Oxford Science Blog
Read the latest science news and views from Oxford University
Search blogs
-
Feathers show their true colours
Pete Wilton | 10 May 12 | 0 comments
For millennia birds have been prized, even hunted, for their beautiful plumage but what makes their feathers so colourful?
A new X-ray analysis of the structure of feathers from 230 bird species, led by Vinod Saranathan of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, has revealed the nanostructures behind certain colours of feather, structures that could inspire new photonic devices.
A report of the research appears in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
‘Pigments or dyes are the most common ways to make colour in birds as in other organisms. Pigment molecules absorb certain portions of the white light spectrum and the portions that are not absorbed manifest as the colour we see,’ Vinod tells me.
‘For instance, melanosomes, granules filled with the pigment melanin, produce blacks, browns and reddish-browns in feathers, whereas other pigments such as carotenoids produce the majority of bright yellow, orange or reddish colours.’
He explains that parrots even have their own class of pigments (psittacofulvins) which give them their vivid yellow and red plumage.
‘However, there are no known blue pigments found in vertebrates and the only known green pigment in birds is found in turacos, a group of birds endemic to sub-Saharan Africa,’ Vinod says.
‘Birds have evolved to produce shorter and middle wavelength colours such as violet, indigo, blue and green structurally instead by the scattering of light photons by nanoscale sub-surface features in the feathers that are called biological photonic or biophotonic nanostructures.’
It was these ‘structural’ (as opposed to ‘pigmentary’) colours that Vinod and colleagues from the US set out to investigate.
Vinod explains: ‘These features are basically repeating variation in material composition on the order of a few hundred nanometres, which matches the wavelengths of visible light.
‘In bird feather barbs (barbs and barbules are respectively the primary and secondary branches of a feather), the complex nanostructures, made up of the protein beta-keratin and air, occur in one of two fundamental forms - either as a tortuous network of air channels in keratin (like a porous sponge) or as an array of spherical air bubbles in keratin (like Swiss cheese), but sometimes as more disordered and highly variable versions of these two forms.’
Despite this apparently chaotic arrangement the team’s X-ray scattering experiments found a kind of order (known as ‘quasi-order’) in the variation and sameness of feather structures that accounts for their unusual optical qualities.
Because the quasiordered architecture of barbs interacts strongly with light, often producing double peaks, pure green or red colours cannot be produced structurally. But, Vinod tell me, many birds have evolved a way round this:
‘Some birds such as the tanagers found in the Neotropics, have combined an orange or red pigment with a spongy barb nanostructure tuned to reflect in orange or red wavelengths in order to make bright and saturated colours, which cannot be produced using either biophotonic nanostructures or pigments alone.’
Not only have very similar barb structures evolved independently in many families of birds (at least 44) but these look very much like other nanostructures seen in the physical world, such as beer foam, corroding metal alloys, and oil-in-water. It suggests that, like these latter structures, feather nanostructures may have evolved by a process of self-assembly (the phase separation of keratin from the cytoplasm of the spongy barb cells).
‘This suggests that many lineages of birds have independently evolved to utilise the self-assembling properties of a polymerising protein in solution to create optical nanostructures,’ Vinod comments.
The findings feed into his current work with Ben Sheldon studying the ultraviolet light reflecting crown structural colour ornaments of blue tits, which males use to attract females and see off rival males:
‘By studying these non-iridescent barb structural colours across all birds, we have a better idea of the distribution of these colours across the evolutionary history of birds so that we can trace the evolution of barb structural colours in other birds closely related to the blue tits.
‘That these barb nanostructures could be self-assembled intracelllularly from beta-keratin, the most basic constituent of feathers, suggests that there may be little or no cost involved in producing such structural colours.’
Yet the secrets of structural colours aren’t just for the birds, they could also help to develop new materials for photonic devices that would not allow the passage of a certain band of wavelengths in any direction: such materials are currently hard to fabricate defect-free and on an industrial scale.
Vinod comments: ‘The nanostructures in bird feather barbs, that are likely self-assembled and have evolved over millions of years of selection for a consistent optical function, could be used to inspire novel photonic devices.
‘They could be used as biotemplates for the fabrication of photonic materials using better technological raw materials (such as titania or silica), or we can try and mimic their process of self-assembly using synthetic polymers for colour tuneable applications.’
