Djuke Veldhuis

After spending time collecting spit on a remote island, Djuke completed her PhD looking at the wonderful chemical cocktail that is stress. She continued in research but also spent lots of time writing and talking about science at festivals and schools. Ideas flying, enthusiasm high and a brilliant vibe to boot she decided to do both and is looking forward to hard work and sleepless nights.

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Follow Djuke on Twitter @DjukeVeldhuis
Find Djuke's blog here www.sciencesquirrel.wordpress.com

As a raft of health reforms are laid out in front of a public already feeling the pinch and health professionals and industry across the board consider their options, it is worth considering how significant the proposed changes are in the grand scheme of things. The trials and tribulations of health services in the UK are documented in the timeline below.

Special Report: NHS reforms on Dipity.

Regardless of the ethics or economics of the proposed reforms, there is no denying that people’s longevity and health in the UK far exceeds that present at any previous time in history.

The Public Health Act of 1975 was enacted to combat the spread of diseases such as cholera and typhoid which were rampant in urban areas due to filthy living conditions. Even so, this Act primarily attempted to prevent disease by, for example, putting an end to raw sewage flowing down the streets, rather than providing measures to help treat those that were ill.

It was not until the emergence of the welfare state, after the Second World War, that we see the birth of the NHS. In 1942 Lord Beveridge identified the five evils of society: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.

To tackle these evils proposed a series of measures which would ensure the co-ordination of public services. There was a cool response by the government to this somewhat obscure intergovernmental report, but it was met a very popular public reception with more than 70,000 copies sold. It was to be eight years before this idea became a reality championed by Clement Attlee’s Labour government. The NHS was finally established on 5 July 1948. But as the wealth of historical archive footage and interviews attest, it was far from easy then.

When you look into space, you gaze upon the abyss of time—and time is something that I and my geological companions felt we understood…And yet that night sky above us was older than everything, taking us almost as far back as the origin of the universe, 13.5 billion years ago.”

Astronomy, biology, history, physics, chemistry and of course, geology, are just a few realms uncovered in the latest book by geologist Dr Ted Nield, Incoming!. I have to admit, the text on the book’s jacket did set off my “is this another over-the-top popular science book telling us what we already know?” alarms. It was littered with commendations from fellow scientists, as well as possibly over-zealous claims of “astonishing new research”.

To suggest that the asteroid bombardment 470 million years ago resulted in such an ecological disturbance, that it actually increased biological diversity, great! Something many people outside academia aren’t aware of. But to claim that this is “astonishing new research” is taking it a bit far .

A book detailing this biodiversity increase was published in 2004 and the idea that meteorites can drive evolution has made popular science books before. Admittedly, after the onslaught of disaster movies in the last years, the public can be forgiven for thinking that asteroids (rocky space junk that orbits the Sun and is too small to be considered planets) and meteorites (same rocky space junk, only they survive the entry into Earth’s atmosphere) only cause death and destruction.

Fortunately, the charm, mystery and passion evident in Nield’s writing from the first page quickly eased any of my previous concerns. A book that could be a drab account of dry geological theory with a few examples thrown-in, instead reads like a detective story crossed with an adventure film (there’s a reference to the walls of Mordor on the third page!). Not just of the science behind meteorites and their role in shaping life on this planet is raised, but a colourful account of legends, historical figures, explorers and everyday people involved:

On 30 November, 1954 a meteorite weighing almost 4kg crashed through the roof of a timber frame house on Oden’s Mill Road, Sylacauga, Alabama, demolishing a radio and hitting a plump housewife by the name of Ann Hodges as she took a nap on her couch…”

Nield is unafraid to bite off big chunks of what could be dense science…

As Earth turns its daily eastward rotation, our first hours of darkness are spent sheltering in the lee of the planet as it orbits the Sun. However towards dawn … the sky above is facing into the path of all those tiny specks of space grit, which now hit the atmosphere with the planet’s forward velocity (about 29.79 kilometers per second) added to their own.”

… and make it accessible…

Past midnight, the firmament catches more flies on its windshield.”

It is hard to do justice to the sheer range of information presented in this book. More impressive is the fact that it doesn’t read as a textbook, as some books of this genre do. Yes there are dates and scientific concepts, but they are so neatly laid out—as well as frank accounts of the ‘messiness’ of research and scientific conflicts between the great and the good—that I easily flicked from page to page.

Moving from the largest meteorite ever discovered (‘Hoba’ found in Namibia in 1920, weighing 60 tonnes) to discussions of the ‘peculiar affection that specialists feel for their preferred groups of beasts’ and how the Deccan Traps in India (massive lava outpourings) sent the dinosaurs teetering several hundred thousand years before ‘the’ impact, to poetry, President Ronald Reagan, Arthur C. Clarke, and Bruce Willis. Ted Nield manages what few even attempt.

An accessible journey into and beyond the world of meteorites explaining that in the unlikely event that a meteorite should crash into Earth and wipe out humanity, we should remember that without them we probably wouldn’t have been here in the first place.

If you’re interested in more about meteorites and Dr Nield’s work, Beki Hill recently interviewed him for Elements.

Thumbnail image: A meteor during the peak of the 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower, shared by Navicore on Wikimedia Commons.

Fairtrade: what does it mean?

Everday in the UK over nine million cups of fairtrade tea, six million cups of fairtrade coffee and 2 million fairtrade chocolate bars are sold.

Ethical snack breaks are clearly a popular treat.

The fairtrade foundation launched fairtrade fortnight 2011 by announcing that sales of fairtrade products had soared by 40 per cent in 2010 – to an estimated retail value of 1.17 billion pounds.

Fairtrade fortnight runs from the 28th feb to the 13th march. City University Environment Officer Dawn White told us a little more about what the College is doing during the two-week period.

Previously Elements brought you the latest on our understanding of chimpanzee tool use. We know, for example, that chimpanzees will use tools to access food, such as nuts, that they cannot open with their teeth alone. Now it seems they are also highly selective about what tools they use depending on the goal and availability of raw materials in their local environment. Elements caught up with primatologist Kathelijne Koops to learn about the latest culinary delights chimpanzees have on the table thanks to their utensils.

Chimpanzee ant dipping

Chimpanzees have a bag full of tools. Hammers, spears, cleavers and sponges are just some of the implements that wild chimpanzees in Africa have been using.

Modified stones, twigs, leaves and other natural materials are used by chimpanzees to groom, access food, throw as missiles, or communicate. Chimpanzees in different parts of Africa make and use different tools depending on the availability of local materials.

Professor William McGrew, from the University of Cambridge, has found that chimpanzees in Gabon have a tool set of five objects in the form of stones, sticks and leaves. These can be used in combination as pounders, perforators, enlargers, collectors, or swabs, in order to get hold of food that may be hidden, such as honey in a bee’s nest high up in a tree.