PILE them high and sell them cheap. From cornflakes to coffee, packaged foodstuffs and drinks that make it into your supermarket trolley are products of the fast-moving consumer goods business.

But with seemingly endless choice, how can a company ensure their product stands out on the shelves? The latest technology can make packaging that kills bacteria, is environmentally friendly and even smells better than its rivals. Meet the scientists who are transforming your trolley.

Take Jonathan Hirst, owner of . Hirst and his team are working on ways to manipulate the atmosphere inside food packets to keep their contents fresh. One of their goals is to eliminate oxygen, which fuels the growth of bacteria, and a process that destroys vitamins and turns fats rancid. Hirst’s team have developed oxygen-scavenging chemical mixtures to be added to sachets, adhesive labels or bottle caps.

Meanwhile, chemists, engineers and materials scientists at technology company are taking inspiration from catalysts in car engines to improve the activity and durability of such chemicals. “It’s all about tweaking the reactions and optimising gas adsorption or conversion by varying material properties,” says Liz Rowsell, a chemist and director of R&D at Johnson Matthey. Recently the team developed a system that soaks up ethylene, a plant hormone that degrades fruit and vegetables.

The team at Johnson Matthey might spend a typical day developing materials from scratch, testing them or telling modellers about their results to help plan future experiments. “It’s really quite a broad church,” says Rowsell.

The people behind packaging tend to have a good understanding of both food science and polymer technology, says Hirst. Rowsell recommends studying these subjects beyond undergraduate level to stand out from other candidates. “We look for a cross-discipline team of material scientists, synthetic chemists, modellers and experts in fruit physiology and microbiology, many of them at PhD level,” she says.

Sandrine Garnier’s background in chemistry, with a master’s degree in materials science and a PhD in wood adhesives, has certainly proved useful in her role at , a company that develops additives for plastics, paints, paper and textiles. “I picked up commercial skills as I went along, but my technical skills were critical from the start,” she says.

Garnier now devises customised solutions that incorporate her company’s additives in clients’ packaging material. Teams at Addmaster have added antibacterial silver to food wrapping and reusable shopping bags, for example, and incorporated perfumed polymers in packaging to entice consumers with scents. “We are currently working with a food packaging company who want to replicate the smell of cereals and coffee sachets in the product packaging,” says Addmaster’s marketing manager Karl Shaw.

“We are replicating the smell of cereals and coffee in the product packaging”

Making products enticing isn’t always a matter of chemistry. Teams at augmented reality firm are working to build virtual content that consumers can access by scanning food packets with a smartphone or tablet. Last year, for example, .

Total Immersion offers a similar service, and recently developed augmented reality experiences for Yoplait and Pringles packaging. Experience of working in IT and an understanding of cloud computing would come in useful for roles at such companies.

Smart packaging can also be an environmentally friendly alternative to plastics that can’t be recycled and so end up in a landfill. Researchers at are working on biodegradable, compostable food containers. The company also advises other firms on how to develop packaging made from bioplastics – materials derived from renewable and biodegradable plant-based materials like corn starch.

But why bin packaging if you can eat it? That’s the idea behind WikiFoods – a project launched by biomedical engineer . His team at Harvard University have been looking at ways to wrap morsels of treats like ice cream, yoghurt and cheese in edible skins, similar to the skin of a grape or coconut.

At the moment, Edwards’s “” are only available in four Wholefoods stores in Massachusetts. But a contender is under development in the UK. Student inventor – who is studying at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Arts in London – came up with the idea of packaging water in a membrane layer made from algae and calcium chloride, both of which are edible. The resulting blob-like water containers, called “” are so easy to make that, in theory, anyone could whip one up in their own home, says González.

Trying to drink from an Ooho! may prove to be a messy affair, though. But by marrying biodegradability or even edibility with technology that keeps food fresh longer, means chemists, engineers and materials scientists can provide greener, cleaner alternatives to existing packaging.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Shelf appeal”

“As synthetic biology comes of age, engineers, biologists and computer scientists will come together to design new organisms tailor-made for specific goals – to function as antibiotic factories, to break down waste and produce fuels, plastics and other useful materials,” says Ó hÉigeartaigh.

Ever more data is being produced by giant international collaborations, so people who know how to store and analyse big data sets will be very popular. In particular, there are likely to be plenty of opportunities for those who can use a combination of mathematics and genetics to make sense of DNA research. And the increasing popularity of personalised genome scans means that consultants will need to be on hand to talk to people and help them to understand the implications of what is found in their genomes.

