Category Archives: Science

Birkbeck’s TRIGGER initiative explores gender inequality in Higher Education

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This post was contributed by James Fisk, graduate administrator at the School of Business, Economics and Informatics.

Trigger logoOn the 28 June Birkbeck took further strides toward gender equality and equity, as the EU Project TRIGGER (Transforming Institutions by Gendering Contents and Gaining Equality in Research) invited an audience of professionals, academics and students to consider how best to inspire aspiring female professors and managers.

Indeed, gender inequality persists in higher education despite the many positive steps that have been made by the sector in recent years. The implementation and acceleration of Athena SWAN, as well as vocal support from leading academics and professionals, has raised the profile of gender inequality substantially. Yet a report published by the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) in 2015 and looking at statistical data gleaned from the sector elucidates the enduring prevalence of gender inequality. In 2015, 77.6% of all Professors were male, whilst in SET (Science, Economics and Technology) subjects the figure was even higher at 81.8% (ECU).

How barriers can be overcome

The event ‘Aspiring female Professors/Managers – What can aspiring female professors/managers learn from those already in these positions?’ exists within this milieu and looked to develop dialogue, networking and solidarity to consider how such barriers can be overcome. As one speaker, Simona Iammarino, Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics, remarked during the panel discussion:

“We need more than just small cogs; we need a holistic culture that lends and prides itself on both gender equality and equity.”

So, how to eradicate an inequality that is both historic and persistent? To those at the event the answer seemed to become clearer as experiences were shared among the audience and the panel. Many panel speakers discussed the necessity of having role models, with young and ambitious students, academics and professionals all attesting to the benefits of inspirational figures in the guise of mentors, line managers and colleagues.

As Birkbeck’s Professor of Entrepreneurship Helen Lawton Smith stated, “we need to understand that we’re all in this together and it is up to each of us create the support necessary for women to succeed in academia and professional roles”.

TRIGGER image

The TRIGGER event on 28 June 2016

Fostering organisational change

Birkbeck’s four year TRIGGER initiative was set up in January 2014 as an applied research project aiming to foster organisational change through promoting the role of women in research and academia. It complements several other initiatives introduced by Birkbeck to reduce gender inequality in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Mathematics) subjects and managerial roles, such as ASTREA (Networking for women in professional and support roles), AURORA (Developing leadership skills for women) and Athena SWAN.

It is through such exchanges that commitments are made, not only to fighting disparity among gender pay and seniority, but also to fully comprehend the myriad dimensions of the struggle at hand. Indeed, until the persisting mechanisms of gender inequality are fully understood, they are doomed to perpetuate themselves. Discussions at the event ranged from the issue of age and its gendered role in the life of academics and professionals (see Fields Medal), to the challenges of younger women eager to assert themselves in male dominated professions.

The event itself embodied this sense of solidarity and commitment to gender equality, with networks forming around shared aspirations, experiences and struggles. If indeed institutions are to instigate a culture equipped to overcome inequality, it will be through a sharing of information, a proliferation of networks and through the support of key decision makers.

You can see a video taken of the event online, for those wishing to read more you can catch a summary of the panel responses posted to LinkedIn. You can read more about TriggeR  and upcoming events on their website. Students interested in mentoring programmes run by the college can check out Mentoring Pathways.

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The use of extraterrestrial resources to facilitate space science and exploration

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This post was contributed by Professor Ian Crawford, from Birkbeck’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. It was originally posted on the Centauri Dreams blog by Paul Gilster on 10 June 2016. On 8 April, Professor Crawford organised a Royal Astronomical Society Specialist Discussion Meeting. Here, he discusses themes explored at the event.

Ian Crawford blog

(Centauri Dreams introduction)

We get to the stars one step at a time, or as the ever insightful Lao Tzu put it long ago, ”You accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” Right now, of course, many of the necessary ‘acts’ seem anything but small, but as Ian Crawford explains below, they’re a necessary part of building up the kind of space economy that will result in a true infrastructure, one that can sustain the exploration of space at the outskirts of our own system and beyond. Dr. Crawford is Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London. Today he brings us a report on a discussion of these matters at the Royal Astronomical Society earlier this year.

There is increasing interest in the possibility of using the energy and material resources of the solar system to build a space economy, and in recent years a number of private companies have been established with the stated aim of developing extraterrestrial resources with this aim in mind (see, for example, the websites ofPlanetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, Shackleton Energy, andMoon Express). Although many aspects of this economic activity will likely be pursued for purely commercial reasons (e.g. space tourism, and the mining of the Moon and asteroids for economically valuable materials), science will nevertheless be a major beneficiary.

