University of Glamorgan

University of Glamorgan science communication expert, Jon Chase this week engaged The Royal Society in London with his creative brand of communicating science.

The event, one of a select number staged at the Society this year to mark its 350th Anniversary, was titled Is There Anybody Out There? and focussed on the science and culture of astrobiology, the search for life beyond the Earth. Rubbing shoulders with a line-up of world-leading astrobiologists, such as Paul Davies, Martin Rees, and SETI founder Dr Frank Drake (pictured above with Jon at the meeting), Jon performed his now famous Astrobiology Rap discussing man’s search for extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society.

Glamorgan protégé Jon rose to fame when he was commissioned by Professor Mark Brake and NASA to create his Astrobiology Rap, which has had over 250,000 hits on YouTube. Professor Brake said, “I am delighted that The Royal Society has recognised Jon’s innovation and skill in communicating astrobiology in one of their select public engagement events. Jon has a unique and tremendous energy and vibrancy which is a heady fusion of science and rap”.

The Royal Society event is part of a busy 2010 for Jon. Next month he is to star as guest scientist on the new, ground-breaking CBBC science programme Space Hoppers, for which Professor Brake has written the spin-off book. Both scholars, who also played at The Royal Institution in July last year, teach on the University’s MSc Communicating Science, which trains for careers in media, government, and research. The course is now available both full-time and part-time.

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University of Glamorgan Science communication experts are once more at the leading edge of developments in the field this week as a new book, written by Professor Mark Brake, is launched internationally by Palgrave MacMillan in the US.

Revolution in Science, is the compelling story of the two biggest events in the evolution of ideas: the revolutions of Galileo and Darwin. The ideological shifts associated with these upheavals were crucial not only to science. Their impact on society and culture has been equally decisive up to the current century. The book aims to capture the adventure and excitement of these two revolutions – one that overturned humanity’s central place in the universe and another that challenged the very notion of the origins of humankind.

Roy Davies, author of The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime, describes the new book as, “Fascinating. Mark Brake takes a story about the political manipulation of the scientific ideas of Greek natural philosophers by the established church across two millennia and with a facility and style rare among scientists and an acute understanding of the human condition breathes life into the entire fabric. A compelling, thought provoking and inventive narrative.”

And Dr Toby Murcott says, “A fresh, radical, vision of two scientific revolutionaries. Brake’s innovative fusion of Galileo and Darwin is both thought provoking and a good read. At a time when books on Darwin abound, this one stands out from the crowd because the author understands both the science and the politics. Brake has the courage to think anew about two scientific giants, more should follow his lead.”

The book launch continues the excellent work of the University’s science communication team, which is headed up by Professor Brake. Last July, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, the prestigious science journal, with a paper on science journalism. And throughout last year Professor Brake, Reverend Neil Hook, and science rapper Jon Chase, another member of the team, have headlined at public engagement events, including appearances at the Science Museum, and the Royal Institution.

Professor Brake is to have two further books published this year, “Space Hoppers”, with MacMillan and the BBC, and “Really, Really Big Questions about Space and Time” with Kingfisher.

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This Christmas/New Year Doctor Who special is typical Russell T. Davies fare. We have end of the Universe plot decorated with smatterings of Cocoon, Heroes, and Silence of the Lambs. The Doctor and Master become giants, god-like beings, from mythology not sf, doing battle amongst puny humans.

Sometimes I wonder if RTD suffers from a writer’s equivalent of megalomania. Time was that the destruction of planet Earth and the end of humanity was all you needed to create the tension needed for a dramatic, everything in the balance, science fiction adventure. Now it seems that is no longer exciting enough, only the destruction of Time itself (and therefore the Universe) will do. Perhaps because of Global Warming and the real possibility of a nuclear terrorist age the ‘end of the world’ scenario is beginning to look a little bit too every day?

In the classic series the Master was evil but rational. He was to the Doctor what Professor Moriarty was to Sherlock Holmes, something that made the series a bit predictable in the seventies since every plot seemed to have The Master behind it. In the new series he’s become more of a nutter. Understandable, perhaps, given the end of the time lords, but (and here’s the cunning bit) he was always destined to go insane from the day he looked into Untempered Schism) on Gallifrey. His madness, it turns out, is all part of a ruthless plot hatched by the President of the Time Lords to escape their destruction.