If this much face time with clients is not your thing, rejoice in the coming telehealth revolution. Researchers will be needed to create “pills that will remotely send information about your heart rate, blood glucose, cholesterol and more to the hospital without you ever needing to leave your house”, predicts Ó hÉigeartaigh.

Remote sex is also likely to take off, according to psychologist and futurist , which will mean opportunities for programmers. “Games designers,” she says, “who enable us to enjoy healthy, happy sex with machines, real partners, virtual partners and geographically separated couples
 will be very well rewarded.”

The global challenges we will face in a decade will also shape the demand for scientific skills. One will be coping with a limited water supply, says , professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The World in 2050. “Water is needed for everything from irrigating crops, to preserving biodiversity, to fracking,” he says. “Science postgrads with expertise in hydrologic science and water-seeking satellite technologies like , to be launched in 2020, will be in hot demand.”

The impacts of climate change could open up careers in emergency engineering in the next 10 years, says Ó hÉigeartaigh. “Engineers will need to use 2023’s advanced materials science to defend threatened regions – for example quickly constructing lightweight dykes to protect low-lying cities from floods,” he says.

“Engineers will need to use advanced materials science to defend regions threatened by climate change”

Smith anticipates an abundance of opportunities for drone experts: “Postgrads with expertise in remote sensing, geography, aeronautics, and aviation law will find fascinating job opportunities here.”

Many future machines, including drones and other autonomous vehicles, will present ethical problems, so vehicle ethicists will have a crucial role to play, says Ó hÉigeartaigh. Self-driving cars have a great track record of safety, but it is inevitable that at some point they will head for a collision – what ethical rules should the cars obey? Take the “trolley problem”, for example. In this thought experiment, a person has the chance to redirect a trolley that is heading for five people and direct it towards one person. “Autonomous vehicles make the philosopher’s infamous ‘trolley problem’ a real-world concern, and will provide many situations for ethicists to puzzle over,” he says.

POSTGRADUATE degrees offer a sure-fire catapult into a well-paid career, right? Unfortunately, not all postgraduate training will boost your employment prospects; some can leave you overqualified for entry-level positions and drowning in debt. Many postgraduates are in high demand, though. Choosing the right course can enable you to follow your academic passions and take your employability – and pay cheque – to the next level.

An increasing number of graduates are opting to study for a master’s degree. Although the number of doctoral students, and those enrolled in vocational postgraduate courses such as teacher training, has not changed much over the last decade, enrolment in master’s courses has increased by around half between 2002 and 2011. The number of these students is similarly high today, according to .

But these students may be paying through the nose for the opportunity. Funding is increasingly hard to find, and of late. At the same time, . Now, applicants are most likely to find this kind of funding as part of an enhanced undergraduate degree or during the first year of a doctoral degree.

And investing in a self-funded master’s might not pay off. A quick glance at employment figures reveals that a master’s is no insurance against unemployment. “The postgraduate market still appears to be in recession,” says , deputy director of research at the UK Higher Education Careers Services Unit. In 2007, 4 per cent of master’s graduates in science subjects found themselves unemployed six months after completing their course. By 2012, that number had risen to 7.2 per cent – barely better than the 8.3 per cent of unemployed science graduates without a master’s, according to . The statistics are brighter for some subjects, though.

PhDs could provide a safer route to employment, if you are willing to put in the extra time. Only 4.4 per cent of science PhDs are unemployed six months after graduating – just slightly more that the 3 per cent of PhDs who found themselves without a job before the recession hit.

A master’s might not boost your employability by much, but you can expect the qualification to boost your earnings. Master’s graduates who do find a job can look forward to earning 9.4 per cent more over their lifetime than their peers who left university with a bachelor’s degree, according to . PhDs are rewarded with even more: a 16.2 per cent increase in lifetime earnings.

A , compiled this year by , a UK organisation promoting research careers, corroborates these gains. The organisation looked at data collected by HESA, which asked 2500 PhDs – two-thirds of them scientists – about their earnings, and recorded an average salary of £35,000. That’s £3000 more than those with only a master’s degree can expect, and a whopping £10,000 ahead of those with a bachelor’s degree. “The hearsay that you don’t get paid for your PhD simply is not true,” says Janet Metcalfe, head of Vitae.