The potential scientific benefits of utilising space resources were considered at a Specialist Discussion Meeting organised by the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society on 8 April. This meeting, which was attended by over 60 participants, demonstrated widespread interest in the potential scientific benefits of space resource utilisation. A report of the meeting has now been accepted for publication in the RAS journalAstronomy & Geophysics and videos of the talks are available on the RAS website.

The participants agreed that multiple (and non-mutually exclusive) scientific benefits will result from the development of a space economy, including:

  • Scientific discoveries made during prospecting for, and extraction of, space resources;
  • Using space resources to build, provision and maintain scientific instruments and outposts (i.e. in situ resource utilisation, or ISRU);
  • Leveraging economic wealth generated by commercial space activities to help pay for space science activities (e.g. by taxing profits from asteroid mining, space tourism, etc);
  • Scientific utilisation of the transportation and other infrastructure developed to support commercial space activities.

Specific examples of scientific activities that would be facilitated by the development of a space economy include the construction of large space telescopes to study planets orbiting other stars, ambitious space missions (including human missions) to the outer Solar System, and the establishment of scientific research stations on the Moon and Mars (and perhaps elsewhere).

In the more distant future, and of special interest to readers of Centauri Dreams, an important scientific application of a well-developed space infrastructure may be the construction of interstellar space probes for the exploration of planets around nearby stars. The history of planetary exploration clearly shows that in situ investigations by space probes are required if we are to learn about the interior structures, geological evolution, and possible habitability of the planets in our own solar system, and so it seems clear that spacecraft will eventually be needed for the investigation of other planetary systems as well.

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Professor Ian Crawford

For example, if future astronomical observations from the solar system (perhaps using large space telescopes themselves built and paid for using space resources) find evidence suggesting that life might exist on a planet orbiting a nearby star, in situmeasurements will probably be required to get definitive proof of its existence and to learn more about its underlying biochemistry, ecology, and evolutionary history. This in turn will eventually require transporting sophisticated scientific instruments across interstellar space.

However, the scale of such an undertaking should not be underestimated. Although very low-mass laser-pushed nano-craft, such as are being considered by Project Starshot, could conceivably be launched directly from Earth, the scientific capabilities of such small payloads will surely be very limited. Initiatives like Starshot will certainly help to develop useful technology that will enable more capable interstellar missions later on, and are therefore greatly to be welcomed, but ultimately much more massive interstellar payloads will be required if detailed scientific studies of nearby exoplanet systems are to be conducted.

Even allowing for future progress in miniaturisation, a scientifically useful interstellar payload will probably need to have a mass of at least several tonnes, and perhaps much more (as I have discussed in this recent paper in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society). Moreover, in order to get this to even the nearest stars within a scientifically useful timescale (say ≤100 years) then spacecraft velocities of order 10% of the speed of light will be required. This will likely require vehicles of such a size, with such highly energetic (and thus potentially dangerous) propulsion systems that their construction and launch will surely have to take place in space.

The potential long-term scientific benefits of an interstellar spacefaring capability are hard to exaggerate, but it seems certain that it is a capability that will only become possible in the context of a well-developed space economy with access to the material and energy resources of our own solar system.

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Lost planetary worlds: Evidence of the unquiet early Solar System

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This post was contributed by Birkbeck student, Anja Lanin. Anja attended Professor Hilary Downes’ lecture, ‘Lost Planetary Worlds’ during Birkbeck Science Week 2016.

Solar System

Professor Hilary Downes has been a research scientist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Birkbeck for 30 years. Insights from her own and other workers’ research have left her with a strong interest in the evolution of the Solar System. As it turns out, the orderly Solar System we observe today in fact started out as everything but quiet and orderly. In its early days it was a place of violent collisions between planetary bodies. Many of these have been almost completely lost. Almost! We have evidence of their existence, ranging from the macroscopic to the elemental, and this was the subject of Professor Downes’ enthusiastic talk ‘Lost Worlds of the Solar System.’

Theory: Computer models

Starting her talk by showing a real image of a planet-forming region around stars, as observed by telescope, as well as computer models which together may suggest the organised formation of planets within an accretionary disk, Professor Downes moved on to theoretical considerations of a very different-looking chaotic early Solar System.

Computer simulations of Jupiter’s growth, for example, indicate that many planetary embryos were sent onto wildly eccentric orbits. Other models show planets such as Jupiter and Saturn moving repeatedly closer and then away from the sun causing gravitational chaos in the inner Solar System before the system became more settled.