The cleverest bit of the whole story, however, was the wonderful twist at the end. It wasn’t The Master or the Time Lords who kill the Doctor. It is gentle Wilfred Mott (played by Bernard Cribbins) who knocks four times and fulfils the prophecy.

RTD plots are fast paced, twisting, turning adventures with occasional emotional pauses. I did wonder if this was something to do with the alleged limited attention span of British television audiences, but I think it is because it helps cover up some the holes in his plotting. For example, the President of the Time Lords is named as Lord Rassilon. Yet Lord Rassilon is a semi mythological figure from Time Lord early history. Perhaps he was somehow brought out of history to lead in the war against the Daleks? And what was the point of Donna being in the story, she didn’t anything, especially die when she started to remember? There are others, but do we really want to be anorak enough to look for them? Actually, sometimes I do, but not this time. This was a great farewell to David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor.

written by Peter Grehan

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The University’s irrepressible Professor Mark Brake, described recently by the Western Mail as one of Wales’ foremost scientists, spoke at Cambridge University this week on the subject of Are We Alone in the Universe? Sharing a platform with professors Monica Grady and Jack Cohen, and doctors Lewis Dartnell and Carolin Crawford, the Prof strongly emphasised the culture as well as the science of the alien life debate.

In a fascinating debate on the topic at The Triple Helix group, Prof addressed an audience of well over 100 on the cultural and scientific aspects of the extraterrestrial life debate. Starting by informing listeners of the importance of the ship as a weapon of discovery for science, Prof went on to lucidly outline the role of the telescope and fantastic literature as great and lasting influences on the ET debate. Professing that the best position on the existence of ET is a sceptical one, the Prof suggested that the aliens are already among us, made flesh by our own creativity. And such has been the power of film and fiction in the C20th, we are now rather loathe to doubt them.

Prof’s appearance in Cambridge is the latest in a year of scoops for the University’s science communication team. In July, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, with a paper on science journalism. And throughout the year the Prof, Reverend Neil Hook, and science rapper Jon Chase, another member of the team, have headlined at public engagement events, including appearances at the Science Museum, and the Royal Institution.

Prof’s next book, Revolution in Science: How Galileo and Darwin Changed Our World is to be published by Palgrave in the United States. He is working on a book, Alien Life Imagined: Communicating the Science and Culture of Astrobiology , for Cambridge University Press.

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It is a classic repeated formula in science fiction, and especially Doctor Who, to isolate the characters in a story.

The Waters of Mars continues this tradition and highlights the difference between how isolating the protagonists in science fiction and, another genre where this technique is used a lot, horror. The isolation allows a stage to be set whereby the protagonists are contained and are forced to do battle with the ‘other’. Both genres isolate to define boundaries and increasing the tension within the story. However, in science fiction the stakes are often increased because the alien threat is to humanity as a whole and the isolation allows this battle to be contained until it is concluded. But the fact that we find human protagonists isolated within a hostile alien environment in so many science fiction texts also suggests a greater metaphorical content.

It is a recurring theme within science fiction often exemplified by the BBC’s Doctor Who series. The Doctor has regularly stumbled into small isolated human communities that include space stations, off world bases, colonies and archaeological expeditions. In isolating the protagonists, science fiction effectively represented humanity’s existence, within the vast hostile universe, as a metaphor of the struggle for long term survival in a post Darwin evolutionary battlefield.

The interesting thing about this story is that we learn early on that the humans on the base are fated to die. “Waters of Mars” shares many of the characteristics with John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). In fact the scene where Andy Stone infects Tarak Ital with the mysterious lifeform could be a direct homage to one of the final scenes from “The Thing.”

In both stories the source of the threat is some form of alien virus. The imperative becomes preventing this infection reaching the rest of humanity. And so we come to another characteristic of the science fiction isolation text, self-sacrifice. The humans in ‘Bowie Base One’ are to make an act of self-sacrifice to defend humanities boundaries against the horrors of the void.

In making “The Thing” John Carpenter wanted to avoid simply remaking Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing From Another World so he returned to John W. Campbell’s original novella that had inspired it Who Goes There? (1938). As a result he produced a more faithful retelling of Campbell’s text as the basis of his film. Consequently many of John W. Campbell’s themes are therefore transferred to Carpenter’s film. Again a small isolated outpost within the hostile Antarctic environment represents humanity within the hostile universe. At the same time they also become a defensive picket line defending humanity from the threat emerging from the unknown. To this end all the humans on the Antarctic base accept the fact that they must die in order to prevent “The Thing” reaching and infecting civilisation.

