Science news in brief
5-April-2009
Recent real science
The research topics below, chosen from hundreds published this week, range from robot scientists to alien invaders and astronaut exercise. There is sleeping sickness, astronomical images and nanoparticles to see inside the living body. Have a look:
3-April-2009 Young pulsar shows its hand
A small dense object just twelve miles across is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. The images are being released as part of the "Around the World in 80 Telescopes" webcast as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.
3-April-2009 Robot Scientist
Human scientists have now created the first robot scientist. He's called Adam and is the only machine so far to have discovered new scientific knowledge all on its own. The robot is a computer system that automates the scientific process.
3-Apr-2009 Another robot scientist
Using the digital mind that guides their self-repairing robot, researchers at Cornell University have created a computer program that uses raw observational data to tease out fundamental physical laws. The breakthrough may aid the discovery of new scientific truths, particularly for biological systems, that have until now eluded detection.Reporting in the April 3, 2009, issue of Science, Cornell University researcher Hod Lipson and his doctoral student Michael Schmidt
3-Apr-2009 Dissecting a stellar explosion
Integral has captured one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts ever seen. A meticulous analysis of the data has allowed astronomers to investigate the initial phases of this giant stellar explosion, which led to the ejection of matter at velocities close to the speed of light. In particular, the astronomers believe that the explosion lifted a piece of the central engine's magnetic field into space.
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2-Apr-2009 Sleeping sickness
Scientists at the University of Glasgow have made a breakthrough in the treatment of Sleeping Sickness, otherwise known as Human African Trypanosomasis.
2-Apr-2009 Alien invaders across Europe
Europe's borders have been breached by thousands of plants and animal species from other parts of the world: from the American mink to the New Zealand flatworm. The invaders feed on, hybridise with, parasitise and out-compete native species. They also introduce diseases, alter the balance within ecosystems, modify landscapes and impact upon agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
2-Apr-2009 All over for Clover
The UK has cancelled funding for an experiment that, if built, would have searched for the signatures of gravitational waves in the Comic Microwave Background (CMB).
2-Apr-2009 Common language for climate change
A letter has gone out to the scientific community outlining how to improve communications between climate scientists and policymakers. It recommends a single frame of reference for atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and rising global temperatures. This will reduce confusion, produce consistent reporting and lead to more decisions based on accurate science.
2-Apr-2009 Astronauts need to work harder
New research shows that astronauts need better workouts to avoid severe muscle loss on long space missions. Even though crew members exercised they still lost 15 % of their muscle mass: "By clinical standards, this is a massive loss. It approaches what we see in ageing populations, in comparisons of a 20-year-old versus an 80-year-old."
Mar 31, 2009 Seeing inside living bodies
Researchers in the Netherlands have imaged the flow of blood in a living organism for the first time. They are using a technology known as magnetic particle imaging (MPI). X-rays and MRI produce high quality snapshots of bones and hard tissue inside the body. But they are not nearly so good at resolving soft tissues and fluids. Iron oxide particles injected into the body are highly visible though, because there are no other naturally occurring magnetic particles in the blood stream.
Education resources, classroom activities, cool stuff
This week's podcast
Young pulsar
100 Hours of Astronomy is a global astronomy event for discovering the Universe - a project of the International Year of Astronomy, it has free public activities around the world and on the web.
Have a look and listen to the scientists who discovered the pulsars while still a student, Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
Adam the robot scientist
Watch Adam in eight videos (no sound).
Robot scientist report in The Times
Take a look at the paper itself.
Cornell robot scientist
Take a look at the video and the FAQ on this research
Hod Lipson video about robots that can learn about themselves
Maybe some of the gravitational wave stuff about science.
More about Hod Lipson.
CCSL outreach
Article in Wired
Astronauts need better workouts
Get your students to train like an astronaut.
Staying fit - on earth and in space
Astronaut Greg Chamitoff on fitness and stress in space
If you think it's hard to stay in shape on Earth, try keeping fit in space.
Watch a very short video on this latest research.
Sideways workouts from New Scientist
Stellar explosion
Life cycles of stars
Sleeping sickness
Glasgow University Vet School
Video on school trip to James Herriot's home, now a museum (Herriott qualified from Glasgow Veterinary College, which later became Glasgow University Vet School, then later again the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.)
Alien invaders
DAISIE - delivering alien invasive species inventories for Europe
Handbook of Alien Species in Europe
Invasive alien species, from the Convention on Biological Diversity
Over for Clover
Watch and listen to Glasgow University gravitational wave researchers.
Climate-change language
Series of lessons for the science classroom based on the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth
Video trailer for An Inconvenient Truth
Classroom activities for climate change
Facts and fiction about climate change from the Royal Society.
