Features

Could lifeforms from Venus reach Earth by hitching a ride on the solar wind?

That's the rather startling suggestion made by two researchers following analysis of data from ESA's Venus Express spacecraft.

According to BBC Online they say that chemicals in Venus's clouds are consistent with the presence of microorganisms and that, under certain conditions, microbes from these clouds could be blown into the Earth's atmosphere.

It's an interesting idea (and a good plot for a Hollywood movie!) but according to Oxford's Fred Taylor, an Interdisciplinary Scientist for the Venus Express mission, it's pretty far-fetched.

'The idea of life on Venus, particularly the clouds where the temperature and pressure are similar to the Earth, has been floated around for a while but is not really very likely,' Fred commented, adding that it was also most unlikely that microbes could hitch a ride in this way.

Yet if you think this makes the solar wind boring you'd be wrong: two NASA missions will scour the solar wind for clues about how the planets formed and to map where the solar system ends.

Genesis is already sending back some fascinating results, including studies that show that parts of meteorites and the sun share a common pattern of oxygen isotopes - suggesting that Earth, the Moon and other bodies with a different composition are the 'odd ones out' in the solar system.

Meanwhile the planned Interstellar Boundary Explorer [IBEX] mission will chart the very edges of the sun's influence by detecting where the solar wind fizzles out and the solar system ends and interstellar space begins: at the moment the best guess is 'somewhere beyond Pluto' but after IBEX launches later this year we can look forward to a more precise answer.

What can we do to understand and help Africa's elephants?

According to this week's Current Biology one approach is to give elephants mobile phones.

Not, as you might think, for them to make emergency calls on at the first sign of poachers but rather mobiles that are attached to sensors on the animal to automatically text their whereabouts and regular status reports.

Fritz Vollrath of Oxford's Department of Zoology is amongst those using such techniques to investigate elephants' survival tactics. He has worked with Iain Douglas Hamilton of Save the Elephants for many years to monitor the behaviour of Kenya's pachyderms.

The animals, it seems, have reacted to an increasingly threatening environment by changing their behaviour: travelling through unsafe territory only at night and very fast - so avoiding conflict with man.

This change appears to be giving elephant populations in Kenya a boost. 'We at Save the Elephants have evidence that elephant populations have been on the rise ever since 1989 in Tsavo, and in Samburu, Mara and Amboseli,' Fritz comments. 'This does not mean that we are not worried by a potential resurgence in ivory poaching... but it does give grounds for cautious optimism.'

Overall, he says, the outlook for wildlife in Northern Kenya looks good with organisations and local communities working together towards the same conservation goals - spurred on, in part, by the gleaming carrot of tourist revenue set to reward successful conservation projects.

It's one example at least of how appreciating the value of wildlife (both in cultural and economic terms) can help humans and animals to live side by side.

This weekend saw two articles tackle the hot topic of the (re)introduction of species from quite different perspectives.

In the New York Times Felicity Barringer explains how Yellowstone's grey wolves have been given fresh legal protection. Wolves were reintroduced into the park in 1995. Previously they could be hunted legally, now plans to allow around 500 wolves to be killed across three states are on hold.

Meanwhile The Observer's Robin McKie reports that Chile and Argentina are mounting an enormous operation to eradicate thousands of North American beavers that are chewing their way through the countries' forests. Fifty beavers, a species not native to South America, were introduced in the 1940s and over the years that followed the population has snowballed.

There are lessons to be learnt from both stories: the trouble is deciding which lessons.

The reintroduction of large predators such as wolves is always going to be controversial but the question is who should decide 'how many is too many'? Without agreement between local people, government and conservation groups about what size of population should be maintained any animal reintroduction risks stumbling into an ethical and legal minefield.

South America's beaver problem is very different: the beaver after all is an alien species, as such the local ecosystem is not adapted to cope with it. Reintroducing European beavers to the UK doesn't carry the same level of risk as, until recently, beavers were native to these shores and our ecosystem should be more robust.

The difficulty, perhaps, comes in our rather inconsistent attitudes to wild animals and their impact on the environment.

In the UK there seems to be a consensus we should conserve wild habitats and wild populations wherever possible. Yet what if, in the long-term, this is only possible if such habitats are transformed or recreated? Or if wild populations are culled and managed rather like domestic livestock - does this mean these animals are no longer wild? Who is legally responsible for what these animals get up to?

