Features

New images released yesterday from ESA's Herschel Space Observatory are giving astronomers the most detailed view yet of what space looked like 12 billion years ago.

The pictures show tens of thousands of newly-discovered galaxies at the early stages of formation, some thought to have formed just over a billion years after the Big Bang.

The images will be analysed as part of the HerMES project which involves over 100 astronomers from six countries and is led by Seb Oliver of the University of Sussex.

HerMES team member Dimitra Rigopoulou, of Oxford University's Department of Physics and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, told me: 'It is a tremendous leap forward for understanding how galaxies form their stars. In just one picture we can see ten times as many galaxies as have been seen by all the telescopes like this one, up until today.'

The HerMES project aims to produce a map of the Universe as it was around eight billion years ago, based on data received from Herschel's SPIRE infrared camera.

Dimitra added: 'Seeing such stunning images after just 14 hours of observations gives us high expectations for the full length observations over much larger regions of the Universe. This will give us a much clearer idea of how star formation has progressed throughout the history of the Universe.'

We’d all like to think that a small tipple – a glass of wine or a pint of beer, say – is not going to be bad for us, particularly at this time of year. So how much more are we likely to pounce on reports that such moderate amounts of alcohol might actually have some beneficial effects, like lower risk of heart disease? 

There are a large number of such reports around to seize on. This week, The Telegraph light-heartedly covered a small study that suggested compounds present in champagne could have benefits for the heart, although further reading suggests this is still very much a hypothesis rather than a demonstration of a real effect on heart disease. Similarly, it’s worth reading this to judge a recent large-scale Spanish survey of the effects of really quite large amounts of alcohol on the heart.

So how do we make sense of all of this? Not least because when alcohol consumption spills over into heavy drinking, we know very well that it becomes a very serious and costly public health problem not just for individuals but also wider society.

OxSciBlog turned to Dr Naomi Allen of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit [CEU] at the University of Oxford. Naomi led research into the effects of drinking alcohol on rates of cancer as part of the Million Women Study.

OxSciBlog: What do we know about how light-to-moderate amounts of alcohol can affect health?
Naomi Allen: Everyone knows that heavy drinking is bad for our health, but what about the health effects of more moderate amounts of alcohol that most of us drink? Indeed, people who drink one or two drinks every day appear to have the lowest death rates (ie they live longer) compared with people who don’t drink at all and people who drink more heavily.

This is largely because moderate alcohol drinking has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease in middle to late age.

However, moderate drinking (one to two alcoholic drinks each day) also increases the risk of developing certain types of cancer, especially breast cancer in women, but also cancers that were previously only thought to be related to heavy drinking, such as cancer of the liver, rectum and in smokers, cancers of the mouth and throat.

Most of this increased risk is for breast cancer, so the potential risks of moderate drinking are perhaps of most relevance for women. In particular, the risks may be of greatest concern for middle-aged women, whose risk of developing breast cancer is much higher than the risk of heart disease. For women over the age of 75, the risk of heart disease increases and the risks and benefits of moderate drinking are not so clear.

OSB: Why might alcohol be beneficial?
NA: Alcohol is believed to protect against heart disease in several ways, the most important of which is through increasing the amount of ‘good’ cholesterol in the blood (called high-density lipoprotein) that helps prevent blocked arteries, and also through reducing the ‘stickiness’ of the blood.

There has been much speculation that red wine may be most beneficial (due to the high content of compounds called polyphenols contained in some red grapes), but the evidence to date suggests that it is the alcohol itself, rather than other compounds contained in alcoholic drinks, that protects against heart disease.

But I would not recommend people start drinking specifically to protect the heart, as there are health risks involved in drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, and there are safer alternative ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, such as to start taking more physical activity, to eat a healthy balanced diet and to stop smoking.

OSB: What do we know about the dangers of binge drinking?
NA: The adverse health effects of heavy drinking are varied, devastating and affect all ages: in youth, alcohol tends to be related to mental and behavioural disorders, injuries and violence, whilst in middle- and late-age, heavy drinking is related to liver disease and certain cancers.

