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Issue 2 - September 2014.

Aqua Pura

Biofuels: Fuelling The Future, Or Sparking A Crisis?

Type II Diabetes: A Thing Of The Past?

The Happiness Hypothesis

Sympathy For The Devil

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4The single most important thing you will do

I wanted to make a difference.So I did.

Just 16% of pupils eligible for free school meals make it to university, compared to 96% from independent schools.*   Change their lives. Change yours.

Matt Inniss, The University of Cambridge Taught: History Now: Head of Department

*Source: Sutton Trust, 2010

teachfirst.org.ukCharity No 1098294

5The single most important thing you will do

I wanted to make a difference.So I did.

Just 16% of pupils eligible for free school meals make it to university, compared to 96% from independent schools.*   Change their lives. Change yours.

Matt Inniss, The University of Cambridge Taught: History Now: Head of Department

*Source: Sutton Trust, 2010

teachfirst.org.ukCharity No 1098294

New Horizons We’ve built space stations, landed men on the moon, and Voyager 1 has even left our solar system for interstellar space, but there is much we still don’t know about our cosmic neighbourhood. One com-panion we know relatively little about is Pluto, until 2006 the ninth planet and now defined as a dwarf planet; it is still in the dark, both figuratively and literally.

Earth at its furthest from the sun is a mere 152 million km away; Pluto on the other hand, far out in the Kuiper belt, can reach 7.3 billion km away. Its distance and small size means it’s very hard to see, so the images we have of it are blurry and pixelated; we’re not even sure how many moons it has... yet. The summer of 2015, if all goes to plan, will provide answers. This is when the New Horizons mission that launched from Cape Canaveral in 2006 will ar-rive at Pluto. It has already passed Jupiter, where it took the composite image to the right and sped up by 14,000 km per hour, using Jupiter’s gravitational pull as an interplanetary slingshot.

New Horizons will provide novel scientific observations on Pluto’s geography and composition, and importantly, close-up images of Pluto and its moons. One moon in particular, Charon, may get the most attention. Some scientists would rather define it as another dwarf planet, as its relationship with Pluto isn’t a true orbit, and maybe it isn’t a true moon. The pair instead acts as a binary system that rotates around a point in space between them, and not inside Pluto, the way it is with Earth and our moon.

After its rendezvous with Pluto, New Horizons will continue into the Kuiper belt. There it will study more objects, send back more information and per-haps new discoveries; inspiring new missions and lighting up a bit more of the darkness.

By Cormac Kinsella

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Mark Jervis was a leading entomologist at Cardiff University’s biosciences department. He was the author of over a hundred papers, a book, and was the chief editor of the International Journal of Pest Management. His seminal work on parasitic wasps and on ‘ovigeny index’, a quantitative metric of reproductive strategy in holome-tabolous insects, remains highly cited today. Mark’s strongest impact was felt by his colleagues and students, who universally liked and respected him. Here is what some of his students had to say about him:

Jamie MacLaren (Doctoral Student, UA)

In the wake of the loss the Biosciences de-partment has recently suffered, I would like to put a few words together in honour of my BSc supervisor, the effervescent Dr. Mark Jervis. When I first came across Mark, he was lec-turing us on concepts of evolution in the first year. Many of you may have had the same lec-tures these past years. The immediate message Mark gave across whenever he entered the room was: “I’m here to get you through these exams smiling”. Not only would he progress through his endless lecture slides with youthful exuberance and beaming grin, but he would drop handy hints here and there, and was always approacha-ble during and after lectures. As a supervisor, he went about his business in much the same way – big smile, a couple of one-liners, nuggets of in-formation sprayed around. Meetings with Mark were often brainstorming sessions rather than structured conversations, although they were never uninteresting or unemotive. From a purely personal point of view, Mark Jervis is the reason that I am where I am today. On receiving our options for final year disserta-tion topics, I noticed with horror the lack of evo-lution-based projects. I emailed around to see if I could stir up some interest, but to no avail. I went into my first meeting with Mark thinking “so...homopteran bugs...”, and yet the ensuing hours consisted of Mark sketching out a rough

