OnOmYesterday I went to the Big Bang Fair at the NEC in Birmingham. This isn't my usual topic for blogging but I thought I'd share some cool science stuff for kids.

The fair is a huge science expo designed to get young people interested in the sciences. There are stands as diverse as the new fastest car in the world attempt, the army engineers, a fully dissected pig and as many robots as a tech head could want. There were thousands of students present, even some exhibiting there own research, and they were loving it. Seeing so many inventive ways to bring science to life was awesome, even if there wasn't much biology. I suppose this is because most of the money in biology is to be made in biomedical fields, something that is really important but I just don't find enthralling.

The thing that blew my mind the most was a 40min show by the Gastronaut. He's a YouTube science communicator and together with his Quantum Mechanical Chocolate Factory they collide fairly high level science with food in an engaging way. Through food the explained crystalline structures, fluid dynamics, diffusion, UV and phosphorescence. Any teacher who wants to bring chemistry alive should check it out.

Gastronaut YouTube channel:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC0f5hnnSGWXhNQxDJdxlPsQ

​On this channel you can watch videos about how to extract iron from bran flakes, how to make dry ice and how to make your own chewing gum, all in your own kitchen. These are really cool experiments that can be transferred easily into the class room to make science fun for young kids. But even if you are not a teacher, just someone with small children or nieces and nephews, then these are fun things you can do to get children interested in science.

​I’ve recently started as a science teaching assistant, I’m deciding on whether teaching is something I’m any good at and a career that I’d like to pursue. But in my first few weeks I have noticed something about how the students view and understand the information they are taught. There is no distinction between the way they view science and highly subjective subjects like English and RE. Student’s view someone’s opinion on why Shakespeare used a certain turn of phrase in a sonnet in the same way that they view atomic structure. To them both are equally valid, just someone’s idea. I think this stems from a lack of understanding of what science is and how it works. So in the rest of this blog I’m going to give a lay explanation of how science works. For those of you who are academics this will skirt over issues about whether peer review is the best way or that negative results are under reported and published. The idea is just to lay out that science is a systematic and self-correcting way of understanding the world.
 
Firstly, most science is done by conducting experiments. Researchers will get an idea from observing things in nature or from what we already know about how the world works and want to test if their idea is right. These ideas are hypotheses. This is done by changing one variable and seeing what effect this has, but also comparing it to when nothing is changed (called a control). This allows the scientists to see the impact this variable, be is temperature in a reaction or how much food a father blue tit has available to feed his offspring, has on the system. The researchers the record their results and write them up in a scientific paper, usually structured: abstract (summary), introduction (why we’re looking at this and what similar things have been found before), methods (how we ran our experiment), results (what we found) and discussion (how we interpret what we’ve found).
 
Secondly, the scientists will submit their research to an academic journal in the hope it gets published. There work will be sent off to experts in their field of research, be it astrophysics, marine biology or material science. These experts will then look at how the experiment was done: was it a careful and well-designed experiment? Did they use a big enough sample size? Did they use the right statistics to determine if what they found was statistically significant? They will also look at the discussion to see if the researchers interpreted their findings correct or if they are claiming to have found things that their results do not support. This process determines if this bit of research becomes published or not. These are the types of science that you hear about in newspapers and on the TV. This is cutting edge research and you’ll learn about it at university but not in school.
 
Thirdly, cutting edge research is great and it is the stuff that breaks new ground but it isn’t always correct. To really know if something that has been found is real it needs to be repeated by other researchers. This is where science differs from other subjects. Experiments are repeated by other researchers and published and their results are compared to those of the first. Gradually knowledge about something builds up and something called a meta-analysis can be done. This involves looking at all of the research in a specific area and finding out what it all means, because comparing a large amount of studies is more accurate than just using one to decide if a scientific hypothesis is true. Often initially exciting and extreme finding are tempered, or they can be found to be untrue and in this was science is self-correcting. However, if all the repeated experiments show the initial idea to be true then it will change from a hypothesis to a theory. Theory is a term that is often misunderstood outside of science because it sounds like it’s just an idea but a scientific theory is a In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses [1]. Theories are the end point of science not the beginning.
 
Fourthly, and finally, these new areas of science are taught in schools. This can take a long time and typically depend on what the government in your country decides is important. But before it gets to the school text book science has been rigorously tested and shown to be repeatable and true in a way that someone’s opinion on why a certain ruler in the 19th century decided to do x or y just simply haven’t. I am not advocating for C.P. Snow’s two cultures or trying to devalue arts subjects, as they are crucial to education and provide a form of thinking that is critical to learn. I also believe that children should be taught to have a critical mind and ask questions of everything they are taught. However, when students are taught evolution by natural selection or atomic theory they shouldn’t be do I believe this, as they should of a literary critic’s opinion of Wordsworth, but instead how did scientists find this out and what is the evidence? They are subtly different but crucially different questions. There is also beauty in the scientific method!
 

