Amazing science in the world around us

National Science and Engineering Week is over, but that doesn't mean emerging, exciting science stories are over too. I've been involved in one or two events this week so I'm just managing to catch up on the science news headlines from the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/) and its incredible how advanced modern life has become- from 3D printing of human face parts to bionic 'cyborg' limbs, I find it hard to comprehend this kind of technology (even though my school days weren't that long ago)! To think that we live in an age when faces can be reconstructed by simply being printed off before our very own eyes is unbelievable. But it is true, and it's true because of the efforts of scientists and mathematicians and engineers continually trying to develop our world and make it a better place for us. How cool is it to think we are alive NOW when all this is happening? In the late 1980's DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) fingerprinting was used for the very first time to capture a criminal, the murderer Colin Pitchfork. This all happened around the time I was born, and since then DNA fingerprinting has moved leaps and bounds in it's development, meaning the identification of people nowadays can be made much quicker and by using tiny amounts of DNA of between 100 to 1000 base pairs (DNA building blocks). To put this into context, the gene for ginger hair (MC1R gene) has nearly 90 million base pairs! These developments help to make the world around us a safer place to live, knowing that criminals will be caught, but also offer hope to those who may have lost loved ones in past conflicts. In fact only this weekend it emerged that 10 soldiers who died during World War I had been identified using modern day forensic DNA analyses, allowing families to close the chapter on their relatives last moments. What else will scientists and engineers discover or create in this world (or other worlds?) whilst we are alive? What discoveries will you make?

Nottingham's ScienceGrrl first meet and greet

What a fantastic turnout of people at the first ScienceGrrl meeting at Nottingham! Lots of exciting opportunities and events coming up in the Nottingham areas over the coming months. First one for the diary is Science@Sutton Bonington on Saturday 22nd March! See you all there!

It's National Science and Engineering Week!

Wow- this week is busy busy. I had an amazing time at Science in the Park on Saturday, meeting lots of young, aspiring scientists. It never ceases to amaze me how inquisitive the young(er) mind is, especially when I think about how I was as a young person, taking the world in and wondering what lay ahead for me. I should be heading out to East Leake Academy this week too, and also have an appointment with some ScienceGrrl's at Univeristy of Nottingham on Thursday and then giving a talk at Science@Sutton Boningtonon Saturday. Sometimes it's hard fitting the day job in, buts it's all worth it.

So what's everyone else up to this week? I like talking about my job and how I ended up here, so that's what I'm mostly going to be doing. Hopefully it might inspire someone else to consider a career in sciences. I've moved around a bit to be honest, from forensics to pharmaceuticals to food sciences, buts it's been a natural progression and I've followed what's interested me. I love the gut (sounds a bit wierd) but I'm fascinated about how it knows what nutrients we need for our bodies to function. It's an awesome world in the gut, in the intestinal tract! It's why I spent 4 years looking at it and growing it in the lab - a conversation for another time maybe. But it's why I'm currently working for a company in Nottinghamshire that investigates the gut and the food we eat. I like food, so science projects that combine food and the gut are great for me to get involved with. What else do I enjoy? What do you enjoy? What's around the corner for us? Hmmm....

Back in the UK, ready for Science in the Park

I had a really useful time at the 3rd International Conference on Food Digestion in The Netherlands this week. I heard about fantastic research, met great scientists and world experts, and came back with my head full of new ideas and possibilities.

Now, today, I'm preparing for a Saturday event I really love called 'Science in the Park'. It's an annual FREE festival of science for the whole family held at Wollaton Hall in Nottingham (also famous as Batman's house -- it was there that the scenes at Bruce Wayne's home were filmed for The Dark Knight Rises).

In my spare time I'm Secretary of the Nottinghamshire branch of the British Science Association, The BSA, and we've organised the Science in the Park festival for families and science lovers for the past six years. Tomorrow's event runs from 11am to 4pm at Wollaton Hall, across the road from The University of Nottingham's main campus, University Park. If you live nearby, come along! Here's a map: http://goo.gl/bbp0dh

This month I'm celebrating a year at the food and ingredients research company where I work, Eminate Ltd. It's been an incredible year in general. That's part of the reason I'm starting my ScienceJennie blog. I want to share some of the things I'm discovering, about science, my subject, and life!

In the past year I've completed my PhD and passed my viva (the face-to-face exam testing me on my doctoral thesis) and I'm working on some amazing projects. For Science in the Park, I'm taking most of the Eminate team to Wollaton Hall with me.

We'll be giving visitors the chance to try up to several real-life experiments related to food. We're calling it 'Science of the Bake' to show that every time you bake and make food, you're doing science!

 

If you like 'The Great British Bake-Off', you'll enjoy diving a bit deeper into bread for 'The Great British Yeast-Off', another set of experiments looking at what yeast is and how it works. Another experiment looks at the chemistry of cupcakes. It'll investigate all the clever processes that ingredients that go into gorgeous cupcakes.

Also, do you know what milk is? I mean, do you know what it really is, how it works and what the point is of separating curds and whey? That will be one of our experiments, called 'Micellar Milk'. We'll also show how to make rainbows in milk (yes, really!) along the way learning about things called surfactants and emulsifiers.

Come and meet us there and have a go. Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/NottsBSA

In case you can't come, I'll put pictures and more information up here next week. Also follow @sciencejennie on Twitter, here https://twitter.com/sciencejennie

An adventure to The Netherlands

So here I am, about to travel to my 6th conference to a town called Wageningen in Holland. I'm quite excited, travelling alone, just me and my poster. I'm armed and at the ready with business cards and a list of people I want to track down to talk to about perhaps working together in the future, or now. I've never been overseas on my own before so my trip is tinged with a few anxieties, the usual "will I get lost" or "what if I catch the wrong train". But I'm sure I'll manage, I am, after all, 28 years old and big enough to look after myself. Of course, the event should be exciting, 3 days jam-packed with presentations given by the 'celebrities' of the food digestion world. All new to me though; my background is forensics and then pharmaceutics, but since starting my new role in March last year in a food, feed and ingredients company in Nottinghamshire, I've loved every minute of exploring ways to improve the nutrition of an expanding world, an ageing world, a starving world. Discussing ways of how scientists might be able to tackle obesity before it's too late. Discussing how cancers could be diagnosed more quickly to improve survival rates. It's an early start to catch the 7am flight in the morning, but it's going to be worth every minute of it!