As ever, the only answers lie in a better understanding of ecosystems and how we can best balance the needs of animals and humans.

In 1741 the automata-maker Jacques Vaucanson gave a lecture at Lyon’s Academy of Art.

The minutes of the meeting record that Vaucanson told of an amazing new project he had imagined ‘that of constructing an automaton figure which will imitate in its movements animal functions, the circulation of the blood, respiration, digestion, the combination of muscles, tendons nerves, etc.’

This automaton would be designed not to entertain but to enlighten: through experiments upon this artificial man physicians would gain new insights into human health, disorders and illness.

Whilst Vaucanson would struggle for 20 years to make his automaton, ultimately he would have to admit defeat. He was a man ahead of his time: the materials and tools required to build such a creation still elude us.

Yet that isn't the end of the story as one tool, the computer, promises one day to make Vaucanson's vision a (virtual) reality.

Oxford is at the forefront of efforts to create the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH). In essence this would be Vaucanson's automata on computer ('in sillico'), giving researchers from around the world the chance to share and combine their ideas and observations about how the human body works.

The challenges are immense. We still don't understand many of the fundamental physical processes that determine how our organs function and interact, especially at a cellular level. Despite this, recent advances in computing power and computational modelling mean scientists are starting to create models that quantify such processes.

I'll blog more about all the projects involved in due course, and the collaborations between Oxford's Computing Laboratory and Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics, but I thought I'd get straight to the heart of the matter:

preDICT is one of the projects just starting that has benefited from some forward-looking European Commission funding. Its stated mission is to model, simulate, and ultimately predict the impact of pharmacological compounds on the heart's rhythm using computer models.

To do this the international team, involving scientists from Oxford, will have to create mathematical models of the ion channels that control how and when heart cells contract, tissue models which capture the complex physical and chemical interactions; all wrapped up in computer code that can run such a model faster than a heart beating in realtime.

It's a big ask - preDICT's project manager Katherine Fletcher tells me they will still need to build a computer at the end of the project that's powerful enough to run the model! - yet there's no doubt that meaningful testing of drugs 'in sillico' would be of immense benefit to those developing new treatments.

An Oxford University team will be one of only two teams* from the UK to compete in RoboCup 2008, the ‘Robot Soccer World Cup’, in Suzhou, China 14-20 July.

Whilst the long-term aim of the tournament is to produce a side of autonomous humanoid soccer players that can thrash the most recent human World Cup-winning team, right now its leagues and challenges are a showcase for new ideas in robotic hardware and software.

'The most spectacular events are the robot football games with physical robots, with the leagues split according to the size of the robots, and whether they use wheels or legs,’ said Stephen Cameron, one of the three researchers from Oxford’s Computing Laboratory attending. ‘Many of the issues being tackled here are the serious engineering problems of building robots capable of moving a ball around, whilst being reliable enough to still be operating at the end of the game!’

Away from the physical kickabouts robotics is taken to the limit in the Simulation leagues. Stephen explains: ‘These use simulated robots within computer programs to push the boundaries of robot intelligence without the constraints of what is physically possible today; the computer programs written here will find their way into the physical robots of tomorrow.’

Stephen and his research student Jie Ma will be competing in the simulated wheeled and legged robot competitions whilst another of his students, Julian de Hoog, will be collaborating with a team from the University of Amsterdam in the RoboCup Rescue competition, in which a simulated robot tries to identify and prioritise casualties within a collapsed building.

‘The simulations we use closely resemble real situations and the virtual robots are based on real robots,’ Julian tells me. ‘The long-term goal is to develop robots to crawl into spaces within a building that has collapsed, spaces that, because of the size of the hole or the poisonous gases or heat involved, wouldn’t be accessible to humans or dogs.'

Up to fifteen different models of robot exist in the RoboCup Rescue simulations: it’s up to competitors to get them to work together to perform tasks guided by the sorts of limited sensory data and communications available in a real disaster situation.

‘I specialise in developing strategies to help robots explore these environments,’ Julian explains. ‘The eventual aim is to get robots to learn on their own how best to spread out and search an unknown environment for survivors in the most efficient way.’

It’s likely be many years before real robots routinely do lifesaving work alongside humans – for one thing, we need to learn to trust our metallic friends – but within a decade expect to see some amazing rescue machines. 

[* in the senior competition, good luck UK juniors!]