plan of the mammal phylogenetic tree, andme walking out with a literature based project on the evolution of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). From there, I scarcely took a back-ward step. I thoroughly enjoyed my dissertation topic, and the enjoyment I experienced compelled me to apply to study an MSc Palaeobiology in Bristol (dinosaurs, before you ask!). From there, I have been awarded a grant to study for a PhD on the evolution of locomotion in horses, rhinos and tapirs at the University of Antwerp. All this can be traced back to one conver-sation I had with an extraordinary supervisor, which set me on my way – I wouldn’t be here without you Mark. Thinking of you.

Neil Hobbs

I would say I was very lucky to have had the privilege of being both lectured by Mark and su-pervised by him for my final year project. My project involved quite a lot of staring down a mi-croscope to identify all sorts of insects and other invertebrates. There once came a point when I raided the library for all their insect identifica-tion books in order to find the identity of one invertebrate that I just couldn’t get a name to. Af-ter trawling through all those books, I eventually gave up and so popped over to ask Mark, to see if he could have any luck. He perhaps looked down the microscope for 20 seconds before declaring what it was, and then regaled me with the story of

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how he once worked with this critter. And that I believe eloquently sums up Mark: knowledgea-ble, helpful and always with a story or two about pretty much anything. His lectures were equal in entertainment and information. I cannot recall another lecturer ever being able to bring in pop culture references into their talks. It was his en-thusiasm for insects that encouraged me to make the switch from a wannabe marine biologist to a wannabe entomologist.

Adam Walker

Too often university lectures can be bor-ing and the lecturer can even seem disinterested themselves. With Mark that was never the case. He had a reputation as ‘the man with a million slides’ and it was true – but the only reason he had so many slides is because he had so much to say. In his field he was incredibly well known throughout the world, something I think anyone who goes into the sciences aspires towards. Often with recognition comes arrogance and a refusal to acknowledge those who aren’t maybe as suc-cessful or intelligent. I think it would be fair to say that Mark was the opposite. He was happy to natter to anyone – students, janitors and his peers and he treated them all with the same respect. I personally loved his lecture style and his bouncy, jokey, enthusiastic outlook on how knowledge should be shared. Selfishly I was disappointed that Mark never got to read the dissertations that his tutees worked so hard on. It would have been amazing to hear his views, for him to have seen the finished article and been able to have thanked him at graduation.I realised after a while that it didn’t matter. I know my dissertation was good. And I know that be-cause Dr. Mark Jervis taught me.

Cormac Kinsella

Mark personally supervised me twice. The first time was during my year away from Cardiff working on mass extinctions in Bristol, where he visited me and over a coffee discussed the project in detail, taking great concern over whether

I was happy with all arrangements, before he excited-ly went to meet my supervisor (whose work he knew in detail – no surprises) and attend a carol concert. I was then of course delighted when I learned he was to supervise me during my final year dissertation. Mark instantly treated me as an equal member of the department, finding me a project I was fascinated by and even paying out of his own grant for 140 butter-fly chrysalises just for my use. Mark took a genuine interest in everybody, and was both extremely funny and very generous with his time and resources. It was Mark that told me very frankly (when I was on a low-2.1 grade) that if I wanted an overall 1st I was capable of it, and that it would require me to work hard – as usual, he was right. Mark inspired me to love research, and I now plan on pursuing a PhD position. I will miss him very much, as I know so many others do – his wife and two sons especially, and literally hundreds of colleagues and students he has influenced.

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Element 117, or ‘ununseptium’, was first created in a labo-ratory in 2010. Extremely unstable and lasting only frac-tions of a second before decay, the element is still to be officially confirmed; however the original team in Russia and another from Germany claim to have repeated the experiment successfully. One chemical required to make element 117 is berkelium. Only one site in the world makes it (in the USA), so 22 mg of the substance was flown over to Russia. It had to make five trips over the At-lantic, being refused by Russian customs twice.

