Features

When he came to write his latest book Oxford University's Marcus du Sautoy decided he wanted to go beyond the printed page.

For The Num8er My5teries he created an 'app' that enables iPhone users to explore the ideas and games within the book and recently wrote for The Guardian on what apps can bring to books.

I asked Marcus about creating apps and how they can help to enrich the reading experience and communicate scientific ideas:

OxSciBlog: Why did you create a gaming app for the Num8er My5teries?
Marcus du Sautoy: The Num8er My5teries is a book which tries to get the reader actively involved in playing with the mathematics. The book grew out of the Christmas Lectures that I did in 2006 for the Royal Institution and Channel Five. The aim of those lectures was to find ways to playfully engage people in doing and understanding science.

I am a great advocate that mathematics is not a spectator sport and the best way to appreciate it is to play. It's one of the reasons that I have also been creating an internet maths school called mangahigh.com which aims to use online computer games to teach the GCSE curriculum.

The publication of the book has come at a time when publishers are exploring the power of apps to supplement and enhance the reading experience. The published book of The Num8er My5teries is jam packed with experiments and games so exploring the use of apps to enhance the playful character of the book seemed an exciting prospect.

OSB: What did you learn from making it? Any advice for other writers looking to do something similar?
MdS: The app we have produced is really just a first experiment both for me as an author and for the publisher. It combines games, videos of me talking about the book and excerpts from the book itself. So it is a very multimedia experience. I think these apps have a huge potential which still hasn't really been tapped.

I think it is important to recognise whether an app is really going to enhance the reading experience. It shouldn't just be a gimmick but should feel like an essential component of the experience. The book I have written stands on its own without any apps which I think is important. If resources permit I have got exciting ideas for pushing the project further.

OSB: What do you think writers can learn from videogames about communicating scientific ideas?
MdS: My experience with the internet maths school mangahigh.com is that if you get the game right you can deliver powerful scientific content together with a fun gaming experience.

I have a 14 year old who spends ages playing games online. He will repeat a level again and again until he has perfected it. Often this is what you need to do when you are learning new scientific ideas. The challenge is to get a good balance between a good gaming experience and learning objectives.

OSB: How do you think social media could help enrich the experience of reading a science book?
MdS: Tapping into the power of social media in doing mass scientific experiments I think is a really fascinating challenge. Galaxy Zoo here in Oxford has really done well in exploiting social media in doing citizen science. They have even developed an app so you can continue classifying galaxies while bored on The Tube!

Marcus du Sautoy is Oxford's Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute.

If particles of dark matter are accumulating inside the Sun then we could use neutrinos to detect them.

A short article in this week’s Science, by Joseph Silk from Oxford University’s Department of Physics and Ilidio Lopes of the Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal, suggests how this might be done.

They propose that the presence of dark matter in the Sun’s interior would cause a small but potentially significant drop in its central temperature. They calculate that in some scenarios an isothermal core – a region of constant temperature – should form, and this core could be picked up by neutrino detectors such as Canada’s Sudbury Neutrino Observatory [SNO].

“The existence of a dark matter isothermal core in the Sun would produce a unique signature written in the energies of solar neutrinos,” Joseph tells me.

“We calculate that the existence of dark matter in the Sun’s core could lead to a 4 per cent decrease in its central temperature and a 3 per cent increase in the central density of the Sun.”

Dark matter inside the Sun would decrease its central temperature by providing an additional way for redistributing the heat inside the solar core. The models developed by Joseph and Ilidio Lopes show that it should be possible to distinguish changes in the core produced by dark matter from those produced by other effects.

Professor Joseph Silk is based at Oxford University’s Department of Physics.

A study published in the journal PLoS One has found that taking daily high-dose tablets of certain B vitamins reduced the rate of brain shrinkage in people aged over 70 with mild memory problems.

All our brains shrink, especially with age. But the rate of shrinkage is seen to increase in those with mild cognitive impairment, and shrink faster again in Alzheimer’s, suggesting this is part of the disease process. So the observation that brain shrinkage rate can be reduced could be significant, but more work needs to be done to show that.

This finding is of interest because mild cognitive impairment is common – an estimated 1 in 6 people over the age of 70 have MCI – and it’s thought that up to half (so not everyone) go on to develop dementia within 5 years.

