I loved maths since I was a kid, and the idea of being able to write equations that could predict reality really appealed. Then I discovered that computers could do maths better than I could!
I started off writing simple computer games, with simple built in physics equations using a Sinclair ZX81. My ideas became real on the screen. Later, I advanced to writing simulation programmes for magnets, and optics.
Computers gave me the opportunity to create new ways of exploring, as my career progressed I became more interested in understanding the human brain. After degrees in psychology and medical physics I’m now in a computer science department trying to understand how our brains work mathematically, and using these insights to build smarter technologies, like robots.

What is your research focus?

I coordinate a big EU robotics project, building socially aware companion robots. We use ideas from biology all the time – the biological world has had millions of years of evolution to come up with really good solutions to hard problems – and we should use these where we can.
In the past I’ve been able to use maths to predict new types of optical illusions – nature’s magic tricks – and as a hobby magician I loved that. I also spend a lot of my time trying to inspire school children about the excitement of research in science maths and computing, through my projects like computer science for fun and the magic based illusioneering project.

How do you think ICT should be taught?

Computing is a relatively new subject, so it’s not surprising we are having some teaching troubles… I’ve been involved in [the curriculum review] behind the scenes; the problem with some ICT classes is that they can make computing dull – it’s about using existing tools rather than the wonderful creative skills of being able to build new and better software.

We should be allowing our next generation the chance to meet those moments in their lives where they too can discover how to create something new. The reality is far more complex, where will the teachers come from with the skills to do this? How do we ensure the best and important parts of ICT are not lost?

What advances do you imagine in computer science in the next ten years?

Computer science will continue to be the main driving force in new products and underpin advances in science and medicine, it will also allow the creation of new forms of art and entertainment. The importance of understanding the human user’s experience, rather than just writing good code, will become more important.

The next 100 years?

Always hard to predict, my best shot will be that we will see more computing devices built into our homes, cars, clothes, and even our bodies. Humanity will link and then blend with artificial intelligence. In the same way as we look back on history and wonder how we lived without glasses, penicillin, telephones and the printing press, in 100 years we will wonder how we lived without personally customised medicines, smart clothes with built in sensors, and adaptive smart buildings to minimise energy use.

This bizarre sounding collection of equipment was an invention borne out of necessity. When scientists at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich could no longer see what they needed down an optical microscope, they put their ingenuity to the test and came up with a rather home-made looking contraption. When they can’t see what they need to down a microscope, this experiment allows them to hear down it instead.

The world’s smallest ear is actually the product of long and drawn out research, led by Jochen Friedmann. Their work, published this month in Physical Letters, shows how trapping gold nanoparticles means they can use them as tiny ‘ears’ to hear the movement of objects down to the cellular level.

The common method of using optical tweezers – radiation pressure from a laser – to twist and manipulate nano objects was suggested as a new way of holding the gold nanoparticles in place. The ‘ear’ was only 60 nanometres wide which, to give you an idea, is about the size of a pea, if the pea were the size of the Earth. This static ‘ear’ will only move if nudged by movement nearby, which means it can be used to measure fluctuations in its environment, fluctuations like an acoustic wave.

Alexander Ohlinger and his colleagues used a two stage process to develop the ‘ear’. “First, we validated the basic principle using a relatively strong sound source,” group leader Andrey Lutich explains. “In the second step we were able to detect significantly weaker acoustic excitations.”

The scientists first glued a tiny tungsten needle onto a loudspeaker, and then used this to agitate the gold particles, by sending sound waves towards them. Friedmann could detect the movement of the particle using a darkfield microscope and an ordinary digital camera, to show the particle moved parallel to the sound wave propagation.

Next, they trapped one gold nanoparticle in amongst a group of other ‘free’ particles and heated them with a green laser. It was found that these particles emitted tiny vibrations towards their static counterpart, which could be used to build a 3D image of the object at a nanoscale.

The unprecedented sensitivity of the world’s tiniest ear – it can hear sound a million times quieter than you or I could – means a whole new wealth of information will be available to us about cells, bacteria and viruses (which  we could never have imagined just from viewing them down a microscope). In particular we will be able to ‘see’ into areas where light conditions make use of an optical microscope impossible.

However, as the experiment stands, it is only a concept which works in controlled laboratory environments, and it would need to be significantly refined in order to be used as a medical tool.

Before we delve into the science of religion, we have to ask ourselves three basic questions: why do people believe in religion? Why do people disbelieve religious claims? What is the relationship between science and religion? Due to the rise in scepticism, the floodgates to critically examine religion have now been opened.

