Cast your mind back to your primary school days and you will probably remember learning about Ireland’s wildlife. You might even remember the term ‘Iora rua’, or ‘red squirrel’. This shy tree-dwelling mammal can still be found in forests across the country, but this may not be the situation for much longer.

Since the introduction of the grey squirrel to Longford in 1911, red squirrels have grown scarcer and their distribution has shrunk dramatically; so much so that the National Parks and Wildlife Service has had to take measures to protect it. Ireland isn’t the only country where this animal is in danger; the red squirrel has become extinct in England and Wales due to the introduction of the grey squirrel in 1876. However, another factor helped along the disappearance of red squirrels in the UK: the lethal squirrel pox virus (SQPV). It was long believed that Ireland was free of this disease – that is, until now.

This January, the first Irish case of SQPV was confirmed by Prof. Sean Callanan of the UCD Veterinary Pathology Department. The squirrel was found by local resident Kevin Phelan while walking in woods in Hollywood, County Wicklow and since then two more cases of the disease have been confirmed. This development could spell doom for our native squirrels.

It is widely believed that grey squirrels fight with and kill their red counterparts, but this is not the case. They are simply bigger, breed faster, have more young per litter, and can exist at higher population densities – therefore they have displaced the red squirrel population by competition. Reds are now mostly found in inhospitable pine forests where food is too scarce for greys to thrive.

Grey squirrels are simply more adaptive – they are happy to live near humans and although they’re cute and playful, they can be extremely destructive to homes and gardens. This has resulted in them being classed as a household pest alongside rats, wasps etc. They also strip bark off trees and significantly impact upon commercial broadleaf timber production.

Grey squirrels have another means of thinning out the red squirrel population; it is believed they are carriers of the squirrel pox virus, but have evolved an immunity and thus are resistant to its potentially deadly effects. It is yet unknown how they transmit the disease to red squirrels, but scientists believe it may be passed on via secretions from scent glands that they use to mark their territories. Its effects on non-immune squirrel species are devastating.

The virus causes lesions similar to those seen in rabbits with myxomatosis – swellings, ulcers and scabs develop around the animals’ eyes, mouth, nose and paws and it is believed the squirrels simply die of dehydration, respiratory problems and starvation as they cannot forage for food or eat. The virus does not seem to affect their internal organs.

Yet there may still be hope for the red squirrel – in 2008, a UK scientist discovered a handful of animals that had developed antibodies to the disease, thus indicating that some red squirrels have the potential to become immune. When myxomatosis was introduced to the UK in the 1950s, the death rate amongst rabbits was almost one hundred per cent, but those with a natural immunity survived, bred and now the death rate has decreased to thirty-five per cent. A similar situation may occur if enough red squirrels develop an immunity to the disease and live long enough to produce immune young. The development of an SQPV vaccine could also theoretically save the red squirrel. In fact, a Scotland-based charity called Wildlife Ark Trust are currently trying to do just that, but it will take at least another year to develop an effective vaccine, and subsequently three years of trials will be required before it can be used in the wild.

So what lies ahead for our red squirrels? If the virus spreads throughout the country it is likely that they will go the same way as their counterparts in England and Wales. Although the loss of a native species would indeed be tragic, Darwin’s principle of “survival of the fittest” doesn’t take pity or make exceptions for any animals, no matter how cute or charismatic they may be.

Since humans set this tragedy in motion by introducing grey squirrels to Ireland, it is only right that we at least make an attempt to preserve one of the few Irish mammals that still survive in the wild. This will require measures such as supplementary feeding, monitoring and recording squirrel numbers, careful forest management and the humane culling of grey squirrels. Yet these measures require money and resources that Ireland is currently lacking. Therefore the future may be bleak for Iora Rua – only time will tell.

All too often, popular culture takes undue liberties with matters of the mind – but how skewed is our idea of how the brain works? Do fact and fiction always sing from the same hymn sheet?

We should start with the basics – what are brainwaves? Your brain is essentially a great mass of wires and circuits. When you think, current flows through these ‘wires’ (cells known as neurones) from one part of the brain to another. When current flows in this way, electrical signals resulting from these processes can be detected on the surface of the brain, through the skull, using electrodes. This results in a picture (or ‘waveform’) on a monitor called an electroencephalogram (EEG), which is similar to an ECG.

