Mathematicians Combat Climate Change

Mathematical models could hold the key to the future of global food security. This is the news coming out of a recent meeting of mathematicians and crop scientists in Morocco where mathematical models are being developed to identify genetic material that could help improve food crops resilience to climate change. Experts warn that drought, pest and disease are becoming more prevalent than in the past, all of which are expected to worsen with future climate change.

While there are over 1,700 major agricultural genebanks housing over 7 million samples across the world, researchers have so far had the painstaking task of trying to locate the much sought-after traits that would enable the development of climate–proof crops able to withstand heat and drought conditions.

Mathematical models are therefore being developed which would help focus the search and reducing the time taken to locate the precious traits. Rather than employ the use of ‘trial and error’, the model, known as the Figs system, would target samples with a high probability of finding the given traits. A paper published last year presented some of the inroads already made by this new model – where the Figs system successfully identified drought-resistant traits in samples of faba beans. Mathematicians looking for some critical and topical applications of their discipline need look no further, while HSPS, Biological Science and Geography students should harvest all this information before interview time.

Biologists and material scientists will be glad to hear that the natural world has emerged as a major inspiration for new materials and technology. American engineers have developed a flexible material that changes colour to match its surroundings.

Professor John Rogers and his team from the University of Illinois based their design on the camouflage abilities of cephalopods: octopuses, squid and cuttlefish. The three-layer design seen in the skin of these animals was adapted for the engineered system – where the top layer contains the colours, the middle layer drives colour changes, and the lower senses the background patterns to be copied. In the new material, the bottom layer contains a grid of photosensors which detect changes in light and transmit the pattern to ‘actuators’ in the layer above. Although the material so far only responds in black and white, researchers hope that the principles of the design can be developed further and be applied to a variety of military and commercial uses.

The potential military uses of camouflage are such that the project was initially funded by the US Navy. Artists and designers have also been drawn towards the material’s potential – with the possibility of colour-changing fabrics for high-end fashion which could respond to ambient lighting, or even dynamic colour-changing walls and other interior surfaces. While Rogers remained jovial about the myriad of commercial uses for his engineering feat, he stressed that, ‘’”Our goal as researchers is not to develop a colour-changing wallpaper.

That’s a vision that somebody had, for an application – and indeed, it’s kind of cool. But our emphasis is more on the basics, around biologically inspired engineering.” For those looking to be well-armed with case studies before their material science interviews, here’s a link to Professor Rogers’ work in the journal PNAS.

The Ebola outbreak affecting West Africa is the worst in history. According to UN figures, deaths across the region have reached over 800, and officials in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are struggling to control the virus and prevent it spreading.

While the virus is not new, there is no known cure and this outbreak has been the most devastating since the virus was first identified in 1976. Ebola is a viral illness that kills up to 90% of those infected. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat. This can then be followed by the more serious stages of vomiting, diarrhea and even external bleeding.

While public health dissemination across West and Central Africa has gone into overdrive, health workers have faced more difficult challenges in rural and countryside areas where their presence has often been treated with suspicion. As Liberia’s Information Minister Lewis G. Brown explained, ‘’some [Western health workers] have been turned away because communities believe they are the cause of the spread of the disease. Superstition aside, traditional practices in burial, including the preparation and washing of the deceased, is one of the near-certain ways of contracting the virus if death was from Ebola.’’ It is in these circumstances that politicians, medical workers, and local voices must group together to combat the threat. Brown further expanded on the measures being taken in Liberia to inform people of the risks of the virus, where they have used ‘’ indigenous language radio to reach remote communities and sending local public health workers – at real risk to themselves – to speak in local languages to villagers, to overcome the suspicion they may have of others.’’

With world leaders and international health organisations rallying together to prevent the spread of the virus, the Ebola case outlines the ways in which localised issues can very quickly take on an international dimension. Medicine, Politics and Geography students should note how attempts to contain Ebola’s spread are being exacerbated by the porous borders of today’s globalised world. In an era of interconnectedness and easy international air travel, health concerns in seemingly distant areas of the globe have the potential to very quickly develop into transnational political issues – only enhancing the role of non-governmental institutions such as the UN and WHO.

Did you know that about 50 to 75 percent of the population live with a virus dwelling in their guts?! This is the startling revelation made by researcher Rob Edwards, a professor of bioinformatics at San Diego State University. But ‘why have I never heard of it?’ you ask. The reason is that most people haven’t, not even scientists! Although extremely common in humans, it was only discovered recently when researchers studying bacteria unwittingly came across the virus, known as crAssphage . The virus is a bacteriophage, or ‘’phage’’ which means that it infects bacteria. CrAssphage infects bacteria which live inside the human gut, called Bacteroides, but it’s unclear whether the virus is harmful to humans, or responsible for any health problems. The next stage for scientists is to grow the virus in a laboratory in order to work out exactly what effect, if any, crAssphage has on the human body. In the meantime, researchers are being praised for the sophisticated technique they employed to identify the virus. David Pride, associate director of microbiology at the University of California, claimed “The biggest contribution of this work is the method they used’ which could ‘provide a blueprint for further viral discovery’.  Dr Martha Clokie of the University of Leicester, was most excited by the news that ‘’scientists have produced new techniques and powerful tools to help identify previously unknown viruses’’. Given the important role bacteria plays in chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, Clokie hoped that “If we can pin down these viral controllers, we could perhaps one day use them to modify any harmful bacteria, rendering them less powerful.” While the discovery of the bacteria should be of interest to Medics and Biologists, all Science applicants should take heed of the methodology on display here that could prove transferrable to a variety of disciplines. 