Neutrinos are extraordinarily difficult to detect, as their neutral charge and negligible mass (even on the subatom-ic scale) means they rarely interact with other particles. Detectors are built deep underground to avoid picking up cosmic rays, and look for the tell-tale signs of an in-teraction. 65 billion neutrinos from the sun pass through every square centimetre of the earth, every second. They are going through you at all times – even at night, after passing through the earth.

Antarctica only became the icy land it is today around 23 million years ago, when South America fully separated from it. This opened up the Drake Passage, and allowed currents to circle the whole of Antarctica, leaving it iso-lated. Before this, the land mass of South America forced currents to travel north, so returning water brought warmth with it. Further back in time around 66 million years ago, Antarctica had a tropical climate and a marsu-pial fauna like Australia today.

The kakapo, an endangered flightless parrot from New Zealand, is a victim of evolutionary isolation. Not used to nocturnal ground-hunting predators, it has found it dif-ficult to cope with introductions of cats, dogs and rats by humans. Historically it’s only natural predator was an ea-gle species –the Kakapo still hides in the daytime from a predator that has been extinct for hundreds of years.

Viking sagas from the 13th and 14th century occasion-ally refer to ‘sunstones’, tools used to help navigate at sea, allowing sailors to locate the sun even on fully overcast days. After a crystal tool that could be used to locate the sun was found in 2013 on a wrecked English ship from the 16th century, archaeologists think a similar device may have been used by the Vikings.

Marie Tharp, Bruce Hazeen and Maurice Ewing produced the first detailed maps of the ocean floors, discovering new information about the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Their work (and that of many others) helped lead to the even-tual acceptance of continental drift and plate tectonics as late as the 1960s, thought beforehand to be a ridiculous hypothesis by many scientists.

Every time you properly shuffle a pack of cards, it is al-most mathematically certain that the sequence has never been seen before. This is because the potential number of sequences is an astronomically large figure, called 52! (52 factorial). It equals 52 times 51 times 50 etc. all the way to 1. For comparison, 5 factorial = 120, 10 factorial = 3,628,800, and 15 factorial = 1,307,674,368,000.

NASA scientists are working on technologies that reduce the volume of sonic booms produced by supersonic air-craft, i.e. those travelling over Mach 1. Changes to their design can ‘shape’ the sonic boom, reducing noise. This is necessary if supersonic flight is to become legal above civil land areas.

By Cormac Kinsella

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Metagenomics and the human gut mi-crobiome, sounds riveting doesn’t it? You actually couldn’t be more right! The initial two questions that pop up: what is metagenomics? And what in the name of Fred Flintstones’ stunning choice of wardrobe is a gut microbiome? Metagenomics is the genetic study of environmental samples, using modern sequencing techniques to be able to com-pare interactions and communications between bacteria present in the differing environments.

Why would you bother doing this? The hu-man gut microbiome project is a brilliant exam-ple to answer this question. Firstly, a gut micro-biome is simply the micro-organisms present in a gut sample. If you collect samples from a large enough group of people you can start to compare the ratio of bacteria present. For example, the ma-jority of the samples would probably come from healthy humans, and we can begin to see if there is a pattern emerging, showing types of bacteria usually present in healthy individuals. This can then be contrasted with samples from diseased gut samples; people with diabetes, Crohn’s, or any disease linked to the gut or metabolism (and as we are discovering perhaps other diseases too). This is done with the ultimate goal of being able to restore the gut microbiome to a healthy state and so treat disease.

Is there any evidence that this works? Yes, yes there is. Looking specifically at patients who have undergone gastric bypass surgery, gut bacteria samples have been taken prior to the surgery and

also post-surgery. As the majority of patients whoundergo this treatment are obese, many tend toalso have type II diabetes, an obesity-linked dis-ease. Incredibly, and only around two weeks af-ter surgery, in almost every case the symptoms of type II diabetes disappear. Why? Well, scientists looked at the gut microbiome to try and find out. They saw that there does seem to be a pattern emerging in the types of bacteria present, and af-ter surgery there is a significant change in propor-tion of those bacteria found.