Obviously, the brain is doing multiple things at any given time, and so the resulting information is a bit jumbled. Once this jumbled signal is sorted out, the result is a short and fast waveform, called a beta wave. When we go to sleep, this picture changes entirely. Instead of a busy metropolis, the brain becomes a tranquil sea – devoid of the activity that characterises the waking state. The brain shuts down and becomes desensitised to all but the most intense external stimuli. Accompanying this is a decrease in the amount of detectible electrical activity. As you fall asleep, your brain descends through a continuum of brain waves which are much longer and slower than beta waves, ranging from alpha waves (most active) through to theta and then delta waves (least active).

In practice, a person’s state of alertness is usually measured simply by their ability to respond to pain and touch. However, the presence and type of brain waves detected by an EEG can be used by medics to determine the consciousness of a patient, and to investigate brain activity where the underlying neurological problem may not be so apparent. The relevant terminology can be employed with wild abandon in certain narratives, but may also be used quite accurately in some television programmes, such as House and ER.

EEGs are also exploited in science fiction exploring the stranger side of neuroscience such as telepathy and mind control (Star Trek’s Vulcans and X-Men’s Jean Grey being prime examples) – where a subject may be (arbitrarily) said to be exhibiting “strange brain waves.” In reality, the brain simply lacks a natural means to directly send electrical signals to, and interact with, another individual. However, the ability to communicate with others and with machines by thought alone might not be as fantastical as we may think. Many futurists believe technology holds the key to unlocking such potential, and researchers in Switzerland have already developed a prototype wheelchair capable of being controlled entirely by the mind for patients suffering from total body paralysis.

Returning to sleep; every few hours during the night, your brain will go into an extremely deep sleep, called R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) sleep. This lasts about forty-five minutes, and is when you dream. At this point, your brain ramps back up to highly active beta-like waves. This is because a dream is quite like being awake, except you are experiencing an alternate dream-reality based on memories and past experiences.

However, everything seems real at the time, and you’re processing a vast amount of simulated sensory information just as though you were awake. You are even electing to make movements based on these stimuli – the only thing stopping you acting out these movements is an automatic, body-wide paralysis during the dream.

When this safety mechanism fails, a person will talk in their sleep or even sleep walk. This is exploited in narratives where people may reveal their darkest secrets in the middle of the night – an idea that is not unrealistic, as it is quite possible for people to coherently form words or even complete sentences while dreaming.

The concept of dreaming is the also the crux of narratives which explore ideas of virtual reality such as The Matrix and Inception, which exploit the ability of the brain to process sensory information, despite it not actually existing. Furthermore, the brain’s powerful capacity to imagine and interact with artificial worlds depicted in video games might be seen as an extension of the ability to dream.

Finally, a narrative gambit so overused that it has become inextricably associated with television and film: the soap opera coma. A comatose state is actually defined as a period consisting for more than six hours in which a person cannot be awakened, even by strong stimuli such as pain. This is, in essence, abnormally deep sleep and is the body’s response to some form of extensive damage – the idea being to restrict all non-essential bodily activities to allow resources to be used only to heal the individual and prevent further damage.

A study was carried out and published in 2006 to determine how accurately comas are depicted on the silver screen. It found that characters often recover instantly, with full consciousness. This is far from the reality, where patients can go through days or weeks of incomplete and transient consciousness. Perhaps a more obvious error is that characters often awaken with tanned skin or even fully toned muscles, which is unlikely due to the decay muscles undergo during extended periods of disuse. Evidently, work remains to be done where science meets fiction.

While many psychedelic drugs have earned a bad reputation in the public eye, there has been a resurgence of their use in alternative therapies in the last decade. The infamous hallucinogenic fungi Psilocybe, commonly known as ‘magic mushrooms’, has been the focus of two studies published in the past month that analysed brain activity in users of the drug, as well as its potential for therapeutic application.

A research team in Imperial College London investigated the brain’s response to the drug from both neurological and psychological perspectives. By mapping brain activity in a group of healthy volunteers with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they were experiencing the psychedelic state brought on by ingesting magic mushrooms, they illustrated the correlation between changes in consciousness and decreased activity in central hub regions of the brain.

The active compound psilocybin, which is present in these mushrooms, is responsible for its hallucinogenic effects, such as flashbacks and vivid relivings of past experiences. It is not entirely understood how psilocybin causes such a reaction in users, even though it has been shown to activate receptors of serotonin (a neurotransmitter that is associated with happiness) in the brain. It is this reaction that interests researchers in psychoanalytical therapies.