So, in the not too distant future, we could be growing our own artificial feathers not just to dazzle and amaze but to harness the power of light.
(Full story) -
Cocoon clue to lightweight armour & cars
Pete Wilton | 04 May 12 | 0 comments
A new examination of silkworm cocoons suggests how they could inspire lightweight armour and environmentally-friendly car panels.
Scientists from Oxford University’s Department of Zoology studied 25 types of cocoons for clues to how the structures manage to be very tough but also light and able to ‘breathe’.
Fujia Chen, David Porter, and Fritz Vollrath report in Journal of the Royal Society Interface on their research into the factors that enable cocoons to protect their occupants.
‘Cocoons protect silkworms in the wild as firstly a hard shell, secondly a microbe filter and thirdly as a climate chamber,’ Fritz tells me, adding that this order of importance will change depending on the threats and environmental conditions faced by each species.
The lightness of cocoons is down to both the material they are made of – silk – and the way that this is turned into a layered composite material with a clever arrangement of silk loops that are woven together with gum only at the intersections.
‘By controlling the density of the 'weave' the animal controls the material properties of each layer, and by having different properties for different layers the animal can make tough yet light structures,’ Fritz explains.
‘In addition many wild silk worms integrate mineral crystals (which they obtain from their food plants) into the composite to give extra strength. Silk cocoons could bring inspiration to light-weight armour by showing ways that animals have solved some of the problems faced by human designers.’
At present most of the cocoons produced around the world are boiled and unravelled to be made into textiles, but the researcher suggest that they could be used to create composite materials that could satisfy the demand for car panels and other components in fast-growing economies such as India and China.
‘Silk cocoons are fully sustainable, non-perishable and climate-smart agricultural products,’ Fritz comments. ‘They are also very light, tough composites. Using cocoons as base materials, in combination with equally sustainable fillers should help us make sustainable composites with many layers of complexity.’
The next stage in the research will involve looking for natural glues and resins that interact well with mats of ‘raw’ (unwoven) cocoons.
Fritz adds: ‘This will require a good understanding not only of the cocoon materials but also of composite theory and the issues involved in turning that into practice.’
(Full story) -
Destination: Ganymede
Pete Wilton | 02 May 12 | 0 comments
It’s official: it was announced today that Oxford University scientists will help to prepare a mission to Jupiter and its icy moons.
But whilst the JUICE spacecraft will beam back valuable data on several of the planet’s satellites, it will give special attention to one in particular: Ganymede.
I asked Leigh Fletcher of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the JUICE team, about the appeal of Ganymede, what they hope to find there, and how Oxford scientists will probe the secrets of this enigmatic ‘waterworld’…
OxSciBlog: What makes Ganymede so interesting?
Leigh Fletcher: When people think of moons in our solar system, they often imagine them as being inferior to the main planets, and somehow less interesting. The moons of Jupiter show how wrong that misguided assumption can be - the four largest Jovian moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) are the size of planets, and each has a fascinating and rich geologic and chemical history.These moons truly are worlds in their own right, with a diverse range of unusual landscapes and features that can keep scientists busy for decades. ESA has chosen to focus on Ganymede, the largest example of an icy moon in our solar system. It is thought to be made of roughly equal measures of rocks and water ice, and is likely to harbour a saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust. For those searching for habitable environments in our solar system, the mantra has always been to follow the water, as the vital solvent for the chemical reactions of life.
Ganymede's surface has a mixture of ancient, dark, cratered surfaces, and brighter water-ice-rich regions of ridges. The biggest feature is a dark plain called Galileo Regio, visible from Earth even through amateur telescopes, and may even have polar caps of water frost. Furthermore, Ganymede has an extremely tenuous oxygen atmosphere, and is the only moon in our solar system with a magnetic field, probably caused by convection within a liquid iron core.
OSB: How does it compare to Jupiter’s other moons?