But don’t rush out to sign up for a doctoral place quite yet. The prospects are reassuring, but the three- or four-year commitment should not be taken lightly. “If you haven’t got the motivation and passion for it, don’t even think about embarking on a PhD,” says Metcalfe.

“If you haven’t got the motivation and passion for it, don’t even think about embarking on a PhD”

If you think you can put up with the famously long, solitary hours, funding should be easier to find than for a standalone master’s. “A PhD is definitely the choice if you want a research and development career, regardless of whether it’s in academia or industry. And three more years in education with funding compared to one year without is worth thinking about,” says Ball.

Follow the funding

When choosing a subject, it is a good idea to follow the funding. A glance at the UK government’s priorities in science and technology is a sound starting point. Last year, the government settled on : energy-efficient computing, satellites and commercial space applications, robotics, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, food production, nanotechnology, and energy and its storage. Together, .

Many of these areas have an engineering component. It comes as no surprise, then, that a report by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills predicts . According to , almost 70 per cent of engineering and IT employers are struggling to find senior engineers.

To boost the postgraduate supply for , the UK’s biggest postgraduate funder, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is planning to invest an extra £350 million into more than 70 university-based Centres for Doctoral Training. These centres aim to foster interdisciplinary research for engineers, physical scientists and mathematicians, with strong involvement from industrial partners to help them learn about business and gain entrepreneurial skills. Each centre tackles one of the priority areas, which include medical imaging and engineering, energy use and storage and quantum technologies.

PhD holders can also be hot property in industry. “A , including Airbus, GSK, Rolls Royce, Unilever and Vodafone, closely links PhD holders with increased company performance and a host of secondary benefits,” says Neil Viner of the EPSRC.

“Engineering is certainly one area where we are short on people doing doctorates, but rewards for master’s graduates are already so high that few are convinced to invest the extra time,” says Ball. Mechanical engineers, for example, already enjoy some of the lowest unemployment rates among master’s graduates; at 4.2 per cent this is below the science PhD average of 4.4 per cent.

In medical, life and environmental sciences, the outlook is mixed. Biology, biochemistry and environmental science master’s graduates have unemployment levels markedly above the 7.2 per cent science averages, at 8.1, 11.2 and 8.6 per cent, respectively. “Especially in biology, this is probably a temporary trend linked to a downturn in non-medical NHS positions,” says Ball.

A promising option may be to convert to a medical degree or choose a postgraduate course in a medical subject. Budget cuts at the National Health Service (NHS) don’t seem to affect prospects for medical roles too badly. “Outcomes here are really good, you basically don’t get unemployed medical graduates,” says Ball. It isn’t just those training to be doctors who benefit. Only 6 per cent of anatomy, physiology and pathology master’s graduates find themselves unemployed six months after finishing. And for those who fancy a career in biomedical research, PhD scholarships are on offer not only from the but also from several charities such as the and Cancer Research UK.

If medical science does not appeal, try looking to subjects that tackle some of society’s pressing problems. Priorities for funding at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council include food security, bioenergy and ageing research. Food supply and energy security also rank high on a put together by the Natural Environment Research Council last year, along with skills in other sustainability-related subjects such as freshwater science, soil science, environmental epidemiology and sustainability science and planning.

The top five skills on the list, however, are computer modelling, multi-disciplinarity, data management, numeracy and translating research into practice. The same skills underlie many of the government’s “eight great technologies”. “The message that is coming through from this is the importance of interdisciplinary skills,” says Metcalfe. Ball also believes people with such skills are in high demand. “There are always shortages of postgraduates in the very mathematical disciplines and at the interface between subjects,” he says.

Thinking about your career goals should be high on the agenda before you decide on a course, says Metcalfe. “Postgraduate study, and especially a career in academia, can seem like an easy option because it’s a familiar environment, but it is important to realise just how many employment opportunities there are across all sectors.” She recommends internships, volunteering or even simply talking to people who work at different organisations. Once you have your heart set on a particular subject or course, don’t let employment worries put you off, recommends Ball: “There are not particular subjects you should avoid in terms of employability. You are likely to get a job; you just may need to work on it.”

“Postgraduate study can seem like an easy option, but it opens up job opportunities across all sectors”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Tough choices”

A SIMPLE bedside scan could reveal an active mind hidden inside an unresponsive body. The method provides another tool for recognising consciousness in people who have been wrongly diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Tests are also under way to use it to monitor people under general anaesthetic, to make sure they do not regain consciousness during an operation.