Evidence from our Solar System planets – shaken and stirred!

The audience were then presented with some very odd and interesting facts about our planets. For one thing, they do not orbit the sun in the original plane (the location of the previous accretionary disk) of the Solar System. Some seem to defy the laws of physics by floating above and some below. Furthermore, some of the planets’ axial tilts have gone ‘wonky.’

While Jupiter and Mercury spin textbook-style perpendicular to the plane, all other planets have been knocked around to the extreme that Uranus has been completely knocked over and is now spinning parallel to the plane. Venus is even more special – it is rotating in the opposite direction to all other planets! These characteristics, according to Professor Downes, strongly suggest violent collisions of the planets with other planetary material.

‘Tangible’ evidence: meteorites within meteorites

So what happened to the impactors? We can actually study collisional space debris which comes to us in the form of meteorites. For many of these meteorites the parent body, for example a planet or an asteroid, is known, but, as Professor Downes emphasises, there are many parentless ungrouped meteorites. Perhaps the most interesting of these are brecciated meteorites which contain fragments of other meteorites. What do we learn from these fragments?

 

Real science reveals real mysteries….

As indicated in the talk, planetary science students at Birkbeck are actively accessing technology (e.g. electron microprobe) that allows them to study the mineralogy and basic chemical make-up of meteorites. This is one way that allows them to determine whether or not meteoritic material comes from a classified or unclassified parent body.

Something that cannot be analysed at Birkbeck yet!, but also yields very important clues, are oxygen isotope ratios. Each known planetary body has a unique oxygen fingerprint, so that previously unregistered ratios hint at lost parent bodies. Professor Downes, relating to her own group’s research, points out a particularly interesting brecciated meteorite fragment, which, surprisingly, turned out to be granitic, i.e. it is mineralogically and texturally similar to granites found on Earth (some of us recognise the rock from kitchen counter tops!).

However! – its oxygen chemistry indicates that it comes neither from Earth nor is it related to the other meteoritic material in which it was included as a fragment. It is therefore not related to the asteroid from which the rest of the meteorite is derived. In addition, a strange associated glass is high in sulfur (S) and chlorine (Cl), and no planet in the Solar System except Mars contains sulfur and chlorine. But the oxygen chemistry again suggests it is not from Mars. Thus, this glass may represent another lost planetary body or planet possibly disintegrated during the early collisional chaos!

There are many examples of odd, unexplained finds in meteorites. Even opal, which we recognise as a semi-precious stone, has been found by Profesor Downes and her colleagues, although its extraterrestrial origin is still unclear. Perhaps a water or ice-rich meteorite crashed into an asteroid and all that is left of this ice or water world is this little piece of opal?

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Molecules that Walk

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This post was contributed by Dr Clare Sansom, senior associate lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences. Dr Sansom attended Dr Anthony Roberts’s lecture during Birkbeck Science Week 2016.

Molecules

The Department of Biological Science’s contribution to Science week 2016 kicked off on 11 April with a lecture by Dr Anthony Roberts, a young Principal Investigator who arrived at Birkbeck in 2014. Anthony received his B.Sc. from Imperial College in London and his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds, and spent four years as a postdoc at Harvard in the USA before moving here to start his own research group as a Sir Henry Dale Fellow of the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society.

Walking molecules and their importance for human health

Anthony began his lecture by explaining that he was going to talk about molecules that have the capacity to produce directed movement – or to ‘walk’ – and their importance for human health. These molecules are all proteins, and the context in which they move is the interior of living cells. Both the proteins he studies, kinesin and dynein, ‘walk’ on a network of highways conceptually not unlike the transport system that we use to move around London. These cellular highways are filaments called microtubules, which, unlike our roads and railway tracks, are able to self-assemble and also to self-destruct.

The ability to move is one of the fundamental properties of life, and scientists and philosophers have been studying it for millennia. Muscles were identified as the organs of movement in antiquity, but it was not until the mid-twentieth century that the molecules involved in muscle contraction could be identified. The Hungarian physiologist Albert Szent-Györgyi discovered the muscle proteins now named actin and myosin using very simple equipment during the Second World War.

These proteins have similarities with kinesin and dynein, although historically they have been easier to study due to their abundance in muscle; actin forms fibrils and the enzyme myosin binds to and ‘walks’ along these filaments. This process, like all movement, requires energy, and this is obtained from the cell’s power source, the small molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The part of the myosin molecule that binds to actin, which is called its head, breaks a phosphate bond in this molecule to liberate energy and power the walking motion; many of these ‘power strokes’ together cause the muscle fibre to contract.