LF: To better understand Ganymede, it's important to consider the processes which shaped its evolution and surface features by comparing it to the other Galilean moons: although these four worlds of fire and ice probably had the same origins in the Jovian sub-nebula, their present-day structure is the end of product of aeons of subsequent evolution. Jupiter's immense gravity causes tidal flexing of the moons (strongest at Io, weak or absent at Callisto), providing energy to liquefy the water ice crusts and produce internal activity.Io is mostly rocky, lacking the water ice of the other satellites but featuring hundreds of active volcanoes. Europa is the smallest of the four, with a smooth geologically-young icy surface overlying a water ocean, heated by the tidal flexing from Jupiter. Ganymede's ocean is likely to be deeper than Europa's, under a thicker ice crust. Callisto is further away and experiences less tidal heating, resulting in an ancient terrain, one of the most highly cratered surfaces in the solar system.
OSB: What do we hope JUICE will find out about it?
LF: JUICE will be the first orbiter of an icy moon, and provide a full global characterisation of its surface composition, geology and structure. An ice-penetrating radar will peer through the icy crust for the first time, providing us with our first access to the water ocean of a Galilean moon. Our key goal is to assess the potential habitability of Ganymede as a representative of a whole class of ‘waterworlds’ which may exist around other stars, building upon the discoveries of habitable environments on the Earth's deep ocean ridges.So JUICE will be looking for key characteristics of habitability on Ganymede - sources of energy, access to crucial chemical elements, liquid water, and stable conditions over long periods of time.
It's a crucial step in our reconnaissance and exploration of our solar system, and towards answering the question of 'What are the necessary conditions that make a planetary body habitable?’ By comparing the three potentially ocean-bearing Galilean moons, we hope to identify the physical and chemical characteristics driving the evolution of this planetary system.
JUICE will study the extent of Ganymede's ocean, its connection to the deep interior and ice shell; the global distribution and evolution of surface materials, geologic features, and present-day surface activity; and the interaction with the local environment and magnetosphere. In addition, JUICE will explore recent activity and composition on Europa, and characterise Callisto as a remnant of the early Jovian system. Finally, JUICE will be capable of exploring the wider Jovian system, from the complex and dynamic Jovian atmosphere, the magnetosphere, the minor satellites and rings.
OSB: What instruments will be needed to study it?
LF: The proposed JUICE payload has cameras to take images of the icy moon surfaces and swirling Jovian clouds; spectrometers covering ultraviolet, near-infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths to determine moon compositions and temperatures, winds, composition and cloud characteristics on Jupiter; a magnetometer and plasma instruments to conduct an investigation of Jupiter's magnetosphere; and a laser altimeter, ice-penetrating radar and radio science instrument to probe below the surface of the Galilean moons and through the Jovian cloud decks.The payload is just a model right now, and other instruments could be added. All this will be launched on a 5 tonne spacecraft in 2022, with solar arrays to provide power and a large high-gain antenna to return the data to Earth. It will take 7.5 years to reach the giant planet, before going into orbit around Jupiter to conduct an extensive survey of the whole planetary system. Then, in the final phase in 2032, it will enter orbit around Ganymede.
OSB: How are Oxford scientists likely to contribute?
LF: Oxford has a strong heritage of contributing instrumentation and data analysis techniques for outer solar system missions, notably with the near infrared mapping spectrometer (NIMS) on Galileo and the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) on Cassini.We also have a long-term campaign of giant planet studies from ground-based observatories in Hawaii and Chile and space-borne telescopes (Spitzer, Herschel, Hubble). This has allowed us to contribute to the science case for a return mission to Jupiter and its icy moons, identifying the key questions and mysteries left unanswered by previous generations of spacecraft.
Oxford, along with many other UK institutions, will hope to contribute instrumentation to fly to Jupiter to address some of these questions. Involvement with Galileo and Cassini enabled Oxford to build up a rich planetary science group, with a broad range of experience from lab spectroscopy to spacecraft hardware, and from icy moons to gas giant dynamics. This expertise will help us to solve the challenges of the JUICE mission.
OSB: What is the next big milestone for the JUICE mission?
LF: Now that the mission has been officially selected by ESA as the L-class mission for 2022, the hard work really begins. Industry will be invited to design and build the spacecraft systems, and an announcement of opportunity will be issued to call for instrument designs. Teams will be assembled to thrash out ideas for instruments that address key scientific questions, all hoping to see their particular design on the launch pad when we lift off for Jupiter in a decade's time.The final go-ahead for the mission from ESA, known as 'adoption', should come in the next 2-3 years.
