This isn’t just about the jobs of thousands of scientists – most of whom will be able to move abroad – but about a concern for the UK economy, which is so deeply entwined and dependent on technology and knowledge based industries.

Hundreds, or hopefully thousands, of people will be gathering on King Charles Street at 2pm outside the Treasury to demonstrate, we hope you can join us. Please also sign the petition, write to your MP and blog or tweet about this very important issue.

I’ll update this blog after the rally to let you know how it went.

Get involved!

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Well it seems you can’t always get things right where technology is involved! Yesterday evening we held out intro meeting for new recruits to come and find out all about what it is we do and what opportunities there are for everyone. Unfortunately, we had issues getting our mass email sent out so a lot of people got the email after the meeting. SO here you will find all the information you need and how to get involved.

We are going to be holding our AGM on the 2nd of November, at 5.15pm, in F2 lecture theatre of Firth Court. If you are interested in going for any of the positions that will be listed in this blog, then you’ll need to go to that, or email join@sciencebrainwaves.com

So first of all, a little history. In November 2009 a group of Ph.D students came together to organise a public lecture. The idea was to reach out to the public and provide the opportunity for learning that was accessible to everyone. The topic was vaccines presented by Professor Adam Finn, over 300 people attended from all backgrounds and with ages ranging from eight to eighty. From this success the group decided to continue and so Science Brainwaves was formed.Science Brainwaves has two areas of operation: the public domain and the academic. We aim to increase communication amongst scientists and to the wider community through innovative and engaging events, the creating of which pro-vide skills development opportunities to the students of the University of Sheffield. We were snapped up early on by the South Yorkshire branch of the British Science Association, to broaden their programme of public engagement events.

Public egagement is incredibly important – it can help us communicate important new research relevent to the public and can inspire the next generation: the kids. In our remit is everything to do with science, engineering, technology and maths – even social sciences and the history and philosophy of science.

Our involvement has prepared us for life beyond our education and provided numerous career advancing opportunities, we really hope others can benefit from it as much as we have.
Half of our committee is moving on to new jobs (for example, Jenna will be starting her new job as media executive for the society of biology in the next few weeks), jobs that have been secured thanks to their involvement in Science Brainwaves. We would like new members to bring new expertise and enthusiasm, meaning we’ll continue to grow and meet our aims in the future. We are sure Science Brainwaves can become a dominant force in science communication in years to come and that the students of the University of Sheffield will benefit greatly from it’s success.

Just have a look through this blog, the rest of the website and our Facebook group – you’ll see the many other successful events we’ve put on, such as a debate about how science is covered in the media, iTRAK science-art exhibition with a robot that shows it’s “brainwaves” as it’s deciding what to look at, We’ve been science busking at the national Big Bang fair, we’ve taught kids who to extract DNA from strawberries in a cinema and a school, our summer lecture with Brook Magnanti on chance and luck, and most recently, we took along some simple experiments you can do with food to the Green Man festival. We even helped set up the first ever completely student-ran RTP/DDP module (PG cafe forum) for post-graduate students at the university to hone their presentation skills for non-specialists in a comfortable and relaxed environment (a pub!).

In the future we want to carry on doing this and more. We’ve forged strong partnerships with Museum Sheffield and the Thackray Museum in Leeds, so that we can offer varied and exciting experience and opportunities to our members. We have a number of existing and new roles that we need to fill, so whether you’re interested in writing for the website, or getting your teeth in to organising events, read on!


Website

Currently running the website is myself, Michaela, and Paul, or expert web monkey who makes all our crazy ideas a reality. We’re hoping we can put together a “web team” that will come up with great ideas, develop them and implement them, as well as keep on top of the general maintenance of the website.

-2x web assistants – you don’t need to know html. You just need to be vaguely computer literate, enthusiastic and have some fantastic ideas! With me you’ll be helping organise podcasts, coming up with ideas and occasionally setting up blogs and other reports on the site. Theoretically you don’t even need to be based in Sheffield for this.

-A web developer – if the following makes sense to you then we want to hear from you:Experience in ASP.NET C# Web applications, with SQL database knowledge is required. CSS and Javascript are desirable but not essential. Knowledge of setting up Content Management would be useful. Technologies currently used: C#, ASP.NET, HTML, Javascript, JQuery, YUI, SQL, Source control in SVN.

