He also talked about recent science missions, which are helping us unlock our past, including the UK-led Beagle 2 Mission to Mars and the highly successful Cassini-Huygens Mission which went into orbit round Saturn on 1 July 2004.
Flowering and Withering
THE CURATIVE POWERS OF FOXGLOVES IN 18TH CENTURY MEDICINE
On Wednesday evening, 3rd November, Ross Science Society supporters enjoyed an illustrated talk on the work of William Withering M.D., F.H.R.S. (1741 – 1799).
The Speaker, Dr. Kit Byatt, of Hereford Hospital, described the achievements of this polymath doctor. Dr. Withering’s many interests included chemistry, geology, mineralogy, biology and he started the science of pharmacology.
In 1767 he graduated from Edinburgh University, described as a ‘hotbed of medical activity’ at that time. Undergraduates had to pay One Shilling per session, most of the textbooks were in Latin, and the young doctor had to defend his final thesis in Latin. After a brief absence on a Grand Tour of Europe, he settled down as a doctor in Stafford. From 1775 he practised in Birmingham, and joined the ‘Lunar Society’, a group of intellectuals who met together regularly, travelling to their meetings by the light of the full moon. As a prosperous doctor, travelling during 1785 over 6,000 miles on professional business, he tried to devote at least one hour each day to charity work. In 1783 he diagnosed his own pulmonary tuberculosis; despite wintering in Portugal, and his design of an air-conditioning system in his home at Sparkbrook, he died in 1799.
William Withering’s fame rests mainly on the publication of his 4 Volume ‘Arrangement of British Plants according to the Latest Improvements in the Linean System’ for many years a standard botanical textbook. His interest in geology led to his identification of a rare mineral, barium carbonate, which was named ‘witherite’; he designed a pocket microscope, and specialised in the study of ‘dropsy’, oedema. This last interest stemmed from a chance consultation with an old woman severely afflicted with dropsy. He travelled regularly from Birmingham to Stafford to see patients at the Infirmary and during the change of horses on the journey, he was asked to see this patient; his prognosis was bad, so he was astonished on a later journey to learn that she had recovered, helped by a locally brewed herb tea. He analysed the tea to find the active herb was the Foxglove. Ten years later he scrupulously recorded 162 cases of cures with this poisonous plant, in ‘An Account of the Foxglove’, pub. 1785. Infusion instead of decoction was vital to avoid severe side-effects, and possible death.
William Withering disparaged himself as ‘a dampener at a party’ but he was much respected as a conscientious, intellectual and inquiring scientist, … a man of many talents.
After last year’s stunning portrayal of the Antarctic environment, David Fletcher changed his allegiance and this time opened up the Arctic experience to us.
Edmond Halley, 1656 -1742, was an English astronomer and contempory of Issac Newton, discovered the proper motion of stars and the periodicity of comets. He worked out a theory of comet orbits, concluding that the comet of 1682 (which still bears his name) was periodic and correctly predicted that it would return 76 years later in 1710.
Frenchman Charles Messier, 1730 – 1813 devoted his professional life to comet hunting and on 21 January 1759 Messier found the returning Comet Halley. In 1758 he believed he had discovered another comet-like patch in Taurus, it turned out that this patch was not moving like a comet but a nebula. it later became the first entry M1 in his famous catalogue.
Later Ian continued with a show of images of comets in more recent times and described how we could see a comet this evening. Currently there is a comet in the constellation of Perseus high in the evening sky Comet Machholz. Discovered by an amateur astronomer Don Machholz on 27 August 2004. Don is credited with the discovery of nine previous and has spent nearly 1500 hours comets searching since his last discovery nine years ago however, in the scientific community automated telescopes patrol the night sky searching for comets, one such program is LINEAR
This slide is just one of an animated sequence. We'd love to show them all but not everybody has broadband!
CT Scanning is different from conventional radiography, where a flood of X-rays are passed through body tissue to expose a photographic plate. The scanner fires a narrow beam of radiation through body tissue and very small differences detected in the received energy levels are processed by computer. Multi-slice scanning has developed apace and 64 slice systems are now being installed, the first at Abergavenny. These systems reduce the scan time remarkably, so increasing patient throughput and reducing dosage levels. Neil Barker of Toshiba Medical Systems took us from the origins of the arrival of the Computed Tomography (CT) scanner in 1972, at EMI Central Research Laboratories, by Geoffrey Hounsfield, a former Radio Instructor in WWII.
Neil Barker of Toshiba Medical Systems
But Venus never enjoyed the limelight of stories like 'War of the worlds' or the possibility of life there. This idea died with information sent back by the first space probes sent there.
Unveiling Aphrodite was the story of the space probes sent there from 1961 up to today. Their successes, failures, triumphs of survival on the planet which is the nearest to 'hell' we can imagine.