“Waters of Mars” is, in fact, a highly optimistic episode of Doctor Who. Its message is that the disasters and tragedies that humanity faces should been seen as a sacrificial payment of our growth and development. Perhaps the most significant thing about the “Waters of Mars” is that it highlights the Doctor’s weakness of character in not being able to accept this and his hubris in thinking he has the ability to alter any key events. It is the ‘human’ Adelaide Brooke, played by Lindsay Duncan, who has to teach him humility once more. David Tennant’s superb acting makes this all the more believable. I’ll be very sorry to see him leave the role.

written by Peter Grehan

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Science communication experts at the University of Glamorgan are once more at the leading edge of developments in the field this week as a new book, edited by Professor Mark Brake, is published internationally by Palgrave MacMillan on 6 November.

Introducing Science Communication: A Practical Guide, shows how to communicate complex and controversial scientific issues to the public. The volume also has chapter contributions from Glamorgan academics, Dr Toby Murcott and Reverend Neil Hook. Written and edited by such pioneering and experienced professionals in the field, it is an essential text for students and practitioners learning how to effectively communicate science via today’s media.

Professor Brake, the University’s Professorial Champion for Public Engagement in Science on the Beacon for Wales project, said, “Dr Emma Weitkamp and I are delighted to be editing this new collection which looks at how professional communicators interact with and present science communication in all its guises. We will be sure to feed this latest research back into the University’s MSc Communicating Science, which trains students for careers in media, government, and research”.

The book launch is the latest in a year of scoops for the University’s science communication team, which is headed up by Professor Brake. In July, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, the prestigious science journal, with a paper on science journalism. And throughout the year Professor Brake, Reverend Neil Hook, and science rapper Jon Chase, another member of the team, have headlined at public engagement events, including appearances at the Science Museum, and the Royal Institution.

The book is the first in an Autumn Term publishing double for Professor Brake. In December, his next book, Revolution in Science: How Galileo and Darwin Changed Our World is to be published by Palgrave in the United States.) Professor Brake is also working on books for the BBC, MacMillan, Kingfisher, and Cambridge University Press.

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A few of my friends have seen The Sound of Music at the Wales Millennium Centre recently and have told me that Nuns and later Nazis enter the auditorium and walk to the stage through the audience. The really odd thing is though that it’s the Nuns, not the Nazis, that seem to frighten the children in the audience as they pass.

Is this because they’re more used to seeing Nazis on television, or have more youngsters gone to convent schools than I ever thought possible? Shades of Are You Right Their Father Ted?

written by Frank Sable

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Okay, maybe not on the actual Moon. Can you imagine the headache in terms of University paperwork? Whose budget code is it going to come out of? Which line-manager will sign off the OT1? How long the pre- and post-evaluation forms would have to be. Whether it’s FECd. Whether it has to then be included in the Glamorgan Academic. Whether Europcar will actually do a one-way hire to the lunar sub-station.

By comparison, appearing on BBC Radio Wales to talk about the 40th Anniversary of the 1969 Moon landings is a breeze. And this is what Professor Mark Brake will be doing this week. He is to appear on Science Cafe and another programme which can’t be mentioned right now.

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University of Glamorgan science communication rapper, Jon Chase has been invited by NASA to guest star at a conference at the University of Washington, in Seattle.

NASA’s AbGradCon conference is a gathering of the rising stars in astrobiology, the search for life beyond the Earth. Jon’s trip is the latest in a summer of scoops for the University’s science communication team, which is headed up by Professor Mark Brake. Last month, another member of the team, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, the prestigious science journal.

Jon Chase commented, “It’s a great privilege to be invited as a guest speaker to NASA’s AbGradCon. At Glamorgan, we engage with people through a blend of science and the imagination, working hand in hand to help with creativity. I hope that delegates at the NASA conference get to understabd what popular culture, especially hip hop, has to offer in the communication of astrobiology”.

