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.

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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!

Craighouse Update

I went today to the developer's exhibition showing their proposals for the old Napier University Craighouse campus development. I was relieved that it looks as though it isn't going to be anywhere near as bad as I had been lead to expect. (You can read my concerns here).

New build housing will cover 4% of the site, this is 4% too much, but it's much less than I had been lead to believe. The woodlands will thankfully not be built on and public access to these woodlands will be maintained (or are the developers here making a promise they won't be able to keep?). Car parking will be mostly restricted to the existing car parks or will be hidden away, in some cases underneath the housing. There are likely to be fewer cars once the site becomes housing, compared to how many were there when it was a University.

A real area of controversy is that some of the housing will be built on the old orchard. The representatives of the developers today said to me that all the trees in the orchard are either dead or very nearly so and that it isn't really an orchard any more. I'm not sure that that would be true, old and in fact dead trees have a real ecological value. Having said that, looking at the plans the orchard is at the edge of the site and having housing there is less intrusive than it would be if it were built right across the open space. Also the developers are going to plant a new orchard, though of course those trees will take years to reach maturity.

The other real issue is that the entire site is designated in the Edinburgh City Local Plan as Open Space and/or Area of Great Landscape value, and therefore any new-build on the site is contrary to the Local Plan. If the local council gives planning permission for this development, it sets a dangerous precedent for future developments on our open spaces.

In an ideal world certainly, the development would be restricted to renovating and converting the existing historical buildings. So far however, no-one has come up with a financially feasible way to do this. Given that we live in an imperfect world, perhaps the current proposals are the best we can hope for? Or do we want to wait for a perfect proposal, which risks in the meantime allowing all the historical buildings to fall into decay such that they can then never be refurbished?

If you're concerned about the proposals, please go along to the exhibition between 10-4 tomorrow at Old Craig on the campus site. Have a good look at the plans and ask the developers some questions. Get involved and have your say!

Shadows over the Future of Craighouse

Napier University recently sold Craighouse Campus to property developers, Mountgrange Real Estate Opportunity Fund. The developers now own the campus grounds; the woods and the hill itself.

The developers plan to turn the Grade-A listed buildings into flats (which is not necessarily a problem) and controversially to build 3-storey new housing across the orchard (a designated Open Green Space of Great Landscape Value in a Conservation Area), 3 to 4-storey blocks around the site and a very substantial new-build development across a large area of Open Green Space, mature woodland and Nature Conservation Site.

The proposed destruction of green space and woodland along with the pressure from 200 new households in terms of traffic, schools and carparking across this beautiful site led to the formation of Friends of Craighouse Grounds & Woods.

Crafty Green Boyfriend and I today wandered round Craighouse and the nearby Easter Craiglockart Hill. The woods were alive with birds, as well as the most common woodland birds we saw bullfinches and greenfinches and heard great spotted woodpeckers. I also took these photos of the area that stands to be impacted by the inappropriate development.

If you live in Edinburgh (or even if you don't!) and care about the future of this wonderful woodland area and historical site, please join Friends of Craighouse Grounds and Woods before we lose yet another green space that's vital for wildlife and people alike. You can see photos of the groups protests here. If you can, also go to the exhibition of the plans (short notice I know, sorry!):

■Friday 30 March. 2-8pm. Boroughmuir RFC, Meggetland Sports Pavilion
■Saturday 31 March. 10-4pm Old Craig

for Shadow Shot Sunday

Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins

Most of the stories in this brilliant book are gritty urban realism and so I've reviewed it on Over Forty Shades.

However the title story fits right in with the themes of this blog and is such a lovely story it deserves a blogpost to itself.

Three Ways of the Saw is a meditation on the felling of a storm damaged locust tree, told from the perspectives of: the ageing owner of the house and garden where the tree grows; the tree surgeon just approaching middle age and the young apprentice tree surgeon.

The parallels between the ageing tree and the ageing house owner are obvious but beautifully drawn.

I grab the bottle of oxycontin and go to the picture window where I can look out over the front porch at what's left of my honey locust. Used to be that almost every day when I cam home from the paper mill I'd sit on the porch swing for a while and watch its thorny, green branches sway in the wind or its snow covered skelton hunkering down beneath the flat winter sky. Trimming the thorns off the trunk and otherwise keeping an eye on it had been my habit ever since I planted it thrity-three years ago to grow into blocking out the transformer and telephone pole behind. But there was more to it than fixing a bad view. There is what we decide to take and what we can give back. There is the grind of the mill and the sulfur stink of stripped logs being processed down to slurry, and there's the trees I've planted on this deep lot, one for each year here, the first of them all now halved and dying in the middle of my front lawn.

The reader knows that the homeowner has little time left to him and that his wife will soon be left alone. The futures for the other two characters are less certain, will the tree surgeon keep his health and continue to work in an understanding way with trees? Will the apprentice learn to love the trees and to see tree surgery as more than just a job or will he prefer to spend his time getting drunk with his friends?



Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins published by Atticus Books.


Reviewed for Brighton Blogger's Reading Challenge 2012.


You can read my latest post on Green Books on Brighton Blogger's Book after Book blog.


There's also another interesting article about greening the publishing industry here.

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

National Spring Clean

Anyone who cares about the environment at all must be concerned about the amount of litter. How often do you go for a nice wander through the woods or the hills only to find drinks cans in the heather and trees decorated with bags of dog poo? In many areas of our towns and cities, the situation is much worse. Then there's the effect of litter on our waterways and oceans. (the Midway project is a powerful exploration of these problems).

So Keep Scotland Beautiful are running the National Spring Clean through April and May. They hope that 200 000 people will join in this year and volunteer to clean up their local area. This offers an ideal team building and corporate responsibility opportunity for your company or organisation! Your staff or members could get to know each other while doing something really worthwhile and cleaning up a local area. To find out where your nearest litter pick is, you can visit this handy interactive map. I'll be picking litter every week, as I always do, along the Water of Leith. The Water of Leith Conservation Trust runs river clean ups every spring. You can find out more on the volunteering page of their website.

I've also blogged about this over on my new blog here.

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

Few Flowered Leeks

I walked along the Water of Leith this morning, a wonderful spring day with lots of birdsong. I spotted a pair of dippers who looked as though they had found a nest site on a pretty bend in the river and a pair of dunnocks that were dancing together.

The few flowered leeks are now in bloom and quite an odd looking bloom it is too! Gabrielle had asked for a close up shot, so here are a couple!




The leaves can be picked and eaten as salad or in sauces (but please note thatlots of dogs run around the Water of Leith and you must wash the leaves thoroughly before eating). Apparently these plants taste very different from the wild garlic, which is not yet in bloom so I'll post a close up of that flower in the next week or so!

For Nature Notes

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.