x-change yearbookBritish Science Festival 2010

BIRMINGHAM14-19 SEPT 2010

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TO DO LIST:

1. Find speakers!

2. Lab coats...

3. Blue paint?!

welcome to the x-change yearbook 2010!

This year’s x-change saw more interesting, controversial and hilarious speakers than ever before. Our tireless team of x-changevolunteers searched high and low to find the best speakers andround them up each night in the Blue Room of Aston University’sStudent Guild.

Unwinding over a drink, festival-goers got their teeth into some ofthe hottest science of the day, heard from inspirational speakersand award lecturers and uncovered some of Aston’s hidden science talent.

Humour was also in abundance with juggling, hypnosis, stand-upmaths, a riveting talk from the Pope’s Astronomer and who couldforget Dr Ken and his plunger..

Join us for a behind the scenes tour of this best of the Fest, if youcouldn’t make it see what you missed out on, and if you werethere, re-live it!

None of it could have happened without our fantastic five so amassive thank you to Alice, Anna, Claudia, Sian and Tulpesh along

with talented tweeter, Toby, and of course our very own Gossip Girl,

host, Sue Nelson.

Amy x

Anna PermanHi All! My name is Anna Perman. I'm a Birminghamlocal but left in 2006 to study Biology at Bristol University and this September I started a masters in Science Communication at Imperial college London.

I applied to the x-change basically because I'm amassive geek. I love science. I love talking about science. I love hearing about science. The x-changeis a brilliant way to do this away from the classroom orthe lecture theatre.

My favourite part of the festival was getting thechance to talk to top scientists about areas I have studied, and to findout from them about subjects I know nothing about. Seeing Jim Al-Khaliliand Brother Guy Consolmagno (The Pope's astronomer) was great forthe celeb factor, but finding out about the effects of hypnosis from Peter

Naish was fascinating - as was seeing it in practice!

An unusual fact about me is that I know every word to Ant and Dec's single 'Let's get Ready to Rumble'. For your sake though, don't ask me fora demonstration.

Alice Thorpe

I’m Alice! I have a BSc in Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Bath and an MSc in Science,Media and Communication at Cardiff University. I’m

currently working as a production assistant at a TV/film

production company.

I really enjoyed the festival in 2007 (when I recieved abursary to go) so really wanted to go again and I

thought it would be a great oportunity to meet and network with scien-tists and science communicators and also be really good for myCV....Plus I love organising stuff :-)

My favourite x-change moment was jumping off the steps outside theguild in order to get that perfect picture - my legs still hurt!My favourite speaker has to be comedy mathematician (slash maths comedian)Matt Parker - hilarious!

Oh, and I once climbed a 14,980 ft mountain...never again!

Cláudia VelhasMy background is in Zoology. I recently finished myMSc in science communication and work for the Science Museum in London as an Explainer.

I applied because I hadn't been to the festival beforeand wanted to extend my experience in running science communication events for adults. What particularly interested me as well was meeting other

science comunicators and to network too. It was great

to do something different this time.

My favourite bit of the Festival was definitely thex-change! It really was "the best of the fest"! My favourite speaker woulddefinitely have to be Brother Guy Consulmagno! He was a brilliant guest,with an excellent sense of humour.

A few years ago I was in Tobago on a coral reef research project. I wasgetting ready for a dive early in the morning when I spotted one, thentwo, then lots more baby leatherback turtles hatching from a hole in thesand. They were all over the place and so confused. So I helped directthem towards the sea. I can say I assisted the birth of baby turtles... It was emotional!

Sian Henderson Hi, I’m Sian! I have a BSc in Environmental Sciencefrom Sussex and like Anna, I’ve just started by MSc inScience Communication at Imperial.

Like the others, I applied to be on the x-change teambecause I’m a science geek and I wanted a free passto the Festival!

I’d say my favourite part of the Festival was getting totry stuff like the mobile phone demo - a really confusing test of your concentration whilst attemptingto text!It’s a popular choice for favourite speaker:Brother Guy.

Outside of the x-change, I’m also a qualified Athletics Official whichmeans I can decide if someone has failed an event and I’m also allowed

to stand in the path of incoming javelins and hammers!

Tulpesh PatelI’m Tulpesh and I’m in the last few months of my PhDin Cognitive Neurosciences at Aston in collaborationwith the Birmingham Children's Hospital.

I applied to join the x-change team because I am anuber-geek and science communicating hobbyist,who was giddy with excitement that the festival wascoming to Aston and was keen to be directly involvedwith the festival with a program that sounded fun andengaging. I also saw it as a good chance to promotethe excellent science that Aston is involved in.