By demonstrating how a ‘power-down’ of central hub activity in the brain was a confirmed response of the nervous system to psilocybin, the research team disproved the common misconception that taking magic mushrooms ‘expands the mind’ or increases brain connectivity. Areas that would usually have important synchronous activity showed a large decline in interactivity, which contradicts many drug-user’s philosophy that magic mushrooms will free the mind and activate heightened brain consciousness. The opposite, in fact, is true.

It is now proposed that the dream-like state of recollection induced by magic mushrooms is owed to this reduction in brain activity and connectivity. The intensity of the drug’s effects in patients corresponded to a large decrease in functional connectivity between the main areas of the brain. The largest areas of decreased activity were the prefrontal cortex and the anterior and posterior cingulate cortices. It is thought that by reducing synchronisation between these connector hubs, psilocybin impedes the flow of information through the brain, and this accounts for the hallucinations and the state of ‘unconstrained cognition’ experienced by users of magic mushrooms.

The second paper published by the research team analysed the implications of reduced brain activity for psychedelic drug-assisted therapies. Evidence that psilocybin enhances autobiographical recollection attests to its potential use in psychotherapy as a tool to reverse negative cognitive behaviour.

Positive memory cues were used to cause visual recollections in volunteers, who had been asked prior to the study to compile a collection of personal memories of specific life events, (such as standing at the alter on their wedding day). Whilst being monitored by fMRI scanning, the memory cues were shown to volunteers who had taken psilocybin, and they subsequently prompted the activation of sensory and visual regions of the brain, which remained inactive in volunteers on the placebo dose.

This switch in sensory function from a pattern of deactivation under placebo to activation under psilocybin is crucial, and may explain why memories can be felt as especially vivid or ‘real’ when under the influence of psychedelics.

The patient feedback from the study corresponded to the technical results from the fMRI scans. Memories were rated as more “vivid, visual, emotional and positive” under psilocybin than placebo. Patients on psilocybin reported that they felt like they were more attached to the images they saw than they otherwise would be, referring to heightened emotional engagement.

Although the patient report is a subjective measure of the body’s response to the drug, it correlates strongly to the evidence obtained from the fMRI scanning, and it gives scientists and medical professionals a greater understanding of how the sensory regions of the brain affect our cognition and perception.

Essentially, the practical implications of this study show the potential that psilocybin has to reverse negative thought patterns in patients suffering from depression or anxiety. Depression involves hyperactivity in the prefrontal cortex, leading to the pessimistic outlook characteristic of the condition, so deactivation of the prefrontal cortex region could alleviate those symptoms. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in America openly supports the use of psilocybin to treat anxiety in patients of life-threatening illnesses, in addition to applied therapeutic uses of cannabis, LSD and MDMA. Some past studies support this use of psilocybin, reporting mood improvements in cancer patients who suffer from anxiety.

However, not all studies in the area have produced the same successful set of results, so there remains a strong element of doubt in the minds of many psychotherapists over the possibility of such alternative treatments. One of the main limitations of this treatment lies in trying to ensure that any hallucinogenic experiences caused are positive ones; most ‘bad trips’ reported on magic mushrooms are often linked to painful or conflict-laden memories being re-experienced. For the drug to work in relieving anxiety and depression effectively, the entire hallucination experience must be positive.

On 2 February, the Human Body Experience will make its world debut in the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin.  Those attending will, as event co-ordinator Noel McHale explains, be offered the unusual opportunity to view the body systems of numerous real human specimens. “There are different galleries, there’s a skeletal and muscular one, respiratory ones, digestive and nervous system, and the circulatory system.” There is also an optional gallery, which shows the full chronological development of a baby (these specimens were acquired from women who had miscarriages).

A German anatomist, Gunther von Hagens, pioneered the preservation technique used on the specimens. In 1977 he invented a technique called ‘plastination’. The bodies are processed in the Dailin Hoffen Biotechnique laboratory in China, which is also where they are also sourced. The process can be incredibly time consuming, with some larger specimens taking up to a year to be preserved. The first step is the dissection of the body or body parts, where the anatomical features that are to be accented are focused upon. The body is then preserved using formaldehyde (a simple organic chemical often used in embalming), making the specimen partly rigid, which is useful when the team is trying to put the body into a particular pose. The specimen is then dehydrated by immersing it in acetone (a highly volatile solvent, sometimes used as nail polish remover) at a very low temperature. Finally, the body is placed in a bath of liquid polymer and a vacuum is created, which allows the acetone to boil off and be replaced by the polymer. Once the specimen is cured and dried, the preservation process is finished. Exhibits that show only certain body systems are prepared in a similar way. The exhibit ‘Red Man’ is a specimen with every blood vessel exposed. McHale explained how this was prepared, “You dissect out all the blood vessels, and inject them with polymer, and then you rebuild the body.”