However, for people who drink more moderate amounts of alcohol, it is not yet known whether the pattern of drinking affects the long-term risks for cancer (i.e. whether drinking one drink every day or bingeing on seven drinks in one session at the weekend has the same effect).

OSB: We seem to get endless reports of new studies with conflicting conclusions. Why is it so difficult to carry out a definitive study?
NA: The main reason there have been so many conflicting findings is because most studies have been too small to detect reliably the effects of low to moderate amounts of alcohol on different health outcomes at the same time. Up until now, most studies have examined the association of alcohol on a single disease (eg a specific cancer type, or heart disease).

Many thousands of participants are needed to reliably compare rates of diseases within the same study population. Only by establishing these very large epidemiological studies, such as the Million Women Study in the UK (with over 1.3 million middle-aged women recruited 1996–2001), can we begin to directly compare future disease rates among women according to their usual alcohol consumption.

With linkage to both regional cancer registries and, more recently, hospital admissions databases, it is now possible to investigate the association of alcohol with cancer, heart disease and other outcomes in this population, and we will soon be in a position to comment on the overall risks and benefits of moderate alcohol drinking in women.

OSB: And do you have any advice as we look forward to all our Christmas celebrations?
NA: I don’t want to be a party-pooper and berate people who have a celebratory tipple at Christmas time, or even those who have one every day to celebrate life’s daily grind. However, the three wise men might advise middle-aged women not to overindulgence too much on a daily basis, especially if they have other risk factors for breast cancer.

It’s now three weeks since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) restarted, after over a year of repairs, and images of scientists clapping and cheering were beamed around the globe.

More celebrations were to follow as the machine smashed proton beams together and then, on 29 November, its beams set a new energy record as they exceeded one TeV, making it the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator.

But what’s it like to be part of such a huge experiment?

To find out I talked to two of the young Oxford University scientists who have been working, living and breathing LHC science.

When particles collide
Hugo Beauchemin and Caterina Doglioni from Oxford’s Department of Physics are both involved in the ATLAS experiment, one of the four detectors which will examine the particles produced from collisions inside the LHC.

‘The LHC is built to look for answers to questions such as why the fundamental particles have mass, or whether the visible matter we see is only a small part of the matter that fills the universe, or why we are made of matter and we see no antimatter in our universe,’ Caterina tells me.

Yet her own research is less about exotic physics and more about seeing where the physics we think we know matches up to real experimental results.

‘I am working on the 'rediscovery' of the standard model we use so far for describing particle physics,’ she explains. ‘First of all we need to be sure the ATLAS experiment works correctly if we want to claim we have an answer to any of the questions above.’

‘And if we are sure everything works, and we still see discrepancies with the current model... then there will be quite a bit of excitement in the physics community!’

Hugo is investigating the extension of that model to see where gravity fits in with the three other fundamental forces of nature: ‘weak nuclear force’ [weak interaction], strong interaction, and electromagnetism.

He tells me: ‘Having done my PhD on the theoretical aspect of the structure of space-time, I’m now leading investigations for LHC evidence of new dimensions of space. In terms of detector operations, I have been centrally involved in studying trigger performance and operation.’

These ‘trigger systems’ are vital to the science going on at the LHC – with so much happening when particles collide, and only a limited amount of storage space for the huge amounts of data generated, automated systems need to decide very quickly what’s ‘important’ or ‘interesting’ and record it.

Hugo feels that, in some senses, the year’s delay wasn’t a complete loss:

‘Despite the disappointment of having to wait an extra year before getting data, I don’t feel that we lost a year… during this last year, a lot of developments on the trigger and data acquisition systems have been made. We are now ready to take good data and to properly store them, which, in my opinion, was not exactly the case last year.’

From frustration to elation
After last year’s frustrations the clock was quickly ticking again as all those involved counted down to the restart.

‘You could feel the excitement growing, everything needed to be ready and working and every possibility had to be explored: which for me means more work coming from a few different directions, not just from my supervisor for physics analysis!’ Caterina comments.

