Features

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!] 

I've blogged before about the International Linear Collider (ILC), a 'quantum searchlight' needed to answer fundamental questions about the universe likely to be posed by results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Oxford is a key partner in the ILC and its involvement has been threatened by the STFC budget shortfall that has led to the withdrawal of UK funding.

It's nice to finally report some good news: the European Commission has given the green light for a 5m Euro contract to develop the technology and resources needed to construct the ILC.

We should care because, as the ILC website tells us, 'The ILC is our searchlight to illuminate the unknown. We know about some of the things we are looking for: dark matter, the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and superparticles. And we know where to direct the searchlight to find them - and possibly discover things along the way that we didn't expect. Up until now, our searchlights have not reached far enough. By building the ILC we will have one that does.'

'The collaboration that has already been in place for many years has received a major boost,' commented Oxford's Brian Foster, European Regional Director for the ILC's Global Design Effort. 'With the funding from the European Commission we can secure a leading role for Europe in the technology development for this exciting new project.'

Let's hope Brian and his Oxford colleagues can keep the flag flying for UK particle physics.

Every so often the New York Times comes up with a firecracker of a science piece: as evidenced by this NYT article by Tom Christopher on weeds and climate change.

It's like a written version of those nesting Russian dolls with many fascinating layers but one of the big headlines is: 'weeds benefit far more than crop plants from changes in CO2 and that the implications of this for agriculture and public health are grave.'

US Department of Agriculture researchers testing urban plots resembling the hot CO2-rich future conditions of many parts of the world discovered an 'ecology on amphetamines' with the city-weeds far out-stripping their country cousins.

In what's worse news for hay-fever sufferers plants such as ragweed produce twice as much pollen with more of the allergy-producing protein when exposed to higher levels of CO2.

Many weeds are already taking over (as the Kudzu-ridden field in Mississippi shown above demonstrates) as human activity accelerates climate change. So should we spray, burn and decimate our weedy friends?

Science yields another surprise: removing these interlopers doesn't bring back native plants, it causes the ecosystem to crash: suggesting that many weeds are 'passengers' simply exploiting new ecological niches opened up by climatic change rather than driving the extinction of native plants.

Instead, Chris suggests, we could learn from weeds which, after all, provided the original basis for all our crops: much as Oxford scientists are looking to do to create salt-tolerant wheat and other crops. Like our Neolithic forebears we need to seize the opportunity presented by changing conditions to breed new types of plants that benefit man.

In short it's the message evolution teaches plants and animals alike; adapt or die.

Could the problem of global warming be solved simply by making fossil fuels more expensive?

Writing in The Guardian Ashley Seagar reports that as the price of oil goes through the roof solar power is seen as increasingly attractive. This is especially so in Germany where feed-in tariffs oblige utilities to buy in renewable energy at above the market rate.

It poses some interesting questions about whether economic or technological efficiencies are actually slowing the spread of renewables. As I've mentioned before Oxford researchers are amongst those looking at how to improve energy generation from solar power.

Yet, whilst we can expect improvements in solar power (and other renewables), as was pointed out at a recent debate on energy at Oxford electricity is only part of the story. Over half of the energy we use is expended on heating space and water - something the electricity supplied by solar cells would be particularly ill-suited to.

Are we ready and willing to rip out all our gas boilers and replace them with inefficient electric heating? Can we afford the trillions needed to transform our energy infrastructure from a centralised model in which energy flows out to one in which a large portion is drawn in from here, there and everywhere?

There's another sting in the tale for people who say renewables are a 'magic bullet' for our energy woes. As the price of oil rises so nuclear energy, just like solar and wind, will start to seem more attractive too...