Seeing the blood flow
Five different technologies for peering inside the living brain
Transcript of 5 April 2009 podcast:
The week in Real Science - robot scientists
Hello again and welcome to the Real Science review of the week. This is the place where we pick out a handful of pieces of research published since this time last week, give you a webpage with links to help you learn more, and provide a bit of chat on some aspect of the latest research that strikes us as interesting.
The most obvious feature of this week's topics is that there are two different pieces of research on robot scientists – one from Aberystwyth University, the other from Cornell University in the States.
So if everybody is suddenly building robots that do real science, who needs real scientists? It's a good question. I remember talking to a fellow student when I was at university, who told me he was "really into black holes". An unfortunate turn of phrase, but that's how we talked in those days. Apart from black holes though he could see no point in science or scientists.
Wrong tack
This guy was studying history and sociology, so he was interested in the past but not in the future, in people but not in ideas. I tried to explain how without science there would be no modern world, half of all children born would die before they grew up, and every town would be awash with sewage.
He was unconvinced, and looking back I realise I took the wrong tack. Because what I was trying to do was justify science by talking about engineering and technology. Science is not engineering and technology.
What's the difference? Well in essence a scientist is driven to understand. An engineer is driven to do, to make, to create. A scientist is always asking why. An engineer wants to know where, how and why not.
Which one?
At different times in my life I've earned my living as a scientist and as an engineer. But at heart I'm a scientist.
I've been taking nobody's word for anything, asking the question why, looking for evidence, ever since I can remember. That kind of thing doesn't make you popular with parents and teachers when you're only 6 years old. But what can you do?
Unlike a real engineer, I have no urge to build a better mousetrap – and not just because I won't kill any living thing. Human-made machines don't interest me much. The natural world is far more complex, fascinating and strange.
What's the difference?
Here are a few thoughts from other people on the distinction between science and engineering:
“Scientists dream about doing great things," said the author James Michener. "Engineers do them.”
"A good scientist is a person with original ideas," said the physicist Freeman Dyson. "A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering."
"Engineering or technology is the making of things that did not previously exist," said David Billington, "Science is the discovering of things that have long existed."
Adam from Aberystwyth
So now we know what we're talking about – more or less – here's the question. Are these robot scientists real scientists? Are they engineers? Or are they technicians, doing a skilful job of work without innovation?
Well since they're not human you'd think they're missing the two main ingredients of a scientist right away – curiosity and creativity. But let's dig a little deeper.
Adam the Aberystwyth robot comes up with hypotheses. It devises experiments to test these. It runs the experiments using laboratory robotics. It interprets the results and it repeats the cycle. All without human intervention.
So there are essentially two parts to Adam – the artificial intelligence that dreams up the hypotheses and interprets the data, and the machinery and equipment that run the experiments in the lab to test the hypotheses and produce the data. A brain and a body, if you like.
Clever Cornell
The Cornell robot scientist is simpler, apparently. It only has a brain. It's entirely software. So real scientists have to set the experiments up that produce the data and provide these to the robot scientist – which clearly isn't a robot in the usual sense of a mechanical human. But not being tied to a body makes the Cornell robot scientist more flexible, more powerful. What does it do? essentially it finds patterns in large amounts of data.
It does this without any knowledge of what produces the data. The system it investigates might be a conventional robot – which is where their research began. Or a complex mechanical system like a double pendulum. It might be an environmental system or a weather pattern. The data could come from population genetics, cosmology, oceanography, particle physics. Any field that produces oceans of numbers that need explaining and understanding – and create gargantuan jobs for real scientists.
Right now the Cornell researchers have turned their attention to the complex chemistry of living things, where breakthroughs in understanding could have a huge impact on health and disease.
Have a think
Now here's a question. The Aberystwyth researchers are scientists – biologists in fact – while the Cornell people are engineers. Both call their invention a robot scientist though. Are they right? And if so why?
And here's another point to ponder. What are the chances of building a robot engineer? What good would it be? Would it be a bigger challenge or just about as difficult as making a robot scientist. Again why?
And a couple of final thoughts, because we've run out of time once more, and I intend to be quite firm about keeping these chats to 5 minutes or I'll ramble on forever.
Here's a nice quote from Martin Luther King. – but notice that he's making the same mistake I did all those years ago – confusing science with technology. "The means by which we live has outdistanced the ends for which we live," King said in 1963. "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
In the beginning
And finally, the Aberystwyth scientists are now working on an improved version of Adam, called – you guessed it – Eve. The last time somebody did something like that the pair got up to no end of trouble as soon as he turned his back. Somebody should tell the Aberystwyth scientists to keep Adam and Eve well apart. Or better still call their new robot scientist something safer. Like Albert.
That's all for this week at Real Science. Talk to you again soon.
Thanks for listening
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