‘I’ve been involved in testing the reconstruction algorithms that allow physicists to decode what the detector registers, and I've written quite a bit of computer software for that so far. It might seem disconnected to the LHC restart, but I knew that I was one of those working towards a common goal, and in my day to day tasks I was also contributing to make all of this work.’

Finally, on Friday 20 November, the LHC was switched back on and successfully circulated two stable proton beams in opposite directions.

So what it was like being there when this giant machine came back to life?

‘Being at CERN is the best place for working as a PhD in particle physics, it feels like we are living at the centre of the world, where everybody converges. And being here at the start-up is like a dream come true!’ Caterina tells me.

‘Even though physicists who work on commissioning the detector with first data from the LHC do not expect a Nobel Prize, seeing a peak that means the rediscovery of a particle that has been known from the 1940s is an amazing experience and it pays back all the work that's been done to prepare for this moment!’

Hugo thinks it may take longer for the sheer magnitude of the occasion to sink in: ‘I was extremely excited, like most of my colleagues, but, to be honest, I didn’t have much time to celebrate. There are so many things need to be checked, studied, monitored, etc. This period is frantic, exciting, but exhausting. I believe that it’s only during the Christmas break that I will have time to realise all that has been accomplished.’

Looking to the future
And for those working on the LHC, exciting as it is, the restart is just the beginning of many years of hard work:

As Hugo points out, despite setting a new energy record, it will take many months to gradually ramp up the energy levels of the LHC to the point where it is likely to make genuinely new discoveries.

He comments: ‘So far it doesn’t provide a sufficient number of collisions for thorough studies of new phenomena, and is even still far from reaching the sensitivity of the Tevatron [a proton vs anti-proton machine, where the LHC is a proton on proton collider]. So this restart gives hope and excitement, but there is still a lot of work to do before being able to achieve anything really new.’

So how do Hugo and Caterina think they will look on this period of their life, dominated by the giant silver machine?

Hugo tells me: ‘Hopefully with a smile: it is a stressful and quite uncertain period. Expectations are high, all eyes are turned toward us, but we don’t know what will be the outcome of this experiment. I hope that in 10 years from now, the LHC will have revealed a large spectrum of unknown phenomena and mysteries to be investigated.’

Caterina adds: ‘I think I will be look back at this time with happiness and pride. I am at CERN, working together with amazingly talented people on something that is an incredible achievement, even because of its start-up alone. There's nowhere else I'd rather be!’

It emerged today that more drivers are using hand-held mobile phones than two years ago, despite the introduction of tougher penalties, BBC News online reports. The Transport Research Laboratory is worried because phone-using drivers are four times more likely to crash and their reaction times are likely to be slower.

It may be that a group of neuroscientists at Oxford University can help in dealing with this kind of distraction and improve drivers’ reaction times. They believe that understanding the way we respond to danger signals and make life-or-death decisions can enable us to make improvements in car design. Leading car manufacturers are now taking an interest in the hope of making us better, safer drivers.

The problem with using a phone is that talking while driving increases the risk of an accident. ‘People think that they can do both, but they can’t,’ says Professor Charles Spence of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. ‘The brain is configured to respond best to one spatial location at a time. So looking in one direction at the road and listening in another to a caller on the mobile phone at the same time can’t be done well.’

It is now possible to make transparent loudspeakers which can be incorporated into a car windscreen. This enables people to look at the road and listen to a phone conversation coming from the same direction, Charles Spence’s group has shown.

Senses & signals
There’s no doubt that improvements to driving safety are still needed, with 2,538 people killed on the road in 2008 and 26,034 seriously injured. Human error contributes to the vast majority of road accidents, and loss of control of a vehicle or failing to look properly are contributory factors in many of these incidents.

Many new technologies are gradually being added to cars to improve safety. These include sat-navs, hands-free mobile phones, and warning signals. A number of cars now have systems that can sense nearby vehicles and warn the driver when anything gets too close.

But Charles Spence and colleagues believe that the designs that engineers have come up with - using displays, flashing lights, and bleeps - don’t always make it easy for drivers to make decisions based on the information they’re given.

