Plastic Pollution - Surprising Rafts for Insects at Sea

Plastic has transformed packaging, improved transportation efficiency, and may be the key to cheaper solar cells, but it also disrupts ecosystems. A recent study has found that tiny plastic fragments dispersed in the ocean have increased around 100-fold in the past 40 years and are providing new places for an insect species to lay its eggs.

Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California studied an area in the North Pacific dubbed the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. While its name comes from its large concentration of plastic debris, this patch is not an island of plastic. Contrary to popular belief, it is not visible from space. It is made up of fragments so tiny that most of the plastic cannot even be seen from a boat.

Nonetheless, even these fragments no larger than a grain of rice pose an environmental threat. They’ve been shown to be toxic for fish and birds and nourish some microbes. Now, the Scripps study has reported insects laying their eggs on them. The insect, Halobates sericeus, is a water skater that lives on the ocean surface. It usually lays its eggs on rare bits of floating driftwood or seashells, but plastic fragments provide plentiful new real estate for this purpose. As lead author Miriam Goldstein explained in a blog post, “… adding all that plastic is providing habitat that would not naturally exist out there.”

Where there is more plastic, there are more eggs, boosting Halobates numbers. The insect eats plankton and is eaten by birds, so it is hard to guess what this boost means for the whole food chain. What is clear though is that our love for plastic is causing unexpected effects for the ecosystem. We are bound to continue discovering these unanticipated ways that plastic is changing our world.

This study was published in Biology Letters and is freely available here

Author - Catie Lichten

Photo Credit: Anthony Smith

Do You Value Yourself ? ?

Too much to do, too little time. 

Even cutting the grass has to go into the Google calendar these days. A recent survey showed that most people cut their own grass when they would be better off employing someone else to do it quicker. What you’re actually saving by doing it yourself is the equivalent of £7.68 per hour. Now, how many of us would choose to work on a Sunday for just £7.68 per hour. Strange, isn’t it?

The same goes for flat pack furniture. When I recently went to pick up a bench seat, two chairs and a table for the garden, I realised that they were either pretty flat or I’d have to build them myself. Not a problem I thought. I had the instructions, the tools and the rest of the day. Fortunately, I also had a tip from the chap who helped me out to the car with the boxes: “If I’m honest Sir, these are a pain to build. I do it all the time. The trick is to keep all the screws loose to the very last minute and then tighten them up in sequence.” He waved me on my way with the same casual manner, I imagined, as an instructor would use with a first time parachute jumper, as they fall out of a plane: “Remember and count to ten and make sure you pull the chord at the right angle or it won’t open.” If only I’d been told this earlier !

As it was, I spent the next five hours building that furniture. My investment in time was, let’s just say, significant. I had devoted an entire Sunday to this when I would have been much better off actually working. And that’s the fallacy of ‘saving money’ by doing tasks you’re not familiar with. Or not valuing your own time.

Cutting the grass is low skill. Building furniture is more demanding. But justifying to HMRC that what you’re doing is eligible under the R&D tax credit legislation is a whole different ball game. Yet we still see people ‘trying their hand’ at making a claim.

Take Lola group, the race car manufacturer which went into administration a few years back now, citing HMRC’s resistance to paying it R&D tax credits as a major reason. One wonders whether Lola was trying to write something it knew nothing about. Was it, in effect, assembling self-build furniture without either the instructions or the specialist knowledge and never having done it before? The result was a claim that obviously wouldn’t withstand scrutiny.

So when comparing Jumpstart with someone else, ask yourself if they’re trying to sell you the flat pack equivalent of a Harrods table.

Author: Brian Williamson

Why So Stripey ? ?

Why do zebras have their distinctive stripes? No seriously...why would evolution endow zebras with such an obvious pattern that provides next to no camouflage in the African savannahs? The question puzzled even our most celebrated biologist, Charles Darwin, who commented, “The zebra is conspicuously striped, and stripes on the open plains of South Africa cannot afford any protection.”