Biblical criticism in the western world has only recently become acceptable.  Criticising the Qur’an is still cloaked in controversy as many fear retribution. But even when supernatural claims, such as the Shroud of Turin, are scientifically debunked (according to scientific evidence it was a forgery from the fourteenth century), thousands of people still flock to see the it. What makes people reject rational evidence in favour of their beliefs?

Paul Kurtz, often labelled as the father of secular humanism, describes the phenomenon as “transcendental temptation”. Kurtz explains that it’s a “temptation to believe in things unseen, because they satisfy felt needs and desires”. Kurtz argues that powerful psycho-socio-biology plays a key role in transcendental temptation.

If transcendental temptation is often described as a powerful force, how are people able to resist submitting to it? Jennifer Toes, a second year biology student and a campaigner for secularism, says: “People become atheist for different reasons. I understand religious beliefs are comforting and that is why so many people are reluctant to let go of them, and face the reality that there may not be a plan for us.” She goes on to say: “This is something that I feel conflicted about. It’s a harsh reality to face. It’s something I wonder about for the future, if I have children and need to explain to them some aspect of human tragedy, what exactly would I say?”

Yet, is science and religion mutually exclusive? “No” argues genetics undergraduate Bahga Mohamud. “Some religious people choose to reject science all together, but they clearly don’t speak for all of us. I am a Muslim and a scientist; I don’t have to choose to be one or the other. As long as people remain open minded, I don’t see a problem.”
The relationship between science and religion is a complicated one, but it has developed a new area of research.  A recent study from The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)found a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men. Professor Jostein Holmen, one of the authors of the study, encourages research into the possible health benefits of religion. “The fact that churchgoers have lower blood pressure encourages us to continue to study this issue. We’re just in the start-up phase of an exciting research area,” he said.

A smoker finishes his cigarette, enters a café and sees a packet of cigarettes above a cubic napkin dispenser. The smoker orders his panini, sits down at a table with a similar dispenser, and feels an urge to smoke. What is going on inside this smoker’s brain?

A recent study by Marianne Little and Ingmar Franken, published in BMC Neuroscience, discovered smokers can often associate geometrical images with smoking images, and the sight of geometric images alone can elicit cigarette cravings. Furthermore, smokers’ brains respond electrophysiologically to these geometrical images – showing motivational attention signals.

Smokers are known to associate smoking with smoking-related stimuli- like the sight of a cigarette pack- or with sounds, images and smells which are around at times when they smoke.

Several studies have shown that, in these conditions, smokers show increased physiological reactions, like heart rate and skin conductance, and report higher levels of cigarette craving than when the associated stimuli are presented alone. This type of association is called classical conditioning.

This latest study, performed at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, pushed smoking-related conditioning studies even further, using electroencephalography to study the brain activity of 30 smoker and 31 non-smoker students. The researchers found that both smokers and non-smokers brains’ responded more to smoking-related images than to neutral ones. Even though smokers showed larger event-related potentials, specifically P3 components (which are thought to reflect enhanced motivated attention to the stimuli presented), this result shows that, in general, smoking-related stimuli captures more attention than neutral ones.

During the conditioning task, the students learnt to associate two different geometric images with either a smoking-related image or a neutral image. Crucially, only the smokers’ brains showed large P3 amplitudes when presented with the geometric image previously associated with the smoking-related one. Furthermore, the smokers reported more cue-elicited cravings when these images where presented.

Marianne Littel explains that these results suggest smokers have an enhanced ability for drug-related ‘associative learning’ compared to non-addicts. However, she continues: “When the experiment was continued the differences between smokers/non-smokers were lost. This may indicate that second order conditioning is transient or simply that the participants lost interest and concentration.”

Smoking-related conditioning studies explain why quitting smoking involves more than just resisting the physiological addiction responses to nicotine. Smoking, as well as other drug-related behaviours, recruits areas in the brain normally involved in learning and memory, behaviours that are needed for survival. What these studies show is that environmental stimuli, and contexts, account for the brain related side of addictions, which many drug quitting treatments attempt to help with, and  they could help explain relapses.

Nonetheless, the book is intriguing. Dividing the astronomical data, which can become dry and tedious, are segments of narrative, lending emotional weight to the analyses that follow. This, coupled with a focus on the scientists and their methods, leads to a more personal tone.

Overall, as a short book, it is certainly worth reading. With facts that relate to our everyday lives, Aughton presents a fresh, well-structured account of man’s ingenuity and timeless fascination with the stars.