The last time such an exhibition came to Ireland, it was embroiled in controversy because the company running it was unable to account for the exact origin of each of the bodies on display. It was alleged that the bodies on display were either Chinese political prisoners or unclaimed bodies of those killed after a natural disaster. A different company is running this exhibition, and when asked about the origin of the bodies, McHale assured the University Observer that all of the bodies were obtained ethically. “The bodies are Chinese because that’s where the university is, if it was in Kerry, it’d be all Kerry people … Every body that we have has been legally donated and can be traced back, there is a certificate with them.” When the exhibition is over, all the bodies are returned to China, where they are respectfully disposed of. “They are returned to the university where there’s a ceremony and they’re cremated.”

Another controversy that was generated when similar exhibitions were run previously was that it was deemed unethical by some to exhibit human bodies, while others maintained that the bodies on show were not treated with sufficient respect. Again, McHale assured us that the bodies are treated with the utmost professionalism. “At all times, any dealings we have with them, there is total and profound respect for the bodies, because they were living breathing human beings at one stage.”

The exhibition will run until the end of April in The Ambassador Theatre. Student tickets are priced at €16

Depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, and the most commonly diagnosed mood disorder. Mood, as a clinical term, denotes a sustained emotional state lasting for several weeks or longer. Mood disorders are disorders in which the underlying features (symptoms) seem to be the result of disturbances in a person’s mood. They are usually divided into two groups, based on whether or not the individual in question has experienced a manic episode. Bipolar disorder is one in which episodes of mania and depression are experienced, whereas depressive disorders (such as major depression/unipolar depression) are those in which mania is not experienced. Major depression, or rather its underlying biochemical mechanisms, is our subject of interest.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR), published by the American Psychiatric Association, standardises the classification of mental disorders, with its criteria for diagnosing depression being widely used. According to the current DSM, five or more symptoms from a set list – depressed mood for most of almost every day, loss of interest in everyday activities, insomnia/hypersomnia, fatigue/loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness/inappropriate guilt, diminished concentration, recurrent thoughts of death, etc – must be present during the same two week period and represent a change from previous functions in order to diagnose major depression. There are also exclusion factors, such as the presence of other mood/mental disorder, recent trauma/loss or mourning, to take into account. Following from this, it would seem that clinically diagnosed depression ultimately results from some internal, physiological problem.

In the fifth century BC, Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician and father of western medicine, described unipolar depression. He believed that mood resulted from the balance between four humours; blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, with an excess of black bile being the cause of depression. The ancient Greek word for depression is the same as it is for black bile, melancholia. While Hippocrates may not have been entirely on the mark, he was moving in the right direction. He realised that depression might have an internal, chemical cause.

Modern science’s understanding of depression is an example of therapeutic empiricism, with the observation of effect coming before a mechanistic understanding. The Monoamine Theory of Depression, proposed by Joseph J. Schildkraut in 1965, posited the idea that depression is the result of a functional deficit of monoamine neurotransmitters in certain brain regions, and that mania is the result of functional excess. The theory arose out of an association between the clinical effects of drugs that cause or alleviate the symptoms of depression and their known effects on neurotransmitters in the brain. Drugs that increased the level of monoamine neurotransmitters alleviated depression, while drugs that lowered neurotransmitter levels were seen to induce or increase depression. Monoamine neurotransmitters include serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine. Initially, the thinking was that noradrenaline was the key mediator, but further studies revealed that serotonin played a more significant role in mood modulation. Some schools of thought have even attributed particular symptoms to deficits in specific monoamines – decreased serotonin and increased anxiety, decreased noradrenaline and apathy, decreased dopamine and lack of motivation – and recommended specific drug treatments based on the most strongly presenting symptoms.

A lot of research has been carried out to test the monoamine theory of depression, such as testing neurotransmitter metabolite concentrations and the concentrations of hormones released by neurotransmitter-mediated processes. While the results generally support the theory, there are still some anomalies. Inconsistencies can, to a certain extent, result from problems in testing methods, though some are less easily explained. Metabolism varies significantly between individuals; many receive drug treatment for other conditions (further increasing metabolic variation), drugs such as amphetamines and cocaine enhance monoamine activity but have no antidepressant action, and some effective antidepressants have no monoamine activity.