The talked explained how the planet HAS been mapped through the clouds. Simultaneously it appears so similar to Earth and yet so very different as well. A place where the Greenhouse Effect has taken hold with a vengeance.
www.birmingham-astronomy.org.uk
Dr. Jim Ballantine, first explained his ‘unit’ of toxicity, which derives from the quantity of cyanide required to kill a human being…10 milligrams per kilogram body mass this equalled 1 unit on his scale. Cobra venom is 33 times more poisonous than cyanide, i.e. 33 units. The audience were shocked to be told that the black residue that sometimes collects on opened, unrefrigerated tomato sauce bottle tops can contain Botulinus Toxin, which is equivalent to 3,300,000,000 units on the Ballentine scale! Toxins can cause death either by muscular relaxation or constriction.
Several species of marine poisoners were then added to the list; the most notorious toxic fish are the Puffer fish from the Mediterranean along with the Caribbean based Porcupine fish. Both are scaleless; their flesh is poisonous when eaten by humans as it contains tetrodotoxdin, a neurotoxin which causes paralysis and death. An expensive, Blow fish delicacy called Fugu much favoured by the Japanese, is usually eaten raw. The flesh is safe but has to be scrupulously prepared so that there is no contamination from the guts, liver, ovaries or roe. Any ingested contamination causes muscular paralysis and death; restaurants serving this risky fish have to employ staff qualified by examination in its preparation. Some devotees of this fish pickle the roe, and eat it after three years preservation as it gives the diner a floating sensation!
Shell fish can be poisonous when eaten and mussels sometimes contain another neural blocker, saxitoxin. All the instances where shell fish have poisoned humans are situated on coast lines where the waves come in from the west.
Other marine hazards include jellyfish, with the Portuguese Man of War one example. These creatures hatch in the Caribbean, and migrate to Portugal on the Gulf Stream. Their long, trailing tentacles convey a fearful sting; even dead specimens found on the beach can still sting and should not be touched. Another species, the transparent Box Jellyfish, is native to Cairns, North Queensland, Australia. Its sting is so dangerous that the tourist-favoured beaches are closed to the public from October to March. It is the most dangerous organism in the world.
A dramatically marked sea snail, the Cone Shell, on sensing prey, prepares ‘darts’, coats each dart with a lethal substance and, when the prey is within range, fires the prepared dart from its proboscis. The Cone Shell then pushes out its stomach, engorges the paralysed prey, ‘eats’ it, and returns to normal. An enterprising academic from Utah University evolved a device to ‘milk’ this venom by provoking up to 20 successive poisoned darts. The deadly poison secreted on the ‘darts’ (conotoxin) proved to be 230,000 times more toxic than cyanide on the Ballentine scale.
A rock pool on Maui, in the Hawaiian group of islands, is home to a coral on which polyps bloom once a year. A milky liquid is generated in the pool, which lies on the outflow of a volcano. The Polynesians warriors from Maui used to coat their spears with this liquid, and were renowned for the huge death tolls of their enemies. At considerable risk marine researchers collected this palitoxin; their analysis revealed an amazingly complex molecular composition, with 129 carbon, 223 hydrogen, 54 oxygen and 3 nitrogen atoms in each molecule.
The last riveting story related by Dr. Ballantine took his audience to Haiti where, in the past, healthy young men could be reduced to zombies by malevolent human agency. In a magical ceremony a toxic paste was rubbed into the victim’s skin and paralysis followed with apparent death. A ceremonious burial took place. Two days later the perpetrators returned to the graveyard, exhumed the ‘corpse’ who had recovered and was hungry. He was given food which contained ‘zombie cucumber’; this damaged his brain, and the unfortunate young man was then sold as a worker on the cane plantations. This horrendous practice was only revealed when one of the victims returned to his village with a vague recollection of his ordeal and was recognised by his sister who subsequently exposed the crime.
A life-long interest in evolution, particularly of human behaviour, is based on contrasting primitive & sophisticated experience relative to recent academic research. This reveals how recent & skin-deep is so-called modern civilisation & behaviour.
He talked about how the advances in human genetic studies have greatly increased our knowledge and understanding of many human diseases with emphasis on recent developments on Parkinson's disease.
He also described how the advances in whole genome sequencing of a number of organisms has enabled a new avenue of biomedical research, illustrated by his work on the unusual model organism, the fruit fly Drosophila Melanogaster.
Rob talked about the intricacies of managing the Forest of Dean - balancing productive activities with biodiversity and heritage conservation in an area with an involved community and millions of visitors each year. He highlighted some examples of how science can help managers cope with this difficult balancing act.
His talk commented on known surviving maps of Herefordshire 1577-1800 both printed and manuscript maps, usually estate maps, of small areas within the county. Many of these are available for inspection in libraries or record offices. The background to map-making and their makers was introduced including Herefordshire’s Isaac Taylor.
