A Wild Day Out in Holyrood Park

The sun was shining for today's Wild Day Out in Holyrood Park, hosted by Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Historic Environment Scotland as part of Edinburgh Science Festival. Several marquees were set up around the Rangers Centre

and there was a full programme of events happening all day

I watched two birds being ringed (I think this is known as banding in the US?) - a male blackbird who sang all throughout the process and a coal tit. Both birds were then released and if their rings are retrieved in the future, or of the bird is caught again (as in fact the blackbird was on this occasion) then the information can be checked back and added to statistics about that species.

It was then time for me to join Robbie from the Rangers team to lead a guided walk. There was a good selection of walks throughout the day

Our walk went into Hunters Bog (seen in it's entirety in this photo which I took after the event when Crafty Green Boyfriend joined me for our own walk, I didn't take any photos during the guided walk).

While we were in Hunters Bog, Robbie showed us replicas of prehistoric items that have been found here (including a very useful portable sewing kit complete with bone sewing needles) and I talked about gorse, encouraging everyone (carefully as it's a prickly plant!) to sniff it (it smells of coconut). We also listened to the birds and watched a territorial dispute among the mallards on the small pond in the middle of the bog. We then walked over to St Margaret's Pond and fed a good selection of bird seeds to the ducks and swans (and talked about the importance of not feeding bread to birds).

The walk was only an hour long, as most of the attendees were children, but we packed a lot in and everyone enjoyed it, helped by the sunshine!

I then met up with Crafty Green Boyfriend and we walked round the Bog and around Salisbury Crags. The views here of both Arthurs Seat and Edinburgh are amazing.

The Wild Day Out is now an annual event and a great family day out!

Carbon Capture - an easy demonstration

Yesterday I attended the launch of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. You can read more about the programme for this year's festival in yesterday's post.

At the event, I caught up with two scientific demonstrations. The first one involved first producing carbon dioxide by pouring boiling water onto dry ice (carbon dioxide in solid form, called dry ice because it doesn't have a liquid phase but turns straight from gas to solid when frozen to very low temperatures). The dry ice then sublimated to produce gaseous carbon dioxide.

then washing up liquid was poured into the tube and captured the carbon dioxide in bubbles, preventing it escaping further into the atmosphere.

This is similar, at least in theory to the methods used to capture the carbon dioxide produced by power plants to prevent the gas adding to global warming. You can read more about carbon capture and storage here. You can read about the drawbacks of the process (not least the fact that it isn't yet commercially viable) here.

The second demonstration involved optical illusions and a plastic model of a rabbit that magically changed shape, but, as they say, you had to be there. It was, sadly for all the bunny fans who read this blog, a demonstration that couldn't be captured on film.

Edinburgh International Science Festival will take place at venues across the city from 23 March - 7 April.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Edinburgh International Science Festival 2013

Edinburgh International Science Festival launched it's programme for 2013 this morning. To commemorate the festival's 25th anniversary, the theme this year is The Future.Three of the strands include events of particular interest for those interested in environmental issues:

Future Foods will explore what we might be eating in the future, with events including Eating Aliens which will discuss whether eating invasive plant species might be the best way of controlling them (including a three course lunch of dishes made using invasive species)

Future Cities will explore possible futures for our urban centres with events including Greening the City in which experts from Gorgie City Farm and Greenspace Scotland explore various ways in which cities can be made more green.

Future Challenges will focus on some of the myriad challenges facing us as the human population continues to expand with events including Water, Water Everywhere which will explore how we will deal with managing our water resources in the future.

 There are events for all ages, many of which are free including:

Forestry DNA Detectives for children over 5 which will explore the science around DNA

Dung Days at the Zoo in which you can investigate, well, dung and learn to identify which animal leaves which type of dung (this event is free, but you'll need to pay the usual entrance fee to get into the zoo)

Patterns in Nature, one of several art exhibitions that will be on show leading up to and during the festival.

And for those who feel that cute and cuddly wildlife such as pandas get too much attention, the Ugly Animal Preservation Society will be arguing the case for the appeal of the aesthetically challenged species. 