Another problem, somewhat unique to psychopharmacology, is the lack of good, comparable animal models. There is no known condition occurring in animals that corresponds to human depression. Procedures that produce symptoms similar to those of depression – social withdrawal, loss of appetite, etc – have been developed. These procedures include the delivery of repeated inescapable painful stimuli that results in a state of “learned helplessness” and apathy, the separation of mother and infant, and the use of monoamine-depleting drugs (such as reserpine). Apart from being inherently abhorrent, these procedures are often expensive and the similarities between the behavioural states they induce and depression are equivocal. However, like depression, these states can be altered by drugs with monoamine activity. The effects of learned helplessness and mother-infant separation can be reversed by antidepressants, or further exacerbated by drugs that prevent monoamine production, indicating a more than superficial similarity.

One extremely important fact that must be accounted for by any theory of depression is the temporal disparity between an antidepressant’s direct biochemical effect and its antidepressant effect. The former occurs within a matter of hours, while the latter takes weeks. This, coupled with the anomalies unexplained by the monoamine theory of depression, suggests that secondary, adaptive changes in the brain are responsible for improvement rather then the direct drug effects.

Since 2004, a new theory coming out of research into the role of monoamines in depression has gained notice. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that an association between neurodegeneration and reduced neurogenesis (the naturally occurring formation of new neurons from stem cells) and depression. Imaging and post-mortem studies in humans have shown shrinkage of the hippocampus, an area that experiences significant neurogenesis, and prefrontal cortex, an area associated with complex cognitive behaviours and personality expression. Functional imaging, which gives real-time images of the brain, shows a decrease in activity in these areas. Inversely, an increase in activity is observed during the manic phase, in individuals suffering from bipolar disorder. Shrinkage and decreased function in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex also occur in animals subjected to chronic stress of various kinds. In these animals, antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy have both been shown to promote neurogenesis and restore normal non-depressed function. The relation between this theory and the monoamine theory comes from the known neurogenic properties of serotonin. Serotonin, in a process mediated by a chemical called brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), is important in neuron development in embryos. Perhaps this effect actually continues throughout life. Interestingly, BDNF production is reduced by prolonged stress. It is now being posited that serotonin plays a vital role in preventing neurodegeneration in the prefrontal cortex, and protects neurogenesis in the hippocampus. The mechanisms of these processes are currently not well understood.

A logical fallacy and leap in reasoning in the 1930s; the idea that epilepsy and schizophrenia were mutually exclusive and as such that inducing convulsions would treat schizophrenia, led to the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). While useless in treating schizophrenia, it was shown to be quite effective in treating severe depression. Current ECT involves the patient being lightly anaesthetized and artificially ventilated, and given short-acting neuromuscular blockers (drugs that paralyse so as to avoid physical injury). The most recent transcranial magnetic stimulation has been used, a technique in which changing electromagnetic fields induce a weak electric current in the brain avoids the need for anaesthetic drugs. The success rate is at least as good as tricyclic antidepressants, at between sixty and eighty per cent. However, with confusion and memory loss lasting from days to weeks, it is not without its disadvantages. It was thought that studies using ECT would clarify our biochemical understanding of depression, but with no change to serotonin levels and only a slight increase in noradrenaline activity, confusion still remained. Further research may eventually prove the links between neurogenesis, ECT and depression.

While our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of depression has greatly improved since the sixties, the drugs currently used are not so far advanced. Drugs affecting monoamine-mediated neurotransmission still remain the most effective way of treating depression, with improvement reported in sixty to seventy per cent of cases. These drugs fall into three major classes; Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), tricyclic antidepressants and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

MAOIs were the first drugs used clinically as antidepressants. They inhibit monoamine degradation, but are now used infrequently. Tricyclic antidepressants, so named for their chemical structure, prevent the re-uptake of monoamines. SSRIs are the most commonly used antidepressants (prozac belongs to this group) and work by selectively inhibiting the uptake of serotonin. MAOIs were superceded by tricyclic antidepressants and SSRIs, which were more effective with fewer side-effects. Tricyclic antidepressants are currently reserved for severe depression and SSRIs, the most recently developed class, are used to treat mild to moderate depression. While the success rate is undeniable, the use of therapies based on somewhat uncertain science seems frightening. This fear is further compounded by the fact that it is our mental faculties on the line. However, considering that major depression affects eight to twelve per cent of the population globally, it is something we will have to live with for now.