But how could bacteria be affecting us in such a way? There are many types of bacteria, some cause disease by themselves; Yersinia pestis was responsible for the black-death (quite a feat for something microscopic). Some bacteria send out molecules into their surrounding environments, such as toxins, and these have been found to in-teract with our systems and in some cases have even been likened to hormones! Loosely speak-ing, hormones control certain body functions and emotions we experience, and importantly influ-ence our metabolism.

If enough gut microbiome metagenomic sam-ples are collected and analysed this could poten-tially lead to non-invasive techniques for diagno-sis and prognosis of diseases; faecal samples are largely made up of bacteria and would be cheaper, easier and less time consuming than more inva-sive techniques such as endoscopies, which no-body likes, let’s face it. Type II diabetes… could it really become a thing of the past?

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Most of us have some idea of what we think makes us happy, whether that may be: waking up to sunshine, eating a slice of cake, or driving home from work on a Friday. But to what extent are these generally agreed-upon ide-as supported by science? The Happi-ness Hypothesis, written by Jonathon Haidt for a general audience, aims to examine philosophical ideas about happiness in light of recent scientific research. The author summarises what he calls “ten great ideas” each discov-ered by several of the world’s civilisa-tions. Haidt then evaluates these with psychological evidence and extracts lessons that we can apply to our lives in order to find meaning and be happy.

Throughout the text he uses an anal-ogy of the elephant and the rider to represent the idea that humans are di-vided into a large, automatic, primitive system (sub-conscious), and a smaller, controlled and rational system (con-scious), respectively. Haidt explains that the rider is an advisor who can see much further into the future than the elephant and can learn valuable infor-mation. However, this is not enough to change the desires of the elephant – the rider cannot order the elephant against its will. This analogy can be applied to the dilemma present when children are offered the immediate gratification of eating one marshmallow, versus a greater but delayed gratification of

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waiting fifteen minutes for two marshmal-lows. Here, the children who succeeded were the ones who forced themselves to look away from temptation, or to think of other things. In other words the rider was able to control what the elephant does, to some extent, but cannot stop the simple, automatic desire for the sugary reward.

Haidt goes a long way towards answer-ing the question of “how should I live in order to be happy?” providing a happiness formula: H=S+C+V. By this, Haidt means that happiness is a combination of the indi-vidual’s: genetically predisposed Set point, Conditions that they cannot change, and Voluntary activities that they choose to do. The S is not completely deterministic, but a potential range for happiness. Where each person falls within their range depends on the C and V. So, these two aspects of life seem important to focus on in our pursuit of happiness. Haidt gives some suggestions; for example a whole chapter is devoted to love, which is suggested to be one of the conditions. There are also some attempts to give guidance on Vs that we can change. For instance, Haidt states that one way to increase V is to take on voluntary activities that result in ‘flow’ (the state of total im-mersion in a task that is challenging, but yet within one’s capabilities). So, a student might go the extra mile on an assignment, get engrossed in a book, and hence lose track of time. However, for me Haidt’s conclusions leave something to be desired. His final chapter describes that a balance is needed between Eastern and Western perspectives. The author recommends that we shift be-tween these two seemingly opposite sets of