Edinburgh International Science Festival will take place at venues across the city from 23 March - 7 April.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Edinburgh International Science Festival

The festival is now over for another year! I've been delighted to have been given free tickets by Clicket and the Edinburgh International Science Festival themselves and the opportunity to blog about the events! You can read my blog posts

on this blog: Climate Change at Edinburgh International Science Festival : Citizen Science : Cape Farewell and Sadhana Dance : Catalytic Clothes and Invisible Worlds : Away with the Birds : Food for Thought : Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange

on Over Forty Shades: DJ Physics : Emotion in Motion

on my website: Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange - Communicating Science

and weekly summaries on the Clicket blog here, here and here.

It's been fun to blog along with: Carrie of Goodbye Magpie : Colin of Radio Cartoonist : Kate of Blur of Woodsmoke and, though I didn't get to meet them: Claire of Crabbit Copy : David of Dundee Physics : Julie Ann of Super Mummy

Today I posted over on my new website about Information Systems for Conservation, a post that originally appeared at the now rarely updated Information Officer Support Group blog and which ties in nicely with the post about Citizen Science.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more!

Climate Change at Edinburgh International Science Festival

I've been blogging from the Edinburgh International Science Festival over the past two weeks, some posts have appeared on this blog, some on Over Forty Shades (here and here) and some on the Clicket blog.

Yesterday, I attended the last event that Clicket gave me free tickets for. This was Richard Wiseman's Beginners Guide to Climate Change. Richard played the part of a complete beginner on the topic as he interviewed Stuart Hazeldine, Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage at the University of Edinburgh. The discussion started by looking at how the climate has changed in geologic time (ie over millions of years) and then moved on to discussing how human influences are massively accelerating the current natural warming of the climate. There was a lot of discussion about how we can reduce the human portion of this climate change and it has to be said that it wasn't particularly optimistic. I was impressed though by the emphasis put on energy efficiency as this seems often to be overlooked in the rush toward technological fixes.

The day before, Stuart Hazeldine had been one of the panel in the Fixing the Planet discussions at the festival. This event was very interesting, bringing up lots of ideas for how we can solve the current climate crisis. I did feel though that having five people on the panel meant that there were more ideas there than there was time to explore them. Topics that came up included:

wave power,
bio-char,
eco-villages where all homes are built to very high standards of low carbon emissions,
emissions taxes,
carbon pricing

It was pointed out that the UK and Scotland lead the industrial revolution and so perhaps have a particular moral obligation to lead the fight against climate change. Scotland in fact looks on target to effectively produce 100% of our power requirements from renewable energy sources by 2020.

Scotland has an advantage by the way in climate terms, because we are surrounded by sea and also benefit from the Gulf Stream (or at least until climate change knocks it out of place) so that our climate is generally milder than you might expect from a country so far north. We have earlier Springs than many other places at a similar latitude, so if you're one of the people from across the ocean wondering at our early spring, that explains part of it, though climate change has been making our springs earlier over the past decade or so and this year's spring has been particularly early.

As ever red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Citizen Science

As many readers will remember, I recently attended the Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange at the Edinburgh International Science Festival. One of the speakers was Chris Lintock of Zooniverse, a citizen science project that uses amateur enthusiasts to classify galaxies. The talk underlined the importance of giving people the right tools to enable them to take part in their chosen citizen science project.

Another citizen science project that is part of Zooniverse, though very different in its focus, is Old Weather. This is a fascinating project that looks at old weather records from Royal Navy ships to put together a picture of past weather patterns. These then give scientists a better understanding of how weather and climate work and hopefully give insight into climate change.

There are lots of citizen science projects out there! It will be no suprise that I'm involved in a number of natural history based citizen science projects:

I record my bird observations on Birdtrack, operated by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) which studies the migratory movements and distribution of all birds in the UK.

I send all my records of wildlife seen in Edinburgh and the Lothians to the Lothian Wildlife Information Centre, who use that information in assessing planning applications as well as in building a general picture of the state of local wildlife. If you're in Scotland you can find out your local wildlife record centre by contact BRISC (Biological Records in Scotland Campaign).

I also send my records of wildlife along the Water of Leith to the Water of Leith Conservation Trust. This information is used to mitigate the effects of developments such as the current flood prevention works.

