@Bristol Space Odyssey

by Laura Rogers

Ever wanted to play on all the exciting exhibits at the At-Bristol science centre, but felt too embarrassed as they are surrounded by children? Ever wanted to stargaze on the roof overlooking Millenium Square? Ever wanted to drink alcohol whilst at a museum? Well, adult-only nights at the At-Bristol are the perfect excuse.

I was lucky enough to attend ‘A Space Odyssey’, the adult-only night that enabled you to adventure into the depths of the sky and discover how we explore them. The night was from 6:30 to 10:00pm, however, this was not enough time to explore the whole venue and experience everything they had to offer. An insightful talk was given, in which experiments were conducted to show how satellites work. A personal favourite was when a spring was placed in hot water and immediately straightened. This phenomenon was applied to a model of a satellite, enabling it to open its wings via a current being passed through the wire, heating it up and straightening it. The welcoming Bristol Astronomical Society exhibited their telescopes, allowing us to observe stars in the sky. It was fascinating to see how a tiny spec in the sky was actually 2 stars, one orange and one blue. We had the chance to explore a recreated Martian landscape and analyse rock samples which was incredible.

At-Bristol has hundreds of interactive exhibits including: a giant hamster wheel, a walk in tornado, various water activities, exhibits to learn about the human body and many more. They were great fun to play with and helped to develop my scientific curiosity. We aimed to play with as many interactive exhibits as possible; my favourite was ‘startle’. This involved air suddenly spraying into your face, the reactions were recorded and played back in hilarious slow motion.

One of the latest exhibits, in the Zone, gives information on the science behind being a top athlete. It involves completing 5 challenges where you are set against an opponent. It was enjoyable and exciting, however, the only challenge I won was the final sprint finish! 

If you have seen the strange silver ball in Millennium Square, you may or may not know it is in fact a planetarium. You can take my word that it is much larger inside than it appears outside (Bristol’s Tardis) with a majestic screen spreading over the top of the sphere. We were transported from a view of the sky affected by light pollution to an astonishing view of the sky from a nearby countryside area. Just by listening to the audience’s ‘ooo’ and ‘ahh’ it was clear that everyone found the view spectacular. The autumn constellations were shown and a fantastic Astronomer, Lee, described the constellations and their associated Greek myths. This experience was breath-taking and is something I would highly recommend. I even recognised some constellation patterns and can now show off as I know the names and stories. 

The adult-only nights are great fun and enable you to experience the thrills of science through interactive exhibits, talks and demonstrations. The next adult only night is on Monday 9th December so keep an eye out for it.

Synapse radio launch

Synapse radio show launches today on Burst. Tune in every Thursday at 4pm for science news and views, interviews with lecturers, quizzes, questions and answers and pure science joy!

Synapse science news #3

Too busy to keep track of all the science news during the week? Don’t fear Synapse is here. Check out this week's news.

Tatooine eat your heart out - A planet 5000 light years away and 6 times the size of Earth has been identified by volunteers to be illuminated by four suns. Find out more.

Old fella breaks sounds barrier - Chuck Yeager, aged 89, breaks sound barrier flying an F-15 Eagle above California the same day as Felix Baumgartner breaks sound record by skydiving 24 miles. Read the full story.

Prevention better than cure? -  Studies planned to investigate how experimental drugs may prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Find out more.

Girl Power - Ada Lovelace recognised as a pioneer of computing theory. Read more. 



Curious activities - Curiosity Rover takes first Martian dust sample. Check it out.

Tyrant smuggler - Florida man arrested for smuggling dinosaur skeletons from Mongolia and China. Find out more.

What does your handshake say about you? - Offering your hand is always the best option. Read more.

Transporting tigers - In an attempt to save a critically endangered species, London zoo gets another Sumatran tiger. See the video.



Mary Melville and Felicity Russell

Website review - Codecademy

by Jonathan Smith

Being able to code is quickly becoming a useful skill to have, whether you want to write web programs or would just like to expand your CV! For many without a background in computer science, learning to code in a programming language can be extremely intimidating. For those who want to learn, there are many resources available on the web that offer to teach you how to write code in whichever programming language you want. In this review, the focus will be on Codecademy, a cool site that contains many free courses in an ever-expanding range of programming languages.

