Tag Archives: Sheffield

Announcing: Science Communication MSc in Sheffield Uni!

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Sheffield University really has been a hub of science outreach and engagement activities, not least because that’s where we’re based…

Many of the staff holds between them a staggering and broad range of experience when it comes to inspiring and involving people with science, technology, engineering and medicine. So it’s probably great news that the Faculty of science, in partnership with Medicine and Dentistry and journalism, has finally decided to give you the opportunity to have their collective wisdom endowed upon you, by way of a Masters (MSc) in Science Communication.

The course will open its doors to its first cohort of plucky communicators this autumn, offering both a practical and academic approach to get to grips with successfully communicating science to the public, and how to navigate one’s way through the world of the media.
There will be hands-on lessons, researching and producing podcasts, working in a newsroom, organising events and exhibitions as well as the more classic theoretical modules looking at why you’d want to communicate science at all, the best way to achieve public understanding, and some of the issues and controversies that science communicators might get involved in. The best way of learning is by doing and you’ll get plenty of practical experience.

There will of course be many opportunities to develop your communication skills, written and oral, and get to grips with how to deal with TV, radio and ‘new’ media and the pitfalls you might encounter.

On top of this you’ll write a dissertation, to earn the title of “Master”, to bring together everything you’ve learnt, giving you the opportunity to reflect on the sometimes hidden literature on the subject of public engagement and science communication. Even this could be work-place based though, based on experience and evaluation of events, for example.

The course director, Allan Pacey is a researcher and head of Andrology at the University of Sheffield, and has himself been involved in commentating on science stories in the media, both radio and TV (pictured left), and has even been involved with documentary projects on Channel 4 (The Great Sperm Race), the BBC and a documentary about sperm donation (Donor: Unknown). He’s even been a panellist on a debate that ‘Brainwaves hosted! Other Sheffield Uni staff include senior media fellows.

 

Finally, and possibly best of all, it’s in Sheffield! Having been a student here for 7 years I couldn’t possibly put across how much I love this city! It’s vibrant but friendly, so if you’re looking for something outside London… well, we’ve got our arms wide-open and ready to welcome you! Not to mention, the city (both unis, industrial partners, museums and galleries and more) host undoubtedly one of the biggest National Science and Engineering Week programmes of events for the school and public.

This project has been in the pipeline for quite a while and the staff are super-excited that it’s taking off this year, so why don’t you join them in the joy of inspiring and informing the public with science!

If you’re interested in registering for the course then you’ll need an upper second class degree in a Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Maths, Medicine or Physics-related degree, a passion for science and communicating it then visit the website www.sheffield.ac.uk/sciencecommunication

What Are Stem Cells? (PART I)

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Stem cells have been an important part of medicine since their isolation from mice in 1981, but in actual fact they have been used far longer than this. Bone marrow transplants for leukaemia and skin grafts for burn victims both rely on the principles of stem cells and regeneration. Even in ancient Greece they were imagined as an essential part of human biology, shown by the story of Prometheus who, as punishment for stealing Zeus’ fire and giving it to man, was bound to a rock and had his liver pecked out by a giant eagle every single day, just to have it grow back each night. Nice.

The term stem cell actually covers different types of cells, and is arguably thrown around a little too often nowadays. They can divide forever and generate new cell types, much like an oak tree can keep on growing, throwing out new branches. This power has made them exciting with respect to repairing damaged organs and for use in developing new drugs.

Embryonic stem cells are defined as being pluripotent, that is to say that if you took one embryonic stem cell it has the capacity to become any other cell type of the human body. These are the roots and trunk of the oak tree, shooting branches off in any direction it needs, whilst each root can make a new oak tree. During gestation, these are the cells that build us; the fertilized egg generates a shell in which the embryonic stem cells grow, they then divide and follow paths to different fates, for example a neuron, or a heart cell. This ability allows one original cell to go on to produce all the cells that we are made of. The same principle applies for all life; we all start off from the same building blocks.

Adult stem cells are pretty much what it says on the tin. They are stem cells that continue to stay in the body even into adulthood. Adult stem cells are the branches of the great oak; they do not under normal conditions make a new tree, but continually sprout new leaves and acorns necessary for the ongoing life of the original oak. They are found in brain, bone marrow, blood vessels, muscle, skin, teeth, heart, gut, liver, ovaries and testicles. The main difference between these cells and embryonic stem cells is their ability to make new cell types. Essentially, adult stem cells are restricted in what cell type they can make, only creating cells down a certain path, for example the neural path. The body does not want teeth filling our arteries, nor intestines sprouting out the top of our head, so cell types are kept limited.

Induced pluripotent cells – or IPS cells for short – are slightly different matter. They are the acorns and cuttings which when replanted can generate a new oak tree. Scientists have found that they can take cells from our skin; force expression of a combination of genes and this reverses the path the cell has taken, reverting it back to a pluripotent stem cell i.e. a cell that can then generate any other cell type. This demonstrates an incredible progress in our understanding of stem cells.

In the next two parts I will give a slightly more detailed introduction to why and how stem cells are used, and the major points of controversy that arise. Hopefully, it will give an insight into the lives of scientists that work on them and help you decide your attitude towards the subject.


Stem Cell Oak Tree – I.S.

∞

Grabbing attention

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There are certain things in the environment that grab our attention – loud noises, flashes of light and rapidly moving objects.

These are all reasons why we are likely to spot ambulances dashing towards us and mean that we can act in time to get out of the way.

However, there are also more subtle things that attract attention when we are surrounded by a more mundane environment.

Certain properties of the world are more SALIENT to our visual system than others.

These are: changes in colour (e.g. red to green); changes in contrast (e.g. sharp to blurred ); changes in intensity (e.g. bright to dim); changes in orientation (e.g. vertical to horizontal).

These are some of the reasons why human EYES are so effective in capturing attention – the iris is coloured, there is a sharp contrast between the pupil, iris and sclera and there is a change in orientation of the contrast boundaries around the eye.

In our environment there are often many other things that share these features that compete for our attention e.g. traffic signs, advertisements, bright clothing. As we look around some of the things we look at are influenced by this change in VISUAL SALIENCY.


When we look at pictures, we can break them down into their constituent properties. Below are two photograph and their associated VISUAL SALIENCY maps.

These maps can predict where you will look in a scene on the basis of visual saliency. The little “1″ on the maps above show the most salient point. The following 9 most salient points can be found by following the red line around the photos.

The model doesn’t get it exactly right as we are able to over-power these properties and CHOOSE to look where we want but when we first see pictures we are more likely to look at the salient regions, before we’ve got the gist of what is going on.



At Sheffield, we’ve recently published a paper which investigates whether people with autism and Aspergers look at scenes in the same way.

In the journal Neuropsychologia, we have shown that people with autism also show this bias for looking at salient regions when they first see scenes (Freeth, Foulsham & Chapman, 2011).

However, we also showed that both typically developing viewers and viewers with autism and Aspergers are more strongly drawn to looking at social aspects of scenes – the people – even when they are not “visually salient”.

This finding is very surprising as it was previously thought that people with autism wouldn’t be drawn to look at people.

However, there was also an important difference: participants with autism/Aspergers were significantly slower to look at people’s head and faces when they were looking at scenes than the typically developing participants.

It seems that the fast-track mechanism to attend to other people is absent in people who have autism/Aspergers.