I'm sure there are many other examples out there! I think citizen science enables people to use their knowledge and skills in a useful way to help research and conservation. So if you have scientific interests, why not get involved with a project!

You may also be interested in my post on my website about information systems for conservation work.

Disclaimer: I was given a press ticket for the Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Catalytic Clothes and Invisible Worlds

Today's event at the Edinburgh International Science Festival was Catalytic Clothing. Professor Helen Storey who is an artist and fashion designer at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion has worked with polymer chemist Professor Tony Ryan to produce catalytic clothing and clothes conditioners. The idea being that wearing these clothes, or ordinary clothes treated with these conditioners, one can catalyse pollutants into harmless chemicals. The idea is very much still in the early stages and so far has only been rigorously tested with nitric oxide which produces nitrates as an end result. These nitrates then wash out of the clothes and into the water supply, which could be a problem (that being one of the issues still being studied and nitrate run-off from agricultural land being a major issue). There was excellent audience discussion facilitated by Professor John Shephard, which centred on issues such as the need to reduce pollution in the first place and the potential side effects of the clothing. I was very impressed by the openness of Professors Helen Story and Tony Ryan in taking their ideas into the world for discussion at this early stage. Not only is this project a very good example of art and science working together, but also a very good example of open research. Whether it will prove to be a genuine environmental solution remains to be seen, but as a concept it is certainly very exciting!


Earlier in the day I had visited the small exhibition of catalytic jeans and kilts in St Andrews Square.


Luckily by this time the sleet, snow and hail had stopped (although it was still very cold) so I was able to enjoy the wonderful Invisible Worlds exhibition, which includes incredibly beautiful images of microscopic nature and immense galaxies. I'd passed it on the bus several times, but it is definitely worth getting off the bus and having a really good look.

Disclaimer - Clicket gave me a free ticket for the Catalytic Clothes event.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Food for Thought!

I went along to the Science on a Plate exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens today.

This beautifully laid out exhibition included photos of people on their allotment gardens taken by Carlo d'Alessandro. Nicely decorated market stalls have displays outlining the importance of plants to our diet and how wild food harvesting can help to preserve biodiversity (presented by the Botanics), crop breeding (presented by the James Hutton Institute), nutrition and health (presented by the Rowett Institute) and sustainable fish (Marine Scotland). The exhibition was hosted by the Botanics' Edible Gardening Project, who also had a stall demonstrating some very crafty ideas on how to recycle plastic household waste (such as margarine tubs and plastic bottles) into garden tools and equipment.

which their volunteers were happy to demonstrate!

They also have a wee quiz where you have to identify the seeds of various garden vegetables, in which I demonstrated I have much to learn!

I then went back into the cold and rain and walked round the outdoor exhibition of Whole Earth Hard Rain, a follow on to the original Hard Rain exhibition which I blogged about here. The new exhibition looks at some of the many environmental issues that face us and some of the solutions too. The centrepiece of the exhibition is the beautiful Tibetan 'People's Pledge' Tent but there were no postcards to write on and the touchscreen pledge facility hadn't yet been set up.

Science on a Plate is part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. You can see the full programme here. The exhibition runs until 15 April.

You can read my first Science Festival blog post for Clicket here (scroll down for my post)

Hard Rain Whole Earth runs at the Botanics until Sunday 1 July.

Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange

Today was my first day at Edinburgh International Science Festival and it started in great style with the inspiring Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange. To be honest, this day was so inspiring I could probably blog about nothing else for several weeks, but I will restrict myself to one fairly long post.

The event celebrated the spirit of the Scottish Enlightenment by bringing together scientists, artists and other creative innovators to share ideas and inspiration on a diverse variety of topics ranging from nuclear waste disposal to the connections between dance and psychology. For me, it was inspiring to see so many people bringing different disciplines together - where art and science can find inspiration from each other, rather than viewing each other in mutual suspicion. Though as a poet and scientist I often think this mutual suspicion is overstated by people who are neither artists nor scientists.

Below are brief notes about the various speakers at the event, just to give a flavour of it!