(Full story) -
Casting Mr Higgs
Pete Wilton | 30 Apr 12 | 0 comments
You need the latest Flash installed and Javascript enabled to view media on this page. Please ensure Javascript has been enabled in your browser settings. You can download Flash with the link below.
Exactly what sort of headgear do sub-atomic particles wear?This is one of the important issues addressed in an animation about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the first offering from Oxford Sparks, a new portal giving people access to some of the exciting science happening at Oxford University.
In search of the science behind the fun, I asked Alan Barr of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, who works at the LHC, about his role as scientific adviser on the animation and coping with a cast of prima donna protons…
OxSciBlog: Why do you think we need an animation about the LHC?
Alan Barr: The Large Hadron Collider is one of the inspirational science experiments of our time, but it can be difficult for a non-expert to understand what it is about. Anything which helps make the science accessible - even as a first taste - is a good idea as far as I’m concerned. So when the OxfordSparks team suggested using ‘A quick look around the LHC’ as a pilot for OxfordSparks.net, I happily agreed to help advise on the science side.OSB: What contribution did you make to the LHC nugget?
AB: I wish I could say I’d done the animation – but thankfully the hard bit was done by Karen Cheung, a really impressive professional animator from the company Jelly. My role as scientific consultant was to try to make sure that, as well as being great fun, the cartoon conveyed as much physics as possible, and as accurately as possible. Of course that’s a bit tricky in a cartoon. Protons don’t really wear crash helmets, and the Higgs boson doesn’t really have a flower in his hat, even if he appears to in the cartoon. But we were able to illustrate the basic ideas of what happens at CERN - the acceleration, the collisions and the detection of new particles.OSB: What concept are you most proud to see in the finished animation?
AB: When particles move close to the speed of light, the effects of Einstein’s relativity are really important. Very fast particles get heavier, and so our character - Ossie - starts feeling rather bloated as he gets accelerated. Later on, when the protons collide, their energy is turned into new, exotic particles - again just as predicted by Einstein and as we observe in the collisions at CERN.We’ve also put together some extra information on the OxfordSparks web page describing a little more background about how the accelerator works, and the role that Oxford played in the construction and operation. We explain, for example, how we one can detect the characteristic signals we expect from exotic new particles like Mr Higgs.
OSB: What feedback have you had from fellow physicists/the public?
(Full story)
AB: I emailed an early version of the animation to some of our own graduate students here in Oxford. As soon as I heard their laughter coming down the corridor I knew that we were onto a winner. After we released it on YouTube the uptake was fast… I’ve just had a peek at the YouTube page and there have already been more than 27,000 views, so it’s clearly caught the public imagination. We’ve also had interest from other LHC scientists around the world… so who knows – we may even end up going international, just like the LHC itself. -
Chatterbox whales say what?
Pete Wilton | 20 Apr 12 | 0 comments
Scientists studying the calls made by killer whales and pilot whales have a big problem: these whales talk too much.
Because they make so many different sounds it is very hard to work out what these noises might mean. A first step would be to understand the typical sounds these animals make, and that’s where volunteers visiting Whale.FM can help.
Robert Simpson of Oxford University, one of the researchers behind the project, told Scientific American’s Mariette DiChristina:
‘When you visit Whale.FM, you are presented with a sound clip of a recording of a whale. The idea is to match the big sound that you see/hear with one of the smaller ones underneath.
‘All the pairings go into a database and we use that to find the best pairs of sounds and build up our understanding of what the whales are saying to each other. Basically: we need help decoding the language of whales.’
Whale.FM is the latest in a series of ‘citizen science’ projects led by or involving Oxford University scientists (others include Old Weather, Ancient Lives, and Galaxy Zoo) and is a collaborative effort of Scientific American, Zooniverse and the research institutions WHOI, TNO, the University of Oxford, and SMRU.
One of the questions always raised by citizen science projects is whether volunteers can perform tasks as well as professional scientists. To test this the team took a selection of calls where they already knew the call category and tested them against the groupings given by people visiting the site.
‘We found that the Whale.FM volunteers grouped up the sounds in the same way that professionals would,’ Robert comments. ‘It agrees very well. We found approximately 90 percent agreement in our preliminary test. Our volunteers are amazing!’
Perhaps the biggest surprise, he says, is that their results could be used to help improve automated algorithms for decoding whale sounds:
‘There are tens of thousands of whale calls out here. It would seem that Whale.FM can help narrow the big problem into a smaller, more manageable one.’