The result has been a large amount of media coverage, for example on BBC Online, The Times (subscription required), Daily Mail, and Daily Telegraph.

Despite some subeditors struggling to resist headlines suggesting beating Alzheimer’s or fighting dementia, some points should be stressed (which are actually being widely reported):

1)  It’s one reasonably small trial, although it does show a clear and very interesting difference in the rate of brain shrinkage over a two year period in those who took daily tablets of the combination of three B vitamins.

2)  A larger clinical trial, or certainly longer follow up of these people, is needed to see whether these particular B vitamins actually go on to slow any decline in cognitive ability and progression to dementia and Alzheimer’s before anyone can be confident they will have an effect.

3)  This was a study in people with mild memory problems who are not ill and are able to carry on their normal daily lives, not Alzheimer’s itself.

4)  The tablets included certain B vitamins – B6, B12 and folate – at a high dose; many times what you get in a well balanced diet. At these doses, they must be treated as drugs not just any dietary supplement, and should not be taken without medical advice as there could be side effects. Folate, or folic acid, at high doses and over long periods in some studies has been linked with cancer, for example, though the risk is low and shouldn’t worry anyone being advised to take it, such as pregnant women.

5)The researchers do not suggest people rush out and buy these B vitamins over the counter immediately on the basis of this one study, but call for that larger trial to be done.

The researchers held a press briefing in London communicating their excitement at these results but stressing all these points. Oxford University's David Smith, who led the study, talked about ‘a glimmer of hope’ with these ‘immensely promising results’ after recent failures of high-profile trials of Alzheimer’s drugs, and Helga Refsum said: ‘As a scientist, I would never be happy with the results of just one trial’.

And again, as David Smith says in our news story: ‘These are immensely promising results but we do need to do more trials to conclude whether these particular B vitamins can slow or prevent development of Alzheimer’s.'

Here’s what some other researchers elsewhere have said about the study that echo the interest in the work but offer some appropriate caution about how much we can take from this trial.

Paul Matthews, Professor of Clinical Neurology, Imperial College, London said: ‘This well-conducted study adds substantial new data to previous information suggesting that dietary B vitamins could have beneficial effects on neurodegeneration with aging.

‘Smith and his colleagues studied a mixed group of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and showed that 2 years of treatment with folic acid and vitamins B12 and B6 slowed rates of brain atrophy. Trends identified in their report suggest that the treatment could slow deterioration of cognition, but this was not demonstrated directly in this small study

‘It is important to appreciate that only some of the patients studied would be expected to develop Alzheimer’s disease; the results therefore should not be interpreted as providing evidence for a new treatment for this most common form of late life dementia.

‘The association between better treatment effects and blood levels of homocysteine - which can be elevated with a deficiency of B vitamins and an increased risk of stroke - raises the question of whether any benefits are related to effects on blood vessels supplying the brain.

‘Although the vitamins used are generally safe and inexpensive, the study should not drive an immediate change in clinical practice. Instead, it sets out important questions for further study and gives new confidence that effective treatments modifying the course of some dementias may be in sight.’ 

Dr Nicholas Timpson, MRC CAiTE Centre (Centre for Causal Analyses in Translational Epidemiology), University of Bristol said: ‘The trial based investigation of a series of homocysteine-lowering B vitamins (including folate and B12) and brain atrophy is of great interest.

'Authors note a reduction in the rate of atrophy in participants randomly allocated to treatment which is itself of great interest, however there are aspects of the work which need to be approached cautiously. These include comparison of observed effects to natural atrophy by age and the actual relationship between cognitive ability and the use of B vitamins. As to the latter of these, there is no direct analysis of cognition and whilst it is alluded to, the lack of this is a clear limitation.

'This work is good evidence of a causal relationship, but the reporting of mean effects in a study such as this does not guarantee impact at the level of the individual given adherence to the same vitamin regime.’ [David Smith points out to me that the study didn’t just report mean effects, but also divided out the results by baseline homocysteine level for example.] 

John Hardy, Professor of Neuroscience, UCL said: ‘The data is very interesting and I have seen it presented. Homocysteine is known to be involved in stroke-related diseases and so involvement in Alzheimer’s disease is plausible. But it is important to note that the study is rather small and needs replicating in a larger study.’ 

