So I know I was meant to talk about plastics in my next post, but I wrote a little something for the internal work magazine and thought I would share it here too... Now, ‘Kale’ us crazy, but at Terrific Scientific we’ve been on a mission to get 9-11 year olds to eat their greens with something called an Exposure study (I promise, it’s not as sinister as it sounds). It seemed an impossible task, but we partnered with Coventry University and asked children at four schools across the UK to eat a bit of kale every day for 15 days. They recorded their reaction to kale every day, ranging from hating to loving it, and we compared their reactions on the first to last day. On the last day, I went into the schools and tested the children’s ‘Taster Status’. Everyone falls into one of three categories: Non-tasters (people less sensitive to bitterness, 25% of population), Tasters (somewhere in between, 50% of population) and Supertasters (people incredibly sensitive to bitterness, 25% of population). Imagine tasting things in pastel or neon, these are the extremes of tasting. We then compared this to their kale ratings and found their opinions had changed! Non-tasters and Tasters showed the most improvement, but Supertasters may have needed more time to get used to the kale. This was a brilliant finding and became the basis of our Live Lesson on 31 January which was broadcast live across the country to primary school children and can now be watched here. We also asked school children across the country to uncover their taster status and send in their results to build a national picture of Supertasters. We’re hoping this is the start of something great for this BBC Learning project, as it’s the first of 10 interactive investigations for 9-11 year olds to do in the classroom. It sounds a cliché, but I never thought I’d be here! I imagined a world of creatives like the BBC would have no room for a nerdy scientist like me. Having recently completed an MSc Conservation & Biodiversity, my background has always been very ‘Biology heavy’. I find this study and those to come incredibly exciting, and only the BBC could pull off something on this scale in such a short amount of time. It's been amazing working with Breakfast and seeing our results on Newsround and even a couple of newspapers! A job aiming to inspire the next generation of budding scientists seems too good to be true, and I’ll always be grateful I’ve had the opportunity to be part of it. For more information on BBC Learning’s new campaign visit the Terrific Scientific website. Teachers, parents and anyone who’s interested can join in the conversation on social media using #TerrificScientific
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It has to be said, insects do not really sound like the most appetising of foods. However, research published this year has suggested that crickets, palm weevil larvae and mealworms may all be more nutritious than beef or chicken. Today is World Edible Insect Day (yes, it has its own day!), aiming to increase the prevalence of insect based foods in western cultures by legalising them and publicising the benefits of eating insects, both to the individual and the environment The study mentioned above aimed to compare the nutritional content in 100g portions of various insects in comparison to beef, chicken and pork, using two different methods.
The first, Ofcom, produced a 1-100 score on levels of energy, salt, sugar and saturated fat, and found no significant difference between the various insects and traditionally farmed meats. The second, Nutrient Value Scores, also took vitamins and calcium content into account, and found a significant difference between the nutrient levels in all insects compared to beef and chicken, with only caterpillars and silk worms losing out to pork. From this, it looks like insects could be the next big health food trend, especially when the WHO are likely to declare on Monday that "bacon and other processed meats cause cancer". Insects are also considered a delicacy in many places and their breeding and consumable yield are extremely efficient, meaning they would cause reduced environmental impact in comparison to beef, for example. So eating them would not only be good for us, but for the planet as well. It has also been argued that there are fewer ethical problems with eating insects in comparison to farmed animals such as cows as there is reduced suffering when they are harvested for food. It is worth noting that the carcinogen story is probably scare mongering from the press as the WHO have not confirmed this yet. However, I might think twice before eating a full English again, and maybe try find a good recipe for fried crickets instead. I have to admit, when I first realised I had a trip to Kew Gardens for my Terrestrial Biodiversity and Conservation module, I was only mildly interested. But over 3 days this week, my preconceptions of Kew and what they did was completely overturned, and I have left this field trip with incredible respect and admiration