Codecademy is run by a group of hackers and programmers that aim to improve programming education worldwide without cost to the learner. It is an engaging and interactive site with a simple interface for easy use. The variety of examples offered is impressive – from learning HTML code to coding a game of Blackjack in Javascript! Courses exist for complete beginners that take you through the basics of writing code, step by step. The courses are made up of exercises that get you to input code into the browser in order to complete the exercise. By doing this, you progress to the next exercise and earn points for correct answers. This can get very addictive!

If you get hellishly stuck on an exercise, the creators do not step in. Instead, forums related to the exercise are easily available so you can find help from the community of users that are in the exact same boat. This works surprisingly well as users are always willing to help out. Speaking of users, you are encouraged to learn as a group as you can pool ideas. With this in mind, there is a 'follow' function that lets you link with other users and keep track of their progress. So if you and a friend want to learn together, then have fun! 

There are one or two issues that I would like to see improved in this site. Firstly, while it is beneficial to troubleshoot your own problems, it would be nice to see more feedback inside exercises as to where you went wrong. There is always the problematic exercise that fails because of a typo! Secondly, the obvious observation is that bugs still exist in some tasks though these are very rare and are sorted out very quickly when brought to the staff's attention.

In summary, Codecademy offers free, interactive courses designed to help you learn to code with lots of help from the community and I recommend giving it a try - that is if you can spare the time from your already busy university schedule!

Synapse science news #2

Too busy to keep track of all the science news during the week? Don’t fear Synapse is here. Check out this week's news.

Curious rock discovered on Mars - The Mars Curiosity rover has been hard at work. This week it discovered a rock with an exceptional composition, never before discovered on the planet. Read more here.

Billions needed to save nature - The world is currently going through a biodiversity crisis. At this week’s Convention on Biological Diversity scientists concluded that $76 billion dollars a year is required to reduce the risk of extinction for threatened species, by establishing protected areas. Tough choices face policy makers. Is it worth it? What do you think? Find out more.

Failure to launch! - On Tuesday (9/10/2012) Austrian adventurer Felix Baumgartner prepared to go supersonic and travel faster than sound by skydiving from a helium balloon. Unfortunately, after entering his capsule and getting fully prepared the dive was cancelled due to high winds. A second attempt was planned for Thursday, but this was also called off. The balloon carrying Baumgartner plans to travel to 120,000ft (36.5km), making it the highest skydive ever. A third attempt is likely to take place on Sunday (14/10/12). Keep up to date with the latest news on the mission here and read more about the mission here. 

Nobel Prize winner was written off at school - John Gurdon always wanted to be a scientist but his school master said this was ‘quite ridiculous’ and a 'sheer waste of time'. This week, the now ‘Sir’ John Gurdon, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for his work proving that adult cells can be reprogramed and grown into different tissues in the body. I guess teachers are not always correct! Read more here.

The diamond planet - A new rocky planet has been discovered. Scientists believe it is similar to Earth, but with one major difference; this planet’s outer crust is largely composed of solid carbon crystals, meaning much of its surface is coated in diamonds! The diamond planet is orbiting a distant star named 55 Cancri, around 40 light years away from Earth. Read more here.

David Blaine does Tesla proud - OK it’s not really science, but this week American illusionist David Blaine spent 72 hours channeling one million volts of electricity while wearing a 20-pound chain-mail suit. Check it out.

The most unpleasant sounds - Scientists have identified the most unpleasant sounds for the human auditory system. Can you guess any? Well here are a few from the top 10: chalk on a blackboard, fork on a glass and a female scream. Check the full list here. When we hear sounds such as these there are increased interactions between the brain region that processes sound, the auditory cortex, and the amygdala, that relates negative emotions.

Eco-Friendly Optics - Spider silk is an extraordinary natural material. Now it is believed it could be used to catch and manipulate light, making it an eco-friendly alternative to more traditional ways of manipulating light, such as through glass or plastic fiber optic cables. Read more.

Tom Stubbs and Felicity Russell

Synapse science news #1

Too busy to keep track of all the science news during the week? Don’t fear Synapse is here. Every weekend we will present a round-up of the week’s science news. Here is your first installment.