Chris Kennard, chair of the Medical Research Council’s Neurosciences and Mental Health Board said: ‘We welcome the findings of this MRC-funded study which bring us a step closer to unravelling the complex neurobiology of ageing and cognitive decline and holds the key to the development of future treatments for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. However, we must be cautious when recommending supplements like vitamin B as there are separate health risks if taken in too high doses. Further research is required before we can recommend the supplement as a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.’

Figure 1 in the paper outlines the flow of participants through the two-year study. Drop out numbers at each stage are given with some of the reasons. There are some who drop out before the trial, some during, some were excluded, some were diagnosed with cancer, and two died. Of the initial 271 participants, 223 completed the two-year trial and cognitive tests.

But it does appear that there may be a high number of people in the two trial arms (vitamin tablets and placebo) not volunteering for MRIs. Only 168 people had the two MRI scans included in the study and which gave the paper’s main results. While the paper doesn’t describe the reasons for each case (I’m not sure how many papers do), there could be a number of reasons for this in what is an elderly group. It is after all a voluntary scan and some people may not, in the end, like the idea.

On asking David Smith, he adds further: ‘The important point is that in the trial we allowed for the fact that some subjects did not choose an MRI scan by including this in the initial minimization procedure. In other words, no bias was introduced.’

In the end, although these certainly appear promising results, we come full circle to where I started. So I’ll finish with Carl Heneghan’s last line in his blog at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford:

‘I'd call this an interesting result. But what is needed is a much larger trial, with a well defined clinically significant outcome. Ideally this would be progression to Alzheimer’s disease.’

Update 10 Sep: The Behind the Headlines section of the NHS Choices website has an analysis of the study here.

A new way of combining ultrasound images taken from different positions can result in sharper, better quality 3D images of the heart to help doctors make a diagnosis.

The new technique aims to improve on conventional 3D echocardiography which is not yet routinely used, partly because of problems with the quality of images produced and difficulties in imaging the whole heart.

A team of Oxford University biomedical engineers and cardiologists has developed a way of merging 3D data from ultrasound transducers placed in different positions on a patient’s body. The researchers recently reported in the journal JACC Cardiovascular Imaging that, in a pilot study of 32 people, this boosted the quality of good/intermediate quality images of the heart from 70% with existing methods to over 96%.

‘For the first time we’ve shown in a detailed clinical study how fusion of 3D data from different positions can improve the quality and completeness of the final image,’ Alison Noble of Oxford University’s Department of Engineering Science, a co-author of the report, tells me.

‘Our new technique saw significant improvements in the general image quality and the definition of features within the heart which should make it possible to spot even small abnormalities in, for example, the motion of the heart wall,’ adds Harald Becher of Oxford University’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine.

The team's method is based on ‘voxels’ - 3D units of data similar to the 2D pixels on a TV screen. By matching similar-looking voxels of data from different positions it is possible to calculate the ‘best fit’ of a sequence of individual frames. This alignment is then applied first across ‘downgraded’ low-resolution images before these are ‘upgraded’ again to their original high-resolution – saving computation time.

‘This new approach is an exciting advance in echocardiography, as it enables us to see the sort of complete picture we weren’t able to before,’ Harald explains. ‘For instance, in this study a number of the participants were Oxford rowers with very large left ventricles which could not be imaged from a single position. By fusing our data we were able to produce accurate three-dimensional images of the entire heart within seconds.’

The team say these preliminary results are encouraging, although further studies are needed with larger groups of patients. The researchers hope their approach could lead to a greater use of 3D echocardiography in the future and are currently looking at how it could be combined with other heart imaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging.

Video: Left and middle: 2D slices of conventional 3D echo images showing chambers of the heart. These four images were acquired from the same subject from four positions. Right: Resultant image by the fusion of four images shown on left and middle. Anatomical information and image quality is increased.

The Oxford University team included Professor Alison Noble, Dr Kashif Rajpoot, and Dr Vicente Grau of the Department of Engineering Science, and Professor Harald Becher, Dr Cezary Szmigielski, Saul Myerson, and Dr Cameron Holloway of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine.

The research was supported by the EPSRC.