of the work they are doing to protect plant species across the world. The field trip took us behind the scenes at Kew Botanical Gardens to meet the scientists and learn about the different projects Kew supports globally. We also had the chance to walk around the herbarium (brimming with pressed and dried specimens, some of which were hundreds of years old) and the plant nursery (where curators care for around 33,000 species of plants, growing them for scientific study and for display in the botanical gardens). We visited one of three nurseries, which had plants on the floor, the walls and the ceilings, ranging from huge palms and cycads to tiny water lillies, carnivorous plants and orchids as far as the eye could see (these are apparently a flight risk in the main public Botanical Gardens - some collectors can't get enough). I can honestly say I have never been so excited about plants. Yes, PLANTS. Let me tell you something, there is so much more than meets the eye to those green things we see in our back gardens and countryside. They are INCREDIBLE. Some of the adaptations we learnt about are absolutely spectacular, and just by looking at the photos below, you may get a sense of how biodiverse and beautiful they are and why plants are worth protecting. (Apologies for the lack of species names - alas, I am not a botanist! If anyone reading this is, please comment the names below!) This trip was designed to teach us about the ins and outs of Conservation work, but the main thing which has stuck in my mind is that of the 40(ish) MSc Conservation & Biodiversity students on the trip, I don't think any of us had any clue that a whopping 1/5 of all plant species are threatened with extinction around the world. ONE FIFTH. This ignorance to the peril plants are facing mainly stems from the fact that plant protection isn't really talked about in comparison to Animals. I am guilty of this myself. I usually rant about how charismatic megafauna always gets the attention when we should really be focusing Conservation efforts on those species which are lesser known, but it hadn't crossed my mind that plants have it worse. How naive I and many others are, for of course, no animal can survive without plants first. We heard from experts about the problems this causes with their Conservation efforts. In particular, about a partnership with the Natural History Museum, where Kew conducted a Global Assessment of the state of the world's plants; Plants Under Pressure. It was here that the figure of 1/5 appeared, as well as the concern that over 33% of the estimated 380,000 plant species 'are so poorly understood that we still don't know if they are endangered or not'. No prizes for guessing why plants are dying out: Of course, it's us. Humans. All the effects of Agriculture, Harvesting, Logging, Disturbance, Pollution, Mining and Invasive species (to name a few) are catching up with us and account for 81% of the threats to plant species. Whilst this is incredibly disturbing, our lectures this week taught us about the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, where the main aim is to halt the current and continuing loss of plant diversity globally. So what are Kew doing to combat this? Many things, actually. Here are a few initiatives we learnt about:
Of course, this is no where near the full extent of their work, but it was incredibly inspiring to hear that many of their projects have been successful. There is still a very long way to go to meet targets set for 2020, and this is a little disheartening, but after meeting these experts (who seemed to know everything about every plant ever) I have every faith that Kew will continue to achieve the goals they set themselves in the future. Here's some more photos of the field trip, and please do visit Kew Gardens to support their amazing work. Twitter, Facebook and the world of news today has been outraged at the death of a Lion called Cecil in Zimbabwe, whose fate was sealed when American dentist Walter Palmer paid £32,000 to shoot it with a bow and arrow. The lion in question was 13 years old, lived in Hwange National Park and had a GPS collar as he was part of a study at Oxford University. He was cruelly (and illegally) lured out of the park to be killed by Mr Palmer and his two Zimbabwean hunters who are now facing poaching charges in court. The Metro this morning published photos of Mr Palmer next to Cecil's lifeless corpse, as well as photos of him posing with a dead leopard, white rhino, bighorn sheep and African buffalo. What could possibly drive a person to pay so much and take pleasure in killing such majestic creatures is beyond my comprehension. Mr Palmer had the audacity to state: "I had no idea the lion I took was a local favourite and part of a study until the end of the hunt", although this did not stop him from decapitating Cecil with the intent of keeping his head as a trophy. The fact that a lion (or any animal) is not part of a study should not be a reason to justify its death. Mr Palmer has it so wrong.