(Full story) -
Hawks win, doves pay for being odd
Pete Wilton | 13 Apr 12 | 0 comments
In a crowd, looking different can be dangerous, at least if you’re a pigeon.
A new study from Oxford University has examined the so-called ‘oddity effect,’ in which predators preferentially attack different-looking individuals within a prey group - presumably because it enables them to focus on a single target within a confusing, moving mass.
To test whether this hunting strategy actually pays off for the predator in terms of enhanced reproductive success, Christian Rutz of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology studied urban goshawks preying on feral pigeons in the city of Hamburg, Germany.
A report of his research is published in Current Biology.
In feral pigeons, most individuals are grey-blue but many flocks contain a few white birds.
‘Goshawks are specialist bird hunters, and in urban environments, their preferred prey is the feral pigeon,’ says Christian. ‘When attacked by a raptor, pigeons seek safety in numbers and form a tight flock. Goshawks struggle to single out a suitable victim in such flocks, but by focussing on an odd-coloured individual, they seem to be able to enhance their attack success.’
But, Christian explains, like other skills this hunting strategy is something young birds have to learn: ‘Male goshawks apparently hone their hunting skills over their first few years of life. As they get older, they become not only better pigeon hunters in general, but they also get increasingly selective for odd-coloured individuals.’
Importantly, the study found that those hawks that master this selective attack strategy are the best breeders:
‘An efficient hunter can provide a lot of food to their offspring,’ Christian comments. ‘In goshawks, the most selective pigeon hunters initiate their clutches very early in the season and raise young of excellent body condition.’
This finding leads to an intriguing question: why doesn’t this selective hunting drive rare white pigeons to extinction?
‘Feral pigeons apparently prefer to mate with partners who are of a different colour to themselves,’ Christian notes. ‘Thus, white pigeons may risk paying the ‘ultimate price’ for being conspicuous, and get killed by a hawk, but they are preferred mating partners of their much more common grey-blue counterparts and seem to enjoy reproductive advantages whilst alive.’
The work may encourage studies in other species to move beyond simply recording success rates in predators attacking swarming prey, to examine explicitly how different attack strategies may affect a predator’s reproductive performance.
(Full story) -
FameLab win with quantum carrots
Pete Wilton | 22 Mar 12 | 0 comments
An Oxford University researcher has won FameLab UK, a competition that aims to spot the best new science communicators by getting them to deliver a nugget of science wisdom in a talk lasting just three minutes.
In the final, which took place last night at the Royal Institution, Andrew Steele of Oxford University’s Department of Physics secured the prize ahead of nine other finalists with a talk about why carrots are a delicious testing ground for quantum mechanics.
‘Why is this carrot orange? It turns out that carrots are quantum vegetables, and their delightful colour can be understood with one of the simplest ideas in quantum mechanics: the so-called particle in a box,’ Andrew told the judges and assembled audience.
He went on to describe how the beta-carotene in carrots is a ‘molecule in a box’:
‘Think of it like an angry cat. <miaow> In fact, to squeeze an electron, or a cat, into a box so small that we knew exactly where it was would take an infinite amount of energy. And kicking a cat in an infinitely small box would just be mean…’
Andrew concluded by exploring how light interacts with carrots and tearing a spectrum printed on a card in half:
‘If you shine white light on a carrot, everything that’s green or more energetic gets absorbed by the electrons, and you’re only left with red, orange and yellow being reflected back into your eyes. And that’s why carrots are orange.’
His talk won over the judging panel of Andrew Cohen, head of BBC’s science unit, anatomist, science writer and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts, and Oxford neuroscientist Professor Russell Foster, as well as winning the audience award.
Andrew tells me: ‘The final was pretty nerve-wracking! There was strong competition and a real diversity of styles so it must've been as hard for the judges as it was for us finalists. It was amazing to have the chance to speak in such an illustrious venue as the Royal Institution, and obviously I'm thrilled with the outcome!’
The prize includes £1000 in cash and £750 to spend on a science communication activity and Andrew will go on to compete for the title of International FameLab Champion at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival in June.
(Full story) -
Chimps show food link to walking
Pete Wilton | 20 Mar 12 | 0 comments
A study of chimpanzees gives tantalizing evidence that humans may have evolved upright walking in order to carry more food.