principles, in a yin and yang fashion. Throughout the text he provides evidence for this in demonstrating that tradition-al Buddhist techniques such as meditation and looking within the self are useful in achieving happiness, but that we also need to strive to reach our own goals in a more individualist, western manner. To quote the author: “different people at different times in their lives will benefit from drawing more heavily on one approach or the oth-er”. Despite being supported by a firm base of evidence and therefore a very attractive view to believe, personally I find it a little vague. Although I accept that Haidt did not set out to write a self-help book on steps to make us happy, I argue that his conclu-sion is difficult to apply to everyday life. For example, how are we to know whether it is a time for meditation and acceptance (as in a Buddhist perspective), or a time for the pursuit of a career that is coherent with our personality, in a stereotypically Western perspective? The Happiness Hy-pothesis, while giving a great deal of acces-sible insight into happiness, does not quite stretch this far. Nevertheless, Haidt did address this on his website; he gives happi-ness tips inspired by the book’s principles on http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/beyond-gethappy.html. Despite my reservations about Haidt’s conclusions, for an audience interested in ways to be happier that are applicable to real life, I would recommend The Happi-ness Hypothesis; as it looks at positive psy-chology from a more academic perspective. The book gives a good introduction to lots of positive psychology ideas, providing a strong base for further reading around the topic of positive emotion.

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There is current debate and uncer-tainty about exactly when fossil fuels will run out, though it is clearly inevitable that their depletion will occur. Whether this happens in our generation, or gen-erations to come, it is vital that alterna-tive energy sources are developed. One option is the use of biofuels. Biofuels are fuels produced from renewable, natu-ral materials. Some biofuels are already in use, such as biodiesel. Old vegetable oil or oils extracted from plants includ-ing soybean and sunflower have been used to produce biodiesel. There are al-ready several biodiesel fuelling stations in the UK, and some bus services have switched from conventional petroleum to this “eco” fuel. On the surface this all seems like good news for a more envi-ronmentally friendly and renewable fu-ture, however there are concerns with bi-ofuels and how “green” they really are.

The production of biodiesel from food crops such as soya bean or corn ex-erts extra pressure on food demand and supply, and sparks a food vs. fuel debate. Bioethanol, another major biofuel, is also predominantly produced from ma-jor food crops such as wheat, maize, rice and sugar cane. In a world where a bil-lion people suffer from chronic hunger is it wise to put extra strain on agriculture and food stocks?

In the past there have been claims that biofuels such as bioethanol and bio-diesel are carbon-neutral, but is this too good to be true? Vast areas of rainforest have been cleared to make way for palm crops to provide oil for biodiesel produc-tion. The amount of CO2 released from the destruction of large areas of forest, as well as the burning of fossil fuels in the processing of biofuels, has raised

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concerns about their environmental im-pact. Several studies have now shown that more CO2 is released during the produc-tion of biofuels than is absorbed by the plants in the first place.

Although there have been many advanc-es in biofuel production, the process is still relatively inefficient and unable to meet global demands. For example, if corn oil biodiesel was to meet half of the USA’s fuel requirements, then 846% of the agricultural land presently available would be needed to grow corn crops; this is obviously impos-sible. Additionally only 2-3% of soy bean biomass is oil, resulting in large amounts of wasted energy and biomass. In the pro-duction of bioethanol, plant tissue requires a lot of mechanical and enzymatic break-down, which is very costly and time con-suming. It also results in high carbon emis-sions and a low energy yield; in reality these “miracle fuels” may not be quite as good as originally imagined.

However, there may still be a future for biofuels. Though wind and solar energy are more suitable renewable energy sources for home electricity and heating, they are not suitable for current cars and travel. With an ever expanding dependence on transport it is vital that there is an alternative liquid fuel to petroleum. Algae hold massive potential for the future of biodiesel, with some species able to convert 60% of their biomass to oil, thirty times more than soya bean crops! Algae would also not contrib-ute to the food vs. fuel crisis as they don’t

compete with the amount of land available for food production.

Other options include using non-edi-ble parts of plants for biofuel production, or stress-resistant GM plants that are able to grow on land that is unsuitable for tradi-tional food crops. Biofuel processing is also being made more efficient with emerging technologies such as GM plants that show increased photosynthetic rate, biomass pro-duction, oil production and CO2 absorp-tion. Additionally the discoveries of more efficient enzymes and microbes for the pre-treatment of plant tissue for bioethanol production have given biofuels greater po-tential. Current research and development of biofuels has tackled the main issues cur-rently holding them back, including envi-ronmental impact and efficiency/produc-tivity issues. Although the future of biofuels remains unclear and still has doubts, with an ever growing human population and rapidly depleting fossil fuel sources, do we have any other choice?

