Little

Book of

Irish Science

Science Foundation Ireland

IRISH SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS

CONTENTS

01 Introduction 03 Dublin City of Science 05 An Eye to Improving Vision 07 Yes We Can Connect

09 Efficient Drug Manufacturing 11 Early Astronomy Expertise 13 The Father of Modern Chemistry

15 Early Cancer Treatment 17 Lose the Junction 19 Layers for Better Plastics and Computers 21

A New Weapon 23 A Window on Brain Seizures in Babies 25 Discovering the Pulsar 27 And the

Oscar Goes to... 29 Mutebutton 31 Bat Clues 33 A Virtual Sawmill 35 Target: Immune Disease 37

Software to Make Sense of DNA 39 Irishman Splits Atom 41 The Perfect Foam 43 19th Century

Maths and Gaming 45 Computer Logic 47 Viagra 49 9 Out of the Top 10 51 Testing for the

Speed Gene in Horses 53 Ranked Highly 55 An Important Influence 57 The Beaufort Scale 59

The Big Telescope in Birr 61 Why is the Sky Blue? 63 Earthquake Pioneer 65 Acknowledgments

Ireland. You may have read works by some of our writers. Perhaps you’ve seen some of our dancers perform. Maybe you’ve grown up listening to some of our bands. But do you know our scientists? From ancient astronomy to modern genetics, Irish scientists and engineers have been leaving their mark on the world. This little book gives you a glimpse of some of these achievements.

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SFI - RESEARCH FOR IRELAND’S FUTURE

WWW.SFI.IE

DUBLIN CITY OF SCIENCE

Europe’s largest multidisciplinary science conference

(ESOF 2012) comes to Dublin this July. Ireland is

marking this prestigious occasion with a year-long,

nationwide programme of science-related events.

Throughout 2012, over 160 events are taking place

nationwide to celebrate the best of Irish science

through culture and the arts. Ireland boasts a

rich cultural and artistic heritage and it is the

aim of this festival programme to be a true

representation of both our scientific and artistic

culture. The programme will demonstrate the

reach of science into almost every aspect of

life-education, culture, business, arts, sports

and communities as well as how science touches

and shapes our past, our present and our future.

In July Dublin will come alive with our ten day

Science Festival; ‘Science in the City’ an integral

programme element of ESOF 2012. Find out more

at www.dublinscience2012.ie

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AN EYE TO IMPROVING VISION

Cataracts are one of the leading causes of vision

impairment around the world and surgery to cor-

rect them can involve inserting a replacement

lens inside the eye. The Applied Optics Group

at NUI Galway is developing instruments to test

out new designs of these lenses by simulating

how they would work in the eye. Their approach

reduces the need for expensive and invasive

testing of the lenses in patients. Ultimately,

better lenses could mean fewer people will

need to use glasses for far-vision.

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YES WE CAN CONNECT

For the economic stimulus package website Recovery.gov, which shows the American

public how funds are being spent, US President Barack Obama’s administration chose

to use internet technology developed at the SFI-funded Digital Enterprise Research

Institute (DERI) in NUI Galway. The web standard is called Semantically-Interlinked

Online Communities, or SIOC. It was created by Dr. John Breslin and it aims to connect

online community sites and Internet-based discussions.

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EFFICIENT DRUG MANUFACTURING

COULD OFFER BIG SAVINGS

The SFI-funded Solid State Pharmaceuticals

Cluster led by the University of Limerick (UL)

is working on a potential game-changer for the

pharmaceutical industry that could see drugs

manufactured by more efficient processes. To

do this, the Cluster is focusing on overcoming

the problems of continuous crystallisation. The

approach could potentially save pharmaceutical

companies billions of Euro in manufacturing costs.

With eight of the top ten global pharmaceutical

firms located in Ireland, all of which are partnered

with the group in UL, the potential competitive

advantage offered by this technology is substantial.

processO

processO

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EARLY ASTRONOMY EXPERTISE SET IN STONE

As far back as 5,000 years ago, astronomers and

engineers in Ireland knew their stuff. The Boyne

Valley, Newgrange in County Meath is home to

megalithic monuments that show a deep un-

derstanding of the heavens. Probably the most

famous example is the roof-box at the burial

mound in Newgrange, which is older than the

Great Pyramid of Giza. A small opening just above

the entrance to the 5,000-year old burial cham-

ber is positioned so that as the sun rises on the

shortest day of the year, light floods through the

narrow corridor and illuminates the chamber.