Last month young scientists and engineers from Oxford and Cambridge joined together in teams to learn how to pitch business ideas to a Dragon’s Den-style panel of judges.

The theme of the event - Oxbridge Connects - was renewable energy and the winner of the £1200 first prize was an Oxbridge team with an idea for setting up wind farms in rural Argentina.

I caught up with two members of the winning team, Claudio Silvestrin of Oxford University’s Department of Physics and Vihar Georgiev of Oxford’s Department of Chemistry, to ask them how they pitched a winner:

OxSciBlog: Why did you focus on wind power in Argentina?
Claudio Silvestrin: One of our team members, Julian Tuccillo, who became the project leader later on, is Argentine and he proposed a wind project for rural areas in his home country. He had a lot of background information on it and we all liked the idea of working on a project with an international context.

Looking back, it was a very good decision. In the process of developing our ideas we learned a lot about the challenges you face when setting up a business in an area like rural Argentina. For example, in a project set in the UK you most likely wouldn't need to think about people still living without electricity and how life-changing the installation of a small wind turbine might be for them.

Vihar Georgiev: Another reason was the fact that the project was supposed to be on a small scale and this particular topic made it realistic for us as students. The final reason behind choosing this topic was that it didn't touch upon the UK market, as we expected other teams to concentrate on this.

OSB: What did you learn about developing/presenting business ideas?
CS: We went through product and market research, financial modelling and risk analysis, all scheduled in a project plan. But we also learned how challenging it is to work together in a virtual team, since half of the team was in Cambridge and the other half in Oxford.

In terms of what to focus on and how to present your business plan in a very short time (presentations were 8 minutes + 4 minutes Q&A) we got a lot of help from our mentor, Professor David Upton of the Saïd Business School.

VG: Working on our business plan, I became familiar with business and technical terms and, thanks to this, was more confident in answering questions during the presentation. The bottom line is that I learned that before you do anything, you need to do your homework thoroughly. I also learned that to be successful you need to be able to explain your ideas clearly and with confidence.

OSB: What were the key points you stressed in your pitch?
CS: First of all we argued that our project provides social good to the local population. We also stressed that with it we are building capability (technical know-how, supply chain) in the communities. Other key points were the good wind resource in Argentina and the environmental benefit. But our project was also profitable and had a low risk for investors.

VG: Our calculations showed that the profit gained in a 20-year period would be 10 times the outlay. To compare, at the moment PV solar cells in the UK bring a profit of 3 times the outlay over 20 years. Our plan is very low-risk and I think, if implemented in real life, it could be even more profitable. It was also crucial for me to concentrate on an environmentally-friendly project.

OSB: How did having such an interdisciplinary (& inter-University!) team help you win?
CS: In some aspects the interdisciplinarity was vital for our success in terms of combining the technological component and the business side of the project. Also, having an interdisciplinary team made the work very interesting in terms of interacting with each other. But for some of us our individual backgrounds didn't play a large role. Most important was the dedication and effort everybody was willing to put in, in order to learn quickly how to produce good results in a field that you might be unfamiliar with.

VG: The biggest advantage was a chance to see many different points of view. Based on different cultures and education each of us had, everyone could see the project from a different angle. This way we had not only one way of thinking but five, which made the project more flexible and reduced the number of mistakes. Personally, if I work on a similar project in the future, I would like to work with such a diverse and interdisciplinary team.

OSB: How do you think this experience might prove useful in the future?
CS: I was amazed by what you can achieve in a team, which is put together almost randomly and works together through skype and email most of the time. Personally I believe that the experience is going to influence my future strongly since I developed an interest in building small businesses, which I knew very little about before. Bringing people from different backgrounds together in a workshop like this is a wonderful idea. 

VG: I'm sure this workshop will be very useful for me in the future because it only strengthens my interests in sustainable energy sources. Also, after researching the topic of wind power, I have a better idea of the key aspects in this new field of science and its importance for society. For me this workshop was a good way to motivate people engaged in science to think not only about the importance of a scientific breakthrough but also about the business and environmental aspects of their work.

Oxbridge Connects took place on 6 July 2010 at Kavli Royal Society International Centre, Chicheley Hall. It received support from Oxford’s MPLS Division and EPSRC.