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Mathematician Programmer Engineer Scientist

Britain is experiencing a huge lapse in stu-dents pursuing the study of science and maths; this is leading to major stresses for employers and a buildup of people without essential skills. Is the British education system to blame for the current decline in students studying science subjects? Recently, I had my induction as a STEM (Sci-ence, Technology, Engineering and Maths) am-bassador, and was completely taken aback by some of the figures I was given: In 2012/2013 54% of students gained a GCSE (A*-C) in both English and Maths, and 46% of students gained a GCSE (A*-C) in English, Maths and Science. To me, that is staggering, having always found sci-ence in particular a fascinating subject. Why is the figure so low? The majority of other countries in Europe do not have this problem - a large pro-portion of their students continue in STEM

education, leading to employment in a wide range of areas. Not only this, but there are similar pro-portions of male: female students undertaking these subjects; again, a very different story from what is occurring in the UK where most are male.

The question of why this might be is an in-triguing one. Could it be anything to do with the influence of the media today, and the portrayal of science and female roles? Could it be a misinter-pretation as to what STEM subjects entail and what careers they could lead to? If I say the word ‘engi-neer’ to you, what do you immediately think of? Are you aware of the many different types of en-gineering available? Or do you just picture a man in greasy overalls, with a wrench, under a car? To illustrate this point about stereotypes, I typed into Google Images the following words, and these pic-tures were among the first to appear:

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Mathematician Programmer Engineer Scientist

(To clarify, engineering specialities include: chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical and systems, with sub-disciplines within each area.)

What are the wider implications this is having? STEM employers are not find-ing enough qualified people to fill their roles. This began to be noticed in the 90’s, when a wider variety of subject choices be-came available to students. Students start-ed choosing specific subjects such as pho-tography, or media studies, instead of core subjects- perhaps the subjects that interest-ed them more at the time. Or they strate-gically took classes they perceived as easi-er to gain a higher grade in, for university entry. Whatever the reason, it led to a giant hole in the employer market. For example, Bosch set up a car manufacturing plant in Wales; but due to a lack of qualified engi-neers and a decline in sales, they closed and moved to another country. If the cor-rect information starts to be relayed to stu-dents concerning future job opportunities, before important subject choices must be determined, this could open job opportu-nities for many people. If Bosch had stayed they would have generated hundreds of well-paid jobs that now no longer exist in the vicinity.

A recent KPMG report stated: “There is a shortage of qualified scientists, engineers and technologists (SET) in the UK. The number of automotive manufacturing va-cancies tripled between January 2013 and January 2014. According to employer skills survey 2013 data from UKCES, almost one in five of these are hard-to-fill vacancies.”

Another outcome derived from a lack of locally qualified potential employees, is that employers will have to bring in quali-fied people from outside of the UK, which leaves those in the UK still looking for ful-filling jobs; this is again highlighted in the KPMG report.

What can we do? Help to promote core subjects to students, through initia-tives such as the STEM program and ca-reer profiles in schools and colleges. STEM subjects can lead to a broad variety of ca-reers, and the skill sets gained from these subjects should be emphasised and in par-ticular linked to a fulfilling and interest-ing job. As stated before, it is interesting to note that other countries in the EU do not have this problem with a lack of a STEM qualified population. Perhaps this is due to the greater influence employers have in many of their education systems? The UK education system is kept firmly separated from the employment sector- would inte-gration help provide students with more support for future employment and infor-mation on desirable skills?

The media is another important target that could help break down STEM stereo-types. Not all scientists resemble Einstein, and Science, Technology and Maths are inspiring subjects, stemming from simple curiosity about how the world around us works. This needs to be accessible infor-mation, promoted to students across the UK in a relatable format. Hopefully, from increasing awareness, we can begin to see a positive change and halt the worrying de-cline currently taking place.

