Archives for October 2009

Royal Research Ships, it seems, are a little like giant telescopes.

Instead of buying, or hiring one, and sailing away to conduct their experiments in a one-off voyage, scientists "book time" on the research ship that's passing closest to the feature they want to study. The ships themselves plough endlessly this way and that across the high seas.

It's the most efficient way of managing what are admittedly expensive bits of kit - the RRS James Cook cost the Natural Environment Research Council some £36 million in 2006 - but it means they're constantly at sea. When one does finally put in to port, there's something of a mad scramble to load it up with experimental equipment that may not be needed for months or even years.

That's what was happening when I caught up with Dr Jon Copley from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. I found him packing the last of his scientific gear tackle and trim into a shipping container deep in the hold of the James Cook, which had put in to Falmouth to take on supplies earlier this week.

Drums of chemicals and packing cases, even a fridge-freezer, were all wedged into the container and securely strapped down - it's important that nothing breaks free during a storm.

The next time any of it sees the light of day will be in February, when the James Cook will be over the East Scotia Ridge to the west of the South Sandwich Islands in the southern ocean - a remote part of the chain of underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents that snakes its way, like the seam on a tennis ball, for 40,000 miles around the planet.

As a marine biologist, Jon Copley is interested in the complex web of life that has evolved around these hydrothermal vents.

"The mid ocean ridges are where under sea volcanoes are creating new earth's crust. Geologists and physicists are trying to understand these processes, and biologists are studying the lush colonies of life that have grown up around these hot springs," he says.

It may seem incredible, but even after 30 years of exploration we still know more about the surface of Mars or Venus than we do about the crushing, inky, blackness of the ocean floor. According to Dr Tim Shank from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution this, rather than space, is the real New Frontier.

"I used to think that the age of discovery was over. That Vasco Da Gama and all these people had found everything there was to find," he says.

"But the reality is we've barely touched exploration on our planet. It is just remarkable what's down there and what we haven't seen yet".

Part of the reason why we haven't seen it yet is the difficulty - and cost - associated with conducting research thousands of miles from dry land, and thousands of feet beneath the waves.

No one country or scientific institution can hope to do it all, and so in an effort to pool resources and avoid unnecessary duplication scientists have formed InterRidge, a kind of international academic talking-shop to plan and co-ordinate efforts to explore the deep oceans.

The UK takes the chair of InterRidge in January, and two of the first projects it will oversee are Jon Copley's expeditions to the Scotia Ridge and the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

That's where the fridge-freezer comes in. It's stuffed with frozen chunks of a dismembered whale that washed up dead in Cardiff Bay a few days ago. The carcass will spend a year at 5,500 metres on the deep ocean floor to see what sorts of creatures turn up for a free lunch.

The chances are it'll be something completely new to science...happy hunting.

Imagine a world in which you don't have to flick a switch to turn the lights on or boil the kettle.

In this vision of utopia you don't even have to say "lights on" or "time for a cuppa". All you have to do is think it, and technology does the rest.

It's the stuff of science fiction. The kind of futuristic opening scene a film maker might employ to establish that the storyline is set well into the 22nd century.

Or maybe not. Scientists at the University of Southampton have managed to communicate the thoughts of one person to another across the internet without either of them touching a keyboard or voicing any commands. But this is not telepathy: Welcome to the world of Brain Computer Interfacing, or BCI.

The idea behind the research is to translate thoughts into binary signals or commands that can be understood by a conventional computer. So with his motor cortex monitored by electrodes, the first subject is asked to think about moving either his right of left hand. The brain activity that results is transmitted over the internet as either a "one" or a "zero".

At the other end of the system a second subject sits in front of a set of LED lights that flash at a different frequency depending on whether a "zero" or a "one" is received. Crucially the pattern of flashes is too subtle to be consciously seen, but it does register in the subject's visual cortex.

That activity is picked up by a second set of electrodes and the binary series of ones and zeros flashes up on a nearby screen. Bingo! (or perhaps that should be "Eureka!") Thoughts from the motor cortex of one individual have been transmitted to the visual cortex of another across the internet.

"Dramatic proof of principle"

It has to be said the experiment is a little... clunky. It takes a few seconds for the electrodes monitoring the motor cortex to register the imagined left or right movement, and there's a similar gap before the message is downloaded from the receiver's visual cortex. Both are susceptible to a degree of interference in the shape of stray thoughts popping into the participants heads.

But that's just a matter of fine tuning. With refinement, Dr Christopher James who lead the research believes, we could one day use the power of thought to transmit messages and control machinery.

"The experiment provides a dramatic proof of principle. This is brain to brain communication through the power of thought."

It's early days for BCI, but already the US military is investing millions through the defence procurement agency DARPA in similar projects. And, while the idea of targeting enemy combatants or controlling battlefield robots by thought alone may still be the stuff of science fiction, Dr James is already experimenting with a motorised wheelchair that could be steered by the power of the occupant's mind.

BCI could also offer disabled people new ways to control their environment, and to communicate with those around them.

And you can also see an online film about Dr James's experiments .