DISCOVER

Polly Arnold started things off with nuclear waste disposal. A topic we're all probably aware of as being vitally important, but rarely has it been presented in such an engaging way. Polly used wonderful metaphors to describe things, for example comparing the large number of electrons in radioactive elements to pomegranate seeds. She gave some fascinating insights into how the elements of nuclear waste can be separated and transmutated to reduce the problems around disposal.

Following quickly on her heels, Peter Lovat talked about the connections between dance and psychology. Speaking from his own experience, Peter discussed how dance can help people with problem solving, improve memory and how it has been shown to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. He also got everyone in the auditorium on their feet and dancing!





Tilo Kunath talked about regenerative medicine and how induced Pluripoten stem cells (which are made from adult cells rather than embryonic cells) are being researched as an ethical alternative to embryonic stem cells.

CREATE

After a short discussion and a coffee break we were back again with Suzy Glass of Trigger who talked about the importance of allowing yourself to fail along the path to creative or scientific progress. We need space to play and more grazed knees in the playground! She also talked a bit about her work with the residents of the island of Canna, a Scottish island that is facing a real population crisis (only ten people live on the island now). She has worked with a variety of creative people, including musicians who have created soundscapes of the island based on Gaelic songs about birds.

Tommy Perman and Simon Kirby of Found next presented a double act about their work in creating Cybraphon, an autonomous emotional robot that constantly searches itself on the internet then monitors its own emotions which then feed into a constant musical tune and Twitter and Facebook updates. It was fascinating to hear that Cybrophon receives virtual gifts from its Facebook followers after it reports that its mood is negative!

Sabrina Maniscalco then introduced us to the Quantum Circus a collaboration between quantum physicists and circus performers. We saw a clip of the Finnish performance of their musical circus show about Schrodingers cat, which was inspiring most artistically and scientifically, and will be appearing in Scotland in 2013 (duly translated into English!) definitely a show to see!

INNOVATE

To wake us up after lunch we were taken on a (virtual) run around Edinburgh landmark Arthur's Seat by Angus Farquhar of NVA. Their project Speed of Light aims to encourage local people to see the hill in a new light. Runners (many of them novices) wearing suits fitted with LED lights run around the hill in the dark in specially choreographed routes that weave light patterns in the open spaces.

Suitably refreshed we then found out from Gavin Starks about his incredibly ambitious project AMEE which aims to ultimately measure the carbon footprint of everything on earth, which works through tools such as household carbon calculators and embedding environmental sustainability in product design.

Another equally ambitious project is Zooniverse, which was presented by Chris Lintott. This is a huge citizen science project that aims to map the universe using volunteers to study astronomical photos to classify galaxies and to look for weird new features in the universe. It is a real example of how ordinary people can make a real difference to science and how scientists can facilitate the process by giving people the right tools to be able to effectively input data.

INSPIRE

The first speaker in the final session, Steve Blackmore of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh talked about the absolute fundamental importance of plants to life on earth and how we should be taking better care of our green leafy companions.

Subathra Subramaniam then took us to the arctic with Cape Farewell, which brings artists, scientists and young people together to seek inspiration in the arctic and to share that inspiration with others through research, education and artistic works. One of their voyages was filmed as Burning Ice, which I reviewed during last year's Edinburgh International Film Festival here.

Finally Richard Wiseman, magician and psychologist appeared as a surprise guest to reveal the psychological secrets behind some common magic tricks.

*

I also blogged about the event here.

It was lovely to meet Kate of blur of woodsmoke who was also there and blogged her impressions here!

I'll continue to blog about the Science Festival over the next two weeks both here and over on Clicket, where I was delighted to be chosen as one of their seven Science Festival bloggers!

Disclaimer - I received a press ticket for this event.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more!

Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange at Edinburgh International Science Festival

I've just found out I'll be one of the bloggers covering Edinburgh E2 the Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, which is exciting news! It's a full day of talks about innovative ways of communicating about science including creative collaborations between science and the arts. As a botanist by training, I'll be particularly interested in the talk about the continuing value of Botany by Stephen Blackmore the Regius Keeper at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. The most exciting event though has to be the talk by quantum physicists Sabrina Maniscalco and Elsi Laine that will focus on the Quantum Circus project, which uses circus performance to explore quantum mechanics!

The event happens on Saturday and I think there are still tickets left, which can be booked here.