Even to modern day biologists, the question has been perplexing. Perhaps the stripes are a way the females choose their mate? Possibly – many male members of the animal kingdom have bizarre decorations such as brightly coloured plumage or heavy, unwieldy horns that are a clear disadvantage in survival but serve to attract the opposite sex – but that wouldn’t explain why the female zebras also have stripes.

Some animals use patterns and bright colours to act as warnings or camouflage– Researchers have found that when zebra herds move together, their stripes act as a large optical illusion. Any potential predator is momentarily confused, giving the zebras vital seconds to escape their clutches.

However, a group of scientists from Eötvös University in Hungary have found another solution, which is far less glamorous. It seems that the zebra’s intricate barcode pattern acts as one large insect repellent – in particular against horseflies. They found that horseflies are quite particular about where they land to prey. The narrow stripes on the zebra act to break up the hide and alter how the light is reflected off of it. These two factors make the zebra less appealing to the horsefly.

It seems remarkable how evolution can be defined by even the smallest of creatures and how a large creature’s body image can be influenced by a fly no larger than a thimble.

Author - Rishi Ramaesh

The Power of Words

The power of words and their associations influences us in our everyday lives. When your partner is tender, is it because of a session at the gym or the fact they’re looking to get married? When something is cold, is this good news because it’s the temperature below which viruses don’t grow or does cold describe your work colleague who is aloof and unapproachable? And if someone tells you about the cloud that’s coming, do you either rush for an umbrella or jump for joy because you don’t need to buy another server? Yes words are really powerful.

The hard drives within our brain translate the meaning of words according to their context and past experience. As one wise person once told me, sometimes your biggest strength is your biggest weakness. In this case, the biggest strength of our brains is that we’ll always find a meaning for a word or phrase and store that away. Its biggest weakness is that it’s hard to dislodge that meaning and change it… even when blatantly wrong in a different context.

We’re also receptive to words that go together, like bread and butter, horse and carriage, salt and pepper… and Research and Development. This last pairing usually conjures up an image of a white coat, pipette or test tube. But add the unlikely yin of tax credits to the yang of R&D and we get a confusing combination indeed, something akin to curried ice cream or chilli-flavoured chocolate. Our brains don’t accept them so readily. In the case of R&D tax credits, the swinging pendulum of white coat to pinstripe suit, perhaps quite naturally, confuses many companies. 

The golden opportunity though lies in this ‘hybrid’ of the two, which combines a comprehensive understanding of the legislation with a deep and meaningful technical knowledge relevant to the business. Technology and taxation in perfect balance, truly giving you the science behind the numbers.

Our final gem from the world of words involves the use of rhyming. It is proven fact that we remember things much better if they’re in a rhyme. OJ's lawyer was accredited with getting him cleared of a murder charge using the famous phrase: "If the gloves don't fit… you must acquit".

So the next time you’re pondering how technology and taxation can go quite so well together and recover you maximum cash, think: Do you need grey suits or grey matter… Jumpstart's the latter.

Author - Brian Williamson

I Really, Really, Really Very Much Do Love Science…..

Facebook. Keeping us connected in the age of social media….or a good way of wasting time, posting pictures of your dinner, letting people know that you are hungry / bored / tired / drunk (delete as appropriate) and hey, if you’re reading this there is a good chance you got to it through a link on Facebook.

It is also the home to a number of community type pages, which vary from notices from village halls to tennis players posting pictures of their amazingly cute dogs (hello Andy Murray!). A rather popular page is one entitled “I [insert sweary word staring with F] Love Science”, it’s a great page populated by geektatsic jokes, updates on the latest scientific discoveries and some awesome facts and pictures. Now I’m going to come out and say it, I love this page because I too [insert sweary word starting with F] love science.

Who else would grow a real human brain the size of a pea in a lab if not a scientist?!!! Who would grow a nose on a man’s forehead or figure out that from his remains found under a car park that Richard III had worms ? !

This last one is particularly exciting to me (yes I know, geek much) because, in a previous life, before I was a Jumpstart Technical Analyst, I was a parasitologist (in case that isn’t clear – I studied parasites….small animals that live on or in other animals. They. Are. Awesome.).