THE FATHER OF MODERN CHEMISTRY

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), born in Lismore,

County Waterford on Ireland’s south-east coast,

is considered a founder of modern chemistry. His

1661 book The Sceptical Chymist outlined the

theory that matter was made of atoms, and he

made the argument for chemical experiments.

This was an important step in the transition from

alchemy, the art of changing one substance into

another, to chemistry as we know it today. Boyle

was one of the foremost thinkers and experi-

mentalists in 17th-century Britain, and Boyle’s

Law, which describes the relationship between

the pressure and volume of a gas in a closed

system, is still taught to science students today.

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Radiation therapy is a widely-used treatment for cancer today. But as far back as the early

20th century, there was a version called the “Dublin method”. Offaly-born scientist John

Joly (1857-1933) and Dr. Walter Stevenson (1876-1931) developed the approach, which

captured radon gas in thin glass tubes and then inserted them directly into tumours.

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LOSE THE JUNCTION FOR

SMALLER ELECTRONICS

A team of researchers at Tyndall National Institute

in Cork has successfully made a junctionless

transistor, which could enable smaller electronic

devices that consume less energy. Transistors

are an integral part of electronics - by controlling

the flow of electrons they allow devices to carry

out functions. Conventional transistors control

the flow of electrons between two junctions, as if

they were jumping from one cliff edge to another

across a canyon, the jump being enabled by the

electrical control of an electrode called the gate

that opens or closes a bridge across the canyon.

But as electronic devices get smaller, transistors

need to reduce the size of the junction, effectively

pushing the cliff faces together - when the cliff

faces get too close to each other, the gate can no

longer stop the electrons from jumping over the

canyon in an anarchic manner. The research team has instead engineered a junctionless transistor where electron flow is controlled by a silicon gate circling a silicon nanowire. The gate can be ‘tightened’ to restrict the flow of electrons, similar to a ring around a hosepipe restricting the flow of water. No cliff faces means the junctionless transistors could support smaller and more energy-efficient electronic devices.

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LAYERS FOR BETTER PLASTICS

AND COMPUTERS

Smaller, faster computers, more efficient batteries and greener plastics could be on the way if we can use tiny flakes or nanolayers of certain materials. Prof Jonathan Coleman and his team at the SFI-funded Centre for Re-search on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN), based at Trinity College Dublin, have developed a method to split these materials into billions of such layers. One example is graphene, atom-thick sheets of carbon with immense strength and the ability to conduct electricity. Prof Coleman figured out how to use a soapy solution to turn cheap lumps of graphite into billions of precious graphene layers. These flakes could be added to plastics to make them stronger while keeping them light. However, they have many other applications in areas such as electronics and sensing. Prof Coleman is now applying the method to other materials that could have a role in storing or generating energy. His publication record earned him a place in the top 100 materials sci-entists of the decade worldwide between January 2000 and October 2010, as compiled by Thomson Reuters. His position of 61, with 30 papers and 1,507 citations in materials science journals, put him within the top 0.02 per cent in the field. Overall, Prof Coleman has published 150 papers in international journals such as Science and Nature and has been cited almost 8,000 times.

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superbugs

A NEW WEAPON IN THE FIGHT AGAINST SUPERBUGS

Researchers at the SFI-funded Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in University College

Cork and Teagasc Moorepark have found a new antimicrobial agent, Thuricin CD, that

can kill the antibiotic-resistant bacterium Clostridium difficile, which poses a major

problem in clinical and healthcare settings.The new antibiotic may also reduce the risk

of disease recurrence, compared with that of broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment,

because it spares the normal gut bacteria that help to limit C. difficile growth. Thuricin

CD was discovered by screening over 30,000 bacteria isolated from the human gut

and the technology was licensed to Irish biotechnology company Alimentary Health.

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A WINDOW ON BRAIN

SEIZURES IN BABIES

Seizures or ‘fits’ are the most common neuro-logical emergency encountered in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) – they are caused by problems such as lack of oxygen around the time of birth, haemorrhage and meningitis.