Buzz over multi-coloured honey - Beekeepers in northeastern France were amazed and concerned when their honey was turning blue and green. It turns out the bees were not feeding on their usual nectar. Rather than using natural plants they were feeding at a nearby waste factory for Mars, the confectionery giant. The blue and green colouration originates from the waste product of m&m's! Find out more, click here

Scientist at the University in Edinburgh plan to rip a hole in space and time! - They have received funding to run experiments that create an analogue to a black hole. Find out more, click here

Test tube spiders - The UK’s largest spider, the great raft spider, is having its three remaining populations enhanced using spiders produced in test tubes! Many of these critters have been raised at Bristol Zoo. Find out more, click here

Scientists name new species after Yoda - A deep-sea acorn worm, discovered 1.5 miles beneath the Atlantic, has been named Yoda purpurata. The large lips on the creature’s head are reminiscent of the Jedi master's floppy ears, apparently! Find out more, click here

11-year-old Russian boy discovers almost complete woolly mammoth carcass - The 30,000-year-old remains of this 500-kilogram beast were discovered in the tundra of the Taymyr peninsula in northern Russia. Doubtless the debate about the possibility of cloning a mammoth will be revived following this discovery. Find out more, click here 

GM cow designed to make allergy proof milk - A genetically modified cow that produces milk lacking a protein that causes allergic reactions in people has been created by New Zealand scientists. The cow was created with the same cloning procedure as Dolly the sheep in 1996. Find out more, click here

The dangers of space debris - Scientists fear the vast amounts of space debris surrounding Earth may cause massive problems in the future. Find out more, click here

Schrödinger's cat, dead or alive? - Physicists have been able to probe a delicate quantum state without destroying it. This goes against the enduring icon of quantum mechanics and suggests it is possible to take a peek at Schrodinger's metaphorical cat without killing it. Find out more, click here

Felicity Russell and Tom Stubbs

Dangerous Results: To Publish or Not To Publish?

Gunnar De Winter

So you thought the avian flu controversy was over? Far from it. A little while ago, two studies on the avian flu H5N1 sparked some controversy. Both studies detailed how the researchers were able to produce a flu strain that, in contrast to the known natural strains, would be highly transmissible between human beings. This research has potentially dangerous consequences. Debate ensued. Should these studies be fully or partially published, or not at all? Both the National Security Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) and the World Health Organization (WHO) issued press releases describing their (different) recommendations. Editors of Nature and Science postponed publishing the respective studies. But this is part of a wider issue: should studies with potentially dangerous results be published or not? Let’s look at some options.

Don’t Publish

Simply don’t publish the studies. Problem solved. Or not? This is the least popular ‘solution’ for the problem. An even more extreme version of this option is to simply not allow research that might yield dangerous results. But luckily almost nobody seriously considers this. After all, one can’t predict potential applications of research. And besides potential misuse, there might be great benefits as well (such as vaccine development in the case of the avian flu studies). Moreover, freedom of research is at stake here. If all research that might be abused by others is suspended, surely the scientific enterprise will wither until almost nothing remains. So, this option provides no solution. Moving on, then.

Publish Partially

Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses

Publish the studies, but leave out some key methodological details (which was the NSABB recommendation for the flu studies). Intuitively, this appears to make (some) sense. But there are problems here as well. First, who decides what to leave out? Furthermore, if other researchers want to build upon the results, they should be able to acquire the omitted details. But at the moment, there is no system to properly coordinate this. Finally, some people point out that just knowing that it’s possible is enough for others to figure it out. It might take a bit longer, but they’ll get there. Well, it seems option two also has its problems. On to the final option.

Publish Completely

Just publish the studies in full (the WHO recommendation). Most scientific research comes with a risk of potential misuse. This, however, should not stop enquiry. Besides, the best protection against abuse, so some argue, is to spread knowledge about whatever is being researched. In case of the flu studies, publishing the studies in their entirety is the best chance of finding a vaccine, thereby counteracting possible abuse. Scientific research in itself is not good or bad. It’s how it is used by people, or by society. The solution therefore is not to curb research, but to promote ethically and morally sound use of scientific knowledge. Achieving this, of course, is not an easy task, and there are many questions to be addressed, but it seems to be the best option we’ve got…

For more information about the avian flu debate:

Nature’s Mutant Flu News Special (http://www.nature.com/news/specials/mutantflu/index.html), where the latest news concerning the studies and several opinion pieces are aggregated.

A similar news and commentary collection can be found on Science’s Public Health, Biosecurity and H5N1 feature (http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/data/hottopics/biosecurity/index.xhtml).