Free event at JIC Norwich : become fascinated with Fungi for #ukfungusday2013

Looking forward to tomorrow (Oct 13th) at John Innes Centre (Near the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital).
We've a free family-friendly event (and not just for families) where you can be fascinated by fungi as it is UK Fungus Day.
Fungi range from the familiar Mushrooms & Toadstools to the moulds we dread to find on our bread to the yeasts that are used to make bread and beer.

The event will have several activities (arts & crafts, story telling, fungal foray (looking at woodland fungi with an expert), how the toadstool got its spots, mushroom growers, mushroom recipe tastings, beer tastings, fungi in medicine & disease, fungi used in food production (affecting taste, flavour & texture) and more...).
Come along to JIC on Sunday 13th to have a Fun-gi day!

Review of #scienceclub

Watched the first episode of the BBC's new science series "Science Club" last night (it's viewable on Iplayer here and is broadcast on BBC2 on Tuesdays at 9pm).  The post programme web-chat is available here.

Dara O'Briain was the host with four additional presenters. This episode was themed on the science of Genetics and started with a brief gentle introduction to how our understanding has grown from the Greek era to modern day. There was then a discussion of how genetic diversity has increased due to ability to travel wider to find mates (starting with the bicycle and moving on to air travel).
This was followed by a brief appreciation of that ground-breaking invention - the bike.
There then was an investigation of the audiences parental diversity with some interesting results.
Another experiment tried blending the audiences faces to get an 'average' face that according to one theory should be more attractive as it lacks asymmetry. This was dismissed at the end of the programme when the resulting images were displayed...

Next there was a consideration on the number of genes in different organisms and similarities between species. A simple test using Boar scent illustrated that certain people had a gene that enabled them to smell it (either nice or nasty) which was reminiscent of the IFR Taste & Flavour activity.

It was followed up by a critical evaluation of the Human Genome project and illustrated the difficulty in explaining to non-scientist politicians why an area of science should be publicly funded.
Next the team extracted human DNA from cheek cells using washing up liquid (fat dispersant), pineapple juice (protease) and 88% proof Polish vodka (With due deference to our Polish PhD student, Dara demonstrated that DNA extraction was a better use for this than drinking it :-)).

This was followed up by a report on how the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA illustrated that before they died out, there was some inter-breeding with homo sapiens.

The equivalent of the "Top Gear Cool wall" was displayed with pictures of scientists who have made significant contributions to genetics.

Another aspect of genetics was then explored - epi-genetics which illustrates that diet and lifestyle CAN affect expression of our genes. Results seemed to indicate that effects our diet & lifestyle could be passed on affecting even our grandchildren. Sadly, it stopped short of exploring our extended genome provided by the commensual bacteria in our gut (An area of interest to scientists at the Institute of Food Research).

To summarize, a very good and promising start at a very accessible general science programme.

A batch of Food Factory reviewing...

I finally caught up on Food Factory episodes...

Second in series looked at how bubbles are used in food processing.
So we had the celeb guests making "Chocolate coated honeycomb bars" (Hows that for avoiding mentioning brand names?) and Stefan made extruded maize snacks (Cheesy puffs). I loved the bit where he used a tumble dryer to coat the (unflavoured) puffs with a mix of oil and cheese flavouring. Brought back happy memories of my early days at the Institute where food materials research was done using extrusion cookers. Stefan also looked at why bubbly chocolate can taste more chocolaty than a solid bar.

In the third episode, the celebs made "Wheaty breakfast bricks" and Stefan made pasta (spaghetti) from wheat (using a hand mincer and lots of elbow grease).
So the focus was on mechanical processing of a basic food-stock (wheat). An important point was that removing water made for a long shelf life as reducing the water activity (Aw) slows down spoilage due to bacterial growth.




The fourth episode explored different applications of freezing in food processing.

The celebrity guests made a three flavour/colour ice lolly and the Host (Stefan) made freeze dried coffee. We also saw how peas are rapidly frozen after harvesting and why (stopping sugar turning into starch and loosing sweetness as well as affecting shelf life).





Hopefully, this series is succeeding in making people think about the food that they buy in supermarkets and stores and the effort involved in producing it.

Open Days for school & public at the Institute of Food Research

IFR Open Day

Saturday 29 September 2012

10:00 - 16:00

This is a unique opportunity to wander around the Institute of Food Research, talk to scientists about their work, follow trails, take part in competitions and find out about what goes on inside one of the world's centres of scientific excellence right on your doorstep.