 

And of course, we still want bloggers and reports, especially blogs based in physics, chemistry and engineering, so get in touch. If you’re a budding journalist and interested in joining our news team, please email news@sciencebrainwaves.com.

Events

Organising events is usually done by small, dedicated teams, where each person takes on a specific role. Our next event that needs team members is the Christmas Lecture on Dec 17th on weird physics. You don’t have to have had any previous experience, nor be a physicist. All that is needed is enthusiasm and a thirst to learn. And, it’s something that looks absolutely fantastic on your CV.

Project Manager – oversee project, responsible for overall budget, ensure deadlines are met, responsible for applying for grants. Produce schedules, etc. Contact for Paul Stevenson, responsible for booking everything for him. Act as support for team members. Write event evaluation in consultation with the rest of the team  – Michaela

Media/marketing Liaison – produce press release, seeks opportunities to feature info about lecture in newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. Also ensures that info is included in event listings. Organise any interviews (e.g. setting up green room). Responsible for distribution of flyers in publics places (libraries, shops, etc, work with everyone on team to cover as much of Sheffield as possible). Investigate cost of local magazine ad space – contact forge press, etc. Responsible for implementing any internet marketing – posting on to local/relevant forums/facebook/twitter, etc. – Jen.

Schools/children’s university liaison – responsible for sending out information to schools (secondary schools) and Sheffield science teachers forum for attendance. Develop further material to be sent to schools with multimedia producer. Produce activity materials (if relevant, quizzes/competitions, must consider age-group attending – work with funding assistant to organise prizes). Contact Children’s University for attendance and to develop any further opportunities.

Multimedia producer – someone to produce, most importantly, posters to market the event, a podcast from the lecture and/or dvd to be sent out to schools/other interested parties. Previous experience not required, but would help. Work with media/marketing/schools liaisons to ensure deadline for mail outs and cohesive image.

Funding assistant/reception organisation – Working with project manager to make links with local businesses to organise materials for the reception (e.g., food and drink) and extra sponsorship. Set-up the reception. Work with university link to develop/organise a stall/poster/whatever to show-case Sheffield research for information/outreach purposes of physics department.

University/alumni Liaison – a link between university staff (gaining support from external/community relations office) and the alumni office to contact local alumni and provide a VIP experience for guests. Work with Project Manager and funding assistant to apply for alumni foundation funding and organise the VIP reception experience. Work with funding assistant to set up reception. – Martin

Reception assistants – 2 persons help on the night to organise and set up the reception, serve drinks/food if not provided by whatever catering we end up using.

Ushers – a group of 5 people to help attendees – two persons to be in charge of admissions (checking the guest list against people arriving), one person to show people to the upper tier of the lecture theatre, and two people on the lower tier – on person to be specifically in charge of the VIPs. After lecture responsible for herding attendees in to the reception in Mappin Hall. Don’t necessarily need to be separate people to the above roles, especially for reception assistants.

Jobs with names against them have already been taken, but if any of them tickle your fancy, drop us an email! We’ve got some meetings lined up for this one already, specifically about funding, so if you are interested, get in contact ASAP.

Museum’s/Science club Coordinator/team

Also up-and-coming is our involvement with Museums Sheffield. The weston park museum will be host to the beautiful games exhibition that will be bringing the science or sport to the public. We’ve been given the opportunity to run workshops alongside the exhibition, so if you have any ideas please get in touch. We also have links with the Thackray medical history museum in Leeds and our initial ideas are to produce a “medical marvels: head to to” series of lectures. We also want to start up a science club for schools that will hopefully be based in a museum.

Loads of poeple have already showed interest in this, so please do get involved – the more the merrier!


GEOSET

GEOSET is a tool for researchers to present their work in a virtual fashion to school and college kids all over the world. We’ve got a slot on the first wednesday of ever month for members, or otherwise, to go and record a presentation targetted to school/college kids. We need someone to help coordinate that with the PG Cafe forum folks so that we can get as many resources fo school kids on the web as possible. Again, if you’re interested, please get in touch.


Committee positions

So if any of that seems of interest to you, then please do get in touch – at the AGM we will be appointing the following positions:

Head of Events
Museum Coordinator
Science Club Coordinator
Website Assistants
Website Developers
University Liaison
Volunteer Coordinator
GEOSET liaison

Thank you for making it this far. If you have any questions at all about anything at all, then please do email us on join@sciencebrainwaves.com. We’re really looking forward to working with you. See you all soon!

Michaela

on behalf of the Science Brainwave team.