But here’s the problem: seizures can be very difficult to detect in newborns, and there may be no obvious outward signs that the baby is experiencing one, making intervention or treat-ment difficult.

The only accurate tool for diagnosis is EEG monitoring, a measure of electrical brain activ-ity, but newborn EEG interpretation is a highly specialised skill and few experts are available.

Prof Geraldine Boylan, who directs the Neonatal Brain Research Group at University College Cork, has been carrying out research with collabora-tors into automating EEG interpretation so that seizures can be detected reliably in the NICU.

Cork is part of an EU-wide project, NEMO (www.nemo-europe.com), to further test the technology so that seizures can be detected rapidly and the information can be shared with specialists remotely so timely decisions can be made for treatment.

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DISCOVERING THE PULSAR

In the 1960s, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who was born in Belfast and raised in Lurgan,

was doing her PhD at Cambridge and helped to build an enormous radio telescope

that scanned the skies. She analysed the results on reams of paper charts and

noticed some unusual markings or ‘scruff‘ on the record. This scruff turned out to be

a signal from a pulsar, a previously undiscovered type of small, dense and rapidly-

rotating star remnant. Since then, many more pulsars have been found, and

studying them has helped scientists to learn more about how some stars die.

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AND THE OSCAR GOES TO...

Prof Anil Kokaram, a researcher at Trinity College

Dublin, won an Oscar for the development of visual

effects software for the film industry. He worked

as a consultant with UK-based The Foundry, which

develops image-processing software for the post-

production industry and was awarded the Oscar

in 2007. The visual effects and image-processing

software developed by Prof Kokaram and the team

have been used on a host of high-profile feature

films including Casino Royale, X-Men, The Last

Stand, The Da Vinci Code and Charlie and the

Chocolate Factory. Prof Kokaram works with

the Signal Processing and Media Application

Group (Sigmedia) at Trinity, which develops

techniques to restore film, create effects in

post-production and adapt digital film to allow

better streaming over the Internet. He is now

working on video quality with the Chrome Media

Group at Google HQ in Mountain View California

and maintains his research activities at Trinity.

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MUTEBUTTON - TARGETING TINNITUS THROUGH EAR AND TONGUE

Researchers at NUI Maynooth have developed a

technology that aims to alleviate the symptoms of

tinnitus, a condition where the person ‘hears’ nois-

es such as ringing or hissing even though there

is no external source of the sound. The device,

called MuteButton, simultaneously stimulates the

sense of hearing and touch by playing sounds to

the ear and stimulating touch using sensors on the

tongue. The approach targets centres in the spinal

cord and brain that integrate sound and touch,

with the aim of suppressing the perceived but

imaginary sounds of tinnitus. www.mutebutton.ie

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BAT CLUES ON HEALTH AND HISTORY

Dr. Emma Teeling is looking at the genetics of bats. Why? Because therein could lie clues about how genes play important roles in health. At University College Dublin her work compares genomes of bats and various other animal species to tease out how nature has addressed particular problems. The findings could help us better understand conditions such as inherited deafness, as well as more general topics such as ageing and the immune response. Dr. Teeling’s work also feeds into a wider international project that is using “phylogenetics” to examine evolution, and the analysis is uncovering new information about how mammals diversified when dinosaurs became extinct.

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A VIRTUAL SAWMILL

SEEING THE WOOD IN THE TREES

Imagine you could plan to fell a forest without

leaving your chair? Technology developed by

Irish company Treemetrics and the SFI-funded

centre 4C at University College Cork lets users

non-invasively measure and virtually optimise

the management of forest resources. The laser

technology physically measures trees in a for-

est then converts and represents the data into

in a way that allows better use of forest resources

and less wastage. The company, which now offers

measurement and ‘virtual sawmill’ technology to

analyse forest resources quickly and accurately,

is working with partners and clients around the

world. www.treemetrics.com

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TARGET: IMMUNE DISEASE

TARGET: IMMUNE DISEASE

You need your immune system to help you fight off

bugs and viruses that cause disease. But if your

immune responses go awry, it can result in chronic

auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Or, if you receive a transplanted organ, your vigi-

lant immune system could cause you to reject it.