My favourite part? Saying 'all of it' would be cheating. Two highlightsbookended the festival. The first was the fantastic flash dance, which wasso much fun and the second would be being name-checked in afreestyle rap by Baba Brinkman during his performance at the ElectricCinema. And as for favourite speaker, it's not a cop-out, but there wereseriously too many to choose!

At one point I had 8 piercings and as many tattoos (the tattoos I still haveof course, but all the metal had to go once I started working with MRI).

Sue NelsonBroadcaster and journalist, Sue Nelson (she’s the onethat doesn’t wear a bright pink t-shirt!), is our multitalented x-change presenter. Along with theteam, she sniffs out the best speakers and the funniest, weirdest and most fascinating stories to tell.

The evening kicked off with Elizabeth Moores and Emma Birkett fromAston University. They showed how timing is important in our lives, likemaking sense of sounds. Four volunteers stepped up to represent thekey processes in copying a rhythm and tapped a rhythm they hadreceived from the person behind them to the next person. Conclu-sion? Even something as simple as this involves so many processesthat it is tricky to pinpoint what goes wrong and when.

Next up were Mike Hulmeand Nick Blowfield to per-form a duet on currentclimate science issues.Mike Hulme mentioned itis good for scientists in thisfield to be challenged.Nick Blowfield referred tothe challenges to busi-nesses and corporate re-sponsibility.

Kate Bellingham gave an insight into her career path. As a radio en-gineer at the BBC, Kate was spotted for her great communicationskills and she continued her engineering training but “got suckedinto the glamorous TV life”! Kate is interested in looking at youngpeople’s decision making, their perceptions of engineering and theirperceptions of themselves.

Next up was Giovanna Tinetti, whose research is all about planetsoutside the solar system. Currently around 500 exoplanets areknown! Water, methane and carbon dioxide have already beendetected in the atmospheres of these planets. The ultimate aim?Searching for life and learning more about what lies beyond ourplanet.

Nick Lee gave us an insight on neuromarketing. He assured us it isnot a mind controlling or magic power that companies have overus. According to Nick, neuromarketing is another marketing tech-nique: decisions are not just reactions to stimuli, they are a collectionof complex social aspects.

Craig McAllister left the audience in awe as he brought out the tran-scranial magnetic stimulation device! A machine that uses electricalcurrent to stimulate the brain and activate muscles. Craig demon-strated this using an x-change volunteer as a guinea pig. The audi-ence gasped as his arms moved involuntarily! This research can beused to investigate tasks such as languageand it also has potentialapplications in victims of neurological diseases and strokes.

the x-change blog - day 1

Festival favourite Lorelly Wilson’s fabulous demonstrations of sciencewith everyday objects started Wednesday’s x-change. After simulat-ing a stomach in a bag, she dissolved a huge polystyrene tube innail varnish in a matter of seconds, and finally with only a ping-pongball and a milk bottle explained how the pressure forces keeping theball stuck to the bottle was greater than the force of gravity keepingour feet, and in fact everything, firmly on the ground.

That segued nicely into Dr Tara Shears from the University of Liverpooland particle physicist at the Large Hadron Collider, who explainedhow the LHC allows us to understand the universe ‘inside out’ – fromquarks and guons to the real world that is so familiar to us.

Dr Jessica Grahn from the University of Cambridge, speculated thatsynchronised movements helped our ancestors with social bonding,and I must admit I did feel a little closer to everyone in the audienceas we all clapped along enthusiastically to a staccato Balkanrhythm. Can you teach clapping to people who appear to have nonatural rhythm? You most certainly can, you just have to tap into therhythms and sounds that they’re exposed to as babies in the womb.

Next there were three speakers from Aston University. First up was DrAnthony Hilton of Grime Scene Investigation fame, who was intro-duced by Sue Nelson as an ‘ambassador for microbes’. Asked by amember of the audience about the strength of the hygiene hypoth-esis, Dr Hilton explained that there is no evidence that repeated ex-posure to dirt increases resistance to disease – if you’re sufficientlyinfected with a pathogenic bacterium or virus, you will get ill. Next,Dr Caroline Witton from the Aston Neurosciences research teamtalked about the importance and uses of the exciting new paedi-atric MEG scanner that is being built especially for the Aston BrainCentre.