The technique builds on recent research into the nature of consciousness. “Information that is processed consciously typically recruits several brain regions at once,” says Jean-RĂ©mi King at the in Paris, France. Other information that enters the brain triggers unconscious activity – for instance, the righting reflex that helps us retain balance when we are pushed – and it only tends to activate one brain area.

King and his colleague Jacobo Sitt, also at the ICM, reasoned that they could spot consciousness in people simply by playing them a series of beeps and then searching electroencephalogram (EEG) brain scan data for evidence that signals from different brain regions fluctuated in the same way as each other, suggesting that they were sharing information.

They performed their tests on 75 people in a vegetative state, 67 minimally conscious people, 24 people who had recently regained consciousness after a coma, and 14 healthy controls. By running the EEG data through statistics software, the researchers found differences between the patterns from people who were fully conscious, those in a vegetative state, and those who were minimally conscious ().

“This adds another string to our bow of diagnostic tools that we can use to identify those patients who are aware, but unable to show it with their bodies,” says of Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Cruse and his colleague, , have recently begun communicating with such people by asking them questions while monitoring neural activity.

The technique developed by King and Sitt could work in situations where Cruse and Owen’s methods cannot, because, as Cruse points out, it works even on people whose injuries prevent them from imagining responses to questions. “They simply listen to a series of beeps, and their brain does the rest,” says Cruse.

Even listening might be unnecessary for the technique to work, says King. “The recording should probably even work without any external stimuli – although this still needs to be tested,” he says.

That might make the approach particularly suitable for ensuring that people stay unconscious during operations. King and Sitt are now looking to adapt their method for constant monitoring of anaesthetised patients. Around 1 in every 500 people recovers some awareness while still under the knife, so having a reliable consciousness measure during surgery is important, says Sitt.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Locating life’s spark in coma brains”

In Finland, there exist several small communities that used to live for years in isolation. Amongst the descendants of these groups, otherwise rare genes occur more regularly than elsewhere in the country because a level of inbreeding was almost inevitable.

at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues studied one of these communities, where schizophrenia and other neurological disorders are unusually common.

His team first searched for any genetic deletions – chunks of DNA that are missing from a chromosome – that were more common in this group than in the general population. They found a promising candidate on chromosome 22. A deletion on this chromosome was present in 18 of 173 people from this isolated group, but in just one of the 1586 samples taken from people spread throughout the rest of Finland.

Tests confirmed that people with schizophrenia or cognitive impairments were more likely to be missing this chunk of DNA.

Identifying this deletion as a risk factor for schizophrenia and cognitive impairment puts us one step closer to understanding the biological processes at the root of such complex syndromes, says Freimer.

Tying it all together

Further investigation revealed that the deleted region normally contains a gene that makes an enzyme called topoisomerase III beta (TOP3B). This enzyme works to temporarily chop up DNA strands for a process called gene transcription, during which a particular part of the DNA is copied into RNA.

A team led by from the US National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland has been exploring the function of TOP3B in more detail. They say that it also has a role in regulating the winding and unwinding of RNA – the first enzyme found to do this in animal cells.

In addition, they have found that TOP3B has a role in the disruptions that lead to fragile X syndrome. Like schizophrenia, fragile X has been linked to abnormal brain development.

Although the researchers do not yet know how disruptions in TOP3B may affect brain development, they say the most likely explanation is that it changes the shape of the RNA, and thereby disturbs which RNA molecules get copied into proteins. This could cause neurons to grow and connect in a haphazard way. Disrupted neuronal connections have been associated with schizophrenia, autism and intellectual disability, so this could explain why a deletion of the TOP3B gene is associated with all three, says Wang.

Journal reference: Nature Neuroscience, ;
Nature Neuroscience,

“Take the world’s best courses, online, for free.” That’s the offer made by Coursera, one of the first providers of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. These courses, which involve watching bite-size lectures given by world authorities, are gaining momentum. żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ” answers your burning questions

Free education! Where do I sign up?
Millions of students are already signed up to courses offered by US start-ups , and . Between them, the three sites provide courses from around 40 universities, including the , and . This side of the pond, the and have started offering courses with Coursera, and the number of options is set to grow. Eleven other UK universities plan to launch free online courses with the Open University’s new MOOC company later this year.

Which courses can I choose from?
Udacity caters mostly for those with an interest in maths and computer science, offering courses like and . EdX hosts a similar selection, peppered with a few social science courses such as . Coursera aims to please all palates with a broad range of over 200 courses spanning and .