Glamorgan protégé Jon Chase rose to fame last year when he was commissioned by NASA to create his Astrobiology Rap, which has almost a quarter of a million hits on YouTube. In June, at the UK’s science communication conference in London, Jon performed his unique fusion of rap and science to an enthusiastic audience of key stakeholders, including Sir Roland Jackson, Chief Executive of the British Science Association, and Clare Matterson, Director of the Medicine, Society and History division at the Wellcome Trust. And on July 4, Jon rapped at the Royal Institution in an appearance with Professor Mark Brake (as pictured above).

Jon is both a graduate and now a scholar associated with the University’s MSc Communicating Science, which trains for careers in media, government, and research. The course is now available both full-time and part-time.

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University of Glamorgan science communication experts, Jon Chase and Professor Mark Brake, are to star at the Royal Institution this Saturday, 4 July, using science and hip hop music to creatively explore ways in which film and fiction has helped us imagine the future.

The event, to be staged in the world-renowned Faraday Lecture Theatre, is the latest in a summer of scoops for the University’s science communication team, which is headed up by Professor Brake. Last week another member of the team, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, the prestigious science journal.

Glamorgan protégé Jon Chase rose to fame last year when he was commissioned by Professor Mark Brake and NASA to create his Astrobiology Rap, which has had over 247,000 hits on YouTube. And only last week, at the UK’s science communication conference in London, Jon performed his unique fusion of rap and science to an enthusiastic audience of key stakeholders, including Sir Roland Jackson, Chief Executive of the British Science Association, and Clare Matterson, Director of the Medicine, Society and History division at the Wellcome Trust.

Professor Brake said, “Jon and I are delighted to be helping out the Royal Institution for one of their public engagement events. Jon has a unique and tremendous energy and vibrancy which is a heady fusion of performance and pedagogy”. Jon Chase commented, “When we engage with people, they get to see how science and the imagination work hand in hand to help with creativity. We hope that participants get to explore what popular culture, especially through hip hop, has to say about how science and technology have helped shape our views of the world”.

The Royal Institution event is part of a busy summer for Jon. Later this month he is to travel as guest speaker to NASA’s AbGradCon conference in Seattle, where his astrobiology rap will be a main feature.

Both scholars teach on the University’s MSc Communicating Science, which trains for careers in media, government, and research. The course is now available both full-time and part-time.

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Director of The Age of Stupid, Franny Armstrong, could have treated the complex subject of global warming as a conventional documentary, something that she had planned to do, but the final product was left without the necessary impact that she needed to get the message across. So she did what science fiction writers have been doing for decades, she created a dystopic future, one where our current behaviour is extrapolated forward in time resulting in a doomed humanity facing certain extinction.

In the film a lone archivist of human history, played by Pete Postlewaite, is collecting together interview, news and documentary clips in order to transmit an explanation to any alien intelligence as to how a formerly bountiful and biologically diverse planet Earth could suddenly become so bleak and desolate. The film becomes the result of his work and, as the audience, we take on the role of the bemused ‘aliens’ trying to come to terms with why any ‘intelligent’ species could do that to themselves. This is precisely what science fiction is able to do, to make us look at the world we take for granted in a different and revealing way. It is what Darko Suvin, the academic and critic, describes as ‘cognitive estrangement’ and is something that allows us to create an alternative imagined frame of reference from which to view a subject, such as Global Warming.

London in The Age of Stupid

This technique of presenting a serious topic from the view point of it being too late to do anything about it is far more effective in terms of impact regarding long term effects because it puts us there! Human beings have evolved, like most animal species, to be opportunists constantly on the lookout for quick and easy meals. At the same time most of our politics works on short term goals, constrained and focused by the next election. We find it very difficult to look at the long term consequences of our behaviour therefore, even when these will have a disastrous effect on future generations.

By presenting us with a dystopic future Age of Stupid follows in the traditions of other texts that warn of complacency like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (surveillance technology), John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (pollution), William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants (corporate power). The question is will we listen to this warning and save the world or will we remain too selfish and lazy to save ourselves when we have the chance?

The Age of Stupid, reviewed by Peter Grehan

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University of Glamorgan MSc Communicating Science lecturer Dr Toby Murcott has scooped the front page of Nature, the prestigious science journal.

The theme of the current issue of Nature is The Media on Science and is organised to coincide with the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists which will be held in London next week.

Toby was invited to write an essay for Nature on science journalism – which appears in the current issue.