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Life on Earth is unimaginably di-verse. Although it now may be quite rare to discover new mammals, birds, and other large organisms, we have barely scraped the surface of the wealth of invertebrate species out there. Mil-lions of beetles to find, probably even more nematodes, and between them they won’t even closely compare to the number of bacteria and virus species hiding out both in plain sight and in remote, inhospitable locations. Of all these species, both discovered and un-discovered, the vast majority are para-sites. The parasitic mode of life, one that uses other species’ resources to eke out a living on or inside a host, is a hugely successful one – seemingly every species has parasites, even parasites themselves.

The word itself can conjure up images of grotesque creatures; masses of worms writhing in the gut, woodlouse-like crustaceans clamped inside a fish’s mouth, or fungal growths emerging from the head of their ant victim. There is no denying that parasites are danger-ous, causing huge mortality to humans and wildlife, such as Plasmodium that causes malaria. Nonetheless, both in our evolutionary past and contemporarily, parasites have shaped us and provided us with a range of positive services.

The evidence of parasite caused pa-thology stretches far back into the ge-ologic record, even trilobites from the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago had them crawling over their

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exoskeletons. Even further back, a parasitism that became domesticated into a mutually bene-ficial relationship gave rise to our mitochondria, and definably eukaryotic life itself was spawned. A similar event gave rise to chloroplasts in cy-anobacteria – parasitism is therefore ultimate-ly responsible for filling the world with oxygen, and equipping us to use it. Life’s belligerent evo-lutionary infighting with parasites even helped drive the appearance of sexual reproduction and secondary sexual characteristics. Sexual repro-duction leads to higher genetic diversity in pop-ulations compared with asexual reproduction, in practise sexual reproducers will be more re-sistant to parasites; this can be observed in ac-tion within species that include both asexually and sexually reproducing subpopulations, such as some snails. In an even more direct influence on the genetic makeup of a species, some para-sites can directly insert their genetic information into a host’s DNA. 8% of the human genome is made up of ‘endogenous viral elements’, sections of DNA originally from a virus. They include vi-able genes, many of which have been co-opted by us and are now vital to our survival. An example is the syncytins, essential for the development of the placenta and therefore the survival of embry-os.

Parasites are highly specialised for their roles, rather than the degenerate and unevolved crea-tures they were considered by scientists in the past. With representatives from every kingdom of life, they have developed countless methods of locating hosts, gaining access, avoiding detection, remaining stationary, reproducing, manipulating, and escaping. Many of the resulting tools and substances, researched and developed by millen-nia of evolution, can be exploited by us. We al-ready use several drugs isolated from parasites, such as the immunosuppressant cyclosporine, given to organ transplant patients. Anaesthetics and anticoagulants have been isolated from vam-pire bats, new antibiotics effective against both MRSA and tuberculosis from a parasitoid wasp, and a super-grip sticking plaster for burns

patients was modelled after the attachment mechanism of a gut-worm. It is not unreason-able to assume that whenever we study a par-asite more closely, there will be something of use to us, be it biological glues, pain-killers, Velcro-like attachments, or coatings to avoid the immune system. We can even use them as whole-organism tools. Biological pest control has many advantages over chemical. Good bi-ological control species are self-replicating, evolving, specific and cheap to use, like many parasites are. The cassava mealybug, a parasite itself, devastated crops throughout Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. The use of a parasitoid wasp transported from South America brought it un-der complete control within a matter of months, where chemical measures had failed over years. And it’s not just in the wild we can use them, but on ourselves…

High parasite prevalence has been the sta-tus quo throughout the evolution of the human species; only today in the sanitised modern world have we made their presence more un-usual. Severing our involuntary relationship with parasites has had some unexpected conse-quences. It is now thought that many conditions from Crohn’s disease to allergies have arisen partly due to alteration of the development of our immune systems, as a result of eliminating exposure to parasites and pathogens. Work car-ried out in the slums of Venezuela showed that treatment of helminthic gut parasites raised the incidence of allergic conditions. The implication is that parasites could be used to help alleviate these conditions, and initial trials are showing promising results in the treatment of colitis us-ing parasitic nematode worms. A formidable barrier to their use may well be the ‘disgust’ factor of allowing creatures to grow inside you. How we may develop a more complete under-standing and respect for parasites and the ser-vices they can provide is as yet an unanswered question. At least one thing we know for sure: the things parasites can do for us are as diverse as they are themselves.