A team of scientists from Oxford University, Cambridge, and Kyoto University tested the theory that two-legged (bipedal) walking should occur more of the time when animals are carrying prized but rare resources.
The researchers put groups of wild chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea, through their paces. First they provided either commonly-available oil palm nuts or both oil palm nuts and some rare coula nuts in a forest clearing.
They found that when more of the prized coula nuts were available the chimps concentrated on carrying these away in preference to the oil palm nuts.
Whilst overall the chimps still mostly used all four limbs, bipedal walking increased by a factor of four when coula nuts were present. The chimps also carried twice as many items when walking on two legs – often using not only their hands but also their mouths and feet.
The researchers also separately recorded crop raids by Bossou chimps over a 14-month period. They observed that over a third of chimp trips during these raids included bipedal strides and that the number of items carried during these bipedal bouts was significantly higher than exclusively four/three-legged ones.
A report of the work is published today in Current Biology.
‘This small population of chimpanzees at Bossou has already taught us a great deal about many aspects of chimpanzee behaviour and cognition, including the uniquely West-African chimpanzee tradition of using stone tools to crack open hard shelled nuts,’ team member Dora Biro of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology tells me.
‘We've known for a long time that chimpanzees carry items bipedally, but what our study has shown is that such transports increase dramatically when chimpanzees encounter resources that are rare or unpredictable in their availability.
‘In those times their behaviour resembles a "take as much as you can at once" strategy - a bit like people piling food on their plates at a buffet table. Bipedality helps because it allows you to increase the amount of things you can carry to a safe place at once.’
The results support the idea that variable food resources and uncertain environments may ‘fast-track’ adaptations such as bipedal walking. It’s possible that the extra calories gained from novel ways of carrying food eventually selects for gradual anatomical change: something that may have driven our ancestors to stand up on their own two feet and stay there.
(Full story) -
Nanopore: the Oxford story
Pete Wilton | 15 Mar 12 | 0 comments
Last month Oxford University spinout firm Oxford Nanopore revealed that it is to produce a new DNA sequencing machine the size of a USB stick.
The announcement caught many by surprise, with the prospect of shrinking today’s bulky DNA sequencers into tiny devices that could decode the building blocks of life in hours (even seconds) instead of days, being widely reported in the media.
After articles in The Guardian, New York Times, Financial Times, and elsewhere, the blogosphere was abuzz with the exciting possibilities such machines open up.
Yet perhaps it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise: the firm’s success is built on nearly a decade of basic research at Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry.
Professor Hagan Bayley moved to Oxford in October 2003 having already done considerable research into how tiny pores in a protein might be used to detect the molecules passing through them, work he continued to develop in his Oxford lab.
In 2005, with the backing of IP Group and the help of Isis Innovation, Hagan founded Oxford Nanopore to commercialise his ideas.
‘We were looking at sensing a wide range of molecules, but it was work we did at Oxford which showed, for the first time, that our nanopores could identify all four bases of DNA,’ Hagan explains.
‘After that it made sense to shift the firm’s development into the area of DNA sequencing, a move which provided an impetus for many others to follow.’
Conventional sequencing requires DNA samples to be amplified (which can introduce errors), cut to the right length, attached to a bead or surface and given a fluorescent tag which has to be read with expensive imaging equipment.
The pioneering approach developed by Hagan and his team was to eliminate tags and enable individual DNA bases to be snipped off a strand one by one and then fired through a nanopore. Each base disrupts an electric current passed across the nanopore by a different amount so the DNA base ‘letter’ (A, C, G or T) can be read.
‘We found a modified pore that could clearly distinguish between the different bases,’ Hagan tells me, ‘but the big prize was strand sequencing – being able to pull a whole strand of DNA through a pore and read out the bases one at a time from that. It was work done at Oxford that first showed that this was possible.’
The University contributed in other ways too: its Begbroke Science Park would provide a home for Oxford Nanopore from July 2006-2009, during that time the workforce rocketed from 6 to 70 staff.
Despite his role as the firm’s founder, a board member, and long-time scientific adviser, Hagan didn’t become its CEO; ‘my interest was always in the basic research’ he says.