Snapshots

Dr Anthony RobertsIdeally, we would want to watch this, or any other form of molecular motion, in real time, but this is impossible because molecules are far too small: smaller than the wavelength of light, so they cannot be viewed in a light microscope. Studies of molecular structure require techniques like X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy, both of which have been used to study motor molecules.

However, neither of these techniques can do more than generate still images. Movement can only be inferred by taking lots of snapshots of the molecules at different points during the movement cycle, rather like the earliest movies. We have now built up a complete picture of actin and myosin that is detailed enough for the positions of individual atoms to be seen clearly.

Not all movement in nature, however, uses muscles. Single-celled organisms – the ‘animalcules’ observed by pioneer microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in the 1670s – have directed movement, as do bacteria, and these have neither muscles nor nervous systems. And directed movement also occurs inside cells. A good example of this is the division of replicated DNA between daughter cells during cell division.

The interior of all cells is a viscous mixture, crowded with molecules; it is possible for small molecules to move from one part of a cell to another through diffusion, but this process would be impossibly slow for larger ones. Motor proteins, on the other hand, can carry ‘cargo’ molecules across cells remarkably quickly and efficiently. Motor proteins can traverse a distance of 0.1 mm – the length of a large animal cell – in two minutes, which in terms of lengths per second is approximately three times faster than a car.

Both the motor proteins studied in Anthony’s lab, kinesin and dynein, ‘walk’ along microtubules inside cells. These filaments typically form with one end towards the centre of the cell, and its nucleus, and the other towards the cell periphery, and the motor proteins move in opposite directions: dynein towards the nucleus, and kinesin towards the cell edge.

Any kind of directed movement by molecules is challenging for several reasons. Motor molecules have no equivalent of our nervous systems for controlling movement, and they are far too small to be held on their tracks by gravity; instead, they grip the microtubules using chemical forces. They experience negligible inertia, and are constantly buffeted by other molecules in the cell. It would therefore be catastrophic for the whole of a walking molecule to leave its path at once.

A single leg with two feet

The structure and function of conventional kinesin are now fairly well understood. It consists of two identical protein chains, and each chain has two major domains separated by a short linker. The larger domain of each chain coils together to form a single long stalk; the smaller domain is globular and attaches to the microtubule, so the molecule looks rather like a single leg with two feet. Each of the feet is an enzyme that generates the energy for the motion by breaking down ATP to form ADP and release a phosphate group, and it cycles between ATP-bound, ADP-bound and empty states.

The step between ADP-bound and empty is a bottleneck that can be relieved when the foot attaches to the microtubule in a particular position, ensuring that the whole molecule moves in the correct direction. The trailing foot is released from the microtubule and the cycle begins again once ATP has bound to the front foot, triggering a conformational change in the whole molecule.

The core of kinesin is similar in structure to myosin, suggesting that these two proteins have a common ancestor. The other microtubule-bound motor protein, dynein, has a different origin. Although we still know comparatively little about it, it was actually the first of the microtubule-bound motor proteins to be discovered: this was in the 1960s, when it was found as the protein that generates the force that allows protozoa and sperm cells to swim. Anthony’s group, however, has been studying how it functions inside cells to move ‘cargo’ – often nucleic acids or other proteins – from the edges of the cell towards its interior. It also helps to pull the duplicated genetic material between the two halves of the cell during cell division.

The structure of Dynein

Dynein

Dynein

Dynein is a much larger and more complex molecule than the other motor proteins. Its structure, like those other proteins, has several components: in this case, a stalk, a ring and a tail, with a linker between the stalk and the ring. Much of what we know about this large structure has come from electron microscopy, and more recently X-ray crystallography.

Anthony’s group and others have developed a model in which the main mechanical element is the linker, which bends and straightens to displace the cargo-bound end of the structure along the microtubule in the direction of travel. The image shown here is a still from an animated model of how dynein generates movement, which remains speculative in places and is helping to stimulate new experiments in these areas. It is also incomplete, as it only shows one half of the molecule: we do know that dynein, like kinesin, is a biped, but exactly how its ‘feet’ are coordinated remains at the frontier of our knowledge.

Anthony ended his talk by discussing some actual and potential medical applications of studies of walking molecules. Some commonly used anti-cancer drugs, including taxol, work by stabilising microtubules to prevent motion and therefore stop cancer cells from dividing. Molecules that interact with motor proteins are also being studied as potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and for some types of heart disease. One such compound is a myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, which is showing promise as a treatment for heart failure. And we are likely to discover further applications as we learn more about these fascinating walking molecules.

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