Computer Scientists, Medics, Neuroscientists and Psychologists now have a legitimate reason to put aside the books and pick up their smartphones. This is the news that researchers have been using mobile phone apps to conduct real scientific experiments. Scores and gaming patterns from four puzzles from the Great Brain Experiment app are being used to measure people’s cognitive functions – namely the human propensity for risk and impulsive behaviour. The “Am I Impulsive?” game, for example, asks participants to smash fruit that is falling from a tree using their fingers, but to refrain from smashing it when it is rotting, indicated by the fruit turning brown. Eyebrows were raised when the results of these games were used as part of serious scientific experiments, but a team from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging found that they were as reliable as lab experiments, with the added value of a much larger sample size. Dr Zeidman,a neuroscientist from University College London, outlined the benefit of such experiments for further medical, psychiatric or neurological studies, ‘’People with certain psychiatric illnesses or neurological problems have an impaired ability to inhibit their actions, for example ADHD or schizophrenia… If we can better understand just in the healthy population how people inhibit their actions then we’ll learn a lot more.” Already the results from one of the games have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and used in research looking at workingmemory – when information is held for only a very short time. The long-term aim of such research is for game data to be combined with medical, genetic or lifestyle information to learn more about the relationship between well-being and a person’s psychological characteristics. 

Politicians, Lords, law makers, medical practitioners and religious groups are at logger-heads over the controversial issue of assisted dying. Lord Falconer, the former Secretary of State for Justice, has put forward a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose to terminally ill patients judged to have less than six months to live. Prime Minister David Cameron has said he is not “convinced” by the arguments for legalising assisted dying and more than 100 members of the House of Lords have asked to speak on the issue. Cambridge scientist Stephen Hawking and the former Archbishop of Canterbury have, on the other hand, waded in by pledging their support for a new bill. For Hawking, current legislation equates to ‘’discrimination against the disabled’’, as they are currently denied ‘’the right to kill themselves that able bodied people have’’. For many, such as journalist Kieran Turner-Dave, the recent debate has been long overdue, and one that should be of interest to those applying for Law, Medicine, Theology and PPE.

Scientists are worried that the world’s banana crop is facing extinction. A disease called Black Sigatoka (which blackens leaves and halves yields) has shown alarming signs that it has grown resistant to fungicides – forcing growers to increase the dosages being sprayed. To make matters worse, Foc Tropical Race 4, a strain of Panama disease that attacks the Cavendish (the world’s most widely exported banana variety) has hit a variety of countries across the globe. Central and South America, where the majority of the world’s bananas come from, has so far escaped the disease but Gert Kema, a plant pathologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, warns ‘It’s not a question of whether it will occur there,’’ but instead, ‘’It’s a question of when.’’ The challenge now is to find a banana that is resistant to both diseases while remaining commercially viable. It’s not only Natural Scientists and Biologists who should be interested in these events. There are financial implications for Economists, while anyone partial to the world’s favourite fruit should keep their eyes peeled for further developments. 

The world of medical ethics is changing as fast as the rest of the world is. This week, Facebook’s unannounced psychological study has been all over the news, revealing that the social media giant manipulated posts on the Facebook walls of unwitting users for a week to see how it impacted their behaviour. Jess Zimmerman in The Guardian has had a particularly visceral reaction to it, highlighting the ethical problems in this fascinating, futuristic study. Earlier in June, Cardiologytoday also had something to say on the matter of Medicine and media, bringing up the particularly interesting issue of what a good practitioner would do in response to a Facebook request from a patient. When you become a doctor, the heady world of ethics becomes a personal responsibility, and so you will need to have a voice in these debates.

Finding a cure for autism has always been a controversial quest. This week, American scientists have found a link between a mother’s exposure to agricultural pesticides and autism. It’s as much as a two-thirds increase in the likelihood of having a child with a developmental delay or form of autism – and the correlation is stronger when exposure occurs during the second and third trimesters. Most of the chemicals were organophosphates and pyrethroids, both of which already have bad environmental reputations for adversely affecting childhood development and a whole range of nervous and dermatological side effects, respectively. Of course, we should always be very careful to check the statistics in these situations. Don’t forget, aside from the MMR scare, mistaking correlation for causation can make you a laughing stock in the scientific community – so make sure you read the whole article carefully. It’s a highly challenging and sensitive area that all Medics, Nat Sci (B) students and, well, all of us should be aware of: Chemists and Biochemists need to consider the pesticides, Statisticians might need to help with the data and Lawyers and Economists may end up involved in the process as well.

Just how clever are our corvid friends? Many of us will have witnessed it ourselves, and it’s long been known that crows are capable of using tools – Oxford researchers made much of the headway into this research by strapping cameras to crows’ heads. However, it transpires that although crows may have a similar level of intelligence as even a seven year old child in some areas, they cannot produce a novel action, after observing another perform the action. This is interesting as they otherwise can show signs of reasoning and advanced learning abilities in an experiment that offered them different sized rocks for different tasks. How then should we be measuring intelligence? What are the implications for the development of human reasoning? There are certainly a lot of interesting questions raised by studying crows that all Psychologists, Natural Scientists and Medics (both Veterinary and human) should consider.