The Discovery, Development and Manufacture of New Pesticide Products
Definition/description of
what a pesticide is and does; requirements and strategies for basic
discovery/research programmes; optimisation of research leads; criteria
for progression of promising candidates into development; detailed
description of how a real example was taken from laboratory idea to
large-scale commercial manufacture; problems and successes in large
scale manufacture. Chemical formulae and equations will be included, but
kept simple and well-explained with the non-chemist in mind.
Renewable Energy
Ivan gave a clear and well Illustrated talk on both the principles and practicalities of the various solar power systems, preceded by some thought provoking predictions for the impact of global warming.
His talk stirred so much interest that questions went on for nearly an hour after the end.
There is dispute about the causes of rapidly
increasing warming…..whether solar, CO2, or both, but all agree it is
happening. Following the presentation there was discussion of what, if
anything, we can all do about it.
The guiding principle
for the discussion was 'Think Global, Act Local'.
Nicola treated us to a fascinating presentation of the science behind embryo development and, now that the human genomes have been mapped, how it is teaching us much more about cancer and other development defects, with the promise of eventual cures.
Measurement
Climate Change
Department of Earth Sciences,
Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR).
The Open University.
With the phenomenon of climate change now demonstrated as being “extremely likely” (>90% likely) by the IPCC and accepted by most governments, the debate is moving from establishing the reality of human-induced warming to management and mitigation measures. To date, however, the contribution of the geological community to the IPCC, and therefore policymakers, has been far smaller than is desirable both for the subject and for society at large. This is because the models that predict the effects of the change are imperfect and there is plenty of evidence that the effects may be much greater than predicted and arrive much sooner.
This is particularly concerning because, through geological evidence, the models can be shown to be most conservative in precisely those areas of the globe currently demonstrating the highest rates of warming and where warming is projected to continue most strongly in the future. Moreover these areas are those that are most critical to both the Earth System as a whole and society in particular. They are the polar regions, particularly the Arctic, with implications for rapid loss of ice sheets with concomitant rises in sea level, and in the continental interiors with impacts on agriculture, and the capacity of continental biomass to sequester atmospheric carbon. Overall evidence of past (deep time) climate change shows the IPCC document to be conservative and likely to underestimate the rate and magnitude of future change for any given emissions scenario.
Marine Conservation
The Geology and Hydrology of the Forest of Dean (from a caving perspective).
Mark Gibbons
The Antikythera Mechanism
Conflict and Cooperation in Social Insects
But a few less massive planets have been discovered – at present the least massive known exoplanets are just a few times the mass of the Earth. Such planets, like the Earth, are likely to be rocky-iron in composition with a veneer, perhaps a substantial layer, of water, topped with a relatively thin atmosphere. These difficult-to-detect low mass planets will continue to be discovered, down to Earth mass and below, as better instruments become available and as observations are made for longer times.
I will outline the nature of the known exoplanets, and explain why planets with masses greater than about a third of the Earth's mass, up to ten or so Earth masses, and orbiting in what is called the habitable zones of their stars, are by far and away the best candidates for being able to support carbon-liquid water life. (The habitable zone is that range of distances from the star within which water at (most of) the surface of an Earth-type planet would be stable as a liquid – this is the Goldilocks zone, neither too hot nor too cold.)
But at present we can only detect exoplanets by the effect they have on the motion of the star they orbit, or on their effect they have on the light from their star (or a background star). We can thus get the mass of an exoplanet, its orbit, and in some cases its radius. In order to determine whether it is inhabited we need to detect the light we receive from the exoplanet. This is hardly possible at present, due to the far greater, smeared out brightness of an exoplanet's star – like a glow-worm near a searchlight on a misty night.
I will explain this difficulty, and how more powerful telescopes will enable us to overcome it. For low mass exoplanets we look to ESA's Darwin space telescope and NASA's TPF space telescope, which might be in orbit in about a decade.
I will then explain how, once we can detect the light from an exoplanet, we can analyse it to see whether the exoplanet is habitable, or indeed inhabited. Of particular importance is an exoplanet's emission spectrum at infrared wavelengths. This is formed by infrared radiation emitted from the surface, passing through the exoplanet's atmosphere, where the atmospheric constituents absorb certain wavelengths. Atmospheric composition and surface properties can thus be obtained. How this leads to establishing habitability/inhabitation will be revealed.
A short cut to discovering life out there would be if life told us it was there. This brings us to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but that's another story ......
A review of the whole area, at popular science level, and just published, is
"The Search for Life Continued: Planets Around Other Stars"
Barrie W Jones
Springer-Praxis (2008)
ISBN 13: 978-0-387-76557-0
A Brief History of Ferrous Metallurgy