Last up for the day, stem cell scientist Dr Robin Lovell Badge dis-cussed the Ipsos MORI report on animals containing human materi-als, which had beenreleased that day. Publicdialogue seems to con-tradict the common con-ception portrayed in themedia that genetic engi-neering is a bad thing;most people are prag-matic when it comes tothe medical benefits ofthis kind of work.

the x-change blog - day 2

The evening kicked off with Elizabeth Moores and Emma Birkett fromAston University. They showed how timing is important in our lives, likemaking sense of sounds. Four volunteers stepped up to represent thekey processes in copying a rhythm and tapped a rhythm they hadreceived from the person behind them to the next person. Conclu-sion? Even something as simple as this involves so many processesthat it is tricky to pinpoint what goes wrong and when.

Next up were Mike Hulmeand Nick Blowfield to per-form a duet on currentclimate science issues.Mike Hulme mentioned itis good for scientists in thisfield to be challenged.Nick Blowfield referred tothe challenges to busi-nesses and corporate re-sponsibility.

Kate Bellingham gave an insight into her career path. As a radio en-gineer at the BBC, Kate was spotted for her great communicationskills and she continued her engineering training but “got suckedinto the glamorous TV life”! Kate is interested in looking at youngpeople’s decision making, their perceptions of engineering and theirperceptions of themselves.

Next up was Giovanna Tinetti, whose research is all about planetsoutside the solar system. Currently around 500 exoplanets areknown! Water, methane and carbon dioxide have already beendetected in the atmospheres of these planets. The ultimate aim?Searching for life and learning more about what lies beyond ourplanet.

Nick Lee gave us an insight on neuromarketing. He assured us it isnot a mind controlling or magic power that companies have overus. According to Nick, neuromarketing is another marketing tech-nique: decisions are not just reactions to stimuli, they are a collectionof complex social aspects.

Craig McAllister left the audience in awe as he brought out the tran-scranial magnetic stimulation device! A machine that uses electricalcurrent to stimulate the brain and activate muscles. Craig demon-strated this using an x-change volunteer as a guinea pig. The audi-ence gasped as his arms moved involuntarily! This research can beused to investigate tasks such as languageand it also has potentialapplications in victims of neurological diseases and strokes.

the x-change blog - day 3

The Evening began with an announcement from Sue Nelson that thiswould be her last x-change, but that she was determined to ‘go outwith a big bang!’

To start the evening Sue invited Colin Wright to the stage to discusshow in the 1980s he was developing a type of juggling notation andhe noticed that there were mathematical patterns in juggling. Theythen were able to develop new tricks through the patterns of numbers,and therefore juggling is really only a maths puzzle!

Next up was Jonathon Silvertown who joined us to discuss how 2010came to be the international year of Biodiversity. He explained that theConvention on Biodiversity aimed for many of the issues facing wildlifeto be sorted by 2010. He went on to debate the importance of biodi-versity with the audience.

Mike Coleman was up next to talk to us about the growing of humanbrain cells in labs for use in medical research. He told us that researchin this area could lead to medications being developed for conditionssuch as Alzheimer’s disease. He was careful to stress that only braincells are formed, not an actual brain; what they areresearching is the brain’s equivalent of an MP3 player’s chip.

Fourth on the bill was Brother Guy Consolmagno, one of The Pope’s As-tronomers, originally from Detroit; but who now spends his time re-searching meteorites in The Vatican. His job is to study the chemicaland physical properties of meteorites and work out how they arepacked together. His research shows that many are similar in composi-tion which surprises him as there are thousands ‘out there’. Why doesthe Vatican have an observatory? He replied that we need to knowwhy the universe is there and how it works.

With a tough act to follow, John Gibbons was the next guest whocame to the x-change to discuss his research on heart attacks. Sueasked how Marathon runners can suffer from them as they are oftenlinked to unhealthy life styles. John told us that it can be genetic and

linked to your metabolism as this affectshow you absorb and process cholesterol.

The last guest of the x-change was MattParker who entertained us by proving thatArnica is one of the most expensive sub-stances on Earth. Using the quantities of itin homeopathic pills and their cost at 6.1pper pill he has calculated that 1 moleculecosts more that the Gross Domestic Product of the UK!

the x-change blog - day 4

Feeling inspired...?

Do you want to be part of the team thatmakes the x-change the hottest event atthe British Science Festival?

The highlight of the science year is comingto Bradford in September 2011 and youcould be a part of it!

If you’re energetic, enthusiastic, creativeand passionate about science communication, we want you for the team!Applications open in July 2011 so keep aneye on:

www.britishscienceassociation.org/x-changewww.twitter.com/thexchangeteam

BRADFORD10-15 SEPT 11