If you need some background sound while you’re crunching numbers, coding in R, walking back from a field session or just when you’re cooking, podcasts are a great idea. For me the best combine information and entertainment. Podcasts are ideal not only to just fill silence and let you get on with things that are mundane but also for providing random topics of conversation: I have no idea of the number of people I told about the molasses explosion in Boston. They’re a simple way to keen up-to-date with topics you’re interested in but don’t have the time to research or to find out new areas of interest.
 
Below are my top four podcasts and a brief explanation of what they are and why I like them:
 
Radiolab
I was first told about Radiolab by an old work colleague. I first thought that it’d be a typical science podcast that talks about new research etc but it is so much more. There are two main presenters (Jab and Robert) but a plethora of guest presenters and producers make it highly varied. Each episode is typically one or more detailed reports into a huge variety of topics, often taking unexpected looks at things you may think you know a lot about. The podcast isn’t just science, it looks at history and often blurs the lines of traditional divides between the sciences and the arts. Radiolab also has a great acoustic element to it, with lots of really good sound production that brings it to life. It’s awesome!
http://www.radiolab.org/
 
Stuff You Should Know
This is the first of two podcasts that I love from How Stuff Works. The best part about SYSK is that it is presented by Chuck and Josh. Initially it took me a while to warm up to them, as they have an amazing ability to go off on tangents but that is precisely why I think they’re great. Their personalities really bring the subjects they talk about to life. SYSK covers a huge range of subjects from ejector seats to Jack the Ripper. If you want to listen then go to their website rather than itunes, as it has all of their episodes not the last few hundred. I love this podcast but I would take some of what they say with a pinch of salt, having listened to a number of episodes that I am knowledgeable about I found a few holes or misconceptions in what Chuck and Josh said (but don’t let that put you off, it’s awesome).
http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/
 
Stuff You Missed in History Class
Missed in History is another How Stuff Works podcast but it is so different to SYSK. The current presenters, Holly and Tracey, religiously prepare and research each episode. Where SYSK is a fly by the seat of your pants affair, missed in history is well planned and is a brilliant ride through random bits of history you’ll never have heard of. History is something that I’ve always loved but fell by the academic wayside, so this is a guilty pleasure. The show has a penchant for exhumations, missing ships/people and serial killers/unsolved murders. They have also enlightened me about some amazing women from history like Ada Lovelace and Freya Stark. Binge listen to Missed in History while measuring skulls on the Isle of Rum!
http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/archive/
 
Guardian Science Weekly
This is a fairly straightforward science news podcast. However, the presenters and reporters really bring things alive with their enthusiasm for the job they do. It fun and entertaining while at the same time keeping you up-to-date with the latest innovations in science. Because it’s made by the Guardian it’s of a high standard and you can trust what you hear.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/series/science

As part of my job at Sense About Science, I have to read one of the UK's many newspapers every morning. We switch regularly, and so I've had the complete frustration of the Telegraphs science reporting, the bombasticness of the Daily Mail and the complete lack of any science reporting in the propaganda rag that is the Express. At the moment I'm on the Times, which seems to do a fairly good job, Tom Whipple seems to have his head screwed on. Most of what we are looking for is related to human health type stuff, whether it's chemical scare stories or misreporting on vaccines and the safety of drugs. As a zoologist I'm more interested in the stuff to do with animals or behaviour and so have started keeping stories that are in that field, not misreporting stuff but just interesting. 

So I'm going to start a series of blogs that are my take on a few stories clipped from the Times!

First up, yesterday's (6/6/15) reporting on a study that looked at how men behaved after they were 'shown' to be weak.Researchers tweeked the data they presented to 50 male participants after they had them do a hand strength test, telling half they were average and the other half they were below average, the same as the average woman. The test subjects had been informed that the test was of "the effects of exertion on decision making." They then had to fill out a form about themselves, which had some interesting results. Those who were told they had thee strength of a woman exaggerated their heigh by ~0.78 inches and reported twice as many previous relationships as the other group, in addition they claimed higher levels of aggressiveness and athleticism. 

This is a really cool study that shows that slights to a man's masculinity can result in him overcompensating. As the researchers point out, this is not just an interesting aspect of our behaviour but something that has everyday impacts in the world. In many societies men wield a large amount of power and how they perceive slights effects their behaviour. There are probably a number of evolutionary reasons for this relating to intrasexual conflict, but that's a can of evolutionary psychology worms that I will steer clear of!