Human space exploration has been an iconic feature in the history of the last few decades. Recently, massive progress has been made towards what is recognised to be one of the main targets in space exploration: Mars. However, it is unlikely that anyone will set foot on Mars for, at the very least, a decade and a half.

Earlier this month, after just over five hundred days, six men emerged from a locked windowless shed in a Russian research facility. They were involved in an experiment as part of research regarding the feasibility of a manned mission to Mars. Their only contact with the outside world was a phone and Internet connection with a twenty-minute delay.

The men were continuously monitored for psychological stress and fatigue. It was only really after the halfway point of the mission that any vaguely serious problems arose. After they had spent three days performing geological research on a simulated version of the surface of “Mars” (i.e. a warehouse with red sand in it), serious boredom began to set in. Their goal had been completed but they still had nearly another two hundred and fifty days to go.

It is clear from this experiment that one of the most serious problems for astronauts going any further than the moon is passing the time. The astronauts involved spent at least an hour a day exercising, which in space is very important because low gravity environments can cause muscle degradation. The crew also had a Wii fit board and Guitar Hero with them to help get through the days. Every so often a simulated emergency would happen, such as a fire on their ‘ship’, which forced the crew to work together. Overall, they made it through the entire mission without any major upset, clearly demonstrating that given the right group of people, tasks involving sending people on extremely long journeys in very close quarters can be achieved quite successfully.

China has been making progress in building its own space station after being repeatedly turned away from their attempts to join the other sixteen nations involved in the International Space Station (ISS). Their most recent success was getting two sections of unmanned spacecraft to dock together. Although their program is significantly behind any other nation’s space program, it marks significant progress in China’s aim to have a functioning space lab by 2016.

While NASA retired their iconic shuttle program this summer, they still have numerous missions planned. Last year NASA’s funding was approved up until 2013; plans have been made for the development of exploration technology for human spacecraft, as well as the development of the American lab on the ISS and the continuation of its use until 2020. Plans for a permanent base on the moon were recently abandoned after budget cuts caused by the global recession. President Barack Obama gave a directive to NASA which laid out plans to land on an asteroid by 2025. Landing on an asteroid would help lay all the foundations for a mission to land on Mars. MIT professor in aeronautics Ed Crawley stated that “if humans can’t make it to near-Earth objects, they can’t make it to Mars”. Missions to Mars have been plagued with misfortune, even earlier this month a Russian probe due to collect soil samples from one of Mar’s moons ‘Phobos’ got stuck in the Earth’s orbit when some of its engines failed to fire.

Despite the interest in space science that manned-voyages generate, and the colossal technical feat in actually launching a spacecraft, it is often asked whether there is any actual value in sending people into space. The late Nobel prizewinner Richard Feynmann was of the opinion that man’s journeys to space had never really contributed to any major scientific discovery. Ultimately, he is right; we have learnt incredible things from projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope, but what we’ve learned from people being in space is, beyond how they behave or react in completely different environments, fairly minimal. The work that is being done now may as well be thought of as an investment for future generations, who will hopefully have the resources for much grander missions and goals. It is unlikely that any of us will ever be affected by any research that is being carried out, but we can always dream.

What is the official title of your PhD?

Community Based Delay Tolerant Networking in Human Interaction Networks

Explain the official title in English please

Given a network of human interactions, I am trying to find a way to efficiently route information about that network, without the need for infrastructure, based on the idea that humans form communities. For example, as people go about their daily routines, they come into contact with, or in the vicinity of, many other people; friends, family, strangers, familiar strangers (e.g. the people you see every day at the bus stop) etc. If I wanted to get a message to my friend in Australia, without sending it using a postal/sms/email network, I might want to do it via this series of interactions between people, a bit like an automated postal system, where the person’s mobile phone carries the message. Surprisingly, there are only a few ‘hops’ between most people in the world, and so we should be able to work out the shortest route to the intended recipient through a knowledge of the community structure. I am trying to find efficient ways to predict the best person in my interaction network or community, to pass the message on to, who is most likely to get the message to my friend.

What undergraduate degree course did you do?

I studied BSc (Hons) Internet Computing  at the University of Hull.

What made you choose to do a PhD?

I enjoyed my undergraduate degree a lot. When I finished, I worked in industry for a while doing Computer Forensics, but I realised that I would not have the freedom to do really interesting research unless I did a PhD. It just so happened that a Professor at UCD had offered me a position when I graduated, so I took up his offer. At the time I wasn’t sure what a PhD would entail, but I’m glad I took the leap back from industry to academia; it’s a very different pace of life and income, but very personally rewarding.