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As I look around my room, I can see many different materials and compounds. I can see the metals and semiconductors that allow my laptop to play Goldie Look-ing Chain songs. I can also see the rich mahogany chest of drawers that holds my cotton and nylon based clothes. The smell of WD-40 still hangs in the air from when my front door was stiff this morning. To me however, none of these compounds compare to the liquid that sits at the bottom of my PET bottle – water. Consisting of two hydrogen atoms and a single oxygen atom, it is the most amazing compound present here on Earth. It is fundamentally important to life on this planet, has been known about for thousands of years and studied for hundreds – yet the reasons for some of its specific properties are still not completely understood.

In 1969 a Tanzanian named Erasto Mpemba and his colleague published a

paper that discussed the observation of the ‘Mpemba effect’, where under cer-tain conditions hot water will freeze faster than cold water. This is an incredible fact, which the young Erasto first noted while making ice cream. In fact, the phenome-non has been known and thought about since the start of modern civilisation

- Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes have all men-tioned the property in their work on this

amazing liquid. It is only more recently that Nikola Bregović has shed light on how the

Mpemba effect works. The young scientist won the

Royal Society of Chemistry Mpemba com-petition in 2013, as he showed that the ef-fect is explained by convection currents oc-curring within the warm water to help cool down the liquid faster, and supercooling. Scientists Dr Changquin and Dr Zhang have built on this idea, explaining that the Mpemba effect is due to the shortening of the H-O bond, causing energy to be stored. This energy is released depending on the initial amount of stored energy, and so hot water will release its energy faster.

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After hearing about the Mpemba effect, you may question what use it is to the every-day person, or you may feel it is an unimpor-tant discovery – perhaps many would agree! I would concede that water impacts us far more due to its other properties than this interesting quirk. It is a molecule that affects us every sec-ond of every day! Even properties we may take for granted are extremely important to us – for example the molecule is colourless and trans-parent, and this has allowed aquatic plants and phytoplankton to evolve. These are vital for sup-porting every other aquatic organism, so think about that when you next eat fish and chips or tuna niçoise!

Water is a molecule that is vital in photosyn-thesis, the main process for primary production of biological matter. Amino acids are an exam-ple of such matter, and are built into long chains called polypeptides, which themselves are com-ponents in proteins. These are assembled with-in cells and taken apart just as easily, relying on water molecules to split the peptide bonds. Hy-drolysis reactions such as these are witnessed throughout nature. They are observed in the processing of fats, oils and carbohydrates – long chains of disaccharides or single sugar units,

that are held together by glycosidic bonds.Water is once again required to split such bonds and is therefore vital for the body to utilise nu-trients.

Water may seem harmless to the untrained eye, we wash using it and drink it after all, but it (or rather what is dissolved in it) is the cause of millions of pounds worth of structural damage to buildings and statues. This is another of its amazing properties; it is known as the universal solvent for good reason. In this case the solutes (emissions from combustion such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide) change the water molecules so that H3O+ is formed and the solu-tion becomes acidic and corrosive to limestone.

Water is a vital and interesting molecule for these reasons alone, but to me as a chemist, the thing that makes it really special is its reactiv-ity. If you still don’t believe that water has the potential to be harmful, simply look at how it reacts with the alkali metals. These metals are able to displace hydrogen from water, which re-acts with a violet explosion. This is particularly apparent with Caesium, my favourite metal. So the next time you turn on the tap or walk in the rain, don’t forget your lab goggles…

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