Story two, ugly men can get good looking women but they have to be persistent (and vice versa)! Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin found that when a couple was asymmetric in attractiveness that it took longer from their first meeting to their first date. Couples who had 'love at first sight' were usually very closely matched in attractiveness, while those who took more than 9 months to get together didn't correlate at all. This is interesting as it raises lots of questions about the different features that inform mate choice in humans, do we perform assortative mating? and when we don't what are the features that we use, money? social status? or more intangibles like humour? or smell? This gives me the very tangential opportunity to link to a cool study that showed a link between physical ability and attractiveness!


Final story, spiders at sea.This was a cool little piece about why spiders are so good at colonizing new places, as they are frequently the first colonizers of new land. They do this by ballooning (video of it LINK), where they let out strands of silk that carry them away. Ballooning can result in spiders landing on water, be it lakes or the sea, but new research has shown that spiders are not only able to balloon but they can sail too! By dropping spiders from 21 species onto water researchers found that the spiders 'sailed' using their raised front legs to slide across the water, or 'anchored' themselves by releasing silk to stop themselves being blown away. Species that used ballooning more frequently to disperse were 'more eager' to using sailing. This is just some cool natural history that helps in understanding dispersal.


Hope some of those stories were interesting.

Here are some links to some interesting blog posts that I've read recently. They vary from the psychology of 'believing' in evolution to the language of birds. I think they're cool, so some other people might too!

Don't Believe in Evolution? Try Thinking Harder
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/06/29/418289762/don-t-believe-in-evolution-try-thinking-harder?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150629

Gentle Sex? Females Just As Feisty As Males Over Reproduction
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630270.300-gentle-sex-females-just-as-feisty-as-males-over-reproduction.html (behind a pay wall)

What Can Be Done to Make Sure That Wind Energy and Africa’s Vultures Co-exist
http://theconversation.com/what-can-be-done-to-make-sure-that-wind-energy-and-africas-vultures-co-exist-43677

Babbler Birds Use Primitive Language to Communicate With Meaning, Study Show
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-30/outback-babbler-birds-use-primitive-language-study-says/6582860

One of my friends (Dom Cram) has just had a paper come out in Functional Ecology. It's a really well designed experimental study looking at the effects of dominance and effort on oxidative stress in white-browed sparrow-weavers. His research found that dominant females, who work the hardest to provision young during the breeding season, suffered a large decline in antioxidant protection over the course of the breeding season. Antioxidants are the compounds that health professionals keep going gaga over in various 'super-foods', as they help to reduce free radicals which build up due to the cells natural processes and can damage DNA and thus potentially make individuals vulnerable to ageing and lots of other nasty things. So the study hints that individuals that work hard could be at risk of increased ageing and a variety of other future problems. The abstract and link are pasted at the end of the blog.

Dom has rightly received a fair amount of media attention for this piece of work, and rightly so. This is important, as the public need to know what their taxes are funding and how this work fits into our broader understanding of the world. He was even interviewed on BBC radio:

https://soundcloud.com/dom-cram/dom-bbc-radio-interview-sept2014

This coverage though has been very varied, even within the ams newspaper. The Telegraph, link pasted below, covered it well but for some unknown reason decided to lead with a picture of elephant seals.... even though the work was done on a small desert dwelling bird. They also lead with "Alpha males..", even though the abstract clearly states that males showed a decline but it wasn't related to rank, the main result was for females. Well it was a good attempt. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/11070219/Alpha-males-and-females-at-risk-of-ill-health-and-premature-ageing.html

Above is the reporting from the Times, and this again is pretty good, even has the correct species pictured (and a lovely comic). But if you read the scanned image below you'll see that some one else at the same news paper decided not only to get the species wrong but to link it massively to humans, a gross overstatement, but then also to Bertrand Russell, Francois Hollande and John Maynard Keynes. This is a prime example of awful reporting and exaggeration from what is a well respected newspaper, this is what lay people read and where the get their information. We need better reporting by people who actually understand science, so that the public is better educated and so able to help the government make better science and environmental policy decisions.

Here is the abstract:
Cram et al (2014) Oxidative status and social dominance in a wild cooperative breeder. Functional Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.12317http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12317/abstract

1. Oxidative stress has been proposed as a key mediator of life-history trade-offs, yet the social factors that affect patterns of oxidative status amongst individuals in animal societies remain virtually unexplored.
2. This is important, as rank-related differences in reproductive effort in many social species have the potential to generate, or indeed arise from, differences in oxidative status across dominance classes.
3. Here, we examine rank-related variation in oxidative status before and after a lengthy breeding season in a wild cooperatively breeding bird with high reproductive skew, in the semi-arid zone of Southern Africa; the white-browed sparrow weaver (Plocepasser mahali).
4. Our findings reveal that prior to breeding, neither sex showed rank-related differences in markers of oxidative damage or antioxidant protection, suggesting that dominants' reproductive monopolies do not arise from superior pre-breeding oxidative status.
5. After breeding, however, females (who provision young at higher rates than males) suffered elevated oxidative damage, and dominant females (the only birds to lay and incubate eggs, and the primary nestling provisioners) experienced differential declines in antioxidant protection.
6. While males also showed reduced antioxidant capacity after breeding, this decline was not dependent on rank and not associated with elevated oxidative damage.
7. Our findings suggest that divisions of labour in animal societies can leave the hardest-working classes differentially exposed to oxidative stress, raising the possibility of hitherto unexplored impacts on health and ageing in social species.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12317/abstract

