The 2015 Davis Cup Final

Slightly off topic, but today Britain achieved the seemingly impossible. The GB Davis Cup team lead by Andy Murray and Coach Leon Smith beat Belgium 3-1 to win the Davis Cup Final. Young Kyle Edmund (20), world number 100  made his debut, surprisingly comfortably taking the first two sets of Belgian's number one, David Goffin, although he actually went on to loose in five sets. Nonetheless, the Davis Cup was just an amazing experience for an up and coming tennis player, whatever their nationality. Thankfully, the Murray Brothers conquered Steve Darcis and David Goffin in four sets to set up an unbelievable opportunity. Team GB had to win just one match on the final day to become Davis Cup champions - and they did.

One thing's for sure is that this was a far cry from five years ago, on the brink of relegation to the bottom tier of the competition and playing in tiny venues across the world - most not even televised. Congratulations Team GB!

How do scientists classify animals?

They use the binomial system. Every animal has a Latin name.

Every animal or species belongs to a:

• Kingdom
• Phylum
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus
• Species

Take the domestic cat for example, it’s Latin name is Felis Catus. The first section, in this case is Felis – this is the genus. The second section, Catus, is the species. These are then combined to give the Latin name of Felis Catus. Your first question may well be, why bother? But this is a great way for scientists to combine their thinking and get over the issue of different languages internationally.

#SciSparksAdvent 2015

Join me here for a new post every day, on everything from Christmas science to the things you've always wanted to know, in December as we count down to Christmas! 

Makes sure you're also following me on Twitter (@Sci_Sparks) and Facebook, Science-Sparks for the latest updates!

Happy Christmas!!

Gravity...Houston, we have a hit | Film Review

It's been exactly two years since the multi-award winning film, 'Gravity' was released in the UK. But here's my opinion of the hit film.

On the 28th January 1986 everything changed for America. The US news network, CNN carried live pictures of the routine challenger space shuttle launch. Although what was far from ordinary was the shuttle carried the first female civilian to go into space, 37 year old teacher Christa McAuliffe, chosen from over 11,000 applicants. What captured the collective imagination of the American people,soon, 73 seconds later ended in a tragic disaster. All seven crew members were killed and never made it into space.

The event, watched eagerly by millions worldwide shocked and tramatised the nation, just as the 9/11 attacks did some 15 years later. But the smash hit Gravity has the same ingredients, a female in space, Dr Ryan Stone played by Sandra Bullock going about her business with colleague Dr Kowalski played by George Clooney, when an onslaught of space debris hits the international space station (the ISS). First tethered to safety, the race is on to save the space station and more importantly to save their lives.

With the tilted Earth shimmering like a blue marble, circling them below, the film is a cinematic virtue and there's some science too.

The average space station commander logs around 4,000 hours at a time on board the football-field sized vehicle. Hollywood has officially accomplished the mission to make your children think space is cool.

Ocean Acidification on Urchin Larvae

Ocean Acidification is becoming an increasingly big problem. As we continue emitting carbon dioxide the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic. This is because around 30% of the carbon dioxide that's artificially emitted is absorbed into our oceans. Once in our oceans, it forms carbonic acid. This carbonic acid is harmful to sea life. In shelled species, acidic conditions the shell thins and the organism becomes more vulnerable to predators. In other species, the acidic conditions can disrupt their biological processes. There's even been research which suggests that acidity can impact communication in Dolphins for example.


Of course Scientists are determining whether this is a problem which warrants intervention. To do this - they need to understand the importance of the problem and what it actually is. One of the earlier investigations was carried out by a Belgian eco-physiologist, Sam Dupont. He put a batch of urchin larvae into a bath of highly acidic water to see how their skeletons would fare. Immediately, nothing obvious happened, he decided to check on them later in the evening, however he didn't remember until a few days later - at which point he thought they'd probably be dead. When he returned, he found the larvae swimming in their tank but their internal skeletons had dissolved away - but they still seemed to be functioning well. Even though this experiment doesn't provide any definitive conclusions, it does demonstrate the extreme case of what might happen if we let this problem develop. The article, published in Nature says how the acidity of sea water has climbed about 30% over the last 150 years. Some regions of the globe have already become corrosive to such an extent of where it has inhibited the growth of corals and some other species for part of the year. Projections have said that within a few decades’ creatures with calcium carbonate shells like mussels will run into problems within a few decades. Acidification might also impede the growth of plankton, potentially endangering entire marine ecosystems like fisheries and coral reefs.