Great, I can learn from my bed! Now there’s no reason to drag myself to that 9am lecture.
Not so fast. These MOOCs do not lead to a degree. Each course runs only over a few weeks and is chopped up into short video lectures of 15 minutes or so. At the moment, you don’t even get university-recognised credit for them.

So what’s the point in doing a MOOC?
The courses offer you the chance to try out new subjects, taught by top lecturers, for free. What’s more, the certificate you are awarded on completing your online assignments, which are marked by a computer or other students, can be a nice addition to your CV. MOOCs also offer the chance to interact with other students in subject-specific forums, which can provide a good opportunity to make contacts in your field of interest.

MOOCs could change the way students select paid courses by functioning as a taster course, says , an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh who developed . “It’s a free, short but structured foray into a subject you find relevant, and you can get an idea how well you have done at the end.”

Will MOOC certificates ever get me course credit?
Potentially. Udacity in partnership with in California. The three courses – all in maths – cost $150 (£95) each, and are recognised by most US colleges and universities. Later this year, Academic Partnerships plan to launch the , which will offer free for-credit introductory MOOCs from eight universities that hope to lure students to stay and pay for the full degree. If the first set of UK-based MOOCs go down well, similar for-credit courses are likely to follow here, too.

Will MOOCs ever replace degrees?
Most insiders agree that MOOCs will not replace degrees, particularly courses that rely on lab work or other hands-on teaching. But if university-recognised crediting of MOOCs takes off, they may well become established components of many courses.

THE thought of academic glory and golden job opportunities entices many an ambitious graduate to further study. Forking out the fees is a less favourable prospect, however, especially if you are already groaning under a mountain of undergraduate debt.

But don’t abandon your hopes of further study just yet. A closer look reveals the picture for postgrads is not quite as bleak as it may seem. Debt-minimising tricks and funding treasure chests are out there – it’s just a case of finding them.

At first glance, the average graduate’s debt mountain can seem insurmountable. According to the latest survey conducted by student guide , current students who started before 2012 can expect to rack up around £25,000 in debt, while those who started after last year’s fee hike could owe up to a whopping £53,000.

That doesn’t mean you will end up paying it all back. “Very few graduates will ever pay anything like [£53,000],” predicts Johnny Rich, managing director of Push. That’s because about three-quarters of this debt will be owed to the , and under the new fee scheme, SLC repayments will only be collected once you start earning £21,000 or more. If after 30 years the debt has not been repaid, the remainder will be written off.

Those who started studying before 2012 will have any remaining debt written off earlier, after 25 years, but have to start repayments on any income above £15,759. Overall, total repayments made by a person on an average salary of £30,000 will work out about the same on both systems – £25,000. Those earning below £30,000 will end up paying back less on the new scheme, while higher earners will do better on the old system.

The other quarter of a student’s debt will probably be split between loans from family members and from banks and credit companies. While commercial loans typically make up less than 10 per cent of the average student debt, they can end up representing a substantial chunk of your repayments over time due to their high interest rates.

Unfortunately, aspiring postgrads are likely to encounter more of this type of debt once they embark on a higher degree, because regular student loans aren’t available for most courses. For those without scholarships, savings or income, commercial loans are an obvious choice.

Current students can expect to pay more for postgrad courses than those who went before them. , and are expected to rise further in the wake of the tripling of undergraduate tuition fees last year.

At the same time, scholarships are dwindling. Between 2010 and 2012, the number of bursaries offered by the seven national research councils – which together provide the largest source of funding for postgraduates – .

Together, these factors . “Postgraduate finance isn’t working,” says , the commission’s senior researcher. “Students simply can’t find the money they need.”

“Postgraduate finance isn’t working. Students simply can’t find the money they need”

That could soon change. The HEC, , has recommended that student loans similar to those available to undergrads be offered to postgraduate students by 2015. The idea is gaining steam. Last November, the announced .

Nice idea, you might think, but how is that going to help if you want to embark on postgraduate study before 2015?

Searching out scholarships

If you are planning on a PhD, your chances of sourcing funding aren’t actually that bad. About 70 per cent of science PhD students are on scholarships, and this figure has changed little over the past five years. Science PhDs do better than those in the humanities – the alone are expected to fund nearly three times as many postgrads in science than humanities in 2013.