Instead, he continued to work with his team on the scientific challenges of understanding nanopores and what they can do, publishing papers that were useful to both the spinout and others interested in the potential of this emerging technology.
Yet the relationship remained a close one: former members of Hagan’s group would go on to play a significant role in the firm’s development as it grew from a small start-up to a company now employing 120 people.
Drawing on the basic research, Oxford Nanopore has been working hard for the last few years on creating the electronic hardware and software necessary to turn the nanopore concept into viable commercial devices. Its new MinION and GridION sequencers have already been hailed as ‘game-changing’ products on the road to cheaper, faster, more flexible DNA sequencing but this could be just the start, Hagan suggests: ‘we could see a high-throughput chip reading signals from hundreds of thousands of nanopores simultaneously, this could be very important for large-scale sequencing.’
After a decade of working in this area Hagan believes it is now time for him to move on and find new avenues of research.
He believes that most new commercial exploitation opportunities come from basic research, and instead of research councils and universities trying to plan ‘pathways’ to new products and services: ‘the best way to do initial research is to find good motivated scientists, give them funding and time, and leave them alone.’
Hagan tells me: ‘we need to make it simple for academics to form a company, don’t make them have to take a year out from their academic work or quit their university job to get things going.’ The support he received from Isis Innovation and others around the University indeed made spinning out a firm ‘relatively easy’.
His message to funders and universities is that it’s how you treat your researchers that counts; support them and, in time, everyone will reap the rewards.
(Full story) -
Birds evolved compass 'head up display'
Pete Wilton | 14 Mar 12 | 0 comments
Certain birds may have compass information mapped directly onto their vision, much as fighter pilots have ‘head up displays’ overlaying flight information on their view of the skies.
It’s well known that birds, such as the European Robin, can detect the Earth's magnetic field in order to help them navigate on long migratory flights.
This ‘compass’ sense must be associated with the eyeball, because the birds cannot detect magnetic fields in darkness.
But now scientists from the UK and Singapore have shown that birds may really ‘see’ the invisible force of magnetism, giving them a compass on top of their normal vision: rather like aircraft ‘head up displays’ which overlay crucial navigation information on a transparent screen in front of the pilot.
According to the new model, when a photon of light from the Sun is absorbed by a special molecule in the bird's eye, it can cause an electron to be kicked from its normal state into an alternative location a few nanometres away. Until the electron eventually relaxes back, it creates an ‘electric dipole field’ which can augment the bird's vision - for example altering colours or brightness.
Crucially, the alignment of the molecule compared to the Earth's magnetic field controls the time it takes for the electron to relax back, and so controls the strength of the effect on the bird's vision.
There are many such molecules spread throughout the eye, with different orientations. So from the patterns on top of its vision, and the change of these patterns as it moves its head, the bird learns about the direction of Earth's magnetic field.
A report of the research is published in Biophysical Journal.
An important consequence of the new research is that this process ‘piggybacks’ on normal vision and so could evolve quite easily - it does not require the evolution of a whole new sensory organ.
‘We can imagine that in an ancestral bird’s eye this disturbance to vision, oriented to the Earth’s magnetic field, gave some individuals an advantage when it came to navigating vast distances,’ Simon Benjamin of Oxford University’s Department of Materials and National University of Singapore, an author of the report, told me.
‘Natural selection would then favour those individuals so that the effect became stronger and stronger over many generations resulting in the powerful magnetic sense birds have today.’
The research shows that, in an ancestral bird’s eye, just a few molecules could have absorbed photons, creating electric dipoles that made the very weak magnetic field of the Earth faintly visible.
If this effect gave individuals an evolutionary advantage, the number, ordering, and characteristics of those special molecules is likely to have increased over millions of years, creating the compass used by modern birds.
Erik Gauger, of Oxford University’s Department of Materials and National University of Singapore, adds: ‘Further experiments will verify whether the mechanism we have proposed correctly describes the bird's compass.
'However, even if it doesn't, our idea could be a powerful blueprint for engineered magnetometers; for instance a compass that is integrated into a contact lens.’
(Full story)
About this blog
Gives you the inside track on science at Oxford University: the projects, the people and what's happening behind the scenes. Curated by Pete Wilton, science writer and OU Press Officer.
Contact: Pete Wilton
01865 283877
Follow Pete on Twitter: http://twitter.com/petewilton