I am constantly fascinated by these amazing creatures (as some of Jumpstart’s poor directors found at the company BBQ after I had a few beers and regaled them with some of the most disgusting - but fascinating – stories I have about parasites). Did you know that there is a 64ft tapeworm that can live in the human intestine? Or that blood flukes pair up and stay together for life with the female living in a groove in the male’s body (is it just me or is that just adorable?! Just me…ok) or that when Toxoplasma gets into the brain of a mouse it changes the mouse’s behaviour so that it is no longer frightened of cats….making it more likely to get eaten so the parasite ends up in the cat, which is where is always really wanted to be ? !

Well you do now…and we wouldn’t know any of this without science. Doesn’t that just fill you with at least a little awe at the greatness of science?

Author - Charlie Burgess

Tarantula Reality Mirrors Spiderman Fiction

The secret is finally out about how the hairy giants of the arachnid world hang on to vertical slopes. 

Researchers have discovered that tarantulas can, like Spiderman, shoot silk from tiny ‘spigots’ on their feet. The findings, recently published by Claire Rind and colleagues at Newcastle University, appear in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Most spiders handle steep climbs effortlessly thanks to thousands of tiny hairs on their feet, which use molecular forces of attraction to grip even the smoothest surfaces. Tarantulas, however, can weigh over 50g and are too heavy to rely on these hairs alone when climbing. For scientists, it was unclear how the spiders avoid dangerous falls off of steep inclines.

The authors of a study in 2006 found that tarantulas placed on an inclined platform left behind silk footprints. They proposed that the animals might be clinging to the platform by releasing silk from their feet. But another explanation was that the spiders’ feet simply collect silk from rubbing against the silk-producing organs in their abdomens.

Rind’s team solved the puzzle by repeating the test and looking at the tarantula’s anatomy. They too found silk footprints on the platform, but only if they had shaken it enough to make the tarantula slip, suggesting the spider only releases silk when necessary. To locate the silk’s source, they examined spiders’ moulted skin. With electron microscopy, they found taller, nozzle-like structures amid the hairs on the feet, some of which actually had strands of silk emerging from their tips. The observations confirmed that tarantulas can release silk from their feet and the new structures were identified as the silk spigots.

According to Rind, the new findings may fill in gaps in our understanding of how modern silk-spinning spiders evolved. They also make us wonder, which superhero powers will appear in nature next?

Author - Catie Lichten

First posted on 1st June, 2011 - but no less relevant today ! !

A ‘Greener’ Alternative to Green Fireworks

Remember, remember, the 5th of November... because this means Fireworks ! ! But how many of you have ever stopped to consider the environmental impact of these nocturnal displays?

Researchers at the Pyrotechnics Technology and Prototyping division of the US Army have developed new fireworks technology that is both better for the environment and less harmful to its users. At a time when people are becoming ever more conscious of the ‘carbon footprint’ of their everyday lives, it is not surprising to learn that considerable research has already been carried out to develop more environmentally friendly fireworks. Until now green coloured fireworks or flares, such as the handheld signal device used by the US Army, were created using barium-containing compounds.

It has recently been found that barium ores, as a raw material, may contain radioactive radium; barium compounds already pose several health hazards to people who work with them. Barium-free pyrotechnic alternatives have so far, not been very cost effective, and only burned brightly for a short length of time. Boron has previously been studied as an alternative to barium. It produces very bright lights but burns too fast to be useful for its intended purpose.

The group set up a series of experiments where different ratios of boron and boron carbide were tested in comparison to the handheld signalling device used by the army. Boron carbide was chosen due to its potential ability to slow down boron’s fast burn rate. The result was that a combination of boron and boron carbide not only improved the burn time compared to the barium-containing formula used in the traditional hand-held army signalling device, but also proved to have larger luminous intensities. This discovery can therefore be used both by the army and civilians to produce more affordable, environmentally friendly, and less harmful pyrotechnics.

Author - Gwen Wathne

Update - Mark Lear - October 2014