The most coveted scholarships are “full-fat” awards that offer a tax-free stipend of at least £13,750 per year and also cover your tuition fee payments. Doled out by the research councils and big medical charities like the , these scholarships currently fund one in five science PhD students. Some of the programmes include bonus features, such as industry placements and higher stipends.

Another 35 per cent of doctoral students land institutional scholarships from their host university or funding from other charities, commercial partners, government bodies or international sources. These vary in their amounts, with some offering reduced stipends. Competition for full PhD scholarships is usually fierce and a good degree is essential.

If you already have a specific project or research group in mind for which no bursaries are advertised, don’t despair. “Arrange to speak to the project supervisor,” advises Jo Gibson of the . “If you are a strong candidate, they will more than likely be willing to assist you with your funding applications.”

Even if those attempts fail, and you find yourself in the same boat as the quarter of all science PhD students who fund their own research through savings, income, loans and family support, there are still nuggets of funding to be found.

Nuggets of funding

Small charities often have money set aside to support struggling postgrads. Such awards can help make up a gap in your PhD funding, says Shuzhi Zhou, co-author of .

These awards can also save master’s students from debt. Bursaries for these courses have always been sparse, but most research councils have now dropped scholarships for master’s degrees entirely. According to the , only a quarter of science students enrolled in stand-alone master’s courses receive financial awards – 5 per cent fewer than in 2007. Those with an eye on a master’s course will have to get creative in their hunt for funds.

Although individual awards from small charities tend to be modest – usually under £2000 – and identifying the right organisations to apply to can be work-intensive, the rewards can add up.

Zhou herself applied for charity funding to help pay for the fourth year of her PhD in neuroscience. Awards from five different charities netted her £10,000 – enough to cover basic living costs and travel to conferences. “It’s a bit more difficult, but if a student is resourceful and plans ahead they can potentially obtain full funding from alternative resources,” she says.

“If a student is resourceful and plans ahead they can potentially obtain full funding from alternative resources”

If you are employed, you can try to convince your employer to pay for your training. Haven’t got a job yet? – official collaborations between academic institutions and companies – can offer graduate jobs as well as opportunities for business training.

Another option is to complete your postgraduate degree part-time while holding down a full-time job. This worked for Stephen Mounsey, who studied for a master’s in medicinal chemistry with the while working full time as a business-to-business journalist. Mounsey found his income covered his fees and living costs, and he recommends the experience. “I worked in fits and starts for about 25 hours a month and got brilliant support from the university,” he says.

Part-time study is an increasingly appealing option for students. Almost two-thirds of British postgrads in the UK are already enrolled part-time, and this number should rise further as tuition fees continue to climb.

Part-time or full-time, postgraduate study is always an option for those who can uncover the hidden pots of funding treasure. It is just a case of keeping your mind, and your pockets, firmly open.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Treasure hunting”

WHEN Ben Southall, a charity worker from Ropley in Hampshire, became after winning a competition to bag the “best job in the world”, many of us turned a shade of green. According to the job advert, he was being paid by the Queensland tourism board to “explore the Great Barrier Reef, swim, snorkel, make friends with the locals and generally enjoy the tropical Queensland climate and lifestyle”. Sounds amazing, no? Publicity stunts aside, surely jobs like that don’t exist in real life?

But they could. If you have an environmental, conservation or earth sciences background, you too could be enjoying some of the most beautiful places and breathtaking experiences this planet has to offer, all as part of your job. True, the luxury villa Ben enjoyed may not come as standard but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of doing something good for the planet. So lie back, relax and enjoy the ride as żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ” takes you on a tour of the world’s best environmental jobs.

Wish you were
underwater?

Fancy getting paid to snorkel and dive at some of the world’s most colourful coral reefs? Meet Dan Exton. He is marine research and operations manager for , an organisation that arranges scientific expeditions to exotic locations around the world. Students are charged tuition fees in return for a chance to join conservation research projects abroad, working alongside established scientists.

Exton, who worked with Operation Wallacea during his marine biology undergraduate, master’s and PhD field projects, now coordinates its marine research in six different countries. He is about to visit a site in Honduras where the team is comparing the effects of two different coral reef management strategies. Exton spends about six months of the year in the field; the rest of the time he’s based at the organisation’s offices in Lincolnshire, UK.