He believes we can do better: ‘All our decisions and actions are based on our senses and go through our brains. Knowledge of how we respond to sights, sounds, touch and feel should enable us to come up with better, neuroscience-inspired designs for alerting drivers to danger.’

The latest work from Charles’ research group, published in the journal Human Factors, demonstrates how warning signals given to the driver through the headrest can improve the speed with which they can respond to the danger, potentially reducing the number of front-to-rear-end collisions.

The work makes use of recent neuroscience research showing that the space behind the head, where you can’t see what’s going on, is treated in a special way by the brain.

‘Our brains react immediately and automatically to things happening in that space in a defensive response to potential danger.’ says Charles Spence. It is similar to the margin of safety or ‘flight zone’ seen in many animals.

His group, with funding from Toyota, carried out experiments showing a short warning sound from speakers just behind a driver’s head can improve the speed of response to danger by nearly four tenths of a second over warning lights placed further away, like those on a dashboard.

Attracting attention
An alarm signal in the close protective space around the head is better at breaking into the driver’s attention, getting the driver to turn their head to where the danger may be (to look in their side mirror for example), and allowing faster decision-making about the need for braking or avoidance actions.

Charles Spence has also shown that the type of sound and the position of a warning signal matters for the driver’s response time. ‘It is much better to use a car horn as a warning sound rather than a generic electronic beep, because people know what the sound of a car horn means,’ he says. ‘If that sound also comes from where the danger is, rather than on the dashboard, you improve a driver’s response time by four tenths of a second.’

‘Our sense of touch is one of our greatest senses and we don’t use it in driving,’ he adds. His group has investigated incorporating vibrating signals into seatbelts, the driver’s seat, the steering wheel, and the foot pedals. Adding a vibrating warning signal can take another two tenths of a second off response times in driving simulator experiments.

An improvement of five tenths of a second is thought to be enough to reduce front-to-rear-end collisions by 60 per cent, so multisensory warnings that combine vibration, sound, and appropriate location of the signal could make a significant difference to road safety. Volkswagen is hoping to make use of this work.

The neuroscience of our senses could also improve car design in other ways, suggests Professor Spence. ‘The sound of a car’s engine can affect how we think about a car. You may want a car that sounds powerful or sporty, for example. Rather than engineer that satisfying roar into the engine, it may be simpler to subtly change the sound the driver and passengers hear inside the car and improve the way they feel about their driving experience.’

These ideas can be taken further. He adds: ‘You could combine psychology and knowledge of people’s likes and dislikes to introduce smells and fragrances into the car interior to relax passengers or perk them up. You could incorporate this with GPS systems to give fragrances according to the environment you’re driving through. It may even be possible to make the multisensory experience of a car interior so pleasant that you want to stay sitting there even when you’ve reached your destination.’ 

A book currently doing the rounds at the Copenhagen climate talks highlights the impact that biomimetic science could have on medical and green technologies.

Gunter Pauli's The Blue Economy gives the work of Fritz Vollrath of Oxford University's Department of Zoology and the Oxford Silk Group as an example of where learning from nature can pay off.

Fritz started off by studying how the golden silk orb weaver spider in Panama composed and recycled its silk and managed to spin it into complex three-dimensional forms.

Researchers at the Group were able to apply these lessons to processes to manufacture silk tubes and filaments that could be used as conduits for nerve regeneration, medical sutures, and devices to regenerate damaged cartilage and bone tissues. They also showed how such materials could be used to replace titanium parts in products from razors to airplane parts.

Pauli argues that replacing current industrial processes with more biomimetic ones could help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as shepherding the planet's scarce resources.

Fritz and his team have already made a number of contributions to turning such ideas into commercial realities with the founding of spin-out firms such as Orthox, Suturox, and Neurotex, all based on pioneering research at Oxford.

Fritz tells me that he hopes there could be many more benefits from the group's ongoing research which received a boost last year with an ERC Advanced Grant supporting his SABIP - Silk as Biomimetic Ideals for Polymers project.

Could spiders and silkworms really help to save the world? Watch this space...