A recent paper has come out in Genome Biology by Neil Hall, the paper investigates what Hall terms the Kardashian index (number of twitter followers/scientific citations). This has gotten a lot of people upset, and potentially rightly so. I've put a link to the Nature web page with an article on the paper. Science communication is a crucial part of modern research and is a great way for young scientists to communicate their work (and potentially increase their citation rate in the process) to the wider scientific community and the public in general. Many disciplines, behavioural ecology included, have journals with low citation rates but are investigating aspects of science that the public find interesting. Genomics, Dr Hall's field, is probably the other way around: with lots of publications in high impact biomedical journals but being a complicated and often difficult field to explain to the lay person. One criticism that has been laid at the paper is that it's sexist, especially with the use of Kim Kardashian's name for the index. I disagree, as the only male celebrities that I can think of who would fit into that category are on TOWIE and MIC and I don't even know their names, so why would someone in the US or Switzerland know who they are? It's good that people are discussing how best to measure scientists impact and this sort of discourse can only benefit science. I disagree with the K-index but can see it has some measure of merit, maybe it needs to include the number of years that the researcher has been publishing for? Possibly a K+ index (twitter followers/(scientific citations/years publishing))?? Food for thought.

Nature article:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v512/n7513/full/512117e.html?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews


Hall (2014) The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists. Genome Biology, 15:424
In the era of social media there are now many different ways that a scientist can build their public profile; the publication of high-quality scientific papers being just one. While social media is a valuable tool for outreach and the sharing of ideas, there is a danger that this form of communication is gaining too high a value and that we are losing sight of key metrics of scientific value, such as citation indices. To help quantify this, I propose the ‘Kardashian Index’, a measure of discrepancy between a scientist’s social media profile and publication record based on the direct comparison of numbers of citations and Twitter followers.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v512/n7513/full/512117e.html?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

So after finishing my PhD I went back the kalahari to help Tom Flower out with some cool work investigating deception tactics and learning in fork-tailed drongos. While I was there I also had a chance to help his honours student, Bruce, out with his research investigating the relationship between drongos and sociable weavers. The kalahari is full of cool inter-species interactions (I'll put a couple of papers below). Bruce's work has just been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, I have put the abstract and a link to the paper below. The work was really fun to do and highlights how conflict and cooperation have to coexist in both and ecological and evolutionary setting, and that this can lead to cool things evolving.

Baigrie, Thompson & Flower (2014) Interspecific signalling between mutualists: food-thieving drongos use a cooperative sentinel call to manipulate foraging partners. Proc R Soc, 281:20141232
Interspecific communication is common in nature, particularly between mutualists. However, whether signals evolved for communication with other species, or are in fact conspecific signals eavesdropped upon by partners, is often unclear. Fork-tailed drongos (Dicrurus adsimilis) associate with mixed-species groups and often produce true alarms at predators, whereupon associating species flee to cover, but also false alarms to steal associating species' food (kleptoparasitism). Despite such deception, associating species respond to drongo non-alarm calls by increasing their foraging and decreasing vigilance. Yet, whether these calls represent interspecific sentinel signals remains unknown. We show that drongos produced a specific sentinel call when foraging with a common associate, the sociable weaver (Philetairus socius), but not when alone. Weavers increased their foraging and decreased vigilance when naturally associating with drongos, and in response to sentinel call playback. Further, drongos sentinel-called more often when weavers were moving, and weavers approached sentinel calls, suggesting a recruitment function. Finally, drongos sentinel-called when weavers fled following false alarms, thereby reducing disruption to weaver foraging time. Results therefore provide evidence of an ‘all clear’ signal that mitigates the cost of inaccurate communication. Our results suggest that drongos enhance exploitation of a foraging mutualist through coevolution of interspecific sentinel signals.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1791/20141232.abstract

Other cool interspecies interactions:

Pied babblers and scimitarbills:
Ridley, Wiley & Thompson (2014) The ecological benefits of interceptive eavesdropping. Functional Ecology, 28: 197-205

Drongos and pied babblers:Flower (2011) Fork-tailed drongos use deceptive mimicked alarm calls to steal food. Proc R Soc, 278:1548-1555