Schools Open Day

Friday 28 September

09:30 - 15:30

Open to Yrs 10-13, this is an exciting opportunity to wander round one of the UKs leading research centres, the Institute of Food Research, and find out about careers in science and what goes on inside it. There will be open labs, demonstrations, talks and activities around the buildings including flow cytometry, nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR for short, microscopy, chemical imaging and a chance to go inside a Biorefinery– an opportunity to see in action equipment you can often only read about or see photos of.
There will be activities on biofilms, translating proteins into music, taking part in a fat content taste panel, doing something a bit Risky, go inside the Step Back in Time Lab, take part in a sciart activity and the BBSRC Bioenergy display. Taste & Flavour, Do you Know Your Fats, Iron Extraction from Special K and keeping up the Olympic theme in case its long forgotten, Food for Sport, games and hands on fun not to mention walking through an inflatable colon!
You must register to attend and places are limited to 30 per year group per school, unless we have unfilled spaces. The only session you have to book in for are the set of short talks which last an hour in total which will be from 09:30, 10:45, 12:00, 13:15 and 14:30.  Talks will be on Food & Appetite, Food Safety, data mining, super Broccoli, Carbohydrate-protein interactions and food allergies. You are then free to do whatever you choose, although if certain areas get congested we may ask you to move on!
There will also be the chance to talk to other scientists from across the Norwich Research Park including the Genome Analysis Centre and John Innes Centre.
A dedicated careers area will be attended by the Food and Drink Federation, Chilled Foods Association, Leeds University, Institute of Food Science and Technology and London South Bank University, not to mention our own young up and coming researchers to talk informally to anyone wanting to know what it’s like to work in science, from physics to chemistry, biology to microbiology, molecular genetics, biochemistry and maths.
There is parking available on site and if dry you are welcome to have lunch and refreshments in the grounds. However, we have limited space inside to sit and eat so would prefer it if you could plan not to do so. Exceptions may be made for those travelling some distance.
To book your place please contact dawn.barrett@nbi.ac.uk by Friday 21st September.

Local Beaver Scouts do IFR Taste & Flavour activity

Did the Taste & Flavour activity with about 20 Beaver Scouts last night.
Also, I added an activity about the was scientists & mathematicians look for patterns (Moving on from patterns of taste for foods). This involved construction of a CD spectrometer to generate spectra. Time constraints meant that they could not build them themselves so in future activities I will suggest that we have a couple of ready-made ones to hand and they can make one for themselves at home (materials consist of a CD and a cereal box).

I  think that they enjoyed themselves and they went off with a little experimental log-book and a certificate.
The experiment with dying tongues with blue food colouring (to spot taste buds) was very popular. As was the one where the difference between taste and flovour was demonstrated using an aromatic sweet and tasting it with and without pinching the nose.
Hoping to repeat the activity with some cubs (The cubs leader was there and had his tongue painted as well).
As they are a bit older (8+) it will be less guided and will get them to think more about the science.
Will also think about ways of speeding up the setting up of the solutions as was sole scientist there. Not so bad, as there were several enthusiastic helpers & leaders (which made things LOTS easier).

Science Communication course - Day 2

This started with info on what Teachers wanted from scientists i.e. the Contemporary Science angle.
Next, we had a bit of a scavenger hunt in the Resources room (See photo from Day1) - this was a place where I could seriously get my geek on with lots of books and props for science education...
We then had a session with an alumni of the course who gave us his experiences of the second part of the course (Presenting to a Teachers' conference) and some good advice.
Next up was a session about the FreshScience project. We also had a go at an typical exam question and were invited to try taking one of our datasets and reworking it to make it accessible to pupils and teachers for practice at data analysis (Might see if we can do this with the Marmite data from the Taste & Flavour events).
We then had a session on the Learning Hub where we will be getting tasks to perform as CPD in the gap between the two parts of the course. This will hopefully help us to polish up our 45-minute activities at the Teachers' conference. To quote Alfred E. Neumann from Mad magazine - "Wot - me worry?" (Yes!).

Taste & Flavour outreach activity

Along with four colleagues (a veritable Science A-Team!), I was involved in an outreach activity at the University of East Anglia today.
Two frenetic 25-min sessions involving about 30 pupils as an activity for the Local Education Authority.
We re-jigged the taste and flavour activity to suit the venue and time pressures.
The children seemed to enjoy exploring the activities (including dying their tongues with blue food colouring!).
We asked them to think about why we have the ability to taste foods, see how taste-buds are laid out on the tongue and explored why people react to tastes differently.
Dave, Tris & I have all done this activity before, Mel & Kenzi (as far as I know) hadn't but kudos to them they did an excellent job interacting with the children.

Information for teachers who might wish to run this activity at their schools (including Risk Assessments) is available at the second hyperlink (above).

Science Outreach in Norwich Day

Was at the Forum on Saturday on Institute of Food Research stand doing Taste & Flavour again (Assisting my colleague Dave) but to a more diverse audience.We had a good location near the entrance.
Lots of public interest with whole families trying the experiments. So many waves of people visited that I barely had time for a lunch-break and felt quite drained at the end. My colleagues on the BBSRC & JIC stands also drew a lot of attention - so good event all around.
Interesting stands from JIC & UEA as well. You can find some photos here and some YouTube video here. My understanding is that this is becoming an annual event.

More Pictures of IFR stand at Big Bang Fair in London

Brief post to say that there are more photos of  the Institute of Food Research Big Bang Fair stand on the IFR Facebook page.
See pictures of people bravely trying the Marmite super-taster experiment, looking at their taste-buds with blue food colouring, seeing the difference between taste and flavour and trying out the five basic tastes...
All in glorious technicolour :-)