The African Wildlife Foundation states that 85% of the African Lion's historic range has already been lost, making them more vulnerable to extinction along with other iconic wildlife such as the black rhino and African elephant. In this particular case it is quite upsetting that Cecil was the alpha male of his pride and the father to 6 young cubs which are now likely to be killed by the remaining males. Infanticide is common in lions to ensure the remaining males are the ones to pass on their genes to the next generation, so Mr Palmer has effectively killed 7 lions in one go. Whilst it is great that this case has got so much media attention, the senseless murder of defenceless animals is incredibly widespread, not only in Africa but across the world. Mr Palmer has had much backlash on his social media pages and is likely to lose a lot of business from his dental practice. Hopefully making an example of this man for demonstrating how wrong the world of trophy hunting is will dissuade others from committing the same senseless, murderous crimes in future. It's National Volunteers' week here in the UK and I thought I'd post about my amazing experiences with volunteering, how rewarding it can be, and hopefully encourage people to volunteer somewhere in their local community. I have been volunteering on quite a few projects over the last few years, starting with my sixth form that encouraged us to volunteer with our community in our free time. I volunteered to read with a group of children that were falling behind at primary school. Seeing these kids develop their reading skills and their self confidence was one of the most heartwarming things I have done and it gave me an interest in teaching which I had never really considered previously. At University, I briefly volunteered with the Conservation society, getting involved in clearing invasive plant species from a local reserve. However, due to my financial situation and schedule, it was difficult for me to carry on as many of the other projects required a fair bit of travel and associated costs. However I really enjoyed being part of a team working to improve local habitats as it was directly associated with what I was studying at the time. In my last year of University, I was lucky enough to become involved with the Learning Volunteer Team at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London - a team I am very proud to say I am still a part of. Although it involved a commute from Southampton to London every weekend, it gave me an incredible opportunity to develop my own knowledge and science communication skills, but most importantly share my passion for Natural History with visitors and hopefully inspire them to research more at home. This volunteering programme is currently celebrating 10 years at NHM, interacting with 982,405 members of the public since the programme started. Each of the 80 volunteers generally works one day a week, bringing specimens out on gallery and interacting with people of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds. The team I work with is incredible; always enthusiastic and super friendly. Volunteering has also given me opportunities I could only have dreamed of. As a child, I spent almost every weekend at NHM London, dragging my mum around all the galleries, developing my knowledge and passion of the natural world which almost certainly influenced my decision to study Biology at University.
Since I joined the Learning Volunteer team, I have been able to attend numerous talks and events with museum scientists, explore behind the scenes and even meet my hero - Sir David Attenborough! I also met Jan Beccaloni, the curator of Arachnida, Myriapoda, Tardigrada and Onychophora, who I began volunteering with in January this year. With Jan, I have mainly been helping to develop the Arachnida collection by incorporating new material from all over the world. In May, I also assisted her with an Introduction to Spiders course which ran in the Angela Marmot Centre for UK Biodiversity. Although spiders aren't necessarily my passion, it has been really eye-opening to learn more about the biology of these incredible creatures and add new material to the NHM collection which already houses over 80 million specimens. My point is, volunteering is amazing! My experiences have very much related to education and biology, but everyone is different, so that's not all you could do in your community. You could help at a local retirement home, at a local youth group or with a campaign for a cause you support. Basically, offering your skills and communicating your passion are at the heart of volunteering. Giving just one day, or even a few hours a week, makes such a difference, not only impacting other people's lives, but developing your own communication skills, your confidence and enriching your life. I have been greatly inspired by those who give their time so freely and have met some incredible people over the years; it is a great chance to socialise with like minded individuals. I would like to finish this post off by thanking the teams I have worked with, especially at NHM London, and thanking all volunteers who donate their time to make a difference in their local communities across the UK - go and celebrate your week! |
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