Based originally on SFI-funded research carried out

at Trinity College Dublin, Opsona has been developing

and testing therapies to selectively target important

molecules in the immune system called toll-like

receptors. By blocking these receptors, inappro-

priate immune responses could be kept under

control. The biotech company has partnered with

major pharmaceutical companies and has already

started clinical trials in humans of its candidate

molecules..www.opsona.com

Dublin-based Opsona Therapeutics is developing new molecules

to control key steps in the immune response, and so help address

immune diseases and post-transplant rejection.

Little

Book of Irish Science

SOFTWARE TO MAKE SENSE OF DNA

Irish scientist Prof Des Higgins wrote one of the most-widely used pieces

of computer software in bioinformatics. In the 1980s, he developed

CLUSTAL, a programme to align DNA and protein sequences, and this be-

came a standard tool in the field around the world, allowing researchers

to draw meaningful information out of genomic data. Academic papers

explaining the software tool were widely referenced by other researchers.

As a result, Prof Higgins has held rankings among the most cited authors

in computer science, although interestingly, he is a biologist. Today Prof

Higgins continues to work in bioinformatics at University College Dublin,

developing and using software to analyse biological data and help

find new molecules of interest for diagnosing and treating cancer.

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Ernest Walton (1903-1995) was one half of a team that artificially split

the atom in 1932. Working in Cambridge with colleague John Cockroft,

Waterford-born Walton built a machine that could bombard the nuclei

of lithium atoms with streams of accelerated protons. The lithium nuclei

split in the milestone experiment that earned the duo a Nobel Prize.

IRISHMAN SPLITS ATOM

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THE PERFECT FOAM

In 1880 Belfast-born scientist Lord Kelvin (1824-

1907) pondered some pretty deep problems. One

such problem was what the lowest energy struc-

ture of a liquid foam of equal size bubbles might

be. In the 1990s, scientists Denis Weaire and

Robert Phelan at Trinity College Dublin came up

with a structure that improved upon Kelvin’s solu-

tion. This complex Weaire-Phelan structure was the

inspiration for the Water Cube aquatic centre at the

Beijing Olympics. In 2011, Italian scientist Ruggero

Gabbrielli, working with a team at Trinity, announced

he had designed a container that could accommo-

date the Weaire-Phelan bubbles, and this allowed

the creation of the perfect foam in the laboratory.

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19TH CENTURY MATHS AND... GAMING

It’s possibly the most famous act of graffiti in science: on October 16th 1843 as Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) walked to work along the Royal Canal in Dublin, he had a flash of inspiration about a new type of four-dimensional number. So he took out a penknife and in-scribed his thoughts into a wall at Broom Bridge in Cabra. What he had come up with was ‘quaternions’, and his insight is seen as the birth of modern algebra. Hamilton’s discovery played a role in later breakthroughs, including Maxwell’s prediction of eletromagnetic waves, which led to the detection of radio waves and ultimately the radio, television, radar, etc. Even today, we are still seeing the influence of Hamilton’s inspiration: quaternions are at the heart of technology developed by Irish software company Havok, which helps to make motion in movies and computer games look more realistic. In 2008, Havok was awarded a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for pioneering new levels of realism and interactivity in movies and games.

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EMC2The 19th-century mathematician George Boole (1815-1864)

devised a form of logic that was later used to develop electron-

ics systems that used binary instructions. Boole was English,

but he spent much of his career in Cork. His symbolic logic uses

operators such as AND or NOT or OR. Today, Boolean logic forms

the basis for everything from smartphones to the Internet.

COMPUTER LOGIC - THE CORK CONNECTION

0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY0 1 2 6 0 32 DECIMAL 000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000 BINARY

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Eight out of the top-ten global pharma companies have a presence in Ireland. Many well-

known medications are manufactured here - the active ingredient for Viagra is produced

in Cork by Pfizer and Allergan produces Botox at its plant in Westport, County Mayo.

Viagra

Vg

VIAGRA IS MADE IN CORK BY PFIZER

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09:10

Nine out of the top-ten medical device companies have a presence in Ireland and

we are one of the largest exporters of medtech products in Europe.