What is the best thing about research?

To begin with, it was being free to explore fields I had very little knowledge of, but now that I am trying to finish my PhD, it’s knowing that I will be able to contribute something unique to an area I originally knew little about. Being able to learn about and see all the fantastic things that people are researching makes life interesting – you don’t often get to hear about bleeding edge technology and research in the non-research world.

What is the worst thing about research?

The hardest part for me is keeping up to date with and understanding the latest research, whilst at the same time trying to find my own contributions to the field. Often, experiments and ideas seem to lead to dead ends. There’s definitely something to the phrase ninety per cent perspiration, ten per cent inspiration!

How could your work make a difference to the world?

There are some scenarios where this sort of research can help, for example, in disaster situations when infrastructure is disabled, or in remote areas, where there are no cell towers to deliver wireless data, or even satellite communications between planets. However, I would most like to be able to contribute to the world of environmental sensing, and pervasive computing, where the people in a city become the carriers of information about what is happening, and allows the city as a whole to run smartly and more efficiently.

How do you hope your PhD will affect your career prospects?

I am hoping to continue my research after my PhD, perhaps with IBM, Microsoft or Google. I am sure a PhD will be a requirement for the sort of jobs I might apply for in the future, as I think it’s really just proof of a person’s ability to do research. However, I am a firm believer that it’s one’s attitude and experience that will get the job in the end.

Cloud computing is one of the ultimate buzzwords in the world of technology today. It is almost exclusively used as a vague marketing term to make a company seem exciting when in actual fact they are doing nothing new. To try and vaguely define it, you could say it is ‘selling computing as a service as opposed to a product’.

A crude example would be a hypothetical version of ‘SicroMoft Office’ in the ‘Cloud’. Instead of paying SicroMoft money to let you install it on your computer, you pay SicroMoft to let you use the software installed on their servers, i.e. you log in to their server, edit your document, save it and log out. Some companies are already operating systems such as this (e.g. Google Docs’ editing capacities), and it is only a matter of time before other companies also make the switch.

Leaving control with the manufacturer has its advantages, but also harbours serious drawbacks.

On the plus side, it ought to cause the price of computing to come down alongside the ultimate cost of developing and distributing software. If the software breaks, users will be much quicker to force the company to fix the problem. However, if a company ever decides to withdraw a product you use or the infrastructure they use breaks, you won’t be able to use it because you won’t have the software on your machine, and if companies do offer the option to install the software on your own machine, it will most likely be prohibitively expensive in an attempt to encourage people to move to the Cloud.

Few people seem to realise that the concept of Cloud computing has been around since the 1960’s. Back then computers were extremely expensive to make, so to get around this, companies sold terminals that could access the actual computer, which was at a remote location, and users would pay for the time that they used the computer. More recently, Google partnered with Acer and Samsung to release their line of ‘Chromebooks’, a line of laptops with a uniquely limited feature set; the central application is the web browser. If you want to do something other than browse the web as normal, you install an app from the Google App Store. You can use these offline if they don’t require an Internet connection, but the computer becomes an expensive paperweight if your Internet connection dies.

Like it or not, Cloud computing, much like tablet computers, is almost certainly the way forward. Hopefully Ireland will have semi-decent Internet service providers by the time we all move ‘to the Cloud’.

The main pressures being put on wildlife are climate change, pollution, unsustainable use, habitat loss and the invasion of new species. Certain species fail to adapt sufficiently to these stresses, which is what causes their depletion.

This inability to adapt is particularly relevant with regard to the effect climate change has on ecosystems and their species. Areas of high latitude, i.e. the Antarctic and Arctic regions, have the highest rates of global warming, which results in the melting of sea ice. The more ice melts, the less reflective surface there is, which results in accelerated melting. This has an impact on polar bears, which are slowly losing their habitat and will be faced with changes in every part of their lives from their denning habits to starvation and malnutrition.

Large expanses of water are not only affected by higher temperatures, which increase their surface levels, or by carbon dioxide, which increases their acid levels and causes a disruption in marine animals’ ability to make a calcium carbonate skeleton, but also directly by humans.

Waste produced by everyday human activities and industry contributes greatly to marine pollution. Areas called “garbage patches” have been discovered in the middle of the Pacific, North Atlantic and Indian Oceans. These consist of hundreds of kilometres of plastic and chemical debris, which take just a year to degrade. These release toxic compounds as they break down into small particles that enter the food chain after being ingested by aquatic organisms or seabirds.