Reality check: Most people can only dream of the adventures and travel depicted in programmes such as the BBC’s Blue Planet, says Exton. “Being able to do it for my job is a privilege.” Yet one of the hardest things, he says, is having to “cope with friends’ and family’s impression that you are on holiday half the year when it is really a proper job without five-star resorts! The food can be boring, it’s hot and sticky, with no air conditioning, there is patchy electricity at best, and biters and stingers constantly lurk both on land and in the water.”


on ice?

Heat and bugs aren’t an issue for engineer . He is about to return to Antarctica, where he will be part of a team drilling into a hidden lake thousands of metres beneath the ice. Touted as “one of the most exciting and ambitious explorations of our time” the unprecedented will collect water and sediment samples to search for life and clues about the planet’s past in this extreme environment.

Webb co-designed the unique hot water drilling system that will penetrate the ice sheet and spent eight weeks last winter dragging 70 tonnes of equipment across 250 kilometres of untraversed ice in a four-person team, in preparation for this year’s drilling season. “We had to tow the sledges with piston bullies, the same machines that groom ski slopes,” says Webb. When not in the field, Webb is based at the in Cambridge, UK.

Reality check: Although Webb has worked on previous Antarctic projects, he says the Lake Ellsworth expedition is in a league of its own: “We were travelling over land that has never seen a vehicle before and sleeping in tents at -35 °C. The extreme cold makes it very difficult to do anything: boiling water, donning all the layers of clothing, your job
 everything takes twice as long as usual. But the Antarctic is so clean and beautiful, it makes up for it. It is a stunning, peaceful place to be.”


aboard a sailboat?

Whilst Andy Webb was traversing the ice, Giada Franci from Italy was engaged in quite a different sort of crossing, sailing across the Atlantic on her 12-metre-long yacht, Kaitek, in the first leg of a four-year scientific expedition around the world. The boat monitors water temperature, salinity and fluorescence, and the information can then be fed into ocean current models and weather simulations.

Franci, who has a doctorate in marine environmental science, is co-owner of Kaitek and co-founder of , an Oxford-based company that connects scientists and recreational sailors by enlisting privately owned sailboats as environmentally friendly platforms for oceanographic research.

Reality check: Working on such a project means living in cramped conditions and, for most people, it won’t pay the bills. However, in Franci’s opinion, the ocean experience more than pays for such drawbacks: “Nothing compares to feeling the power of nature during sailing. On some days, huge waves push your boat into the water with enormous force, on others you wake up at 7am, the sea is flat and you dive into the water for the most amazingly regenerating experience ever.”


on the ocean floor?

Geohazard specialist Mike Clare is more interested in what lies beneath the sea. Clare works for , a company that investigates and analyses the geology of the seabed for clients who wish to build offshore structures such as oil and gas platforms, pipelines and wind farms.

Clare, who has a master’s degree in geology, can spend half of the year offshore in waters anywhere from Europe to Australia or west Africa, sending and drills into the abyss to take “forensic geological evidence” from the ocean floor. Pictures and samples reveal clues about landslides, sediment avalanches, eruptions or earthquakes that happened in the past and allow him to model future risks so offshore structures are only built where it is safe. The rest of his time is spent at the company’s offices near Oxford, where he heads up its Engineering Geology and Geohazards team.

Reality check: “It’s exciting to go to deep-water geological frontier areas,” says Clare. Sightings of mating humpback whales or weird deep-sea creatures are another perk. The worst aspects of offshore work, says Clare, are related to the weather: “10 to 15-metre waves that make you seasick and stop you from sending out the drills can be a downer.”


in the jungle?

Back on dry land, Finnish forest ecologist Terhi Riutta collects leaves and digs into the soil of the world’s oldest rainforest in Borneo. She is part of SAFE, the , which kicked off in 2010 and will run for another nine years. The project tracks the transition of every aspect of the ecosystem, from secondary rainforest, through logging and conversion to palm oil plantation, in what the organisers pitch as “one of the world’s largest ecological experiments”. Riutta investigates carbon and water dynamics at SAFE as part of her postdoc position with the University of Oxford.

Reality check: is one of more than 60 at SAFE, so the crowd is large and diverse. “We have a lovely community here, but it can be hard to never be by yourself. Fifty centimetres between mosquito nets is all that separates my personal space from that of my cabin mates,” says Riutta. The glimpses of orang-utans or clouded leopards make up for it, though, and even the leeches aren’t as bad as many fear: “As long as you wear these ridiculous long socks over your trousers, they keep off.”

