World class research showcased at University of York open day

WHY has public trust in institutions like Parliament, the police and the media collapsed? How can we use maths to design better biofuel power stations?

What can we learn from the strange language spoken by 1,700 people in a remote corner of Papua New Guinea?

And can we harness the power of nature’s own micro-machines to make better medicines?

These were just some of the questions posed during an open day at the University of York yesterday designed to showcase the world-class research being done there.

York is a university that has consistently punched above its weight, and that in only 50 short years has become one of the world’s top research institutions, said the new vice-chancellor, Prof Koen Lamberts.

But to remain at the top, it needs to continue producing the best research.

To mark its 50th anniversary last year, the university appointed 17 new ‘anniversary chairs’ – scientists and researchers at the top of their game, brought to York from around the world.

Their areas of interest range from nanobiology (the biology of extremely small things) and the mathematics of science, to politics, the environment, philosophy and the study of language.

Many of them were at the open day yesterday to talk about their work.

Here is a flavour of what some of them are up to…

Reasons for collapse of public trust

PUBLIC confidence is collapsing in some of our oldest and most respected institutions, said Prof Martin Smith, the university’s anniversary chair of politics.

Faith in the police has been undermined by things like Hillsborough, the Plebgate affair involving former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell, the death of Ian Tomlinson, and the way some undercover officers have behaved.

But confidence in Parliament and in MPs is also low, following the MPs expenses scandal; the NHS has been riven with problems resulting from its targets culture; and there is widespread anger at the media over phone hacking.

Many of our institutions are in crisis, he said – and it is a crisis brought about by their failure to adapt to a changing world.

Many institutions are regulated only by themselves, using rules they set: and when criticised their first instinct is often to deny responsibility and limit access to information.

But in the new digital age, controlling information is no longer so easy. The MPs expenses scandal broke as a result of the Freedom of Information Act, which gave journalists and others the right to demand answers to questions. And former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden was able to download vast amounts of classified information on a memory stick and upload it on the web to a global audience – causing huge embarrassment to secretive government agencies in the US, the UK and around the world.

Scientists suffer from a similar problem of increasing lack of trust. “Fifty years ago, if a scientist said something was the case, we would accept it because they were scientists.”

Not any more: look at the difficulties climate scientists are having in persuading people of the reality of climate change.

It is a persistent lack of openness in a world where information is now much more freely available that is a big part of the problem, Prof Smith said.

With climate scientists, much of the scepticism about what they claimed was down to the fact that the data was not made openly available.

So how to restore trust in major institutions?

Politicians, scientists, the police – all need to stop treating people like idiots, said Prof Smith.

They need to be more open – and there must be a much more intelligent public debate.

Ordinary people must be treated as adults rather than as children. “Only in this way can they (institutions) rebuild trust with citizens.”

Micro-machines of the natural world

WE like to think that man invented machines. But actually nature got there first, said Prof Mark Leake, the anniversary chair of biological physics.

Biological life is made up of tiny cells, each a millionth the size of a human being. And within these tiny cells are even tinier ‘machines’ – biological machines that are often just a few molecules in size.

They move things around inside the cell; transfer chemicals across barriers; help with the replication of genetic material. And they are extremely good at what they do – having evolved over billions of years.

These tiny machines (or nanomachines) are one thousand million times smaller than us. But using the latest microscope and camera technology, and techniques such as using natural fluorescent dies from jellyfish to ‘paint’ the tiny nanomachines so as to see them more clearly, scientists can now peer deep inside cells to look in close up detail at how they work.

The techniques used by Prof Leake and his team involve collaboration between biologists and physicists, who each bring different techniques and approaches to observing these tiny machines at work.

Between them, he said, they are “shining a light on a new world”. It could have profound implications for all of us. Understanding how these tiny machines work and operate and move about within the cell could help with everything from developing new antibiotics to the early detection and treatment of cancer. “It could give us new techniques to tackle some of the most pernicious diseases known to man,” he said.

Why endangered languages matter

What can we learn from language spoken by only 1,700 people in a remote corner of Papua New Guinea? Quite a lot, actually, said Prof Dunstan Brown of the university’s Department of Language and Linguistic Science.

We tend to think that language is quite straightforward. The Mian language spoken by a small community of people in the Telefomin district of Papua New Guinea helps remind us that it is not.

Grammatically, the Mian language has four genders – male, female, and two neutral classes. Everything Mian people talk about is thus classed as either male (such as men, and also certain types of animal); female (such as women, and certain different types of animal) or assigned to one of two different ‘neutral’ categories (a bit like ‘it’ in English).

But the Mian language also contains an entirely different linguistic system for classifying the objects that words represent – and under this system, some are classified male or female, when under the gender system they are neutral.

An axe, for example, can be either female or gender neutral to a Mian speaker, depending on which linguistic system the speaker uses to classify it.

But why have two systems for classifying objects when one would do?

It is a good question, which could reveal much about us and the way we think and talk. But it is a question to which linguists don’t yet have a complete answer.

The search for an answer to these and other questions continues: and it is an important one, said Prof Brown. Many smaller languages around the world are dying out. “So for our team, it is vitally important that we understand these things before they disappear.”

The mathematics of developing biofuel

Algal ‘blooms’ – giant patches of green or red algae that can spread across the surface of oceans and lakes – are often regarded as harmful.

But understanding the way that the individual, tiny algae which make up these huge blooms behave could help us develop new sources of cheap, environmentally friendly biofuels, said Martin Bees, the university’s anniversary professor of mathematics.

‘Bioreactors’ can be built which use algae to produce biodiesel and other commercially useful by-products. But the mixing of the ‘soup’ of countless tiny individual algae cells used in the reactors, and the harvesting of cells, requires significant amounts of energy and is expensive.

The behaviour of algal blooms may suggest a way of reducing these costs, said Prof Bees. More than 90 per cent of all algal blooms contain algae that can swim – often using tiny flagella, minute whip-like structures that move about in a swimming motion.

The algal blooms are in effect ‘living fluids’: and the tiny particles (the individual algae) of which they are made up move in ways and in patterns that can be modelled using mathematics.

Once we understand the currents of movement within these soups of algae, we can use that understanding to design bioreactors that are cheaper and more efficient: for example, that don’t get fouled up so easily, or that provide nutrients the algae can reach more efficiently.

“To reduce the energy input and costs we should be working with the algae, not against it,” Prof Bees said. If we can learn to do that using mathematical modelling we could produce biodiesel much more cheaply.

• To find out more about the research showcased at the open day, visit
york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/spring-2014/york-talk/

Other research showcased

• Physicists at the York Plasma Institute, are working in partnership with other organisations to develop nuclear fusion – potentially a limitless, clean and safe source of energy from an artificial ‘sun’

• Prof Michael Brockhust and his team are studying the super-fast evolution of microbes such as bacteria so as to develop alternative ways of treating bacterial infections rather than simply relying on antibiotics

• Prof Andrei Andreyev and his team are studying exotic nuclei so as to help fellow scientists develop advanced cancer treatments – and safer ways of generating power from nuclear fission

• Catherine Wilson, Anniversary Professor of Philosophy, argues that if political and military leaders were subjected to more rigorous questioning before a decision was made to go to war, a great deal of pain, death and psychological suffering could be avoided

• Prof Peter McGlynn is heading an international team of scientists trying to better understand the way DNA is copied during cell division. This could help in the design of new antibiotics and cancer drugs, among other things.