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TESTING FOR THE SPEED GENE IN HORSES

While analysing genes in thoroughbred racehorses, Dr Emmeline Hill at

University College Dublin identified important genetic information relat-

ing to racing performance. Her discovery led to the development of a

‘speed gene’ test to help match horses with courses and to inform breed-

ing and training decisions. Irish company Equinome now uses the test to

provide services to the global bloodstock industry. www.equinome.com

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Over the past decade, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has built a com-

munity of approximately 3,000 researchers in Ireland. Through this

investment, Ireland has speedily ascended the international rankings of

scientific research capability, from 36th place in 2003 to a consolidated

position inside the top 20 in recent times. Particular strengths have

emerged with Irish research ranked highly in various fields for scientific

citations: 3rd in the world for immunology (Thomson Reuters) and 8th

in the world for materials science (Thomson Reuters).

RANKED HIGHLY

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erwin Schrödingererwin Schrödingererwin SchrödingerWhat is Life?

AN IMPORTANT INFLUENCE ON MODERN BIOLOGY

Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) is well known for his contributions to quantum physics.

Schrödinger was also behind an important moment in biology, when he published the

book What is Life?, which looked at the physics and chemistry that underpins living

organisms. The book, which was an inspiration to the pioneers of molecular biology, was

based on a series of public lectures Schrödinger gave in 1943 under the auspices of

the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS), where he was the first Director at the

School of Theoretical Physics. Schrödinger remained at DIAS until his retirement in 1955.

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THE BEAUFORT SCALE

Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, FRS, FRGS (1774-1857) was

an Irish hydrographer and officer in Britain’s Royal Navy. Beaufort

was the creator of the Beaufort Scale for indicating wind force.

THE BIG TELESCOPE IN BIRR

In the 1840s, Birr in County Offaly was home one of the largest telescopes

in the world. The reflecting ‘Leviathan’ telescope was designed and built

by the Third Earl of Rosse, William Parsons (1800-1867) at Birr Castle.

He used the telescope to discover the spiral nature of some galaxies.

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WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

County Carlow-born physicist John Tyndall

(1820-1893) came up with the answer to that

question in the 19th century: it is because of

the way shorter-wavelength light is scattered

by molecules in the atmosphere.

Tyndall also made the important observation that

moist air absorbs more heat than dry air, which

was a major step in understanding the “green-

house effect” that keeps Earth’s atmosphere warm

enough to support life. And importantly, his work

suggested that the composition of the atmosphere

affects climate.

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EARTHQUAKE PIONEER

Irish scientist and engineer Robert Mallet (1810-1881) was a pioneer of modern seismology, the study of earthquakes. In the mid-19th century he and his son buried gunpowder in the sand at a dublin beach. When they detonated it, they were able to measure the shock waves that moved through the ground over a distance of half a mile. In 1857, Mallet senior used the new technology of photography to record and assess the contours of damage caused by a major earthquake in Southern Italy. He also identified zones around the world that were prone to earthquakes.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Science Foundation Ireland would like to thank the following organisations

for their assistance in sourcing some of the images included in this book.

Applied Optics Group / Royal Dublin Society / Fáilte Ireland / Trinity College

Dublin / University College Cork / University College Dublin / NUI Galway /

NUI Maynooth / Mutebutton.ie

ESOF 2012

This summer, Dublin will play host to Europe’s largest multidisciplinary Science Conference,

the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF 2012). From July 27th 2012 over 5,000 international

researchers, policy makers, business leaders and global media will gather in the Convention

Centre Dublin to take part in ESOF 2012 and will discuss new discoveries and debate

the direction that research is taking in the sciences. A science conference like no other,

ESOF 2012 is unique in representing the largest convergence of the Sciences, Humanities and

Culture in Europe in 2012. ESOF is the biennial pan-European meeting dedicated to

scientific research and innovation. The programme will cover all of the current major

global scientific challenges, including Health, Food, Energy and Climate Change.

Furthermore, it will also look at fundamental issues such as The Life and Death of

the Universe, Who are we?, Where did we come from?, and Where we are going?

FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.ESOF2012.ORG

Wilton Park House, Wilton Place, Dublin 2, Ireland

info@sfi.ie / www.sfi.ie / twitter.com/scienceirel