Actions speak louder than words. Baby chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans – our four closest living relatives – quickly learn to use visual gestures to get their message across, providing the latest evidence that hand waving may have been a vital first step in the development of human language.

After a long search for the origins of language in animal vocalisations, some evolutionary biologists have begun to change tack. The emerging “gesture theory” of language evolution has it that our ancestors’ linguistic abilities may have begun with their hands rather than their vocal cords.

and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have found new evidence for the theory by studying how communication develops in our closest living relatives. They discovered that all four great apes – chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans – develop a complex repertoire of gestures during the first 20 months of life.

Look at me

Those gestures included the tactile pokes and nudges that are expected to effectively capture another’s attention in any situation, but they also included visual gestures such as extending the arms towards another ape or head shaking. To be effective communication tools, these visual gestures require that a young ape be aware that another individual is paying attention before using them, if they want to get their message across.

“Given that purely visual gestures require more advanced social cognition we would have expected them to appear later in the apes’ lives,” says Liebal. “Their early presence in all four species is really surprising.” Human babies also quickly learn to use visual gestures. Liebal’s team argues that this puts great apes and humans on a different evolutionary branch from monkeys, which .

at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, agrees. “In monkeys, intentional arm movements are dedicated mainly to grasping,” he says. “Communicative gestures probably emerged in apes, and began to assume grammatical forms in hominins.”

Got a point

Shadows of the differences that emerged in hominins can still be seen by comparing the type of visual gestures used by young great apes with those that young children use. “The apes did not use a single gesture systematically, either within a species or across all species – that’s in striking contrast to human infants,” says at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

Liszkowski has just completed a study of gesture use by young children in seven different cultural settings, including Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and Peru. In all cases children had learned to point with their index finger by 14 months (Cognitive Science, in press). “Interestingly, it is exactly that index-finger-pointing gesture which did not emerge naturally in any of the ape species in the Liebal study,” he says.

Beyond these broad patterns, however, Corballis says it is unlikely that the great ape study will ultimately lead to an evolutionary tree of gestures that reveals exactly how language appeared in humans. “I suspect apes have evolved their own idiosyncratic gestures since they diverged from hominins,” he says.

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An uberconnected world need a new politics, says Ben de Biel, spokesman for the Pirates party, who are making waves in Berlin, Germany

Who are the Pirates?
The “Pirate party” name was thought up in Sweden in 2006 as part of an initiative for more file-sharing freedom. People were fed up with being criminalised as “pirates” by the media and other organisations lobbying against free internet content. Our political goals are greater public participation and transparency – the internet simply offers the best means to achieve these.

How do you explain your success in Germany?
Berlin is the biggest city in Germany and a very young city. Most of our votes came from 18 to 35-year-olds. The established parties browse the internet but we work with it. The internet is not an end in itself, but a tool. Established parties haven’t realised this but younger people who started life with the internet do. They want politics to change – to Politics 3.0 if you like – so politicians talk with them, not about them.

Why is free access to online content, as well as getting online for free, such a big deal for you?
Using the net to change politics depends on free access to the technology. Only then can we tap into the potential and resourcefulness of all the people we want to involve in finding solutions for political problems. The establishment confines work on big questions to an inner circle. Attempts to censor information and restrict it to those who can pay have upset many people. Our alternative – give people a choice to be part of politics and decisions – seems to have struck a chord.

What changes does your party want to see?
Long term, we want to run Berlin on an open-government model. We want all bureaucratic paperwork, publicly financed creative works and the products of publicly funded research not hidden away but freely accessible online. And we want a free wireless network infrastructure.

What about the short term?
We are trying new ways of opposition. We’ll put out to the people every enquiry and proposition we have for the coalition, as well as the replies they give us. With tools like Twitter we’ll tap into and involve thousands of people.

Do the elected Pirates have an IT background – and if so, does it affect their politics?
About half do. The rest know how to use net technologies. Many have a science background. They can do the mathematics and work out that there is a discrepancy between our finite resources and what is said and promised by the establishment. I’d say the Pirates’ unifying feature is the desire for a more transparent and honest model of politics and to make a new deal within society.

Is the Pirate movement set to take off?
Definitely. There are Pirate parties in many other countries. Estonia is already practising many aspects of the new politics – for example, it has a digital bureaucracy. We have had many inquiries from Greece and Spain, where people feel a need for greater transparency during the current economic crisis. If we can show success in Berlin, this will be a key to going forward elsewhere.