A non-governmental organisation, Project Kaisei, was set up to study and determine a way to remove the garbage patch in the Pacific, which would yield low marine life loss and low energy expenditure.

This type of waste, while inexcusable, is one few people are aware of and hence feel they hold no accountability for. However, careless industrial practices are equally, if not more, crippling to the movement. Assisting the preservation of species has become increasingly difficult in recent years as large international corporations and organisations have ignored environmental and sustainable development concerns.

Seven oil spills have occurred so far in 2011. Most birds that come into contact with an oil spill will die. Their plumage becomes saturated with oil, which reduces the feathers’ insulating property. The birds themselves become poisoned once they start preening as they ingest the oil, which causes dehydration and a malfunction in liver and kidneys. The same fate awaits seals and sea otters, both of which have heavy fur. Alternatively, the oil may blind animals or impair their lungs and breathing, causing painful death. In the case of oil spills, few things can be done for the affected animals as according to a biologist at the Wattenmeer National Park, Silvia Gaus, less than one per cent of cleaned oil-soaked birds actually survive.

The example of whale harpooning is one that has come to light recently through social media. While it is an example of an individual compromising the overall effort, the US Navy had for years had equally disparaging effects on the same species. They used Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS) to detect and locate rival submarines with no measures in place to protect dolphins and whales who themselves use a sonar system to navigate through the water. LFAS is 235 decibels loud and is capable of incapacitating and killing these animals. It was only in 2008 that a federal court prohibited the practice unless safety measures were in place.

As well as protecting the multitudes of species already walking the planet, conservation is important as new species and new adaptations are constantly being discovered. It is only through having a knowledge base of what species are present in the environment and knowing their relations to the newly discovered species that we can begin to understand and piece together where they came from and how they are related.

Measures are taken every day to save polar bears from melting ice caps, pandas from poachers and African elephants from the ivory trade. These are, among many, examples of species whose conservation status is currently threatened. To say that awareness must be raised about these issues is a defunct statement. Awareness has been raised. People are aware that their actions are spurring on life-threatening consequences for species outside of the human race but continue to do nothing about them. We have yet to find out whether the message will finally sink in or whether we have to wait for the pandas and elephants to disappear from zoos before we decide it’s time to act and protect the future of nature.

Technology. Love it or hate it, it definitely makes life easier – or does it? The luddites among you will rejoice to hear that they were right all along – the gadgets we have come to rely on may not be so beneficial after all. In fact, in some cases they may be downright dangerous.

We’ll start with mp3 players. What better way to relax than by throwing on some bangin’ choons while on the bus to college or hard at work in the library? Lately, music accessories have become fashion accessories. No self-respecting scenester would be seen dead without their chunky earphones. However, using earphones to listen to an hour of music every day for five years at high volumes puts you at risk of permanent hearing loss. According to an EU-commissioned study, five to ten per cent of music lovers risk permanent hearing loss if they continue overindulging. A Finnish study found that using headphones for half an hour at a time at half the maximum volume decreases these risks substantially, but like most good advice, it’s unlikely to catch on.

Next, take mobile phones. Remember showing off your Nokia 3210 in the playground while the grown-ups argued over whether the radiation it emitted would give you cancer? Turns out the real danger may not be radiation after all, but bacteria. A study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology showed that smartphones harbour more germs than your average public toilet, and that borrowing someone else’s to make a call is a bit like letting that person lick your face. Maybe consider cleaning your phone now and then, or at least investing in a hands-free kit. In case you were wondering, no studies have ever demonstrated a link between cancer and mobile phones, but the World Health Organisation has still classed them as “possibly carcinogenic”.

So now that we’re ruined mp3 players and phones for you, let’s move on to laptops. It’s the guys that have to worry about this one: using a laptop positioned on your lap can render males infertile. This is due to the heat the devices produce – laptops can raise scrotal temperature by a whopping 2.8⁰C. This is a big deal if you’re a spermatozoon – these little guys are only produced at low temperatures; hence testicles are located outside the body. So if you harbour ambitions to someday become a daddy, please operate your laptop on a desk. Girls aren’t off the hook either – poor laptop use in both sexes can cause bad posture and back pain.

There is something to be said for doing things the old fashioned way- taking notes on paper, sending messages via carrier pigeon (yes, that’s right – sending messages using a flying rat is probably safer than using a phone), etcetera. But it’s hard to beat shiny toys that play music and movies and let you stalk your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend at the click of a button. Moderation is no doubt the key – we need to know when to switch off.