In it he discusses the role of science journalism and the need for scientists and journalists to work together to ensure that science is reported accurately. He also argues that science needs to open up if journalists are to provide proper critique.

Toby who, lectures on science journalism on the MSc Communicating Science course, is also a writer, broadcaster and former Science Correspondent for the BBC World Service. He said, “There is a danger that science journalists can be seen as just translators of complex scientific research, or even cheerleaders for science. Its essential that we also put science into the wider context, its importance in society and offer intelligent criticism of science itself. We need to tell the world about how science works, not just the results it produces.”

Professor Mark Brake who leads the course added, “It’s really great for the students on our course that they can benefit from the expertise of a professional who is held in such high esteem by both the scientific and media communities.”

Later this year, Palgrave MacMillan are to publish the latest textbook in the field, Introducing Science Communication, edited by Mark Brake, and in which a chapter on broadcasting science is written by Toby Murcott.

For further information on the MSc in Communicating Science visit http://www.glam.ac.uk/coursedetails/685/585

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Professor of Science Communication, Mark Brake, is to speak at the Science Museum in London next week on the topic, The Physics of the Impossible.

The event, at on Wednesday 27 May, is also notable for the presence of physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku whose non-fiction book of the same title explores the theoretical physics of topics typically constrained to science fiction. The event is to be held at the Dana Centre, a public engagement venue for contemporary science debate, run largely by the Science Museum.

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On the evening of Tuesday 7 April, two of the University’s finest, Professor Mark Brake and Reverend Neil Hook, delivered a lecture at the world-renowned Faraday Theatre at London’s Royal Institution.

The lecture featured the role of fiction and the imagination in the development of science since the scientific revolution. Brake and Hook have written two books on the subject, namely Different Engines and FutureWorld.

The lecture, like the books, looked at the relationship between science and science fiction since their co-emergence in the seventeenth century. Since then, the speakers suggested, science fiction represents a proud tradition as a sustained, coherent and subversive commentary on the promises and pitfalls of science. And in their turn, invention and discovery have forced fiction writers to confront the nature and limits of reality.

The RI’s public engagement team were very pleased with the lecture. Indeed, Professor Brake has been invited back in June, when he’ll be showcasing the University’s Rap Science initiative with colleague Jon Chase.

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Another superb review of the latest episode of The Doctor from Peter Grehan…

In Planet of the Dead we see the Doctor marooned, once again, inside a bus that is stuck in the middle of a hostile alien environment. The Writers, Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts acknowledge this vague similarity in plots by having the Doctor ask why he is always being blamed for the cause of problems on buses for humans.

In this story however we see a group of humans being dramatically and unexpectantly ripped from a relatively safe and familiar environment into an alien desert that is devoid of life. The desert is the great threatening void of science fiction that requires a personification. In this case the alien ‘Swarm’ that devours whole planets; plants, animals, water and minerals and leave lifeless deserts in their place.

Partly inspired by Pitch Black, this story actually goes one step better in that it creates a mechanism to explain how such a life form could sustain itself after it had consumed everything. The Swarm in Planet of The Dead has a means of creating a wormhole to move onto their next meal, in this case planet Earth.

This creates an interesting transposition. What starts off as a simple ‘let’s get back home’ story rapidly turns into the whole of planet Earth being threatened. The Doctor acts as scout and observer for Unit scientist Professor Malcolm Taylor to work on closing the wormhole.

But the real transposition comes in the removal of what cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan calls ‘Home Space’. Tuan argues that space can be divided up into three main categories, ‘Homeplace,’ in this the interior of the bus, Home Space, for this story London and Earth as a whole and Alien Space which is the alien desert the bus passengers find themselves in. ‘Home Space’ and ‘Alien Space’ have become transposed. ‘Alien Space’ is now just outside ‘Homeplace’, while ‘Home Space’ is many light-years away.

I rather liked the Tritovore, the anthropomorphic fly species that provide the joke that the only thing can find in a desert are flies, even if they are highly intelligent, highly moral star traveling flies. I can forgive the creation of yet another alien species of humans with animal heads on for the sake of this clever joke, but was a pity they had to be killed off so gratuitously rather than be helped to escape the way the Doctor has helped fellow shipwrecked travelers in the past like the Rills in Galaxy 4.

This was a very entertaining episode and I look forward to the next special.

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