The Tasmanian Devil

The small, solitary animal is nocturnal and spends most of its days burrowed into hollow logs. This marsupial is known to get very feisty when feeding, dozens of them can mob a single carcass. Scientists have also discovered that it has the most powerful bite of any living mammal in the animal kingdom. It will also fly into rage when it feels threatened by a predator - in fact it was these displays which led Early European settlers to call the creature the "Tasmanian Devil".  Their method of reproduction is also strange compared to other animals - Mothers give birth after about three weeks of pregnancy. They give birth to 20 or 30 tiny young. Once they're born, they crawl up their mothers fur and climb into her pouch. Unfortunately, the mother can't sustain this many young so only a handful survive.

Update!

This is just a quick post to say I haven't left ;) Just over a week ago, we held the Young Scientists Journal Conference, which was a great success! You can see the pictures from the day on Twitter with the hashtag #ysjournalconf. I also had a lot of end of topic tests and so on at school! But I've sent my UCAS application for zoology and marine biology, so we'll have to wait and see! But tomorrow we're off to the Isle of Wight for 3 nights - when we're there we're planning on going to the Isle of Wight Zoo, as I love photography and animals it's going to be great!!!!

Exciting times! :) 

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) - Profile

What is it?


As James Watson and Francis Crick famously said - "the secret of life". It's a vital part of any species, how it functions and the reactions that are carried out.



When was DNA discovered?



1953, by James Watson and Francis Crick - although as with any scientific discovery they were working as part of a team. Rosalind Franklin is often credited for her contribution to the discovery of DNA.



What's it made from?


The backbone of DNA if you like is made from sugar and phosphate. The 'rungs' if you like are made from bases - adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine which form complementary base pairings. As its full name suggests, there's also deoxyribose sugar which makes up the structure.

These complementary base pairings combined with the deoxyribose sugar and phosphate make up the 'nucleotide', lots of these join together make up one of the DNA strands. Because there are lots of these joined together - DNA is a polynucleotide.





How much DNA do we have?


A LOT! Although sequencing human DNA is in its very early stages, we do know that human DNA has around three billion base pairings.



Can we do anything with DNA?
Surprisingly, yes. This year Barack Obama announced plans to sequence the genome of around 1 million people in the US in the hope scientists can use this information to create advanced treatments, targeting specific regions of our DNA.


How do we make more of it?


You'll see in more detail exactly how DNA is replicated in my Christmas countdown posts, but in short, DNA is copied to a molecule called RNA. This is because the organelles for protein synthesis are found in the cytoplasm but DNA is bound in the nucleus. This process of copying the DNA to RNA is called transcription. Once the RNA has left the nucleus, it joins to a ribosome where it can then make a protein. This is called translation.

The Lemon Shark

Sharks are one of the most well known marine predators, however they're experiencing a huge worldwide decline. Scientists have estimated that around 90% of the world's marine predators have been lost from our oceans since 1950. This loss is primarily due to overfishing and was entirely preventable. The demand for shark products on Asian markets are ever increasing - sharks are also suffering from habitat loss. Many shark species use specific areas such as waters and surrounding mangroves.

Bimini is an island surrounded by mangroves. In fact, the island is the westernmost district of the Bahamas - 53 miles due east of Miami. The island is actually the closest point within the Bahamas to the US. Because of its healthy marine ecosystem it's a tourist hot spot. The surrounding mangroves provide nursery areas for sharks, other fish, conch and lobster. The lemon shark is perhaps one of most significant nearby species. The lemon sharks have been studied by the Bimini Biological Field Station for over 25 years. They're large species at the top of the food chain - this makes them the apex predator. They are fully grown at about 12-15 years. Once they reach this age, they're sexually mature. From here, they pup every two years for the rest of their life. The usual litter size is between 4 and 18 young. These sharks can live for over 30 years. They can grow a staggering 3 metres long. As part of their research, the scientists tag the sharks to monitor their movement and behaviour. As a result of this tagging it was found that they actually travel very long distances, one individual was tracked for over 1000km. The main idea is that once they've tagged the shark, scientists can look at how the shark behaves and interacts with the oceans.